Cycling Through the Digital Reformation

Elizabeth Drescher, author of Tweet If You Heart Jesus: Practicing Church in the Digital Reformation, recently wrote an article on the independent Episcopal Café web site profiling the work of the Rev. Dr. Bruce Robison's "digital ministry." Bruce+ is the Rector of St. Andrew's, Highland Park, and member of our Standing Committee. Below are a couple of excerpts.

I imagine Bruce Robison on one of those old-timey bikes-the kind with a basket on the front and a bell that goes brrrr-ring, brrrr-ring, brrrr-ring. In my mind's eye, he's dressed like a nineteenth-century parson just come from morning prayer, black cassock waving behind him as he wheels over cobblestone streets to visit Mrs. Dunby, who has been uncharacteristically absent the last three mornings. It could be her arthritis acting up, he thinks. Or, perhaps it's the cold going around that's punctuated the homily with sniffles and coughs the past couple weeks. Whatever, it's not like Lily Dunby to miss Morning Prayer, so the Rev. Robison pedals toward the park, waving to the gaggle of old guys drinking coffee and gossiping at a table outside the local cafe.

[…]

More than almost anyone in my Facebook world, Robison seems to take particular care not just to draw people into conversations he initiates on his Facebook page, but to visit the pages of people in his network and participate in their conversations or comment on the things they've seen as sufficiently interesting to post on their walls. It all matters to him. "I just can't see everyone as much as I would want to," Robison explains. "But I can pay attention to what they're posting on Facebook, so I have at least some sense of what's happening in people's lives."

Please read the complete article by clicking here. If anyone happens to snap a picture of black cassock-wearing Episcopal priest bicycling around the Highland Park area, please forward it to the Grace Happens editors.