I've alluded to this before in several of my past posts , but in some ways, the net can work against community, rather than in favor of it.  For one thing, throwing material out into the general internet seems like a quest for some new community, rather than maintaining the one you have.  That, at least is my impression, listening to this interesting NPR radio show on "Life-logging."  I'm not really going to oppose the phenomenon on principle, but it does seem to have some risks.

A more concrete example occurred to me reading this post on blogs and 18th-century periodicals.

I would submit, along with many academics specializing in 18th-century literature, that blogging today is not qualitatively different than the 18th-century periodical culture. You have nearly personal publishing by individuals or small groups. You have readers with the ability to respond, either directly via comments or indirectly via trackbacks to their own blogs, and writers (usually) willing to return responses. You have interaction between different publishers/writers. You have coverage of any topic under the sun. You have the possibility for anonymity/pseudonymity. The difference between blogs and 18th-century periodicals seems to me to be almost entirely quantitative rather than qualitative–the barrier of entry is much lower, which does lower the signal to noise ratio, I’ll certainly grant you that. But though blogging’s open-access, open-ended format may encourage bad behavior and low-quality self-expression, it doesn’t necessarily mean that blogging can’t be an extremely useful tool when these very same qualities are used well.

While I agree with this in principle, it does seem to me that the low "barrier to entry" means that intellectual and literary communities can no longer form the way they once did.  The blogosphere doesn't allow for what the system of periodicals promoted.

When those 18th-century journals started, they were an amazing revolution in communication and shook up the status quo with the beginning of a new world. But that new world was still one that encouraged centers of authority. Publishing and circulating journals required money and tools. It also required some inherent prestige because no one was going to pay for a subscription to the What-I’m-Thinking-About-During-Breakfast-on-Tuesday Review written and edited by Joe Blow.  At one time publishing required group cooperation.  An editor could claim to represent a constituency and be a gate-keeper for that group.  There was, via journal publishing, an authoritative culture that could decide whether or not to allow you to reply in their pages to someone who criticized you, and tell you who would have the final reply, and dictate to you what your word count must be.

Is this good or bad?  I expect it is both.  But it does lead me to think that for church community, relying simply on "the web" might be problematic.  I think one conceptual problem that might be hampering us is the assumption that every place you can use a browser to navigate is simply part of the internet.  Connect Our People , however, is really more like a congregational intranet.  Whatever the web may do in general, as long as churches exist and need to foster community, there will be a need for tools that put the community first rather than the desire to express oneself (of course, this may turn out to actually be a more satisfying way to express oneself--in caring and communicating with those in one's own church family).