c. 2008 Religion News Service

NEW YORK _ Unlike my normal preference for silence while writing, I prepare this column amid New Age tunes on “international radio,” courtesy of iTunes.

Will it be different? We’ll see. Context tends to shape content.

Last week, I glimpsed a future paradigm for religious inquiry.

It wasn’t a church event, which is one clue. We met in a loftlike office at 37th and Madison, near the one-time mansion district, near a once-thriving Episcopal church, near a host of “former things.”

Eight of us sat in a semicircle _ the classic format of a church group _ but we weren’t there to “tell our stories” or to discuss what we already knew. We were being shown something new: making content available to worldwide audiences through curiosity-driven technology. A flat-screen monitor was our lens to this larger world.

Imagine a world of content made accessible not just at the click of a mouse, but at the “click” of curiosity.

You ask a question _ large or small, long-simmering or suddenly-flaring _ and a content manager assembles a rich array of Internet-accessible resources, from your pastor’s insights to videos of choirs to artistic renderings to essays from around the world.

Like a voyager on YouTube, you follow the thread of your curiosity, moving quickly beyond the cultural blinders of the people you normally consult. Instead of remaining within the usual conversations and faith-conventions of, say, white suburbanites in Atlanta, you experience a Latin liberation theologian, an African choir, a Greek essay and a teenager’s video.

Meanwhile, your thread of questions becomes data, and the God-spark within you shines a light elsewhere. When others far away start the same thread, your inquiry shapes what they see.

We’re journeyed way beyond the church parlor, where eight people would normally offer culture-bound insights on institution-sanctioned questions even as their hearts burn with other questions.

The process is strangely engaging. As people ask questions, our guide sorts through a wide universe of responses to find the most pertinent. Instead of competing for air-time, our minds are free to make intuitive leaps.

This process could be self-guided, as well. I could discover a question while working and go off in search of a pathway.

Whether in a group or alone, I am led beyond the boundaries of my cultural milieu and self-centeredness. I can no longer pretend that my God is small, that creation is entirely about me, or that faith means attaining my personal satisfaction.

Instead of sneering at the religious diversity of our world and finding easy holes to poke in someone else’s faith, I am forced to accept the reality that God speaks in many voices, and none of them is entirely about me. God’s “new creation” is larger than anything I can imagine. Even though I return to a circle of familiar religious friends, God’s restoration of humanity is a far-flung enterprise.

And so, therefore, must be my own restoration.

I have tried to find God in the small circle, the familiar accents and questions of my cultural context. I see now that it has never been enough. Not because I am slow of mind, but because the lens I inherited doesn’t show enough.

As I finish writing this column, Sky Radio presents a stunning new rendering of a familiar Latin chant, “Gloria in Excelsis Deo.”

Fascinating.

(Tom Ehrich is a writer, church consultant and Episcopal priest based in New York. He is the author of “Just Wondering, Jesus,” and the founder of the Church Wellness Project, http://www.churchwellness.com. His Web site is http://www.morningwalkmedia.com.)

KRE DS END EHRICH