It was a great week of Continuing Education in Victoria. The congregation of First Metropolitan United Church hosts this annual conference each January giving folks like me an opportunity to hear great speakers and enjoy a respite from the Ontario winter. Yes, the temperatures hovered around a balmy ten degrees and the sun shone. I even saw a couple of flowering crab trees beginning to bud out and one garden boasted newly planted pansies. Ahhhhh!

The key-note speaker was Leonard Sweet. He is, as the programme material put it, a historian of North American culture; a futurist who “sees things the rest of us do not see, and dreams possibilities that are beyond most of our imagining;” and a preacher and writer who communicates the gospel powerfully to a postmodem age. It also notes he was voted “One of the 50 Most Influential Christians in America” in 2006 and 2007.

Leonard spoke to us of the need to engage in mission through the new world of technology.  Leonard told us that life as we knew it changed in 1973. What happened in 1973? Martin Cooper invented the first cell phone. Ever since then we have been moving more and more into a wireless world. Anyone spending even a few moments in a public space such as an airport or a shopping mall knows that cell phones are the constant companions to most people now. Sweet is great with acronyms and he said we live in a TGIF world (twitter, google, internet, facebook). Leonard made connections for us around spirituality and technology reminding us that as church we need to be using technology to connect with folks.

I guess that is why I started writing this blog. It is a way for us to connect as we consider together how God is acting in our world. What do you think? Does technology strengthen your spirituality? How so?