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Staying on top of the technological curve in ministry can eventually drive one crazy, but it is also one of the most effective tools in communicating with and connecting those in your congregation. With this in mind, one of the very first tasks that I set about in the summer of 2002 when I became the college director at Bel Air Church in Los Angeles, Calif., was to hire a professional Web designer to create a very attractive and interactive Web site. I was expecting this new Web site to bridge the gap for us in communication and connection within our community. We created pages for them to upload their artwork and photography, and we created a forums section where various issues could be raised and discussed for anyone who desired to enter the conversation. Since both my students and I were controlling this content, users weren't returning to the same static site that they had grown used to in the past. But having an attractive and interactive Web site in hopes to communicate and connect people was just not enough, and it is certainly not enough today.
Staying on top of the technological curve in ministry can eventually drive one crazy, but it is also one of the most effective tools in communicating with and connecting those in your congregation. With this in mind, one of the very first tasks that I set about in the summer of 2002 when I became the college director at Bel Air Church in Los Angeles, Calif., was to hire a professional Web designer to create a very attractive and interactive Web site. I was expecting this new Web site to bridge the gap for us in communication and connection within our community. We created pages for them to upload their artwork and photography, and we created a forums section where various issues could be raised and discussed for anyone who desired to enter the conversation. Since both my students and I were controlling this content, users weren't returning to the same static site that they had grown used to in the past. But having an attractive and interactive Web site in hopes to communicate and connect people was just not enough, and it is certainly not enough today. Our college ministry has moved through a gradual technological progression from interactive and flashy Web sites, to blogs, to online social networking over the last five years. But unlike Web sites and blogs, online social networking is close to perfection in communicating and connecting those in your ministry. In the fall of 2004 I noticed a gradual trend away from Web site use as many of my students were migrating to online social networking sites, the most popular being MySpace. For almost a year and half I resisted any attempt to give into this trend, but by the spring of 2005 I could no longer ignore the fact that the majority of my students in our ministry were communicating and connecting to one another primarily through these sites. I had to make an important decision. Should I join the ranks of those going onto MySpace, especially when I had so many questions about the content of the site? Or should I continue to resist and hope that my students would come to our Web site long enough to get information? I eventually decided to create an online profile for our college ministry. In the end, regardless of my questions and concerns about MySpace, I believed it was important for me as a college director to be where my students spent their time, and they were spending hours of it a day in these new online communities. If I had any questions about its effectiveness in communicating and connecting my students, they were put to rest a few months later in the summer of 2005 when three new students shared with me one night in college group that they had located our ministry through our MySpace profile. If you are new to the Internet craze of online social networking, then it can be quite mind-numbing to wade your way through its history and how it operates. Online social networking is a "Web site that provides a virtual community for people interested in a particular subject or just to "hang out" together. Members communicate by voice, chat, instant message, videoconference, and blogs, and the service typically provides a way for members to contact friends of other members."1 The most popular and probably most well known is MySpace, which had more than 200 million accounts as of September 2007. This is the site our college ministry first joined and it continues to be the most popular when it comes to sheer numbers. But there is another online social networking site sweeping the country these days and it is called Facebook. This is the site that we have now chosen to use in our ministry and I cannot imagine doing ministry without it. It is the way I communicate and connect to my students and it is the way they communicate and connect to one another. The most attractive aspect of these online communities is that there is no bureaucracy or hierarchy online, allowing anyone in your ministry to contribute not only to the flow of information, but also giving them the opportunity to be a voice in the community. This is an attractive aspect of these networks, especially when many people in ministry communities do not feel empowered to have a voice and be a part of the discussion. If you will, think of online social networking sites as hubs of interactive communication. That's how Facebook works in our ministry and that is how it is revolutionizing ministries around the country. Through our online Facebook profile I can create content such as advertising for upcoming events, posting my sermon topics, sending out invitations to activities, as well as messaging members. And the beautiful thing about online social networking is that content is created and managed by everyone in your network, therefore it empowers those you minister to, to be more involved. There was a day when these sites were mostly trafficked by college age students and under, but with the removal of some of those restrictions these worlds are busting at the seams with every age and demographic wanting to be involved in helping communicate with and connect to those in their ministries and communities. It will not be the final solution when it comes to the rapidly changing world of Internet technology, but it certainly is changing the way that many of us are doing ministry. Rhett Smith (www.rhettsmith.com) is college director of "The Quest" (www.thequestbelair.org) at Bel Air Church (www.belairpres.org) in Los Angeles, Calif. 1Tech Web Network, Tech Encyclopedia, (http://www.techweb.com/encyclopedia/defineterm.jhtml?term=SOCIALNETWORKINGSITE)
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