Archive for the 'church 2.0' Category

Prayer on the internet

Published
by
Sam
on July 3, 2008
in church 2.0, prayer and work
. 1 Comment

I’ve been following the prayer requests made at WeTheChurch.org on Twitter over the past few months. People go to the WeTheChurch website and anonymously submit either requests for prayer or praise which are then published on the site, and to their Twitter account.

I was skeptical about the quality of prayer this would produce, and only signed up out of curiosity, but I’ve been fairly impressed. There certainly are plenty of selfish prayers, but the majority of the prayers I have seen have been people thanking God or expressing deep desires for others’ spiritual, physical and mental health.

Most of the praise points concern various physical and relational blessings where God’s provision is felt, but there also lots of prayers that praise God’s character:

All glory be to you Lord, for you are the head over all! Thank you for loving us, and walking with us every moment of our lives!

As I’ve read through the prayer requests, I’ve been struck by how many of the more selfish prayers (I use the term selfish loosely) are about work. 13 of the 100 prayers on the front page mention ‘job’ or ‘work’. Here’s a sampling:

NEED a full-time job. Please pray for God’s blessing. Thank you.

On Monday I have THE most important job interview of my life! Please pray for me.

I made the cut for the final 3 for a new job. Thank you, God! Please let me be the final 1 now!

Thank you, God, for a possible job for July.

From what I’ve seen work-related requests comfortably outnumber any other category of personal petitions, including relationship with God, relationships with people and health.

Made me wonder whether in my life and in my advice to others I am giving work the respect it deserves. I know from a short time being unemployed how difficult and depressing it can be to be out of work. However, I think I probably focus too much on the Genesis curse side of work than the pre-Fall created-to-work idea.

When we are talking about wise places to work, or wise careers to follow, do we need to take care that we are not making the options too black and white?

Talking about Church 2.0

Published
by
Sam
on June 23, 2008
in church 2.0
. 3 Comments

This week I’m meeting up with a group of friends to begin an informal discussion on how we at St. Helen’s can use web technologies better as a church.

I decided to write up my current ideas on this and see what you thought.

If we define church as something like ‘a community of people being shaped by God through his word’ (that includes a missional element there), then it seems to me that the best way of using web 2.0 type things to help achieve that aim would be to build a community around a set of church blogs. I think this would be better than going for a purer community like Facebook or Ning or messing around with lifestreaming/sharing.

I see blogging as advantageous because:

  • There is a platform for the Word to be taught. As opposed to Facebook profiles etc where we might often be speaking the truth in love, in a blogging network we can do that as well as have a community that is built on the Word.
  • Authority is more present. There is a clear line between the author and the commentator, a line that I think is very biblical (though I am clearly in favour of the lay-person blogging!)
  • They are better for engaging people from outside the community as all the content is open and obvious and more interesting to read than the Rector’s profile would be.
  • Participating in the blog community is has a lower barrier to entry than joining a social network.
  • Blogs are an established part of the internet, whereas Twitter and social bookmarking and to a lesser extent Facebook are not.
  • Setting up a few blogs is an easy first step, technically and socially. Community type features to allow people to network could then be added on top when there is demand (e.g. using Disqus).

I should stress that the discussion we’re having is very early stage and informal, nothing official yet. But if you’d like to be involved, drop me a line in the comments.

What do you think? Are blogs the best building block?

A tree - ‘I am the true vine’