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How to Use the Internet for Ministry

By Chris Conant

Will the Internet create a new Reformation?
By Drew Goodmanson and follow-up commentary by Chris Conant

Pax Romana, the Gutenberg printing press, radio and the internet. God has used major technological and cultural shifts to bring sweeping changes in the church. As our culture moves increasingly online, the church is being radically altered by this powerful force. The internet has fostered several paradigm shifts in the church that we are only beginning to see. In time, we will see the full effect of today's internet reformation.

We begin by going to the past. It was the mid-1400's, when Johannes Gutenberg brought the printing press into the world. It was a dark moment in history there were wars the Turks on Christendom in the east, famines throughout Europe and great unrest in the population. Yet, something cataclysmic was underway; the decentralization of information. This was done because the Bible, once controlled centrally by the Catholic Church, was translated and distributed throughout Europe. Jaques Barzun author of From Dawn to Decadence: 1500-present states that once the Church lost control of how the Bible was interpreted, it lost its power as the political center of Europe. Historians credit the Gutenberg's printing press with making the Reformation a reality.

Will the internet bring about reform that parallels the printing press? Only time will tell. Much like the decentralization of theological power brought by the printing of the Bible, there is a decentralizing of denominational power caused by the internet. Power is moving from the few to the many, from leaders to congregations and from established-centralized groups to organic decentralized movements. These shifts are affecting the forms of church, its leadership and their communities.

Just as the printing press facilitated the protestant movement, the internet has created a critical mass of people engaged in new ways of being the church. The internet allows similarly minded Christians to gather and express themselves as ecclesia. Today, the internet is connecting people to house churches, urban churches, coffee-house churches and churches in bars. As these churches form, they are collaborating with one another the internet. Movements are being founded, relationships created across continents and cultures.

These expressions of church are establishing a new sense of global ecclesia that transcends denominational barriers; it is based on relationship, not power. Churches now look, feel and act different as a result. The Church has moved from a 'Wal-Mart' church world to one of mass customization and response. A powerful movement in this shift is the emerging church movement. People dissatisfied with a modernistic, traditional church are finding each other online through blogs and online. Local people are able to connect online through the Emergent Village site.

Communities such as the Emergent Village, The Ooze, Next Wave or Ginkworld. These communities are creating new alternative paths for the church. The internet is a central cause for the wide and lasting change brought by the emerging church and other movements. The transformation is underway and is growing momentum through every new internet user.

In the last decade the internet has fueled a new wave of church planting and created a new type of pastor in the process. In the past, church leaders were equipped and educated through centralized training on church planting. The internet has exposed church planting to millions of people.Conducting a search on 'Church Planting Blog' lists over a million results.

Avid pastor bloggers document their every decision, mistake and success in such detail that the fear of the unknown is removed for church planters. This new pastor is being trained and educated online. There is a new sense of potential for many who seek to start churches. The internet is facilitating a new type of congregant through a revival in church participation and decision-making. Prior to the conveniences of email, posting and commenting, decision-making often required a physical meeting or phone call. These requirements eliminated many people from the decision process. Today, decisions are able to be decentralized through internet-based communication. This revival is being experienced in both local churches and at the denominational level.

Keith Drury author of How the Internet is changing Denominations writes: Before the Internet the church operated pretty much as an oligarchy, with power and decision-making concentrated into the hands of the few on behalf of the many. Boards, church staffs, along with district and denominational leaders met and made decisions on behalf of the proletariat. "The people" were supposed to trust their leaders to make these decisions for them. The Internet has altered this arrangement. People now expect to participate in decision-making (or at least the discussion before the decision). It is harder now for boards and leaders to make decisions and just expect people to fall into line and "just say amen." [Source: http://www.drurywriting.com/keith/Internet.changed.denominations.htm]

The internet has raised possibilities for participating and ownership in the church. Churches are now using forums, emails, password-protected areas and instant messaging to engage a more involved community. This is important because if decision-making of a church is centralized, it negatively impacts the church's ability to be on mission. Why? Centralized leadership creates a bottleneck where decisions must go to the center few to be processed in order for action to take place.

Second, centralized leadership impairs discipleship. In a centralized church, knowledge is held by the paid staff rather than teaching and sending people to make decisions as they live out the gospel. The internet allows churches to arm a newly connected, yet sent believer to the margins of society. The church allows for new ways of community. Online social networking is revolutionizing how people connect. MySpace is now the most popular website on the internet, with Facebook rapidly rising. MySpace rapidly surpassed widely-used Web-based email and portal sites including Yahoo and Google. Each day, new social networking sites connect like-minded communities of people together. More and more people are accustomed to connect with others based on shared affinity. Famed author and venture capitalist Guy Kawasaki hosted a panel of teens who all said they participated in at least one, if not several of these social networking sites. Churches who understand how to tap into social networks have a tremendous opportunity to connect with people. In response, there are now dozens of social networks forming for churches, such as MyChurch.org. Even local churches are looking to tap into this online social network. [Soma Community – link to within site] has begun to explore imbedding a social community within their church website. Church members are able to connect with friends, continue group discussions online from their missional communities, and share their own personal stories with one another. Their church sees technology as a vital part of complimenting the physical relationship created at the church. What does all this mean? New forms of church, leadership and community are being expressed. The internet is shifting power from the center to the masses. Is there a new reformation taking place? It is too soon to tell, but we are already experiencing significant shifts rooted in global connectedness.

Response by Chris Conant

Drew, what Ekklesia is doing with Epiphany Systems is groundbreaking. In part, because the system components give churches an on-line ministry, while we add integration of communication components and design interface. For example, the church is now able to precede their relationship with a future member in the on-line space, months and possibly years before they make it to a physical church. Just yesterday I received an email from a person in my social network who made a recent commitment to Christ through her community on-line, including attending church with her fiancé (who is in Texas, and she is in London). This occurred over a period of six months. They “attend” together on-line and discuss on the internet phone at no cost. And search engines…wow. Being able to geo-target search results down to the street level? This means that churches can communicate better with the community and focus just on their own city boundaries if they want to.

The internet has and will no doubt change. See The Church in Web 2.0. There are going to be ethical technology and internet leaders, and there will be a lot of messiness too.

I think something to watch for are self-proclaimed heretics who form 500, 1000 even 100,000 person on-line networks. Will they begin to lead large groups astray? Our youth? Some have said that anarchy is at the internet’s core. This will require some innovation on the church’s part to draw members on their honor who will participate without desecrating the values.

Ethics will again be on the table. Parents will need to be educated. Pornography will be come to center spotlight and need to be dealt with in the church. The warfare will get harder, but the victories will be greater.

Another aspect to watch for is targeted “marketing” toward Christians. The internet now, services its users with relevant content, content that may sometimes seem automated or unauthentic. Will the users be impacted by and respond to the results delivered by the net? And will church decisions be based on the reports of numbers and user statistics?

Will authentic revival prayer drive the internet decisions or the visitor statistics upward? How do we make room for the Holy Spirit? How do churches that expect “moves of the Kingdom” and laying on of hands to occur? Are we placing our hands on the web cam? Will it become a lost discipline? Not if I can help it. My opinion is the Kingdom will and already is advancing upon the internet in new ways. A move of God equals renewal.

A reality: The face of the church could look completely different in just 30 years because of the social tech generation. It seems those with cause-oriented social missions and community-centered internet hubs may be in full swing in America. Keeping Christ at the center, the church will be characterized by being radically and globally networked. It wouldn’t be surprising if every time you come to church there are more transient believers than permanent attendees. However, both are members. And don't expect these folks to be local. They may come from as far as the farthest corners of the earth, arriving as up-to-date as you are, because they attend a decentralized church gathering. Somewhere in the next ten years, every church will have to embrace the internet as the vehicle of communications that is forcing a transformation within the ekklesia (the church). I don’t want our company to have the responsibility of being the driving agents of change and migration, but rather, I think we play a strong role in being the ambassadors sent to help church leadership cross the bridge. We are both old school and new school.

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