Our fearless leader, DJ Chuang, asked us to post a few words about ourselves and what we'd like to see happen around digital.leadnet.org.
My name is Stephen Shields and I live with my wife and three girls in the Baltimore-Washington Corridor. I work in management for USA TODAY, and am also a freelance writer and consultant. My wife Beth and I co-lead a ministry to the New Orleans area survivors of Katrina called KatrinaGrace and I also serve on our church's Leadership Development Team.
My interest in what is increasingly being called New Media began when I bought my first PC while I was in seminary in the mid-80's (a Leading Edge 8088 with no hard drive!) and began participating in online bulletin boards through dial-up connections. My online life, however, significantly increased when around 6 years ago I launched faithmaps.org to supplement a theology course I was teaching while a pastor at Cedar Ridge Community Church in Spencerville, MD. But what may have been more significant for the purposes of this blog was the faithmaps discussion group that I launched in May of 2001 . I moderated this group for five years with over 350 subscribed email addresses and over 45,000 emails. At times we averaged over 1000 emails a month It was in that context that I became convinced that genuine spiritual relationships and interactions can occur in online contexts. Some of my best friends have come from the faithmaps group. We also started faithmaps-related online closed small groups called faithstories where the sharing could become quite profound.
In the developed world, as the cost of entry to new media has decreased, the speed of online connections increased, and the number of online contexts for relational interaction have proliferated, it is now possible to speak of folks actually living a substantial portion of their lives online. Consequently, Jesus followers wishing to execute the Great Commission and to live in consistency with the Great Commandments do well to explore these new avenues of kingdom impact.
With this blog, it is our desire to resource Christ's church as she obediently follows her Lord in these new contexts. We hope to do that by drawing on our own experiences, reporting what we find that others are doing, and suggesting new ways to move forward.
But we want this forum to be interactive. And so we are also looking forward to hearing what our readers have to share from their own experiences and thoughts in comments.
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