I’m now in a church that does not have a regular newsletter, nor a heavily used website. I hear from around the church council table and staff meetings that communication is one of our biggest needs. The truth is that I was most recently at a church with a monthly newsletter that was very professional and a highly used website and I still heard the same concerns.
Church newsletters are necessary to keep people informed and in today’s world websites are even more important in order to share information, but faith is more than being informed. It is about being activated. It is time we stop asking “how do we keep people informed” and begin asking questions like “how do we build community and activate that community?”
Youth know how to use their technology to do such a thing. Using social networking youth have taken relationship building on-line. They have found a way to make technology work for them and enrich their relationships. Some churches and religious organizations have tried to create similar “Christian” communities on-line, but why a separate endeavor. When Kings were going across the Atlantic ocean to a New World the church did not say, “Well, it is dangerous and there are ‘savages’ there we should go find our own island to create a paradise...”
No. The church can no longer be in the business of just creating a website and hope that people stumble across it (or even if we advertise it). We must look at the internet as a new world and begin moving our faith out into that world in a natural but competent way. If we had pornographers, prostitutes and drug lords moving in to the lots next door we would get activated and take back our community. It is time for us to get out into the internet and share our faith on-line and “take back the neighborhood.”
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