Yesterday 12:02pm. [Phone Rings]
Me: “Hello, this is Russ.”
Caller: “Hi Russ, it’s your mom. Are you busy? Are you in a meeting?”
Me: “I’m available right now. How can I help you?”
Mom: “I’m trying to play a video on the computer but it’s freezing in full-screen. I need help.”
Me: “Before we try a few things, I’m curious, what’s the video?”
Mom: “Oh, my friend that I’m mentoring is coming over this afternoon and I thought we’d watch something online as part of our study. I’m just getting ready for that.”
Me: “Ok, what happens if you try…”
After hanging up, I realized the profoundness of the interaction I just had with my mother. I called her up later in the day to find out some more details.
Me: “How did the time with your friend go? Did the video work?”
Mom: “Yes. It worked fine.”
Me: “Tell me more about this video you watched.”
Mom: “Well, I can just go online everyday and watch clips from one of my favourite programs, Back to the Bible.”
Mom: “Watching the online clips are better than those DVDs we often watch in small groups because they’re shorter. My friend has a short attention span.”
Me: “So how do I check out this site? Can you send me the link?”
Mom: “Oh, Russ, you know I’m not good at sending links. You can just Google it. It’s easy to find.”
Observations:
- my mother only has a high-school education
- my mother once said she’d never communicate through a computer
- my mother knows how to find web content to use for discipleship
- my mother wants web content to use for discipleship
- my mother told me to “Just Google it”
- no one ever told my mother to use the internet in discipleship, it just seems natural to her
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
that’s fantastic!