Digital @ Leadership Network

Internet Ministry Conference - Register Now!

It's time to register for the Internet Ministry Conference in October.  You won't want to miss this opportunity to absorb all there is to learn about ministry online if you're anywhere near Grand Rapids, Michigan.  The speakers are amazing and literally I wish I could hear them all.

Some highlights will include:

Dr. Quentin Schultze (who I highly recommend) will present the devotional and  David Russell of NCC will talk about websites.

Kent Shaffer of Church Relevance & Bombay Creative will speak about Internet Ministry Marketing and Tailored Internet Ministry.

Brad Abare of Church Marketing Sucks & the Center for Church Communication will help us define our Personality and, shall we say, frustrate, educate and motivate us towards better online endeavor.

I could talk about more speakers but the important thing is to register now if you're looking to get educated about serious online ministry.

I'll speak on Thursday about your spiritual gift mix online so make sure and let me know you'll be there so we can connect.

-- Cynthia Ware, The Digital Sanctuary

Dallas Hosts ECHO Church Media Conference

A conference for church leaders that love using media, technology, and the internet to be more effective in sharing God's story.   

This Thursday through Saturday, Dallas will host the ECHO Conference.  If you have interest in using media, technology and the internet to be more effective in ministry, then Echo is for you.

Hosted by Watermark Church (I blogged Watermark here) it promises to be an inspiring and creative gathering of church innovators.  Authors, pastors and media-savvy experts will explore the dynamic opportunities available for churches & individuals and sponsors will provide the means to do so.

There are ample breakout sessions and keynotes that include these speakers:

Donald Miller, Matthew Paul Turner, Mark Batterson, Todd Wagner, Mark Steele, Brad Abare

Echo is brought to you by the team at Igniter Media, WorshipHouse Media, and Collide Magazine       

Want more information?  Check out the Echo Blog, watch this Teaser Video, or use this Conference Quick Look

If you're in Dallas, stop by and check out Greg Atkinson's Church 2.0 breakout session.  Meet Greg, Tony Steward and myself - all contributors to the upcoming Church 2.0 book.

-- Cynthia Ware, The Digital Sanctuary

Earthquake Creates Twitter Spurt, So What?

The recent Southern California minor earthquake caused a flurry of tweets in the twitterverse.  This is what it looks like on a Twitter-graph.

Twitter, the micro-blogging or social messaging service (SMS) has been embraced by communication's early adopters but hasn't spread in terms of mainstream acceptability yet.  In fact, according to Wikipedia, Twitter has only 2,200,000 users.

Furthermore, it's proven somewhat (how's that for diplomatic?) unreliable by users. Thus 'serious updaters' have remained uneasy and investigate other services and options for universal status updates.  (See - Read Write Web's Six Ways to Update Your Status.)

Although Twitter has been talked about frequently at Digital, many unconverted still think of it as a narcissistic, time-wasting, pointless, squandering of words.  They are of the "who cares what I'm doing right now?" camp.  Prudent Christians think carefully about stewardship issues and where we invest our time is important. 

But bear with us here at Digital.  Twitter can be a bit of a surprise.  It has an unexpected way of creating links, forging bonds, developing certain degrees of intimacy and spawning mini-communities.  And when it comes to the Church, that may make micro-messaging hugely important.

Twitter, Digital Footprints, Digital Shadows, Tagging and the Age of Transparency

Last December, The Pew Internet & American Life Project put out the results of a provocative survey entitled Digital Footprints: Online identity management and search in the age of transparency.   

Compiled by Mary Madden, Susannah Fox, Aaron Smith, et. al., you can view a PDF of the Digital Footprint report here.  The survey spotlighted the question "Are internet users are becoming more aware of their digital footprints."  Respondents revealed:

* 47% have searched for information about themselves online, up from just 22% five years ago.

However, few monitor their online presence with great regularity.

* Just 3% of self-searchers report that they make a regular habit of it.

* 74% have checked up on their digital footprints only once or twice.

* Fully 60% of internet users say they are not worried about how much information is available

   about them online.

* Similarly, the majority of online adults (61%) do not feel compelled to limit the amount of

   information that can be found about them online.

I found the survey provocative not because we have digital footprints but more importantly, not many people are thinking about it. 

Indeed, most internet users are not concerned about the amount of information available about them online, and most do not take steps to limit, govern or direct that information.

Active Digital footprints are one thing.  Your passive digital footprint, or digital shadow, however, is an even more obscure set of data and quite another thing altogether.  It may include things like:

* your high school or elementary school photo
* your prescription medicines - uploaded for storage by pharmacists
* your driver's license records
* zabasearch records
* your college transcripts
* your charitable organizations memberships
* races or competitions you have been registered in
* boats, trains and other forms of transportation you have used
* tax records
* mortgage records
* voter records
* PTA and school newsletter mentions

and most importantly, for our discussion, your tweets and your @replies. 

Better search your exact Twitter user name right now and every twitpic that has your @name attached to it, like this one of me I found on page 1 of a google search.  Fortunately, it was put up by a friend and basically with permission but in the Age of Transparency there will be great loss of privacy.  I know of quite a handful of online photos that are up on Twitter and the person in the photo is unaware of their existence, much less their searchablity. 

We should also likely check out our accounts at Dodgeball, Jaiku, Pownce, Plurk, Spoink and a list of others.

The Age of Transparency is upon us.  Accountablity vs. loss of privacy?  What are the pros and cons for you? 

-- Cynthia Ware, The Digital Sanctuary

Twellow - Director of Twitter Users

For folks that love Twitter, Twellow is a directory of Twitter users bucketed under different categories.  Here is the Christianity category which already has nearly 1900 users and there are some well-known folks like Terry Storch and Mark Driscoll

They cleverly auto-seeded these categories beforehand, but anyone can add their Twitter profiles to this category.  Pastors may want to add themselves to the "ministor" category which has 480 "ministors" (the site is still in Alpha!)

In their own words, Twellow "assists you in finding real people who really matter"

Found via Loren Baker

-- Joe from MyChurch, social networking for churches

live blogging from Church 2.0 Forum OC

Here at NewSong Irvine for Church 2.0 Forum, coordinated by Greg Atkinson of churchvideoideas.com. This is my live blog, courtesy free wifi with good throughput at NewSong --

-- DJ Chuang, Director @ Leadership Network

Bible Software

I've recently played around with some Bible study/lookup/memorization software that are desktop-based - Logos, Verseminder, and Quickverse (BTW, Quickverse is giving away its 2008 starter edition for free).  Readers also suggested e-Sword.

And I know there are some good web-based Bibles as well like YouVersion.  (do readers know of other innovative ones?)

As internet users start to expect media to be social and interactive, these software developers have an opportunity to make engaging Scripture applications and Bible study software tools that incorporate the social graph.  YouVersion (imho) is clearly the leader here, and there's plenty of room for innovation.

I'm partially thinking outloud for one of my own little pet projects.  We created a Daily Bible verse Facebook app that has 650,000 Facebook users, but very little engagement (less than 1% of the users interact with the app on a daily basis).  I've thought about bringing in some blogging tools for users to discuss the verse.  Or even a one-year Bible reading plan. 

The potential with any of these Web 2.0 Bible tools is that the social graph is involved.  A one-year Bible plan fits the bill as a desktop app.  But even more interesting if your friends are involved to keep you accountable to stick with that one-year plan.  A prayer journal can serve its purpose while sitting on your desktop.  But potentially more powerful if others in your church can see your journal and pray for you (ex KindleJoy).  Bible memorization/trivia is kinda fun when you play by yourself.  But lots more fun if you're competing for high scores among your friends.

-- Joe Suh from MyChurch, social networking for churches

Lord, Teach Us to Pray - Virtually

image: GodTube

21 years ago, I visited Jerusalem for the first time.  One of the many stops on our trip was the Western Wall (aka - Wailing Wall).  Seeing the particular physical place where people poured out their requests to God really made an impression on me. 

Several years ago I got a picture in my mind of a similar wall, only this one was online, a place where people from all over the world could leave their "Dear Heavenly Father".....electronically. Recently, I was reminded of this picture because today, electronic prayer sites are increasingly easy to find.  As we see more specialization on the web, 24/7 prayer pages like this one will likely become commonplace. 

Electronic prayer examples are easily searchable.  GodTube provides it's subscribers their own prayer wall.   Third party developers are creating Facebook prayer applications so Facebook members can notify one another of their need for prayer. 

Kindle is a free worldwide social prayer network that helps people form prayer groups to share their prayer requests with each other.  Kindle, in particular, displays huge potential, as the developers anticipate the forming of specialized groups within Kindle where intecessors are matched with individuals who need prayer for specific issues.

I've personally struggled with the "disconnect" associated with technologically mediated prayer.  And yet, at the same time, I've experienced incredible personal benefit from electronic prayers, specifically, in times of crisis as well as during seasons of elongated suffering. 

So, here are a handful of questions surrounding online prayer in the metaverse:

Would you use an online prayer service?

Do you see drawbacks of online prayer?

Do you see benefits of online prayer?

Do you think online prayer will grow in popularity?

-- Cynthia Ware, The Digital Sanctuary

Westwinds Church tries Twitter Sunday

John Voelz of Westwinds Church (Jackson, Michigan) debriefs on his blog about being a "Twitter Church" last Sunday.

John had seen Twitter impact lives in his church in profound and powerful ways:

I have seen life-altering small groups formed and forged through Twitter. I have seen teams of people mobilized to do volunteer service like nothing else in the past through Twitter. I have seen needs met financially through Twitter. I have made friends through Twitter. I have witnessed theological discussions, seen prayer answered, seen surprise rendezvous’, connected with leaders better, I've seen friends come to the aid of others health . . .

So, on Twitter Sunday, June 1st, Westwinds projected its live Twitter feed (I think the feed was shown live and unfiltered!) on one of its screens during its worship service. Read his full blog post to get an inside look at how Twitter Sunday went for Westwinds >>

What would your church try to do to incorporate live feedback from the audience: twitter? chat room? text message? other?

[aside] while Twitter has become increasingly popular, it's also becoming increasingly unreliable. It's offline from SoCal at the time of this writing.

-- DJ Chuang, Leadership Community Director @ Leadership Network

Collective Muse - Social Networking for College Leaders

Rhett Smith, has been the college director for the last many years at Bel Air Presbyterian Church. Over the course of his tenure he has been dreaming and thinking a lot about the desire for, and need for connecting those involved in college ministry (i.e. pastors, directors, volunteers, etc.).  Rhett says that although there are lots of college ministries, there is a certain disconnect among this particular age group as well as for those in ministry to this age group.

So, after a season of praying and thinking about it, Rhett created and launched a social networking site devoted to these people.

"I hope this site can be a hub that brings us together, helps us promote events, share ideas, meet, pray, etc. It is a place where we can bring together the work that we are all doing, and hopefully be energized and encouraged by what is taking place out there."

You can check out the site at Collective Muse.

Or you can visit the Facebook group here at Collective Muse's Facebook page.

"It's a work in progress," Rhett says.  "I wanted to do a slow and gradual roll-out and just fix, edit and redesign things as they happened, and were needed, rather than trying to have everything perfect.  It's really my experiment in using some of the new, free and easy tools for connecting.  I think part of the new media is also about taking risks, making mistakes, failing, etc, and trying again.  You can do that because the costs have collapsed as Clay Shirky would say. 

The site is "An open and collaborative network for those engaged in thinking creatively and relationally about college ministry."

Collective Muse can be used to:

Connect
We desire to connect those serving in college ministry.

Engage
We desire to engage those involved in college ministry on issues regarding theology, ministry, praxis, etc.

Collaborate
We desire to collaborate with those serving in college ministry on projects that bring innovation and new ideas to the study and practice of this field.

Innovate
We desire to be a community that creates and welcomes innovative ideas in the field of college ministry.

Gather
We desire to gather together in order to form relationships and grow from our interactions with one another.

Prayer
We desire to be a people that continually seek the direction of college ministry through time in prayer.

Diversity
We desire to be a community that spans the breadth and depth of Christianity, interacting on this site with those involved in serving in college ministry in the various denominations, non-denominations, and traditions of Christianity.

Resource
We desire to be a resource for those serving in college ministry, as well as students who are a part of college ministry.   

Rhett says, "By creating this site, I hope to bring people together/connect, by creating a platform for them to share, eventually cooperate and then do some collective action for the good of college ministry."

See similar: Tuggle - Social Networking for Ministry Leaders

-- Cynthia Ware - The Digital Sanctuary