Hey there Syd Ang readers,

The future is now.

Don’t believe me?

Just wait until you read Jeremy Halcrow’s news feature which goes online next Monday morning.

It’s going to tell you all about podcasts and online church and E-vangelism.

AMS’s own E-vangelist David Horne will be online all week to discuss these issues and answer your questions.

So, look out for that.

Online comunity

Just a question

in what way can we realy refer to online community as true christian community

sean

I’ll give you a little background about how this vodcasting caper come about from our perspective.

Ken Sandell and I became friends ten years ago and then in 2003 Ken was very generous to us at Christians in the Media in helping us produce the Introducing God series.  Introducing God would not have happened without his support.

Since then Ken and I have been talking about how to use new media to communicate Christ.

It was about then that the podcasting of talks really took off for us.  I was even asked to perform the wedding of a Christian couple here in Sydney who needed to get married in Sydney but who built a relationship with us through listening to me and Andrew Barry’s Bible talks over the web from the UK.

At Christians in the Media church our camera people, lighting people, vision switchers and editors have been looking for opportunities to use their gifts to serve Christ.

What we have ended up with in Building God’s People TV is a 28 minute program each week for the Australian Christian Channel and a longer version including question and comment time for the podcasting/web .

We are very much finding our feet in this whole game.  But we wanted to start early and make mistakes now and work out how to iron them out.  We are very open to constructive criticism.  So please (while being gentle because we are learning) do give us feedback.

One of the very difficult issues is file size.  Video files are much bigger than audio files.  We initially followed Apple’s recommendations and ended up with file sizes that are far too big.  We are now working out how to get each video file to be a size of around 100MB.

If you would like to help us out in the camera crew or some other capacity please contact us (feedback@introducinggod.org).  We are also looking for prayer and financial backers for this project.  Although we are doing it very very cheaply it is still costing some money, so please contact us if you would like to help there.

Yours in Christ,

Dominic Steele.

Re: Online comunity

Hi Sean,

How’s things?

[quote author="Sean Heslehurst"]
in what way can we realy refer to online community as true christian community

This I think is the crucial question with regards to internet community.

The phenomenon of the internet is rapidly changing the way people relate to each other - especially amongst the young. They prefer to relate this way.

In order to answer this question I think we first need to ask what is true christian community and then see whether there is an internet version of community that allows for this.

Any thoughts?

Dave Horne

Acts 2:42 seems to spell out the bare minimum of a Christian Community.  The only aspect that can’t be done on-line is the breaking of bread together, but this can be done on special get togethers.

Just reflecting on Pauls letters written from prison, was Paul part of the community of believers even when he couldn’t physically be with them?  I’d say yes.

Thax <><

Hi Dominic,

May I suggest there is a large opportunity for bite-sized video versions of some of your materials such as your series on four of the “solas” or “alones”.

By bite-sized video I mean, say, 5 to 8 minutes in length.

I think it is great that you are making your full-length talks available as downloadable video.

Unfortunately, in practice, we have found similar full-length videos are too long a “talking head” experience for many of our congregation, especially the under 20s.

Something short and pithy would be great for integration into our Sunday services and as a discussion starter for small groups.

We would even pay something for that sort of material......8-)

More generally, I see that there is a great opportunity with new media to
make our communications more effective by taking into account the reality of multiple learning styles and shortish attention spans.

These are issues that the “traditional” preaching approach has simply not addressed.

Hi Craig,

[quote author="Craig Thacker"]Acts 2:42 seems to spell out the bare minimum of a Christian Community.  The only aspect that can’t be done on-line is the breaking of bread together, but this can be done on special get togethers.

I think another aspect of church that is important is that of accountability. It is what keeps the integrity of our christian lives. Can we be accountable online? I’m not sure.

[quote author="Craig Thacker"]Just reflecting on Pauls letters written from prison, was Paul part of the community of believers even when he couldn’t physically be with them?  I’d say yes.

In Philippians he certainly had a sense of fellowship with the Phillipians, even though he was in prison. Yet he also longed for face to face interaction so that he could do more than what he could do in a letter (1 Thes 3:10).

Now I think the New Media offers more in the way of relationship than a letter but is it enough to replace face to face relationships?

cheers

David

Hi Craig,

[quote author="Craig Thacker"]Acts 2:42 seems to spell out the bare minimum of a Christian Community.  The only aspect that can’t be done on-line is the breaking of bread together, but this can be done on special get togethers.

I think another aspect of church that is important is that of accountability. It is what keeps the integrity of our christian lives. Can we be accountable online? I’m not sure.

[quote author="Craig Thacker"]Just reflecting on Pauls letters written from prison, was Paul part of the community of believers even when he couldn’t physically be with them?  I’d say yes.

In Philippians he certainly had a sense of fellowship with the Phillipians, even though he was in prison. Yet he also longed for face to face interaction so that he could do more than what he could do in a letter (1 Thes 3:10).

Now I think the New Media offers more in the way of relationship than a letter but is it enough to replace face to face relationships?

cheers

David

Gidday Terry,

[quote author="Terry Gallagher"]More generally, I see that there is a great opportunity with new media to
make our communications more effective by taking into account the reality of multiple learning styles and shortish attention spans.

Not only that but the internet is breeding a generation of people who take their information in quick bite size chunks - simple and to the point.

I think there is also a need for short Christian “teasers” - small thought provoking images/video/audio clips designed to get people thinking. The sort of thing that could be spread virally. What do you think Dominic?

David

Just reflecting on Pauls letters written from prison, was Paul part of the community of believers even when he couldn’t physically be with them? I’d say yes.

That is an excellent point, and one I hadn’t thought of.

New media communities are here and churches that wish to communicate meaningfully with GenY must get their heads around them.

But I’ve heard no-one suggest that it ought to replace regular meeting in person. It is simply another way of relating.

Regarding “bite-sized” video chunks, I think that is an excellent idea. Our problem at the moment is our current resources are stretched to the limit.

Anyone who is interested in helping us out with our new media projects should come along one Sunday night and make themselves known to Dominic.

Hey Craig/Dominic, do you know where the traffic for the podcasting sermons etc is coming from? Has it just grown organically or has something in particular given you more exposure?

Luke Stevens
Hey Craig/Dominic, do you know where the traffic for the podcasting sermons etc is coming from? Has it just grown organically or has something in particular given you more exposure?

Sorry Luke - I haven’t worked out how to do that quoting thing. 

To answer your question. my observation is that we get lots of downloads of the talk we do each weekend in the week that follows. Aside from that it seems that from our library about 50 talks get downloaded about ten times each and then others less than that. 

There’s no particular spike point of growth or advertising that we have done.

My presumption is that as our members (who are ‘talky people’) - especially Craig - are out there on the web recommending talks that they liked and benefited from means and that as people trust his recommendation they will check it out.  Then people subscribe on itunes etc.

That’s new media really isn’t it!  Personal recommendations from bloggers.

We put this video talk on the Good Samaritan up on google video 12 months ago when we were just starting to think about these things.  It is pretty rough, has had no promotion really - but 518 views. 

I was interested that a couple of months ago a man who visited our church then came back a fortnight later said that in the meantime he had googled us and watched this talk.

Re: Online comunity

[quote author="David Horne"]
The phenomenon of the internet is rapidly changing the way people relate to each other - especially amongst the young. They prefer to relate this way.
Dave Horne

G’day,

I personally fall into Gen Y, being 21 this year.

I wonder perhaps if it’s not so much that young people prefer to relate to one another in this manner, but whether it’s out of necessity.

I suggest this for two reasons:

1. I wholeheartedly agree that the internet is changing the way people relate. It allows for people of common interest to communicate more readily than before, eg I used to do tenpin bowling competitively and was able to keep in touch with mates all around the country that I had bowled with via SMS, MSN Messenger & Forum use. For many of these people, it was practically impossible to communicate in any other fashion.

2. The time constraints that exist for young people are becoming greater and greater. I know when I was at school, in my senior years I was at school for 8+ hours a day, and then I was working 10ish hours as well, & bowling a couple of arvos a week. Then you throw assignments & homework into the mix, and there’s not much time left to spend exclusively with friends. Realistically, if you want to still maintain decent friendships, you don’t have much other choice than to you take advantage of different forms of communicating.

I tend to fall in with the line of thought that young people are craving for meaningful face-to-face relationship, but instead compromise for the closest thing they can get. That’s my own experience at least.

I can’t deny that the way younger people are relating is changing significantly, and that it’s something that needs to be addressed in terms of how we preach the Gospel, but I think it’s an excessively broad assumption that there is a preference for this form of communication.

Re: Online comunity

[quote author="Brett Hall"]I tend to fall in with the line of thought that young people are craving for meaningful face-to-face relationship, but instead compromise for the closest thing they can get. That’s my own experience at least.

I can’t deny that the way younger people are relating is changing significantly, and that it’s something that needs to be addressed in terms of how we preach the Gospel, but I think it’s an excessively broad assumption that there is a preference for this form of communication.

Brett,

I take your point - ‘prefer’ is probably too strong a word. I am not GenY but am trying to understand them. So tell me in what ways do you think we should change the way we preach the gospel?

Dave

Regarding “bite-sized” video chunks, I think that is an excellent idea.

I’m doing some research and thinking about this. I do think this explains the success of Rob Bell’s Nouma projects to some extent.

There are some related issues here: How do people actually use the internet? [ie don’t just believe the media hype!! ;) ] To what extent is rapidly changing technology going to continue changing people’s media habits?

As I said in my article only 1 in 10 Sydney Anglicans have ever downloaded a podcast let alone a vodcast. It’s a niche market. The reality is that most people use the internet as a research tool. They are looking for bite size chunks of info that they can ‘mash-up’ and reuse for their own purposes. In ministry terms, this might be an online gospel presentation they can e-mail someone or Bible notes they can rehash for a study.

I know from the data that ‘research’ is the biggest reason people give for using the net - which probably explains why Telstra’s broadband marketing is pitched at that issue [the advert series with the dumb dad who tells his son that the Great Wall of China was built to stop the rabbits.]

In my view people [currently] see it is an active tool, not a passive medium where they just watch or listen to something like TV or radio broadcast. My question is whether this ‘active’ use of the new media is inate, inbedded in the nature of the medium?? Or will people alter their behaviour as connection speeds improve with better technology??

For those of involved in new media ministy it is a critical question to get right, becuase it tells us where to expend our limited people and financial resources.

Any thoughts?