The Web needs to be treated as a "Mission Field" by Church denominations. There need to be studies of the online culture, training of persons in psychology, cybersociology, spirtuality online, and all the "details" of life in the world of the online "seeker". The amount of investment in preparation, education, and "setting up shop" in onsite mission work devoted by denominations and Chrsitian bodies worldwide to all kinds of World and Home Missions is some testimony to the amount of effort it takes to get into somebody's shoes in order to "be a witness", and has been recognized for eons by all but the most blind and arrogant of missionary forces as neccessary work.
So why then is there so appallingly little of the rapidly advancing and growing "Life Online" that is considered to be of much urgency? I see millions entering a social reality that is increasingly being claimed by "e-commerce" efforts, with precious little Church prescence online outside of the postings of fundamentalist drive-by evangelsim (also referred to by many as "eVANDALism"). The life of the Church as a "Community of the Committed" is lost by the examples of online spirituality that seem to forget that the Net began and grew into a dominion worthy of the attention of the corporations of commerce as a tangle of interconnected communities of interaction.
5:33:46 PM
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