Download Using Technology to Lead and Love People

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Dustin Steeve
April 10, 2009
Using Technology to Lead and Love People
Editor's Note: In this article, Dustin Steeve refers to the upcoming Christian Web Conference.
TheHighCalling.org is proud to be cosponsors of the 2009 Christian Web Conference with the Torrey
Honors Institute. Register now to join us at the conference in Los Angeles this Fall and hear Mark D.
Roberts (director of Laity Lodge) and Marcus Goodyear (senior editor of TheHighCalling.org) in person.
Near frenzy appears to drive the creation and adoption of web technologies. Just when one masters a
blog, here comes a Twitter feed. When MySpace finally makes sense, Facebook changes the paradigm.
If you’re a working professional you’re no doubt LinkedIn, check your Gmail on your BlackBerry, and
periodically find your head in the tag clouds. As the Senior Director for GodBlogCon, now called the
Christian Web Conference, it was my job to be aware of emerging web technologies and help you, the
web savvy Christian leader, employ them effectively for the cause of Christ.
When I first was asked to assume leadership of the conference, I was excited. I am a leader at heart
and have always dreamed of running my own company. I am especially attracted to the web industry. I
observed that smart, trendy young people work for web-based companies. Many of our cultural
geniuses and top CEOs reside on the top of mountainous tech companies. Tech is a booming industry
and opportunity abounds. Who wouldn’t want the respect, power, and credibility of Microsoft’s Bill
Gates? To this day, I really think that the web is going places. I see the web as our new social scene,
our new town square. The web is full of useful tools that can plug us into its bustling commerce and
social scene.
Through my work with the conference these past three years, I observed Christians giving mixed
responses to the web. Some dismissed it as a source of porn and other unchristian indecency. Others
saw frivolity or luxury in web based expenditures, preferring to reach people through time-tested,
traditional media.
And yet to some Christians, the web appeal was strong. These Christians saw opportunity for local,
national, or even global outreach via web technologies. Like these visionaries, I saw grand opportunity
for Christians through use of the web. My head filled with ideas about employing web tools for
evangelism. When I assumed leadership of the conference, I was hoping to help lead Christians to
become masters of web technology, to create a place for themselves in the mainstream media of
tomorrow. However, my early desires to conquer the web for Christ were put into a right perspective
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by the professors at my great-books general education program, the Torrey Honors Institute at Biola
University, and Ken Myers of the Mars Hill Audio Journal.
At Torrey, my professors challenged me to think more deeply, to see through the glamorous digital
façade of the web to consider the real-life people behind that façade. Professor John Mark Reynolds
succinctly gave reason for this when he said,
“Virtual reality is dependent on plain old reality, so it cannot escape harming or helping the souls on
line. Because it’s so dependent on the world of concrete, neon, electricity, and physical bodies, it will
never replace them. People are not just minds, but minds in bodies. To really know me (all of me), you
have to know my whole self which includes my physical self.”
Effective Christian use of the web cannot merely be gauged on site “hits,” awards, or even revenue. It
must help people live more Christian lives on- and off-line. Ken Myers pushed me further in my
thinking when he reminded me that technology often shapes one’s interaction with the world. “To a kid
with a BB gun, everything becomes a target,” Myers said at GodBlogCon in 2008. Myers cited several
media ecologists who remarked on the decline in young people’s ability to read deep, extended texts
due to habits cultivated by their fast-paced, keyword-search-based web surfing. Myers challenged me
to think about the consequences of shallow reading. If the web teaches us to be shallow readers, what
does this mean for Christians’ ability to read the Scriptures well?
If we are to fulfill our calling to love our neighbors, then we ought to think beyond mere mastery of our
craft to the lives of those who use our products and how those products shape a person’s interaction
with the world and walk with God. In the case of the web, conferences like the Christian Web
Conference provide a place where Christian leaders can come together, become aware of the latest
technologies, but also be immersed in deeply Christian perspective on their impact on the lives of our
neighbors. If Christians are going to be leaders using online tools, we cannot lose sight of the web’s
potential; simultaneously we cannot be blinded by the flashiness of the web. A leader’s foremost
consideration must be the people for whom the web can be useful and how the technology is shaping
their lives.
This material is provided under a Creative Commons 3.0 License by the Theology of Work Project, Inc.
You are free to share (to copy, distribute and transmit the work), to remix (to adapt the work) and to
make commercial use of the work, under the condition that you must attribute the work to the Theology
of Work Project, Inc., but not in any way that suggests that it endorses you or your use of the work.
WWW.THEOLOGYOFWORK.ORG
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