A UNIQUE publishing enterprise, with a strong Okanagan connection, has won significant recognition.

The 2007 Award of Merit from the Society for New Communications Research will be presented December 5 to Voices of the Virtual World. Subtitled ‘Participative Technology and the Ecclesial Revolution,’ the Wikiklesia Press book was co-edited by Len Hjalmarson. The Kelowna-based writer is also a contributor to BC Christian News (see page 6).

Working with John La Grou, Hjalmarson marshalled the work of several dozen contemporary thinkers. The result received a glowing endorsement from Kevin Kelly of Wired  magazine, who declared: “Uttered like a prayer retrieved from the year 2030, spoken in a new tongue, a new form. Listen!”

Voices, stated Lulu.com, “is a far reaching exploration of spiritual journey, within a culture of increasingly immersive technology – [which] explores the growing influence of technology on the global Christian church. We hear from more than 40 influential voices . . . from a progressive Episcopalian techno-monk to a leading Mennonite professor . . . from a tech-savvy mobile missionary to a corporate anthropologist, whom Worth Magazine calls ‘one of Wall Street’s 25 smartest players.’”

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According to the book’s foreword, the work reflects the “epochal transformation from passive religious consumers to engaged co-creators. The dawning of global connectivity is driving us out of the institutionally dominated world of analog church into the instantaneous, ubiquitous world of microclesia – the digitally connected ecclesia.”

Topics include ‘Reflections on Digital Glass,’ ‘The Technology of Congregational Conversation,’ ‘Virtual Mentoring at the Abbey,’ ‘Living as the Networked People of God,’ ‘Voices from the Technological Borderlands,’ ‘The Geeks of the Gospel: Sorcerer’s Apprentices or Empowered Prophets?,’ ‘Theology as Art,’ ‘Probing the Dark Glass,’ ‘The Ugly Blogger,’ ‘Zeitgeist and Paraclete at Play’  and ‘Will the Internet create a new Reformation?’

All funds raised by sales of the book will go toward the anti-slavery Not For Sale Campaign.

December 2007