I don’t have answer to my question, nor do I know yet how to find such an answer.

Recently, CEO Blog Watch reported :

Clearswift, a content security company, conducted a survey of 939 corporate decision-makers on matters related to corporate blogging, social media and other aspects of the so-called Web 2.0.

Their results were rather interesting.  Some highlights:

• More than one third (34 percent) of organizations don’t monitor employees’ use of the Internet
• More than half (51 percent) of businesses don’t know whether they’ve lost confidential information via social media outlets
• 20 percent of IT and business decision-makers don’t have a policy governing appropriate use of the Internet, including social media sites
• 20 percent of organizations do not allow blogging at work while 45 percent don’t have a policy on it
• 39 percent of IT and business decision makers consider social media to be relevant to today’s corporate environment, while 36 percent do not see social media as relevant to their businesses
• 13 percent of organizations are not aware of social media and have no policy on it

What I’m wondering is, is there a comparable naiveté among pastors.  Do they or do they not realize the a few parishioners blogging have a great deal of power to give others a lasting impression about their church?  Do they ever preach about the use of the Web?  It would seem to me that any preacher trying to apply any of the Bible’s directives about speech should never fail to mention the internet.

One great post I recently found was Alden Ellis’ Ten Things to Remember When Blogging .  These are great point, but they are directed at church staff.  It seems to me that all Christians wherever they work could use these reminders.  “Church 2.0” applications are a great idea, but we need to be honest that new ways of communicating also allow for new ways to sin in communication, or at least more effective ways.
One of the advantages of Connect our People’s community-building system is that it allows a great deal more privacy and accountability than most free blogs.  But leaders must still remind people of boundaries (for example, no quoting people from a Connect Our People account on your public blog.

This all may seem obvious, but I suspect that many are forgetting what can go wrong  in open communication like that fostered in Web 2.0.