Observer Article: "Defunct WonderCafe site is reborn"

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I agree with chansen's analysis. I have been involved in the different levels of the church. I remember explaining GC42 to people and having to explain why there are so many levels in the UCCan. I've been part of discussions that no doubt have been held many times over the years. In fact, I heard a CBC archive program of people discussing the sad state of the UCCan in 1963. 1963. It was almost word for word the discussions we are having today.

Yes, Emerging Spirit was a result of a generous bequest to the church. Many cool things came from it. Or seemed to. WC was created and as a result, a wonderful community. As we've discussed in the past, it had many characteristics of a outreach community of faith or discussion and non-faith. It has provided support to its members and many of us have met in person. Yet, instead of finding a way to make it work and continue, the church dropped it.

We talk about growing into the 21 century and of doing things differently. Is it going to evolve into actions? I hope so. At the same time, I'm not sure. Sometimes I think we want to go back in time when we were the largest denomination in Canada.

I know there are cool things happening in the church. Sometimes though I wonder if we aren't in our death throws. I suppose time will tell.

I will continue to be involved and to do my part.
 
Northwind said:
I agree with chansen's analysis. I have been involved in the different levels of the church. I remember explaining GC42 to people and having to explain why there are so many levels in the UCCan. I've been part of discussions that no doubt have been held many times over the years. In fact, I heard a CBC archive program of people discussing the sad state of the UCCan in 1963. 1963. It was almost word for word the discussions we are having today.

Yes, Emerging Spirit was a result of a generous bequest to the church. Many cool things came from it. Or seemed to. WC was created and as a result, a wonderful community. As we've discussed in the past, it had many characteristics of a outreach community of faith or discussion and non-faith. It has provided support to its members and many of us have met in person. Yet, instead of finding a way to make it work and continue, the church dropped it.

We talk about growing into the 21 century and of doing things differently. Is it going to evolve into actions? I hope so. At the same time, I'm not sure. Sometimes I think we want to go back in time when we were the largest denomination in Canada.

I know there are cool things happening in the church. Sometimes though I wonder if we aren't in our death throws. I suppose time will tell.

I will continue to be involved and to do my part.
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So @Northwind to be clear, you are speaking about GC , conference presbytery.
Chansen is speaking directly regarding staff of the United Church of Canada and naming them as incompetent.
He is calling out specific actions.

Are you in agreement with him?
 
Some of their actions could be seen as incompetent. The United Church is a large organization. It may be an example of how organizations live to protect themselves. Incompetent may be too strong a word. I do agree that things could have been handled in a more competent manner.
 
chansen said:
And I see the side of it you don't see - the complete contempt and disregard for even serious content because someone in the church experienced a degree of butthurt.

But a lot of it is there for all to see, that you still fail to acknowledge. They can not create a decent website. It has yet to happen. They could have facilitated a handoff of at least the domain name, but they simply refused to do that, even though they have no obvious use for it.

I have zero use for them, and if they feel insulted by my words, I can live with that. I can only imagine their frustration when they instinctively reach for the "Delete post" and "Ban user" buttons, and they are not there, because they do not control this place.
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Chansen, the general council's office budget is continuing to get smaller and smaller with less and less staff. Their budget, compared o say, my budget is significantly less. The focussed site is the main united church of Canada site, not some forum software that somebody put up. I agree the forum software they put up is crap, but, I also know that there are many levels of church items which make it not like any corporate or for profit IT department.


You are quite happy to criticize. Given the risk to the United Church of Canada, of say, a group of individuals who are critical of the United Church of Canada....no, not just critical, but with a blind side with language of attack, well, they would have been foolish to give the www.WonderCafe.ca domain name to us.

Honestly. if you felt such disdain, you would have been more honest to have said so when you said you would step up, or when I offered to do the arrangments. Your behaviour now, if that is your true feelings, are to me a concern....only to what else you didn't share in the early days. I'm hoping that I am reading to much into it.
 
I think every organization can benefit from an outsider's critical analysis. Someone like chansen has nothing to gain and won't support the church purely out of loyalty. (or anything for that matter
....we know chansen well) :whistle:

I re-read chansen post and yes, I agree with what he has said.

BTW I do like my BlackBerry it is just that it is such a small screen etc.......(as compared to a proper computer)
 
Northwind said:
Some of their actions could be seen as incompetent. The United Church is a large organization. It may be an example of how organizations live to protect themselves. Incompetent may be too strong a word. I do agree that things could have been handled in a more competent manner.
Click to expand...

Some of what could be seen as incompetent by whom.
Give an example, and be prepared to defend it. I am sure you have all the facts at hand before you start throwing out labels of a professional being incompetent.
 
Pinga I will have to think about it. To sum up my view there are many things that could have been handled better.

Is the United Church above any criticism?
 
There is lots of things to criticize. Be sure you understand what you are agreeing about though. You are specifically agreeing that staff are incompetent. If you are saying professionals are incompetent, then, I would suggest you better have your facts.

If you are saying processes in the United Church are broken especially when it comes to general council and the way decisions are made, then I would agree, but then again, I find that the organizational structure is a challenge, which has many layers of complexity and brokenness *and function ...as it is regional. So, what is working in one space, may be broken elsewhere.

It is easy to criticize from the outside, without understanding the factors at play.
 
Pinga said:
Chansen, the general council's office budget is continuing to get smaller and smaller with less and less staff. Their budget, compared o say, my budget is significantly less. The focussed site is the main united church of Canada site, not some forum software that somebody put up. I agree the forum software they put up is crap, but, I also know that there are many levels of church items which make it not like any corporate or for profit IT department.


You are quite happy to criticize. Given the risk to the United Church of Canada, of say, a group of individuals who are critical of the United Church of Canada....no, not just critical, but with a blind side with language of attack, well, they would have been foolish to give the www.WonderCafe.ca domain name to us.

Honestly. if you felt such disdain, you would have been more honest to have said so when you said you would step up, or when I offered to do the arrangments. Your behaviour now, if that is your true feelings, are to me a concern....only to what else you didn't share in the early days. I'm hoping that I am reading to much into it.
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You are. I like many people in the United Church of Canada. I like the position it holds as an intermediary between what I will call "hard core" Christians on one side of Canada and the non-religious on the other side. I think that is an incredibly important place to be, and I see them sucking at anything to do with social media.

My personal disappointment is the unconditional support they seem to get from you. I've known you to be critical of incompetence, and yet the UCCan can seemingly do little wrong. I would be expecting you to demand accountability for the bequeathed dollars and provide measures for the success you insist it had, but I see nothing.

And I would expect if the United Church social media types ever banned you from anything, I would be front-and-centre asking why a WC2 admin was treated this way, with no explanation and no polite request to simply step aside before swinging a ban hammer.

To me, this is just more evidence of the contempt they have for me in particular, but also Wondercafe as a community. Where they should have approached us and explained the situation with the intent of coming to a community-driven solution, they just announced the closure. Where they could have negotiated an agreement where they maintain ownership and control of the domain name and we get use of it so long as we play nice, they just say no, even though they have no obvious use for it.

They don't talk to anyone. They don't try to solve problems. They just delete, ban, and close. It's what they do.
 
My issue with your analysis is where you place the blame.

I am quite critical of the appropriate layers of church structure regarding wondercafe's closing.

You, on the other hand, continue to make presumptions based on the voice of the message, rather than undersanding or even listening to the information provided.

Your personal attacks and blind spots are ongoing. It is too bad. It gets in the way of other actions, and will continue to do so.
 
I have lived in the world of corporate life, where arguments are held behind closed doors, where I have gone to battle on items, which I totally agree and support, but have lost the battle. Once that decision is made, then, I need to work towards living it out, and representing our corporate space in the best possible manner. I may not agree. I may not support, I may have thought of alternaives, but, at some point, I need to represent the space that pays my salary.

Maybe you have never worked in corporate world. Maybe you have never had to live out or be the communicator of a message that was someone else's message. If so, lucky you. I have. I have had people yell at me. Think that I was stupid. I could not tell them all the information that I had at my disposal. It would be inappropriate to disclose.

If you have as well, then you know that the person who gives the message is often not the person who made it.

I also believe that the United Church of Canada's staff in IT is too small to do what the wider church expects of a national organization, and exists in a high salary city (Toronto). It's a very small organization expected to do large organization things.
 
Pinga said:
My issue with your analysis is where you place the blame.

I am quite critical of the appropriate layers of church structure regarding wondercafe's closing.

You, on the other hand, continue to make presumptions based on the voice of the message, rather than undersanding or even listening to the information provided.

Your personal attacks and blind spots are ongoing. It is too bad. It gets in the way of other actions, and will continue to do so.
Click to expand...
I haven't used any admin account tools against anyone except spammers. I have not deleted a keystroke because I disagreed with it, or it didn't fit the narrative I wanted to promote. I have not stooped to the level of the United Church social media staff, nor will I.

Pinga said:
I have lived in the world of corporate life, where arguments are held behind closed doors, where I have gone to battle on items, which I totally agree and support, but have lost the battle. Once that decision is made, then, I need to work towards living it out, and representing our corporate space in the best possible manner. I may not agree. I may not support, I may have thought of alternaives, but, at some point, I need to represent the space that pays my salary.

Maybe you have never worked in corporate world. Maybe you have never had to live out or be the communicator of a message that was someone else's message. If so, lucky you. I have. I have had people yell at me. Think that I was stupid. I could not tell them all the information that I had at my disposal. It would be inappropriate to disclose.

If you have as well, then you know that the person who gives the message is often not the person who made it.

I also believe that the United Church of Canada's staff in IT is too small to do what the wider church expects of a national organization, and exists in a high salary city (Toronto). It's a very small organization expected to do large organization things.
Click to expand...
Then they can be nicer in their approach. They could have asked us to take Wondercafe.ca off their hands 3 years ago, saving a bunch of money. They could stop treating me like I'm the worst person in the world, just because a couple of touchy members go flag-happy on my posts. Or if I am so terrible, they could point to what I did that was so bad, but they can't, or won't, because they don't think they have to justify anything they do.

They've created an environment where one of the three people who took what was left of Wondercafe and ran with it, has nothing but contempt for them. If they were in such bad shape, they could have asked for our help. Asked for my help, even. They could have used the community in a form of partnership. They could have done so many things differently, but all I've seen is contempt, and my contempt for them is a result of that.
 
Quit being so "the world revolves around me".
You did not hide threads; however, our moderators did for the same reason that threads were removed from the site in the old world.
In the grand scheme of what the united church of canada decision makers are facing, I am sorry that somehow you weren't at the top of their mind or getting a whole bunch of resources. Funny, you haven't really showed your love for the running of wondercafe, not sure why you would think someone should reach out to you.

To expect a hand of friendship, one would first have to be willing to offer one...
 
I offered many ideas by PM. I've always stressed that a community moderator must communicate with the community, and not simply take action and blindside their users. Some of my recommendations were actually being followed in the final year of Wondercafe.ca. So apparently, I did have a brief, positive impact on how the place was run, and I must have phrased those suggestions in such a way that they were taken seriously.

It only took about 4 years.


Edit: Look, I'm comfortable and confident enough in my position being hardly one that only "revolves around me" that I'm going to bed. You can have the last word of the night.
 
chansen said:
I see the United Church as being fundamentally broken.
Click to expand...


I can't argue with what you see. I don't sit where you sit. So I'll simply offer that what I see looks different.

chansen said:
Everyone is pulling in different directions.
Click to expand...

Muscles can only contract and relax. Biceps and triceps pull in opposite directions. The only time this is a problem is when both sets are attempting to contract at the same time.

Maybe in some places The United Church of Canada is experiencing spasms of this sort. From where I sit I don't think it is our biggest problem. Rather I think that we, as a denomination, have made the rookie mistake of not realizing that muscle groups work best in pairs. We wanted really big biceps and ignored our triceps. The end result is that we have great strength in one direction and are incredibly feeble when we have to move the other way.

From where I sit the UCCAN came into being in the age of reason. We were birthed by an intellectual argument that gained traction across divergent theologies because thinking worked. Sadly, society had already started to show us where all head and no heart leads and the Great World War kicked the proverbial crap out of the idea that humanity could think its way out of any problem.

Because the Church experiences lag with the wider society it took some time for the anti-thought wave to wash through.

And as a result we reactively went heart crazy.

The problem with the UCCAN, again from where I sit, is that it feels about things far more than it thinks about things and for some the heart can do no wrong.

Which gets messy.

chansen said:
"Social media" is something they want to jump on, but when you open yourself up to discussion, you may not like what people have to say, and I don't think that ever occurred to them.
Click to expand...

You give the Church way to much credit by suggesting that we thought about social media. We felt about it and whatever thinking happened was likely minimal.

We also didn't think much about what others would say because one of the only muscle groups we have paid attention to are the ones conducive to back patting. We felt that since we were on the side of angels that we would have many people willing to help us pat ourselves on the back.

We also heightened our ability to feel outrage. It helps us stand with/as victims rather than taking our rightful place before victims when it can be demonstrated we were the victimizer. In the humility/hubris group you can guess which side of the equation we exercised the crap out of and which we let atrophy. In our defence, we aren't the only religious group that has made the same mistake.
chansen said:
If there is a plan behind the social media strategy of the United Church of Canada, it has been well-hidden.
Click to expand...

Again, plan suggests thinking. It was felt that social media would be a good platform to feel things at people and everybody felt good about that suggestion and if it feels good why not do it?

Which isn't to say we have nobody capable of thought or planning. We have some very brilliant people. Who report to people who are more interested at the end of the day with feeling good rather than thinking well.
 
Northwind said:
I agree with chansen's analysis. I have been involved in the different levels of the church. I remember explaining GC42 to people and having to explain why there are so many levels in the UCCan. I've been part of discussions that no doubt have been held many times over the years. In fact, I heard a CBC archive program of people discussing the sad state of the UCCan in 1963. 1963. It was almost word for word the discussions we are having today.

Yes, Emerging Spirit was a result of a generous bequest to the church. Many cool things came from it. Or seemed to. WC was created and as a result, a wonderful community. As we've discussed in the past, it had many characteristics of a outreach community of faith or discussion and non-faith. It has provided support to its members and many of us have met in person. Yet, instead of finding a way to make it work and continue, the church dropped it.

We talk about growing into the 21 century and of doing things differently. Is it going to evolve into actions? I hope so. At the same time, I'm not sure. Sometimes I think we want to go back in time when we were the largest denomination in Canada.

I know there are cool things happening in the church. Sometimes though I wonder if we aren't in our death throws. I suppose time will tell.

I will continue to be involved and to do my part.
Click to expand...

(Isn't the UCCanada still the largest protestant denomination in Canada? If it isn't - what is?)
 
Depends on which numbers you use.

Remember the adage, "Lies, damned lies and statistics."

Going by 2011 Census Data collected for the Canadian Government the membership numbers are:

2.5 million for the UCCAN
1.6 million for the ACOC

Both those numbers are inflated due to self reporting and not even the Churches themselves believe those numbers.

Using Denominational statistics the last comparables I have access to are 2007-2008

525, 673 for the UCCAN reported in 2008
545, 957 for the ACOC reported in 2007

Unless the ACOC lost 25, 000 members between 2007 and 2008 they might have a slight lead.

If this was an election we'd be in the too close to call stage
 
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