Waiting and Learning

It's amazing to know that God wants to open up new doors of ministry opportunity. Maybe not all that new afterall, but certainly avenues not previously opened to me in any large measure.

I wanted to create a website for my church, but after research I've found that anything that would create any sense of life or joy really needs much more skill than I have at this moment. My delimma has been whether I want to jump on the steep learning curve and go for it, or whether I'm just out of my league and I need to let the idea go. Thankfully, I've found something that will undergird my vision without the learning curve putting me flat on my back!

I ran into a site awhile back called echurchessentials. I don't know that I'm usually all that missionary minded unless I've just been with a really passionate missions person. I get stirred for a couple of days and then settle back into the "comfortable" place. This time was different. I read the byline in their header "the convergence of E-Church into Realty-Church". Because I've know the power of e-ministry over the past 5 years, I was intrigued by this site and the tools offered. While I know that putting together a good website probably wouldn't cost me the $80 per month that this site charges, the time it would take for me to do this would be far most costly. So there has been a convergence of another type for me . . . a tool that is within my framework of understand and my vision.

Consider this from the Barna Group, Cyberchurch2001

"George Barna, who directed the study for The Barna Institute, explained that numerous changes in people’s faith experience will emerge in the next few years. “By the end of the decade we will have in excess of ten percent of our population who rely upon the Internet for their entire spiritual experience. Some of them will be individuals who have not had a connection with a faith community, but millions of others will be people who drop out of the physical church in favor of the cyberchurch.” The researcher also stated that virtually every dimension of the faith community will be influenced by online faith developments. “We will have an explosion of self-produced and self-marketed worship music as an outgrowth of sophisticated and affordable digital technology that turns an artist into a full-fledged recording company, including the ability to directly and inexpensively market those products to the millions of consumers on the Internet. Within churches we will see e-mail broadcasting, theological chats, online meetings, broadcasts to congregants who are immobile, live webcasting of mission trips via webcams, and 24/7 ministry training from the best trainers and educators in the world.”

It's been 4 years since that report. Many of those "we will see" events are happening today in progressive internet ministries.

Consider a very recent Barna report, dated March 14, 2005:

"The Internet is the only mass medium among those tested whose audience share has grown during the past decade. The proportion of the population using the Internet for faith purposes has increased by two-thirds since 1998." (This is comparing TV and radio as well as the internet.)


Side note:
I know I'm on the right track. My daughter and I just spent an hour and a half on a conference call this week with her online school assistant principal. Next year her school interface will change to a system that will encorporate many more interactive tools. Was she impressed? Not all that much . . . cuz she is pretty active in her interactive skills already!

Sometimes the open doors feel endless . . .