I don’t have any issue with websites that seek to gather liked minded people, whether those be Christians, Lutherans, or WELS teens. What I wonder however is the reasoning behind doing so in some cases. The reason that is often given is that places like Facebook and MySpace attract all kinds of “undesirables.” The conversations going on there are not Christian, and the subject matters challenge our faith. Almost as if to say, there are “sinners” there. Let’s go someplace else where the people are more our kind of people. Things are so “messy” there. I might get dirty.

God has placed us, and equipped us for being in a sinful messy world. Facebook is a part of that. Clearly there are places a Christian should not be, but I don’t think Facebook is one of those places. Christians on Facebook have great opportunities to be salt and light. Our faith is not checked at the door. It is an important part of our digital selves.

I’m often reminded of Jesus’ approach while he was physically among us. He rolled up his sleeves and got his hands dirty. He spent time with “sinners.” After all, those were the people he came to spend time with. (Luke 19:10, Luke 15:7)

So rather than spending our time building clean places where we Christians can cloister, why not spend time building relationships with those we come across in our digital travels? This requires a commitment to God’s Word. A strong and vigilant faith is necessary when you are constantly being tested. Faithful disciples make great digital citizens in spite of the messy landscape they live in.

If you’d like to know what the internet “says” about you, Google yourself. Go to Google and enter in your first and last name in quotes. Then read what others might be reading about you. And now with things like The Wayback Machine, this content is permanent (or at least as long as the internet exists as we know it).

So what have you already etched on the internet about yourself? As Christians, this is an important question as we consider Jesus’ call to let our lights shine. If you are going to put your stamp on the internet, shouldn’t it be a good representation of who you are in Christ? The answers are obvious, but I think sometimes we don’t apply that in our online lives. I’ve seen many people I know who are Christians, but wouldn’t know it by their online persona. Sad. Just because we are online, where we think we can be semi-anonymous, doesn’t mean we aren’t Christ’s ambassadors and sending messages about what’s important to us.

So the next time you put finger to keyboard while online don’t check your faith at the door…etch it on the internet.

Now those line items need to be increasingly aware of the internet. Websites and other internet “marketing” channels are important tools to reach different segments of our communities. When I say Internet Ministry I don’t mean something separate from what you are already doing. Most churches exist to serve a local community. I mean the use of a medium that reaches people where they are, namely online. So how do you know where to focus your time, money and energy? Do you just put up a website and declare it finished? What about investing in Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, etc? What about text messaging and mobile phones? It gets really complicated doesn’t it?

My advice to any congregation is to start small, BUT have a plan. Don’t let the internet “happen” to you. Intentionalize how you use the internet to promote your church or share the gospel. Gather a group of people who meet monthly to discuss topics related to your church’s use of the internet. Let them develop a short and long range strategy that will align with your church’s overall approach to ministry. Don’t separate these. They must work together. Empower that group to try things. One great thing about the internet is it is often free to try before you take the next big step. Explore, Test. Watch. Every church may try a different approach. But unless you have a dedicated group to pay attention, your approach to Internet Ministry will be reactionary, disjointed and haphazard.

Again, keep it simple. Start by at least talking about it. Then planning. Then trying. Then evaluating. Then repeating the process.

Churches have to make similar decisions. To communicate one-to-one or one-to-many. The outreach strategies of today in our churches is usually a mix of many different methods — door bag hanging, surveys, telemarketing, mass mailings, radio spots, etc. Today we also have to throw websites, email and electronic newsletters into the mix. So which are best?

I wish there were an easy answer, but there isn’t. What might work for one church may not work for another. What I have seen however is that most churches don’t really know what’s working for them because they don’t have a way of measuring results.

Let me stay in the realm of technology. Do you know how effective your website is? Now that is a loaded question because it assumes you have already answered the question “what do I want my web visitor TO DO based on visiting my site?” There is the rub. Many websites are simply put online because… just because. No one really ever identified the real purpose of the site and how they would ever gauge if it was worth the effort to put it up or maintain it. That’s poor stewardship.

I won’t get into the many ways you can actually measure effectiveness through technological means. I’ll save that for another post. The challenge is whether you have asked that first question. Why are we doing what we are doing? Write it down. Revisit it. And THEN you can measure it. Perhaps “mass communicatin’” isn’t worth it. Perhaps it is. You will never know unless you figure out the why.

The question then is can churches take advantage of the revolution going on right now on the internet of social networks? You know the kind, Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn to name a few. While some of these have bad reputations, the technology itself has some potential for bringing like-minded people together online. That is what a church is right? Spiritually like-minded people? Same purpose in life. Similar values. And in some respects similar interests.

The value of social networks within the context of the church is for geographically dispersed members to “meet” more often than time and distance could otherwise afford. While I think it is doubtful that in most of our churches, at least today, these groups would form by themselves online. I do think they could be extensions of groupings that already exist at church. Here’s an example. I could envision (and I even know that some of these exist) an online group that meets to continue discussions about the Sunday morning Bible class. The pastor is involved with proposing “seed” discussion topics and perhaps online resources to answer some of those questions. The WELS.net Q&A is an excellent source for some of that. Two or three times a week the member logs in, shares a thought, asks a question, or simply reads. The pastor then uses the first part of the next weeks class to review online activity, thus promoting it’s use to others. I think that’s cool. Perhaps even using resources like the YouVersion online Bible for note taking, etc.

These don’t need to be always about purely spiritual issues either. Mom’s could get together and talk about parenting. Even geeks could gather to talk about their passions. There are many possibilities. Try one and let me know how it goes. God’s people getting together at church and at a virtual meeting room are places the Holy Spirit will work.

If you are a FinalWeb user some simple tools exist there to do this. For those who want to really dive in, products like www.ctsmemberconnect.com or www.unifyer.com might do the trick.

In this week’s WELSTech Podcast that will be released shortly, Sallie Draper and I talk about Green Computing and some tips that every congregation or school can take advantage of. In our picks of the week we both selected tools that help save paper and printer ink/toner. One that I think you will enjoy is GreenPrint. This free application installs itself as a printer on your system and then “intercepts” your print jobs. When it does it gives you a chance to weed out any pages you don’t want to print, especially those nagging screens that have just a header or footer on it, or those pages that you really don’t need. It also allows you to print to a PDF rather than paper. Finally you can choose to not print selected graphics on a page or just the graphic (no text).

This may seem like a small thing, but it adds up. Not only are you saving paper and ink, but of course you are saving money. I find myself trying to print less and less, and use the technology tools at my disposal to at least be a better environmentalist (in my own little way), and save money too.

Let me know how you are “going green.”

Martin

1. Broadband access isn’t everywhere….yet. There are still many rural areas, and even some not so rural areas that don’t have easy access to a good internet connection. This is obviously a requirement for cloud computing.

2. Broadband access still isn’t as cheap as it should be. Because of the lack of competition in some areas, broadband access is still too expensive for many. This limits use and your ability to share files, etc. even if you can afford it.

3.  Connectivity is still difficult to maintain 100% of the time. Let’s be honest. Even the most reliable broadband connections go down. Then you are essentially stuck. Although more and more web applications are realizing that you want your data locally too.

4. Finally, the web is still slower than working on local applications with local files. The nature of the web is that web requests still need to be made to a distant server, and then a reply needs to come back to populate your page. This slows things up a bit. I foresee this drastically improving in the near future however.

So there you have it. Is working “in the cloud” for you? Good question. The point is, I don’t think that question is going to go away anytime soon. Let’s revisit it in a couple months. Things are changing at a rapid rate.

There are obviously a number of benefits to this concept. One of them is that you don’t need a very “beefy” computer to work like this. You just need something with a keyboard, internet connection and modern web browser. Your computer today is likely fast enough and its life could be extended through cloud computing. For organizations it eliminates the need for expensive and complex servers. And believe it or not it helps in the area of security as many of these companies maintain a much more secure environment than a church or school could ever do. Two last benefits are price and features. Many of the “cloud” computing applications today are free for moderate use and offer an ever growing feature set that automatically get added to your environment without needing you to “upgrade.”

It’s not all positive news, but I’ll save the negatives for my next post. In general, I believe there is value for our congregations and schools to at least consider this alternative. While at the conference I heard from a young man who went to school in a San Mateo, CA school where they have decided to do all their work “in the cloud” using Google Apps (which by the way is free for non-profits). They submit their homework via this system as well as all their other day to day work.

If you’d like to learn more about the possibilities, feel free to contact me. If you have “in the cloud” experiences (sounds a little charasmatic doesn’t it), please share via comments.

Future enhancements will include a “group” feature which I believe will allow Bible study groups to form and share thoughts, as well as contact lists. In short it looks live a viable way to do online Bible study with a small, or even larger groups.

Technology now allows your church, or you as an individual to reach “all the world.” At least all the “digital world.” There are still many places that you can’t reach, but the dimensions of our nets just got a lot bigger. I won’t bore you with the big numbers attached to online viewership studies. Let me just say there are A LOT of people on the internet. And A LOT of those people don’t know who their Savior is. Those people are surfing websites, reading blogs, participating in social networks, watching video online, following people on Twitter or Facebook. The simple question is, is your church or are you being heard in those digital spaces? Is our message of God’s grace just being preached on Sunday morning for an hour…limited by time and space? It doesn’t have to be.

Watch future blog posts or listen to our WELSTech podcast about the tools at your disposal. To whet your appetite a bit give a quick read of “Facebook For Pastors.” While I don’t agree with every point made, I believe it illustrates the possibilities of the technology tools now available to us all.

Martin