Virtually Yours? Improving email communication in pastoral care

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Virtually Yours?Improving email communication
in pastoral care

• Margaret Whipp
• margaret.whipp_at_ripon-cuddesdon.ac.uk

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Technology has become the architect of our
intimacies
Sherry Turkle
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Small scale research

• Aims
• Improving email communication
• Themes and virtues for reflective practice
• Methods
• Literature search
• Interviews
• Focus groups
• Email survey
• Observing good practice

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Virtual Pastors

• Emerging patterns of missional communication are
  widely promoted and researched
• Email is widely used in pastoral contexts, but
  under-researched
• Available guidelines are defensive, relating to
  safe practice
• Wider lessons may be drawn from similar
  professional groups

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Connectivity and its discontents

• Email is a powerful and seductive tool

It is too easy to succumb to the fascination of
technology, to deify it humanity too easily
finds itself in the service of new gods.
J-N Bazin and J Cottin
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Critical threads

• Seeking words of wisdom
• Digital culture
• Email composition
• Pastoral challenges

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Critical threads digital culture

• Accessibility
• Screen and body languages
• Asynchronicity
• Privacy
• Permanent record

Any medium has the power of imposing its own
assumptions on the unwary.
Marshall McLuhan
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Critical threads email composition

• Length and brevity
• Terms of address
• Format and tone
• Clarity
• Informal language
• Ending
• Copying and forwarding

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Critical threads pastoral challenges

• Stewardship of time
• Choice of medium
• Email accounts
• Digital divides
• Managing conflict
• Deliberation
• Expectations of reply
• Safe practice

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Digital virtues
Classic virtues Ingredients of care 1 Digital virtues
Prudence Knowing Media sense
Temperance Alternating rhythms Sustained attention
Fortitude Courage Respect for boundaries
Justice Honesty Congruence in role
Faith Trust patience Prayerful focus
Hope Hope Creative depth
Charity Humility Consistent courtesy
1 Mayeroff, Milton. 1990. On Caring.
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Gracefully yours...

• Humane conversation
• Hospitable conversation
• Holy conversation
• Inasmuch as you did
• it to the least of these
• emails.....

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Core bibliography

• Bazin, Jean-Nicolas, and Jérôme Cottin. 2004.
  Virtual Christianity Potential and challenge for
  the churches. Geneva World Council of Churches.
• Howe, Mark. 2007. Online Church? First steps
  towards virtual incarnation. Cambridge Grove
  Books.
• Mayeroff, Milton. 1990. On Caring. New York
  HarperCollins. Original edition, 1971.
• Pickell, Travis. 2010. 'Thou Hast Given Me a
  Body' Theological anthropology and the virtual
  church. Princeton Theological Review (Fall
  2010)67-79.
• Turkle, Sherry. 2011. Alone Together Why we
  expect more from technology and less from each
  other. New York Basic Books.