Special thanks to Tim Schraeder for his impressions / interpretations of some of the concepts / dialog / challenges our session raised at Story 09.  And thank you to the participants who came to our breakout.  Were you there?  You’ll see some of your comments and input here in Tim’s notes.

Social Media Pulse What are churches current social media patterns?

• We are living in a world people dreamed of.
• There used to only be a computer at work… then it went home… then to your lap… now to your hand.
• Mobile ubiquity, where everyone has a phone, presents challenges and opportunities for the church.
• There’s an embedded value system in social media [public/participatory, new media].
• There’s value in it that it’s instant.
• Everyone is an equal creator… it’s user-generated content.
• We’d rather buy something someone tells us about than what we are told by businesses or corporations.
• Users have a voice and are able to generate content.
• In a relationship economy, what people say matters deeply.
• We now have greater accessibility to information.
• Churches might move from having “please have your phone off” signs to “please have your phone on” signs.
• The media is affecting our small group communities and the way that they interact.
• We’ve torn down the boundaries of distance; there’s now a worldwide conversation going on that anyone can participate in.
• The definition of “presence” is changing.
• We HAVE to think through these things theologically.
• Is physical presence necessary for you to be a part of and “be” the church.
• Social media allows customization [personalization].
• One size does not fit all … [MySpace, my reviews, my favorites, etc.]
• My can be consumer oriented, but it reflects the fact that media is in the hands of every person and every person has the ability to create media.
• Everyone is a content producer.
• We now watch TV on our own terms [TiVo].
• New generations are being raised with these new ideas embedded in their everyday interactions.
• As technology becomes cheaper and more effective, the Church is confronted with one of the greatest opportunities along with one of the greatest challenges of how to steward it.
• The Men of Issachar were able to see the times and were able to know what to do.
• Let’s go to the next level… let’s find out what we are capable of doing and how are we able to frame it in a Biblical context?
• The word of our testimony is the critical story we have that’s a powerful conduit [Christianity is viral] to reach someone we may have not been able to reach any other way.
• We’ve moved to a digital age.
• It will be normal for us to connect online, first and then meet in person.
• 43% of churches say social media is one of the most effective ways for them to communicate and engage with people.
• Church websites are the front doors to churches.
• 77% of people say the church website was an important part of why they chose to go to church.
• If people can’t connect to your website they may not go to your church.
• People make judgements about a church based on what the church communicates across their website.
• It’s a missiological issue.
• John 17:18
• Facebook is the 4th largest nation in the world if you look at the number of people that are on it.
• Non-Christians do not go to your website.
• Your website is primarily visited by believers looking for information about churches.
• 20% of all data people are accessing on church websites is information for new visitors… that’s a significant portion where you should invest your time.
• Use the web to help people new into the church to get deeper into community.
• Your web strategy should be looked at as an Internet Presence Management.
• What are you communicating online?
• How are you connecting to where people are talking and engaging?
• Where are you present? Where are you absent?
• Who is responsible for your church’s online presence?
• What does it mean to be the Church online?
• How do you define presence? What’s your theology of presence?
• We need to recognize that participatory media is decentralized.
• It’s unregulated.
• We have a lack of control.
• We have to look deeper at our theology.
• A mobile, extended presence can be used missionally.
• Is virtual community real community?
• What is Biblical community?
• We need to define Biblical community before we define online community and if it’s possible to have church online
• We need to ask if we can use an online presence to build real life community?
• We need to intently be on the internet, it’s a mission field.
• We, the Church, are called to be counter-culture… what does that mean at this technological crossroads?
• We are willing to be transparent online, but vulnerability is not often seen online.

Top Social Media Sites

1. Facebook
2. Twitter
3. Private Member Portals [ MemberHub, Monk, Tangle, Unifyer, etc ]
4. GoogleGroups
5. MySpace

• Greatest needs online: events, post prayer requests, get connected, finding small groups and ways to connect throughout the week, integration with their church website and resource sharing.
• Churches are wrestling with how to use participatory technologies.
• The Cobblestone Community Network is a tool that’s been developed to help churches have private communication that’s integrated into social media channels.
• If you don’t set a strategy you’re going to have a difficult time pulling it together later.
• What is your strategy for the community online?
• Pick a horse.
• If you don’t lead your people, they will find their own way and go their own direction.
• This is something we need to pay attention to but we don’t need to know the mechanics of it; you can find volunteers or someone on staff to help manage this.
• Things are easier than they were before.
• There are challenges and effort required but it’s more centered on your strategy.
• Let people tell you how they want to be contacted… be platform neutral.
• Let people choose how the content gets to them.

If You Liked This, Check Out…

• Echo 09
• Kevin Sterner :: Story
• Story :: Skye Jethani
• Story :: Donald Miller
• Story :: Stacy Spencer

Tags: Cynthia Ware, Drew Goodmanson, Story

This week I’m headed for Chicago and Cultivate 09.  Then on to Ben Arment’s Story Gathering. Cultivate will be streaming live and I’ll be doing the interviews with facilitators all day. Who do you wanna see?

• Kem Meyer
• Dawn Nicole Baldwin
• Matt Knisely
• Tim Schraeder
• Maurilio Amorim
• Blair Farley
• Drew Goodmanson
• Jon Acuff
• Phil Cooke
• Michael Buckingham
• Brad Abare
• Kent Shaffer
• JR Kerr
• Sarah Hatter
• Jeremy Scheller
• Terry Storch
• Carlos Whittaker
• Gabe Taviano
• Cynthia Ware
• Tony Steward
• Michael Forsberg
• Brad Ruggles
• Clint Runge
• Justin Wise
• Tiffani Barnes
• Bobby Gruenewald
• Katie Moon
• Cleve Persinger
• Rhett Smith
• Jami Ruth
• Katie Persinger

Get the inside scoop at the event…  Text CULTIVATE to 24625 thanks to Jarbyco.

Cultivate: Where Culture, Innovation and Communication Connect

It is said the collective wisdom of a group is more valuable than the expertise of one. Cultivate is a collective wisdom. It brings ministry and marketplace leaders to the table and asks them to leave their formal presentations at home.

Cultivate is about bringing you together with the skilled, the experienced, and the insightful, and together you will drive the content. Together you will discover breakthrough insights.

Cultivate is about organized conversations, and each conversation will be designed to nurture collaboration without confining the experience to a box. Expect to be stretched. Expect to be challenged. Expect to cultivate a new way of thinking.

If you are creative, strategic, and responsible for influencing how your church communicates, there is a chair waiting for you.

October 27, 2009
Park Community Church, Chicago

Since we are still evaluating the reality & potential of church online the question just keeps coming up: “Of course, [virtual church] is possible. But is it biblical?”

The following is a response to me from Douglas Estes, author of SimChurch regarding his reflections on this post by Drew Goodmanson - Is Online Community real community; Questions about the virtual church?

A virtual church is just as biblical as a Baptist church, a house church, a Lutheran church, a megachurch, a Pentecostal church, a contemporary rock church or a traditional American fundamentalist church. Why? Because the Bible doesn’t prescribe one type of culture or ‘format’ for doing church. Period. I know that most Christians—even pastors and church leaders—will grudgingly admit this in public and not believe it in their hearts though it is the biblical viewpoint. Everyone who is passionate about the church views their version of the church to be the best, most right, most biblical, most blessed, and closest-to-the-New-Testament version of church as possible. This is not wrong but it does become a problem when we try to say that other people don’t have biblical churches (with the exception of churches whose theology/practice fall outside of historic orthodoxy). We can group current criticisms of online church into 2 main areas—and the first area, rightfully labeled, is denominationalism. This may seem kind of funny because I don’t mean that online churches are a new denomination; I mean that some people are reacting to them through the same lens (not our way = different = not biblical). Let’s consider the second area in more detail.

One important part of writing SimChurch was my starting point: I did not start with virtual churches. I started with the Bible and church history. A critical part of the research was investigating both with discernment to see if there would be anything to prevent an online church. The answer is no. And this is not an argument from silence (like those folks who say it’s okay to do drugs because they Bible doesn’t directly say we can’t), this is a ‘no’ from a close reading of the Bible and church history. In fact, anyone who has studied church history understands that God moves the church in seemingly radical directions at times. So far, most of the arguments against online church are the same types of arguments as those leveled at every new Christian group that has come along since Jesus left us.

Many of the criticisms I read seem to be written by people who are using the internet circa 1999. They forget that even older technologies such as Skype allow for a great deal of interaction, except fully physical (there is some physical because you can see the other person, wave, make faces, laugh, etc). More specifically, Drew (and others) cite verses in the Bible that deal with community and then argue that this community must be rooted in physical proximity (but not the SecondLife or Skype kind). I don’t want to (mis)characterize Drew’s argument here; and to be fair, Drew listed a few verses in a 200 word post whereas I wrote a whole book on this issue. Still, I need to point out a few serious problems with arguments like Drew and others use. SimChurch goes into much more detail, but let’s briefly look at the issues:

First, Drew lists 27 verses (all from the New Testament) that allude to community, or more specifically, what he calls “one-anothering.” These verses include loving one another (1 John 3:11) and the holy kiss one (1 Peter 5:14). In SimChurch, I defined a church as “a localized assembly of the people of God dwelling in a meaningful community with the task of building up the Kingdom.” Now, some people may tweak this but overall I feel it is a solid definition of church from a biblical and church-historical perspective (within a Protestant tradition such I come from). I think we can agree that church must be both local and a meaningful community. The problem comes in when we try to take the verses Drew cited and decide the physical extension of them. As with most of the Bible, these verses are communicating spiritual truth more so than physical truths. When the Bible tells me to love someone else, hugging is probably included in this but it is not the central meaning of the verse at hand (it is greeting). I can prove this: We don’t literally greet people with a holy kiss (at least I’ve never attended any church anywhere that does) at church. Why? Because we understand that the spiritual reality of greeting and loving another follower of Jesus is so much bigger than the physical expression. This is not to say the physical expression is not important; it’s just to say that certain physical expressions are just one aspect of it. Please note that I am also not trying to over-spiritualize this issue; I’m neither downplaying nor disregarding the physical aspect just pointing that it is only one part of what it means to have community. Again, consider people riding the NY subway to work—if you’ve ever done this, you know you unwittingly touch a lot of people due to the crowdedness of the train, but no one would consider a subway car (real) community!

Truthfully, none of the verses Drew lists speak to whether a church should meet in a building (been there), under a banana tree in a jungle (done that), or in synthetic space over the internet. In fact, as Drew admitted in his post, and any honest Christian will admit, we don’t get the type of community that the Bible describes in some/many/most/all ‘regular’ brick and mortar churches to begin with! But just because no one seems to love each other (or greet each other with a holy kiss) at First Baptist doesn’t mean we should declare it unbiblical or not a church.

Since this is a blogpost not a book, let me wrap up by saying that Drew is correct in his conclusion—we need to focus on creating biblical community. Chapters 2–4 in SimChurch go into great detail (for a non-academic book) on what church and biblical community is and how Western Civilization has so influenced this discussion as to make everything about community be tied to the physical where the Bible (primarily, but not only) ties it to the spiritual. In fact, it is the radically-skeptical Western worldview of Descartes and others that has shaped the definition of community for the average Western Christian far more than the Bible has (protests aside). In fact, we could say that if many of the virtual-church skeptics are correct—that to have real community with someone we must be in close, physical proximity with that person—then we cannot have community with God here on Earth because we can’t touch him either. Biblical community, and true presence, is far more nuanced than our materialistic, Western sensibilities can sometimes grasp.

Douglas Estes

Comments?

I get sent 4 or 5 books a week.  I have form letters both for authors & publishers saying “unfortunately, I cannot review your book because this space is reserved for discussions about the Church & media technologies”.   Sadly, there haven’t been many publications that fit well in this zone.   But recently, Zondervan sent me the book SimChurch by Douglas Estes.  I sped through it marking up every page, and realized how helpful it was to have a new set of observations about online church.   Now there’s a blog tour and a bit further into this post I’ve listed some of the blogs Zondervan invited to review / discuss / celebrate the release of this timely book.

Douglas Estes is a New Testament scholar and teaching pastor and he authored SimChurch to explore the (sometimes controversial) world of online churches.  As people (thus the Church) migrate online, we are forced to review our theology and re-assess some of our postmodern assumptions in light of our digital world.

Today I’m posting pointers to the SimChurch site, a list of the selected bloggers who are evaluating the book and a brief video clip from Douglas.  Tomorrow, I’ll be posting his analysis of a post previously put of by my friend & colleague, Pastor Drew Goodmanson at his site. (see: http://www.goodmanson.com/church-technology/is-online-community-real-community-questions-about-the-virtual-church/).  [Drew & I will be presenting together next week in Chicago at the Story Conference - come join the discussion.]

Here are the SimChurch bloggers:

• Church Relevance
• BibleDude.net
• Returned Sheep
• The Digital Sanctuary
• Lessons from Babel
• Mark D. Roberts
• Tall Skinny Kiwi
• Captain’s Blog

Now here’s a video clip to introduce you to Douglas Estes and SimChurch.  Come back tomorrow for his lengthy response to my “virtual church” question.

As you likely know, I have a particular aversion to just throwing up videos for the sake of “instant” blogging. Yet, for the first time, I’ve done it twice in a row.  Not really sure why.  I guess I’m more observing and absorbing rather than being in a place to provide any reflections.  I’ve only been a Google Wave participant for a week but, well to quote Fergie, “I’ve got a feeling….”  I think Google Wave could really be a communications game changer.

I’m swimming in the newest technologies, navigating the firehose as they say, looking ahead beyond the Wave.  Seems everyone is sort of up in arms about the effectiveness of real time typing….. but what I’m thinking about is, well, to pull it straight from Wikipedia “Speech synthesis - A computer system used for this purpose is called a speech synthesizer, and can be implemented in software or hardware. A text-to-speech (TTS) system converts normal language text into speech; other systems render symbolic linguistic representations like phonetic transcriptions into speech.”

Omnivores - aren’t we right around the corner from a voice markup language, SSML (Tesseract has a disabled code for a handwriting markup language)?  Oh, where are my voice recognition futurists…. @terrystorch @JohnSaddington @samsoffes @tonysteward @alldevelopers  @anyone?  Where are we?  Is Google Wave as significant as it seems?

For inspiration you can see Lifehacker - Google Wave Best Use Cases.

As we continue our march into the future, Christians are continually challenged by the global reality of the Digital Age.  Online technologies are creating an immersive culture of connectivity.  What was formerly known as back channel communication (and considered a niche stream of information) is now in the forefront of our communication preferences.

As we grapple together about the impacts that technology may have on the practice of our faith, some Pastors are writing about it (SimChurch - Douglas Estes, Flickering Pixels - Shane Hipps), some Communication specialists are making predictions about it (Ministry in a Post-Christian Digital Society - Part 1 - Jake Johnson), some University professors (Lessons from Babel - Dr. Dave Bourgeois) are studying it, some theological seminary graduates are cautioning us about it (Don’t Eat the Fruit - John Dyer) and some developers are forging ahead with new amazing new applications (YouVersionLive - Terry Storch) for harnessing it’s potential.

I’ve taken a full 10 days off blogging about technology & the church, something I haven’t done in 5 years.  I’m still pondering the polarizing and controversial conversations that surfaced at  the Christian Web Conference at Biola University.  No easy answers but lots of questions.  What are you thinking about when it comes to online church?

The Christian Web Conference last week at Biola University was part of the ongoing effort to educate interested parties about the trends, developments & predictions about faith-based organizations using the internet for ministry purposes.

Much more on the details of the conference later but here are a couple of quick photos.   Tim Challies, author of what ranks as the number 1 Christian blog site (and a really nice guy), addressing some of the participants below….

And a shot of our discussion “The Future of Faith Online” which should be uploaded later in the week.

Again, a special thanks to Catalyst & Leadership Network for giving a dozen of us bloggers the opportunity to simulcast “The Nines“.

Yesterday’s simulcast, the landmark event featuring some of today’s most well known Christian leadership, was amazingly successful if you measure success in terms of numbers of viewers.   As you can see from the visual, these 9 hours of 9 minute interviews with some of today’s most influential Christian authors, pastors, bloggers, scholars & communicators really changed the rhythmic pattern of my blog’s traffic flow.  Additionally, although there were some ‘to be expected’ technical glitches, the vast archive of inspiration, admonishment, and insight will be drawn on for a long time.

The question I have been asked the most is “how can I see the videos I missed or want to watch again?”  and I’m working on getting that answer as well as rounding up some embed codes to host some of my favorite clips here.  The whole thing was a great experiment and we learned a lot of behind the scenes lessons I won’t go into today.  However, one thing that stood out to me is that although people used our blogs to “watch” the videos, none of the commenting went on on blogs….. all the conversation action was on Twubs, Twitter, & via Texting.

Today, I’m headed to LA for the Christian Web Conference at Biola University and if you’re anywhere near, please stop by.

Special thanks to Catalyst & Leadership Network for giving a dozen of us bloggers the opportunity to simulcast this event!

Here’s a partial schedule: (all times CST):

9AM — Troy Gramling, Mark Beeson, Anne Jackson, Dave Ferguson, Scott Hodge

10AM — Perry Noble, Stacy Spencer

11AM — Dino Rizzo, Nancy Beach, Steven Furtick, Reggie McNeal

12PM — Craig Groeschel, Leonard Sweet, Greg Surratt, Jon Tyson

1PM — Margaret Feinberg, Larry Osborne, Matt Carter, Pete Wilson

2PM — Neil Cole, Reggie Joiner, JD Greear

3PM — Mark Batterson, Dan Kimball, Mark DeYmaz

4PM — Jud Wilhite, Brian McLaren, Bob Roberts, Rick McKinley, John Ortberg

5PM — Alan Hirsch, John Bishop, Toby Slough, Ed Stetzer

6PM — Mark Driscoll, Darrin Patrick, Brad Powell

7PM — Darrin Whitehead, Brian Bloye

8PM — Eric Bryant, Nancy Ortberg, Rick Warren