here are some thoughts that i posed to a friend. feel free to comment on them. if there's enough interest, maybe this can be attempted.
a website for the Church (not A church or denomination or conversation. . .the Church).
on the website would be:
1. thoughts / sermons / teachings - could be in the form or podcasts, blogs, book references/reviews (or just book suggestions), questions, etc. for use in local gatherings which, for example, could be in the form of taco tuesdays, forums, instant messaging, etc. everyone would be encouraged to post at least one a year. once the topic has been discussed by some group, they could post thoughts and questions that were brought up in thier discussion (simillar to what lotharbot was talking about a few posts ago)
2. calendars - for community events which the Church in the area could participate or help out in, and times and places of local gatherings.
3. research and links into various charities - since we're not about making money or building a building, this would be one of the main sources of what to put your time and your tithe towards. this would also provide a place for local charity contact and information.
4. "mission trips" orginization - with sign up and costs, links to information about the trip, people to contact, etc.
the website would be broken into pieces so that no one person would have to maintain it, but could be somewhat of a heirarchy to maintain commanality for clarity's sake and the cost of the website would be distributed as well (possibly paid for with ads?). in this manner, no one would need to quit their day jobs (and links for getting jobs would also be a part of the site?). for those that do not have internet, a mailing list would be established and everybody would be asked to print and mail the flyer to some number of people so that the cost is distributed.
how does that sound?
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7 comments:
Well, leaving aside the whole issue that we can't really see THE Church (but I get what you mean; this would be a non-denominational, non-controlled Christian community) I think this is a slick idea. It's like Open Source Christianity, really. Like what the WELL (Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link, www.well.com) used to be for the hippies.
Since the web really is a distributed resource, what you create doesn't have to be more than just a gateway. In other words, it wouldn't require a massive server bank, unless you wanted to slice off hosting services for various functions. Like a secure area for persecuted Christians to access, or blogging/podcast hosting, etcetera.
prexactly
I like it. I've talked about this very thing with more people than I can count. I think it will be done. When it is, I want to be there. Until then, I'll be over here drinking scotch and doing various Jesusy things. Let me know if you see any signs of life.
P.S. I like your blog (and ninjanun's stuff too).
P.P.S. Hi Zeke.
yo yo Erik. Nice to see you around.
Rather than encouraging each person to post a teaching/etc. "once a year" I think I'd encourage each person to participate in a local gathering regularly (however often "regularly" is) and for those groups to jointly produce teachings/etc. as often as they find they have something to say.
A couple things that definitely need to be included (recall what I said about what the church is):
A: Worship stuff. Songs (sheet music, lyrics, mp3s, etc.), poems, teachings, whatever. It doesn't need to all be corporate-worship stuff, but it does need to be stuff that individuals or small groups can use to worship God. Because if you're not worshipping God in some way, it's not the church.
B: Joined in with the calendars should be smaller sections for each local group, where they can post things like prayer requests or general news events. All groups near each other should have their section linked to all of the nearby sections so it's easy for them to read the news and prayer requests from nearby.
This would make for a website that could be incredibly useful for the church. But, of course, it's only a supplement to what goes on in local gatherings and what goes on in people's everday lives. If there isn't real fellowship and worship going on at that level, the website isn't going to be worth much.
lothar,
depends on how you define worship, but i agree with most of the rest of it
but, just because i disagree with the definition of worship doesn't mean it shouldn't be on the site
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