Church of the Saviour Web

Sub-articles under this topic: Telling the Story of a Church on the web | Beyond BrochureWare for Churches | A Place of Connectivity 

I was thinking yesterday about how I ought to actually pursue a dream I've had about Church Webs.  I have a secton here on Church of the Saviour,  because it is through stories and visits and books about them that I have come to look to their models of ministry as the ideal climate in which Church can become incarnate, pervasive,  and be the pillar of one's activity in the world.  For som nay people,  Church is simply a place to be presented with a variety of challenges and observe a regular routine of spirituality,  whatever that might mean.  What I observe is that there is rarely offered the kind of constant confrontation with culture and an exploration of the means to resist and thus protect the "what should be and what could be" in us which seeks to draw from a center of power and divine prescence from the "realities" faced in the "real world".  As I observed in previous posts out of my reading of Gordon Cosby's book of sermons ("By Grace Transformed"),  there is sufficient question about what the real is and what is "illusion".  It is,  in fact,  an actual matter of the accuracy of a story like "The Matrix",  which portrays people living in a world which is an illusion "downloaded" into the bodies of imprisoned, "jacked in" inert, floating bodies conected to a "host computer" which feeds them their "reality".  I loved that movie.  NOw, in light of the Gordon Cosby readings,  I appreciate it even more.

But I digress a bit,  because where I am headed with this is that The Churchof the Saviour,  by virtue of their demonstrating throughout their history the validity of their vision of the Gospel and how it can be lived in community,  have given to me a framework to shape what a "Web prescence" for a Church should include. 

It has made me wonder if I shouldn't just seek it out,  even move there if doors seem to open.  In 1995,  while attending an Ecunet event in Baltimore where my Old St. George friend, Larry,  and my Sojourners friend ,  their Web master , Bob Sabath,  all attended together.  Larry and I were staying at Bob's house just outside D.C.,  and so Sunday morning we went to The Church of the Saviour and I met Elizabeth O'Connor,  who had just written Servant Leaders, Servant Structures,  and I expressed to her my desire to use that short book as a Web document that could grow into something that connected the things in the stories to related Web items.  She said something like "go for it",  and about a year later I received a handwritten letter from Gordon Cosby thanking me for all the work I had done "so quietly" by putting up that book,  linking its chapters together,  and also putting up a copy of their brochure which listed all the Church Communities of the Church of the Saviour.

When I visited with Dan yesterday,  he said to me I ought to ask Church of the Saviour about the possibilities for their doing a Website that was reflective of who they are.  That's realy what Church Webs ought to be: Webs that "tell the story" of the Church.   In the "Cluetrain Manifesto", it is called "having voice". 

I think that for the Church of the Saviour,  this seems like a sense of call that suggests that maybe COS is more than just a model for me.  Perhaps it is THE place where this model of Church Web should be built,  and that I have received a call to do so.  Perhaps it is the stuff from which a "mission group" should emerge;  IS emerging. 

Back to the "model",  and why the COS vision provides an ideal framework for envisioning Church Web schemas.

First and foremost,  it is a A Place of Connectivity.

Secondly,  it goes beyond brochures (see Beyond BrochureWare for Churches)

Thirdly,  it enables story; we need to be about  Telling the Story of a Church on the web

© Copyright 2003 Dale Lature. Last update: 9/23/2003; 3:38:13 PM.