Web Tech and the Church: A New Blog Series Starting.

Cartoon by David Walker

Cartoon by David Walker

One of my great passions is the internet and related technology and how it can support churches in their mission. Want I want to do is write some really solid posts on how churches can use the web to impact the culture and locality. Why? Well I think the climate is right we have some fantastic examples out there now of Churches engaging with culture and even the media through web technology. Some churches are beginning to ask how they too can achieve such things. So what qualifies me despite my passion to write and talk about this? Here is a bit of my background and journey related to the topic.

Background

I have been building for the web since I was 14. A friend showed me a site he had built I and I though “I could do that!” so gave it a shot and loved it. Soon I came to the natural conclusion that this was how we should be reaching people and sharing our faith in Jesus. In my youthful foolishness I also had decided from observation that the Church as a whole was a dead loss and couldn’t be relied upon to do this work. I’m glad to say I was proved to be very wrong. I started blogging about how Christians could use the web to share their faith, the content attracted a lot of people thinking the same way including those in organizations such as Campus Crusade for Christ, Agape, YWAM and various Bible Societies, these parachurch entities seemed to be the early adopters.
Shifting into my third year at university I was invited to be an intern for a year in Wellington, New Zealand, and work on an internet strategy for the Bible Society operating there. However before going I had been attending a new church plant for a couple of years, County Church Northumberland part of the Newfrontiers family of churches. There my idea of Church changed radically and I began to see that church was an amazing design by God him self for sharing who Jesus is. So when I went to work in New Zealand I quickly saw the contrast between a church community and a parachurch organization. I eventually stopped my old blog. Churches are much more suited to spreading the gospel, they just don’t always understand the commission they have been given!

Now in my final year at university I have more recently been inspired and feel a greater burden to encourage churches in using web tech.  Obviously it has to be done in a way that is serving of the various missions churches have, technology should never become our master. It is equally important to establish a foundation that churches can build upon, one that looks at web tech in the right context of church and of the example of the early church where the ultimate objective is seeing people saved by Jesus. Bellow is a rough guide to what I want to cover.

What will we be looking at?

Foundational

  1. The Context of using web technology, Church Mission.
  2. Examples from the past, church and technology.

Practical

  1. How web technology is impacting the Church today
  2. Reaching local people through web technology
    - Social networking
    - Online advertising
  3. Keeping your website alive
    - Yellow pages church websites
    - Jesus the King of the Content
    - Getting your church community involved
  4. To blog or not to blog, that is the question
    - Concerns of church leaders
    - Should church planters blog?