Churches with Flash

In my article yesterday about Churches and the Web,  I was bemoaning how big churches pour stagering amounts of money into traditional media but do a serious slacker job on Web communications.  Another thing which occurred to me as I look at News Links today was the Use of Streaming Video and "Flash" type effects.   The Church like the one I was describing yesterday are amazing with sound and video.  It is becoming so much easier to do digital video and stream it -- some church web services are offering it --- and I think it's a natural for the "Big Production" churches.  I mean,  they're already doing it,  so why not do a Web-compatible export of it to RealVideo or Flash?

But it is also more important to realize here that it doesn't even "Require" Flash.  there are less "flashy" ways to enable excitement via the energy of dialogue.  Weblogs,  various "Social Software" (ie web forums, group collaborative applications,  etc) that make for things that can truly become "theologically emergent".  "Emergent" is used to refer to relatively simple things/processes/code that becomes almost amazingly complex (such as the behaviour of ants in colonies).  Weblogs have done this, in my view.  Weblogs and other "social software" can become "emergent" for the Church, and spawn entirely new social, and yes, "spiritual" processes (could we call upon "where two are three I gathered,  there I will be in their midst" and see this at work also online?  Poses an interesting challenge to the traditional notions,  and also to the notions of how far the omnipotence of God extends).

In other words,  Flash or no flash, emergent theological community tools are happening. 

© Copyright 2003 Dale Lature. Last update: 9/23/2003; 3:37:21 PM.