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Tag: social media

Social media and church

FYI – in the coming days, I’ll be backlogging some posts from recent months as I get back into posting on the Ramblings, so you may want to check back often…

An open house downtown A grassroots effort at First United Methodist Church (where I am a member) has resulted in the creation of a new mid-week service called Open House. The service is one of prayer, meditation and reflection. It’s also one that’s aimed at welcoming in folks that work in Birmingham’s city center and downtown’s full time residents (primarily referred to here in the city as loft dwellers).

The best part for me is the fact that I get to enter the church through its beautiful front doors. The building is a gorgeous Romanesque Revival structure and while its doors are simple, it’s a powerful thing to be able to walk in off of one of the main north-south streets (just down the block from City Hall and the Federal Courthouse complex). I’ve only entered the main sanctuary through these doors once for a Sunday service before the beginning of Open House.

The other cool thing is that I get to share something I’m still learning in hopes that it will be of long term benefit to the church – a working knowledge of social media.

The Ramble: The power of the blog (sometimes a little too powerful)

One thing I’ve learned about blogging in recent years is how quickly a story can travel around, sometimes not allowing those that have learned about it to know about all of the changes taking place and leading to some rather pointed comments to be made. Then again, maybe it’s because as some folks tell me “I’m not mean enough to be doing this.” It’s definitely one of the scariest things about attempting to do this for a living.

The best example of this recently is the coverage by the blogosphere of Birmingham Mayor Larry Langford‘s decision to not issue a proclamation to the annual Central Alabama Pride parade on the city’s Southside. If you really don’t want to read the back story to understand this piece, click here to get to the point…

This morning’s Birmingham News ran a story with the online headline:

Birmingham mayor denies gay parade permit, The Birmingham News, 5.24.2008

The story stated that the mayor had decided to not only not issue the proclamation requested by event organizers, as first shared by Sweet Homo Alabama and Birmingham Blues on Friday (complete with the text from the email sent from Langford’s office), but also said that he would not issue them the permit needed to hold the parade (scheduled for June 7).

The text of the email included in Kathy’s post (about half way into it) did not contain any language that would lead one to believe that he would deny the permit, but did say that he would deny the hanging of banners in the area announcing the events and signing a proclamation.