how to do ministry in an Internet campus

In the coming weeks, we're inviting Internet campus pastors from a different churches to answer commonly asked questions.

For this edition, I asked Brad Singleton, Internet Campus Director at Seacoast Church to respond to this:

How do you do 'the ministry stuff' at an Internet campus, e.g. small groups, discipleship, baptism, communion?

Here's Brad's response:

"Wow, that’s kind of the tough one. It’s easy to get a website with some streaming video going or even have a chatroom on the page, but ministry online is the kind of stuff people write mean blog posts about. Even so here are a few things we are doing and plan to do.

First of all its important to know that one of the earliest and most ongoing responsibilities of an internet campus pastor is to be a translator. I’ve felt very strongly about this since I started about a year ago. My job is to translate the DNA of Seacoast Church into an online campus. That means that the values, convictions, purposes, mission, and even the environmental feel of Seacoast should be felt at the Internet Campus. For us that is most evident in our response time. It also happens to be the one thing that make us most different from the other great internet campuses out there.

When it comes to ministry online, it’s the same mission, different means. For instance, we just recently launched our first online small group. Small groups are a big deal for us so it was important to start doing small groups online as well. Our “real life” groups usually seem to accomplish two things: connection with other believers and personal growth, so I’m pushing that online as well. I’ve set up a private network on Ning, to help with the connection element. Online groups need a little prodding so I post questions (kind of like icebreakers) to our forum so everyone can get to know each other. Then when we meet we are using a video based curriculum, so Mogulus has provided the playback control I need and the chat window for us to talk.

In addition to discipleship through small groups we also have a church wide online learning tool, mynextsteps.org (under redevelopment).

In dealing with early church traditions like baptism and communion we have to really take a step back and look at what is important about these elements of our faith. With baptism we see the important thing is a public profession of faith, the symbolism found in immersion, and the celebration of a new life in Christ. That means it doesn’t have to be me in the water with them. It could be a local pastor or even another Christian friend in the area. So far we have done baptism through our Seacoast @Home groups, but I think Flamingo Road really led the way with Alyssa's Online Baptism. That’s a good model to follow.

With communion, the important thing is that believers come with a pure heart, they remember what Christ did for us, and understand the symbolism of the elements. So we free up people to take communion at home. It’s not like Seacoast is buying a special “holy bread” to use at the campuses. We buy bread that some people might serve with lasagna. So I believe internet campus Seacoasters can use whatever bread/cracker along with wine/juice that will help them to remember what Christ did for us.

Of course, like Mark Batterson says, ”It’s all an experiment.” We will keep having church online until we find out that it doesn’t work, but for now it comes down to this: reaching people, and helping them become fully devoted followers of Christ. We have the Internet Campus because people are online. It’s really that simple." [nb: emphasis added is mine.]

Thank you, Brad, for sharing about how Seacoast is using its Internet campus to minister to people online!

To be sure, there are many other ways to do ministry at an Internet campus, and this is just one working example. What I've found so far is that every Internet campus has its own customized way of presenting the worship experience and doing additional ministries. There's not a cookie-cutter solution (yet?).

Any additional questions you'd like to ask about this topic?

-- DJ CHUANG, Director at Leadership Network

Comments

[John Dyer]

It's great to see how enthusiastically these guys are about reaching people.

I think it's also worth pointing out that the theology operating behind this is really important stuff. The view that baptism and communion are purely symbolic - is pretty recent and would have been rejected by the Reformers (Luther and Calvin). I'd love to know if they considered other theologies of baptism/communion that might not have been as compatible with administering sacraments in a physically disconnected manner (i.e. via internet).