Posted on : 22-09-2009 | By : Brent | In : Church Planting, Culture, Life
I’m not necessarily endorsing the Media Convergence Forum (I don’t know much about it to be honest) that this video promotes, but my friend Jake Johnson recently posted the video with the question: “We are becoming digitized. What’s your online strategy?” As a church planting pastor, I find myself thinking a lot about stuff like this and I wanted to pass this video along for feedback and discussion. How can the church utilize digital tools to build real relationships? Are the two mutually exclusive? Is it enough for a church to have a great digital presence. Of course, this brings up questions of “online church,” but I’ll let you ask some of those questions. Please, discuss:
Thanks for bringing this to light, Brent. I also covered how I approach internet ministry at Praxis in this blog post, which will probably give you an idea of how I feel about online campuses:
http://www.thejakers.com/church-marketing/the-internet-and-incarnation
I’ve been thinking a lot about the implications of what I call digitalism and the problems it will cause for the church. I think to be effective in the future, we have to stop fighting post-modernism and start addressing the new realities of digitalism. People no longer think of truth as relative in the context of culture, but instead seek out communities within culture that validate their personal version of truth. That is a subtle but important change in mindset. In a pre-digital world, we still were challenged by our community through cultural truth. In a digial world, we can sever connections with the click of a mouse and seek community with only those who validate our reality.
Our challenge as a church will be to make inroads into that world, and to expose the hollowness of such a “reality”.
Thank you, Jake. I appreciate your thoughts on these issues. You are helping many of us think through some of these things.
It’s funny, because, as I was just sitting here thinking of some of the implications of that video, Mars Hill just put up a post highlighting how much material they distribute for free using digital resources:
http://blog.marshillchurch.org/2009/09/21/pastor-mark-for-free/
I read that too and thought it was great. Mark is definitely in line with my thinking on both the benefits and trappings of the Internet in ministry. Here’s a good little blurb from Out of Ur on his thoughts:
http://blog.christianitytoday.com/outofur/archives/2009/08/internet_campus.html
[...] Brent Thomas and I are discussing the Church and our digital world at Holiday at the Sea. [...]