Assignment #7- For the Love of God... Literally!

One social network community on campus that I am part of is the e-board for a student based gospel choir. Every week we come together for fellowship and worship, bringing our woes, concerns, and joys to the forefront and having one another for spiritual support. Moreover, we incorporate our love for the Lord, praising him with our voices. For most of the semester we spend time practicing for our concert that is held at the end of the semester for all of Cornell community and for the ongoing engagements that we are invited to perform in.
As part of the e-board, I am the apprentice for the publicity chair. Hence, in addition to spending three hours every Sunday with all the members of the choir, I attend short e-board meetings after rehearsal to go over the logistics of the choir such as upcoming engagements, the funding progress, and wardrobe decisions. This Gemeinschaft, a community as defined by Haythornwaite, is very utopic being that we unite under the common ground of our religious beliefs. We have a shared focus combine our voices to make a beautiful ministry for whoever we are performing for. More specifically, the e-board has a shared focus to make sure that all events and sectors of the choir run smoothly. We all strongly identify ourselves as the leaders of the choir, understanding our responsibilities and working together to make the semester a success.
Being that all of us are all very busy, the e-board meetings are brief and a lot of communication relies heavily on the CMC of e-mail. We have a separate listserv from the general choir members to get our ideas across more directly and to come to a consensus about general concerns. Although it is asynchronous, without the use of CMC the e-board would not have as much strong ties as it currently does. Through e-mail we can address issues and questions immediately instead of waiting till the end of the week to discuss it in person. Being that the common ground factor is deeply established between us, everyone feels comfortable to bring up any question they may have, contributing to our strong ties with one another. This social network has evolved into such a circle of friends that at times our discussions might not be choir related but just occurs to help each other out personally, which demonstrates that we are there for each other.
The flow of information between us is much more effective with the help of e-mail. Our reciprocity, the ability to reinforce one another, is also at a very high level because we all have the same commitment to the choir and can openly communicate with each other about virtually anything.



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