The blogging world has known about this for awhile, but I just discovered that April 29 is "Internet Evangelism Day."  In addition to marking your calendar you ought to bookmark this site because it has some great material on what is available for communicating on the internet.  The site provides warnings about how one must be careful and also refuses to overstate their case.  For example : " We do not wish to overstate the potential of the Internet. It is, in any case, only a channel, and not the Message itself."

Here are some other blogs that posted about this event. 

• Mark your calendars for Internet Evangelism Day!
• Internet Evangelism Day : 29 April 07
• Internet Evangelism Day
• Churches Mark 29 April as Internet Evangelism Day
• SHARE ~ Internet Evangelism
• “Stretch out your Net” with Online Evangelism Resources
• Internet Evangelism Day?
  

 The last post listed is by blogging pastor Dennis Mullen, who expresses some doubts.  He writes:

I have to admit that I’m pretty skeptical about the potential of the web for evangelism. As I’ve said in my recent preaching, sharing Jesus is so relational and (if Jesus Himself is any indication) so incarnational, that the web with its “virtual communities” doesn’t seem like the place to do it. And the web site listed above isn’t all that helpful, with its many nested menus that seem to promise great ideas after the next click…

Since I suspect people have similar doubts about online community-building tools, I think I should say a couple of things about this.

First of all, I think Pastor Mullen's skepticism is often justified in response to many claims made for the internet, but I thought that this site was careful, while promoting the concept and practice, to also give realistic caveats (obviously I simply disagree with the last sentence).  He is also justified in thinking that the internet is not a good replacement for other forms of interaction.  If internet evangelism (or online community) is taking time away from other forms of evangelism, then that is probably a bad thing....

(Though even here, not all forms of bodily interaction are equal.  I've sometimes tried cold-call evangelism and have often come away wishing I'd tried something else.  If a blog attracts readership, that might be better than some things outside of cyberspace.  I suspect the sort of interaction Pastor Mullen wants to see is more productive than that sort of thing.)

But I think this sort of campaign is not encroaching on territory, but rather filling a void.  As I've mentioned before on this blog, my wifes and my own mobile phone do not mean we get less time face to face talking (which has been far too little since we became parents) but that we get more time to talk to each other at all.  Likewise, our hope at Connect Our People is that people will be reminded to engage in other forms of communication and interaction as a result of reading about and from one another daily.

Finally, this word "incarnational" does not, in my mind, speak against these sorts of technological innovations.  After all, Jesus had a human voice and, if someone could not see him in a crowd, he could still be blessed by hearing him.  Likewise, the Bible shows us Paul pastoring by letter.  I wouldn't want to used these things to hinder bodily interaction or Paul's teaching that all Christians are "living epistles," but I think that internet communications are just as incarnational as anything else if kept in context.

That's my opinion, anyway. 

I mentioned this last week, but think it might be good to spell it out now.  We have a new pricing plan.

Connect our people's community building system is best used on the basis of "groups" or "ministries."  Right now, we are utilizing four areas or branches in a church ministry that could use our services:

• Leadership and/or Administration
• Music ministry
  
• Small Groups
• Youth ministry 

As pointed out in the pricing section, "You can have as many groups using the system as you want and still only pay for one to four branches! " Here’s how we break it down:

1. 0-500 members -- $50/month for each branch activated
2. 501-1000 members -- $75/month for each branch activated
3. 1,001 + members -- $100/month for each branch activated

 If you act now, you can sign up fro three branches of ministry and get the fourth for free.  That would save you from fifty to a hundred dollars a month.

If you only want to start with one branch, this would be cost-effective way of testing out the system and seeing how it can help your church. We are confident that you will soon see how useful the system could be to your whole congregation.

Before I forget: May you all have a blessed Easter and resurrection Sunday.  Next week, when the festivities are over, please check out our new pricing plan .

Now, on with the show:

 News headlines from Australia are promising that

Research points the finger at PowerPoint

Australian researchers are claiming that they have found that, "It is more difficult to process information if it is coming at you in the written and spoken form at the same time."

We'll see.  Obviously we'll need to see what other studies say, if they confirm these findings.  (But what if they refute the findings but are sponsored by Microsoft? science is hardly as value-free as some people want to believe.

I suppose there are churches using power point who might be challenged by this story.  On the other hand, more traditional forms of technology will also need to deal with this study since:

It also questions the wisdom of centuries-old habits, such as reading along with Bible passages, at the same time they are being read aloud in church. More of the passages would be understood and retained, the researchers suggest, if heard or read separately.

I find this personally challenging since I've used the ESV's great website to listen and read the Psalms, with the idea that the audio helped me "focus" on the words. 

But, despite the "centuries-old" description, we should remember that bringing one's Bible to church is not so traditional.  Before printing presses and mass production of books, it was simply impossible for the vast majority of Christians to bring their Bibles to Church because they had no Bibles.

So while the study shows that we need to be careful about new technology, it also shows us that technology is inescapable.  Everything we do and take for granted was once a new technological innovation.

So how do we know that technology helps rather than hinders?  Well, we can always be surprised by studies like this one about Powerpoint.  But, before the research comes in, we can ask ourselves "Is this changing what already works, in the hope of improving it, or is it a new thing?"  Powerpoint is supposed to improve presentations, and now we see the possibility that it might not.

Technology like Connect Our People's community-building system, on the other hand, are supposed to ensure communication not in place of what is already happening, but to create communication where, at the moment, people are isolated from one another.  The idea is that we will be more easily reminded of one another, and our gifts and needs, instead of forgetting one another in our private lives. 

Hat Tip: Pastor Wayne Larson

Other blogchatter:

• David Field: Powerpoint Disaster
•  Pivotal Public Speaking: Why Powerpoint Fails
• Hyper-textual ontology: Powerpoint is evil  
• Mikescape: Pernicious Powerpoint
• Information aesthetics: Powerpoint bad for brains 
• Clive on Learning: don't blame Powerpoint
• Create your communications experience: Controversial new Powerpoint research
  

Since one of our earliest posts was gloriously low tech, I don't see how we can pass up this related story.

I am not sure what I would do without the ESV online .  Not only is it a great translation, but it is an awesome web service.  It not only give you an excellent search engine, but it allows you to control how the text is displayed , as well as giving you different audio options.

But, as I said, this is a low-tech entry.  With their great use of web technology, the ESV folks haven't forgotten about basic options like paper and pen.   They just announced the journaling Bible , a "unique format with wide margins and ruled lines designed for writing prayers, observations, sermon notes, and personal reflections. It also includes a one-year Bible reading plan."

I'll have to agree with Jason Blair on this one. That genuine leather is calling out to me! Normally, only the Mac store can arouse this level of materialistic desire in my heart. 

AskingY (asking why) has a great list of "10 Ways to Avoid Building Community Within the Church."  The list includes such gems as

• Avoid new people
• Be physically present but mentally absent
• Don't share a meal

This post makes great use of sarcasm to drive home a point.  Hat tip goes to the blog of Drew Goodmanson, pastor of Kaleo Church in San Diego.

The list demonstrates the promise and limitation of online community building.  To state the obvious limitation, you can't share a meal online.

But, once we are aware of that limitation, we can see from this list how a service like Connect Our People can help. Consider the second strategy I listed from the ten: "Be physically present but mentally absent."  Obviously, Connect Our People can help members of a congregation be mentally present with one another even when physically absent.  You are constantly reminded of one another online.  This doesn't substitute for other sorts of fellowship, of course, but at the very least it can remind you to arrange meetings for those sorts of fellowship.

I just found this service from Electricurrent (which has a pretty mindblowing flash intro, btw).

Natrually, I am hopeful that visitors here will find that Connect Our People's community building system will be a great help to their church.  However, some people are looking more for something a little different, and Advanced Ministry might fill the bill.  In any case, I think many visitors here need a context by comparing and contrasting with other application service providers out there, so I thought it would be helpful to point out what else is available.

As I become aware of other products, you can expect to see me link them here. 

As someone interested in community building and online technology, I tend to bookmark things that end up too complicated for me to really get into.  This document on C3 is great in that it shows how many are seeing the value of community building and of online applications for that purpose (as this blog often mentions!).  On the other hand, I'm not sure I'm the best person to read it.  I tend to be more of a slow-learning user, which is why I am glad that Connect Our People's community building system is pretty intuitive to use.  While analyzing technology and community can be quite rigorous , a well-designed system works easily for a novice.

As someone who has been blogging as a pastor since 1999, and who developed a blog for a church website in 2001 (obviously, I'm not trying to promote my webdesign skills at that time!), I tend to forget how people have not tried various web resources because they assume they are too hard to  use.  I thought about this when I saw this great video (on a blog that deserves some kind of award for digging up interesting videos; I certainly would never have  found these without the help!) about church blogging.  It features the authors of The Blogging Church , Terry Storch and Brian Bailey , promoting the use of blogging as a community outreach tool.  I've simply been doing this because it was free and easy for a web-impaired person like me (and it has gotten easier since now the popular blogs require less knowledge of html than they used to).  No church can afford to overlook this possible tool but many miss it because they assume they need to be savvy.

And the same holds true for a church community building application.  Connect Our People makes it easy.

PS.  Connect Our People is not a church website service, but for those of you using a church website, I just noticed this piece on ways a church website can use an RSS feed .  Check it out! 

The online version  of ComputerWorld Magazine has a long howto article on Community Server, "A shared-source platform for blogs, newsgroups, content-management and more."

Community Server is a web-based platform that enables companies and organizations to build dynamic online and offline communities quickly and easily. Community Server features include email lists, discussion forums, blogs, newsgroups, galleries, file-sharing and content-management capabilities, and much more.

Sound familiar?  Community building tools are not something we at Connect Our People made up out of thin air (though it would be no shame if we could claim that we did!).  These tools are being developed  for many different commercial ventures because entrepreneurs and business-owners see their value.

"Community Server is available as a free Express Edition and in several commercial variants. ...The commercial editions are designed for communities that need more robust tools."  This is exactly what Connect Our People provides--robust tools for your congregation to nuture community.  One major difference, however, is that you don't have to really install anything with our system.  It comes ready to use.  We've already installed it for you.  You don't need to know anything about IT, servers, or software to use Connect Our People in your congregation.

I thought this video posted by a blog I recently discovered gives viewers some good eduction in an entertaining way.  As usual I  think these sorts of things sometimes seem pretentious in places, but I still think it does a great job.

We forget how the very way we function as churches has been massively changed by technology and education. The hymnbook could not exist before the invention of the printing press.  The possibility of the sort of congregational singing which has become the norm since that time simply didn't exist before that point.  Private or family devotions as we know them, and the "quiet time," all depend on mass-produced Bibles and devotional literature.  If one goes back to the early days of the reformation one finds the Reformers wanted people to be in preaching services several times a week.  There was no other way, in those early days of "web 0.0," of getting people to be regularly exposed to God's Word.

(Luther, remember, wanted an academic disputation. That was all he was expecting–a tempest in a university at most. But the printing press had been invented. The bottom line is that the Reformation happened because the campus intranet wasn’t kept secure from the newly developed Western European internet. In other words, someone copied and published Luther's theses and spread the news. The Reformation was viral marketing. Luther was the first blogger.)

All these massive changes take place and we forget that things were ever any different.  So when our blogger at Presbyterian Polis writes, "the church must change from a consumer model to a community model," I suppose many will think that the old way was not a "consumer model."  And to be fair, I'm not sure that is the best word for it.  But it remains undeniable that churches distribute information much the same way a merchant uses media to get return customers--newsletters, brochures, etc.  That's not necessarily a bad thing.  And I'm sure businesses will find ways of using web 2.0 to reach consumers.  But it still seems more congruous with community to look for these new means of communicating.

Again, read the post .  It will make you think. 

One of the great things about doing this blog is that I get to find out about great websites I wouldn't otherwise have stumbled upon.  For example, Technopraxis has this interesting piece about an ad campaign, and I now have a great series on Wordpress to read from Church Communications Pro.

However, some of my reading there and elsewhere on church, internet, and community make me want to register a difference of opinion with what Web 2.0 is, and what makes it good for communities.  For example, this entry presents some great ideas for a church website.  But I'm not sure how much it really has to do with community or with web 2.0, as one of the links I followed to it claimed.

I suspect that "community" here means reaching the local community and getting return traffic.  The suggestions are good.  I just want to state that to use online applications to build or strengthen community within congregations would look different than this.