Community is about doing something together

Reading Mark Batterson’s recent interview with Neue Ministry on community rung so many bells it felt like a carnival in my head this morning.

Some choice snippets: (emphasis mine)

“To me, the greatest adventure is God inviting us into this thing called the Great Commission—how He didn’t call us to do something on our own. God loves the adventure of doing things together … We have a range of about 90 different groups, and they range from Bible studies to running a marathon together. They are so diverse; they’re as diverse as our leaders are. What it is, is just finding touch points. … I think one reason why God wants to be in commission with us is because nothing brings people together like common mission.

…. Ultimately, we want people to have a face-to-face, physical community, but we’re discovering that often starts with a virtual community …

To me, my late-blooming fascination with technology, which resulted in pastoring the NewSpring Web Campus, is all about exploring how our social web tools can help us become visiable, powerful, contagious, “communities of grace.”

Slowly but surely, i believe we are building a community on the web campus. But i can’t shake the feeling that the more opportunities we give to our attenders to do something together, the more likely we are to building deep, lasting relationships — and far quicker, with far more of them.

For instance, the kind of lifestyle groups Mark talks about absolutely flourish online. Crafts, photos, music, you name it. It takes my breath away just thinking about the impact that one surrendered Christ follower can make in that kind of environment.

Do you have thoughts to share in crafting an online active community strategy?

Filed under: community, social media, web campus , social action, social media, social networking

Everybody wants to change the world … so why can’t we?

Unless you’re a really hardened cynic, I think it’s fair to say that most everyone wants to do good, even if don’t always act on it or even if we don’t really know what that is

It’s obvious that social good is hot right now. Google’s All for Good, Twitter’s Twestival and all sorts of micro-sites are tapping to that desire for people to “contribute.” The web’s core values of collaboration and creativity; its smart, curious, and socially savvy users; and its astounding network effects have created fertile soil for social activism that dares to change the world.

So why don’t we do more as the church to embrace Jesus command to do good to others as an evangelism opportunity?

I’m convinced that when people stand shoulder to shoulder with sold-out believers “working out” their salvation, that the gospel will get preached in dramatic ways. In fact, I think the church should choose personal missions above financial mission work wherever possible for this very reason.

One of the most joyful moments of my life as a newspaper editor was my decision in 2005, under the prompting of the Holy Spirit, to send a curious, spiritually seeking reporter to Hurricane-Katrina ravaged Mississippi with two Christian congregations who were ministering there.

She returned with a deep, profound, life-transforming understanding of Christ that led her to become a member of her church, be baptized in Christ and eventually become a part-time children’s ministry worker.

I think there’s plenty of opportunities for us to engage with people who want to do good locally, since who knows local communities and there needs better than local churches? Why are we leaving this to the United Ways and the Rotary Clubs of the world?

Mission activity energizes local congregations, gets them focused on the point of living for Jesus and gives us an opportunity to talk about Jesus — and build the relationships with non-believers who may later be interested in finding out a little more about why we choose to live such other-focused and sacrificial lives.

We can start by registering what missions opportunities we do have on search engines like All For Good. And then we can start designing and executing high-contact, flexible and inspiring missions opportunities in our local communities.

What’s stopping us?

Filed under: community, evangelism, volunteers , community, evangelism, social action

Church community platforms are the next big idea

If there’s one nit to pick about the techno-church’s embrace of the web as a platform for advancing God’s kingdom, is that our hunches, ideas, and theories about how that might work doesn’t have much of a foundation of data to support it yet.

That’s why I’ve been so encouraged by the work that Drew Goodmanson and his team at Kaleo Church. Their research into church web sites and in examining churches’ use of community platforms has been eye-opening.

The big takeaway for me from Wednesday’s unveiling of the early findings of its research on community platforms was that among church tech influencers, such as web pastors, tech pastors, and communications directors, EVERYONE seems to be eyeing some kind of turn-key seamless community platform.

And EVERYONE is worried about the potential for creating Christian subcultures, given the so far dismal performance of Christian social networking sites in making in roads into the church.

That’s a good tension.

Take a look at the top five features or functionalities for the community platform:

1. Ability to find, register, and/or get details for events.
2. Ability to post prayer requests or needs.
3. Ability to find serving opportunities at the church based on interest or gifts.
4. Ability to join and interact with home/bible study groups.
5. Integration with existing church website.

The list seems to confirm my own hunch that there’s a deep need for relational connection both within and beyond the community of God right now, and that our physical churches are obviously not empowering or enabling their congregations in this vital area.

A church community platform can and should be evangelistically powerful.

It would be a shame indeed if fear or generational guilt surrounding the church of the past that was evangelistically weak and missionally challenged were to stop the people of God from living in the fullness of Christian community using our currently blossoming social technologies.

What we see in Acts church is not a church scared of subculture, but a subculture that embraces its role as one that is to build itself up for the purpose of evangelism and outreach.

Church leaders need to be helping Christians recognize that community is a means not an end in itself.

That’s not a technology issue. That’s a leadership issue.

Agree? Disagree?

Download a PDF of the study.

Filed under: community , community, community management, discipleship, evangelism, social action, social media, social networking

A micro-mission online explosion is good news

I’m really pumped about the recent tide of church efforts to use the web to show the love of God to people who desperately need to know him.

I’ve been blown away by the current Servolution initiative of Healing Place Church, led by its service-driven pastor Dino Rizzo.

The 7-day service blowout has included such things as giving free lunches to business around Healing Place’s Swaziland campus, a trash cleanup near Healing Place’s Baton Rouge hub or the inspiration for a New York church planter to pass out quarters to people in a laundromat.

There’s nothing that cuts as much to the core of who Jesus is and who we are as the church as meeting needs and serving others.

But what makes the recent trend even more encouraging is that storytelling is baked in. Telling our story as a people of faith is a powerful and necessary part of revealing God’s work in the world, proclaiming our unique gospel of grace and shaping a positive identity for ordinary Christians who so often are just the butt of jokes or bear the brunt of the polarizing culture war over abortion and gays.

Servolution’s integration of mapping, media, liveblogging and twitter to involve people in the action as it happens and to share the stories of those who have experienced and seen the impact of this kind of ministry is truly impressive.

Before servolution, of course, we saw a similar mashup for the Christmas-time Gift Revolution from Flamingo Road Church. Other attempts include this February’s RevolutionaryLove two-week event from LifeChurch.tv and the anonymous The Love Revolution.

What we haven’t seen is the attempt to go beyond an event-based way of executing this idea on an ongoing basis. That’s where Simple Love Project comes in. Starting April 13, the web site will challenge believers to follow-through with weekly love missions, read about missions others have accomplished, network and share ideas.

I’ll be watching it closely to see whether devoted followers of Christ find this helpful in focusing their good works, whether their commitment to love others as they love themselves continues long after the novelty, the buzz and the publicity have died down, and, most importantly, whether a durable community of grace does indeed grow up around it.

Churches everywhere might be able to learn something from that, and the web church in particular. Check it out and sign up.

Filed under: evangelism , evangelism, social action

Are churches leveraging their members for radical personal ministry?

One of the most powerful and often undervalued parts of our faith is Jesus’ call for us to do personal ministry leveraged within “one body” of believers.

I think it’s in this area the web will make the greatest contribution to the church.

Perry Noble has always emphasized the importance of volunteers to NewSpring’s ministry. What gives NewSpring’s staff-led, excellence-oriented ministry theological coherence is that we should trust and encourage the body to do most of the ministry.

We have serving rates of more than 60 percent, which is impressive.

But I’ve always wondered whether there are some practical (but needless) barriers to the other 40 percent contributing. And whether the 60 percent who do contribute are being leveraged fully.

That’s where I think a ministry utility could be a killer app.

What if our church members were connected to each other, their resources for personal ministry were searchable and transparent, and they could self-organize and self-resource for personal ministry projects of their own?

Such a church app would generate a flowering of ministry and community like we’ve never seen, and create hands-on discipleship into the bargain.

Want to host a small group? Post your study and your credentials, recruit people, meet online, share materials.

Want to organize an evangelistic block party? Find and contact all the church members in your neighborhood. Create a ministry account to collect donations.

Got a spare washer and dryer? Pledge it to Jim and Bob’s inner-city ministry where you know it will meet a need and be used to share the gospel face to face. Find someone with a truck to pick up and drop off.

Want to get groups of people to church who don’t have reliable transportation? See who’s willing to offer rides, and create a route planner.

Have special expertise? Read what’s happening in other ministries and offer your guidance.

You get the idea … the possibilities are endless. Either as a series of web apps working off a central church database that has an API or as one seamlessly integrated piece of software.

No matter how many fancy commercial web apps there or how many social networking-savvy members we have, trying to create micro-communities of purpose on borrowed and cobbled-together platforms is a real struggle.

That’s why I hope the web developers and web thinkers of the web church — maybe you! — will build an app or apps for ministry.

People just don’t have the information they need about each other to imagine potential ministry, let alone the simple, integrated organizational tools to make it achievable.

It seems to me that too many of our serving opportunities are church-heavy. They are defined by the church, they are primarily for the benefit of the church (although I’m not devaluing the evangelistic purpose of church gatherings,) and they take place on church grounds.

The more our churches can release their members’ resources beyond the church walls, the more impact we are bound to have, on the world and each other.

Filed under: community , community, community management, social action, social media, social networking

The tears in church are just as real on the web

The NewSpring Web Campus launch was thrilling. You can read the official account at the Web Campus blog, including video.

But what blew me away was not the number of people that were gathered. Or the fact that people from all over the world worshipped with us.

It was that amid all the philosophical and theological debates about the Web church and whether web community is real and whether sacraments can be rightly administered, we forget that real people need us to make this work.

They are in real pain, they have real souls, they have real lives and real eternities.

Perry brought a tough, intense sermon today. He challenged people to totally forgive. He asked thousands in the auditorium on the Anderson Campus to write names on sheets of paper and to tear them in unison as they were set free from Satan’s grip.

Everyone heard that sound. It brought Perry to tears. And it brought the Web Campus to tears. It drove many people to seek help in our live prayer. And for one reason or another, these people were not in a local church on the ground in their neighborhood.

Sure, we could try and persuade them that physical attendance is the “right thing to do.” We could even take a crack at justifying why they should attend a local church.

Even if they are not being challenged and stretched spiritually.

Even if they are not in fellowship that encourages and strengthens them and that can hold them accountable.

Would we be successful? I doubt it.

But here’s the thing: They were at church. It was just online. And they need the church to stop arguing about whether they were really there and just figure out how we can be the church online for them; how we can help each other love God, love others and make disciples.

It’s time to stop talking about bit-rates, and web design, and the latest, shiniest new tools and to start talking about how we build genuine, Christ-centered community for the long haul.

The web has changed social arrangements forever. We cannot argue about that any longer.

In post-Christian Europe, local churches everywhere are being shut down and turned into luxury condos or bars. Physical, bricks-and-mortar church holds little to no meaning other than prejudice and anachronism for hundreds of millions of people.

We would be sinning against Christ and his sacrifice on the cross to turn our backs on them.

I plan to charge the gates of hell with our Web Campus. Who’s with me?

Filed under: community, discipleship, evangelism, ruminations, social media, web campus , community, culture, discipleship, evangelism, ruminations, social action, theology, web campus, web campus rollout

The web church is the new reformation

It was one of the remarks on Twitter from my boss Tony Morgan that was deceptively easy to glance over.

“Multi-site changes everything. Campuses on the Web changes everything else.”

It resonated with me, because from the first day I felt God calling me to explore how to be the church in the digital age, I was confident that the web church will herald a new reformation.

Those are big words. Weighty words, for sure. Maybe a tad hyperbole. But I’m serious.

In the first reformation, the technology of the printing press made it possible for any believer who could read to match up what Christ said about access to God with what the Catholic Church said about it. The “priesthood of all believers” was the result.

In the new reformation, the technology of the web has made it possible for people to be the church without “the church.” Now anyone who is part of the priesthood of all believers could, if they were very intentional, create their own, or join a pre-existing, fully Christ-centered community.

This is not about 20th-century, lone-ranger Christianity, where “private faith” is what’s important, accountability is non-existent and commitment is quaint.

I’m suggesting that we now have the tools and the conditions that could allow for a faithful believer to join himself to a self-organized community of fellow believers who intentionally devote themselves to sound teaching, perhaps through videoteaching.com, share their lives and work with common purpose, guided by the Holy Spirit, to bring the love of Jesus to the world.

Is that not theologically legitimate church? Could you not have a physical campus-less church and still be the church as Christ intended it?

What I think about often is how inefficient the current structure of the church today really is if it is supposed to be all about making disciples of Jesus.

Think about how much money is locked up in land and buildings. Think about how much money relatively small congregations spend on supporting pastors and administrative staff when they simply cannot — and don’t have to — compete with the incredible teaching resources now available online or in your corner Christian bookstore. Wouldn’t the leadership of mature believers be sufficient to provide solid pastoral guidance?

Think about how few smaller congregations are contagious about their love of Jesus.

Is the disciple-making machinery of church the worship service or the community the worship service creates?

If the technology is here, or coming soon, where sophisticated worship services can be experienced in all their intensity anywhere in HD, the real work ahead for the church is learning how to guide and manage community, the kind of authentic community that, in Acts, added to its number daily and changed the history of the world.

I think a lot is going to boil down to questions about what’s the role of the weekly service in daily worship? And how important will it be to have a weekly physical gathering spot that belongs uniquely to a specific community of believers?

Those are the kinds of weighty issues the Web Church is field-testing. Nothing less.

Thoughts?

Filed under: community, discipleship, evangelism, ruminations, web campus , community, community management, discipleship, social action, web campus

There is danger in confusing great work with a great witness

Fundraising and social good using the social web is the hot, new thing.

And there’s something that does bother me about this.

In the age of the Internet, everyone “gets” that hundreds or thousands of small acts amount to a great work.

Mobilizing people used to be one of our distinctives, back when organizing and motivating large numbers of common people around a common aim used to be remarkable. (Not that we did it very well or made the most of it, mind you.)

Now everyone can “be the change.” Not just the church.

I’ve been wondering whether the opportunity to see the power of God’s people will get diminished now that everyone is part of a body, an open, movable, large-scale network, an organism rather than organization?

A temptation might be to mimic or out-do non-profits and charities and the various market-ainment vehicles, such asExtreme Makeover or Oprah’s Big Give and their online derivatives.

And then I realize that great work doesn’t necessarily produce great witness, even if a church or church folk are behind it.

A great witness is selfless and sacrificial and personal. Because selfless and sacrificial and personal doesn’t happen without the power of God.

It’s when we make much of God that great work happens, and it’s quite possible that it might look just like Extreme Makeover. But it’s not always when we do great work that making much of God happens.

As we step into the world of online-community building, I believe all of us in the techno-church are going to need to remember that.

How do you think we can keep it straight?

Filed under: community, evangelism, social media , community management, social action, social media