A Sneak Peek of SimChurch: Being the Church in the Virtual World

Drum roll please…  a blogosphere world first.. …  to get your exclusive sample click here: SimChurch: Being the Church in the Virtual World (660)

And five free Advanced Readers Copies will be awarded to the best 5 comments to the following question:

Is the virtual church a valid form of church?

Please keep your comments brief, feel free to include why you think its valid or otherwise, and yes, feel free to answer in the negative.   Hint… references to SimChurch will earn big points.
To pre-order your copy head over to: Amazon.com.

SimChurch: World Premiere!

Big, big news…  a world first within the blogosphere.. two chapters from the much anticipated book SimChurch: Being the Church in the Virtual World by Douglas Estes will be available for download here on brownblog next Tuesday US time!!  PLUS the publishers, Zondervan have made available 5 free Advanced Readers Copies to readers of brownblog; details of how to get one of these rare copies revealed next tuesday.

Info about SimChurch: Continue reading »

John Calvin, Virtual Church Pioneer

I welcome to brownblog Douglas Estes, author of Sim Church: Being the Church in the Virtual World, (due out October).  Douglas writes about John Calvin who celebrates his 500th birthday, although word is he cannot make the party.  And he comes at Calvin from a very interesting angle!

Douglas writes:

John Calvin was not only one of the church’s greatest trailblazers; he was also one of the virtual church’s leading pioneers. In fact, John Calvin was all about virtual churches. Even though Calvin lived almost a half-millennium before the first virtual church was born, were he alive today he would be a fan-though he also would be unsatisfied with the direction that most virtual churches are taking.

Calvin was a pre-Enlightenment Christian, meaning that he was born before the modern ideal became the mindset in the Western world. As such, he held many non-modern viewpoints about the church. Let’s look at two examples.

We Westerners squabble over aspects of the ‘church’ that would seem less important to pre-moderns like Calvin. While every generation struggles with culturally-based views of the church, the idea that the church is a physical, tangible object seems to be most felt during the modern era. Our language betrays that we think a church is a physical building or a place. But even those who understand that a church is not a building still overplay the physical nature of what a church is. While there are physical aspects to a church (cf. Calvin’s Catechism of the Church of Geneva, where he likens the church to the ‘body’ of believers), a church is, and by nature must be, primarily a spiritual thing. Calvin understood this when he wrote:

“Hence the form of the Church appears and stands forth conspicuous to our view. Wherever we see the word of God sincerely preached and heard, wherever we see the sacraments administered according to the institution of Christ, there we cannot have any doubt that the Church of God has some existence.” (Institutes, trans Beveridge; 4.1.9) Continue reading »

A church in your hand

A stunning bit of news out of Honolulu: a church there, New Hope Christian Fellowship is going to stream their services live to iPhone and iPod touch users starting this weekend.  The release of the new iPhone and the new updated software makes this possible.

The churches Director of  Technology and Innovations,  Michael Sharpe states,

“Typically, churches are years behind other organizations when it comes to technology and innovation. We have tried to reverse that trend and pioneer new ways to spread the Gospel using the most current tools available,”  “We don’t mind the long hours and stress that comes with innovating because we know that if we can come up with something useful, it can be used by other churches around the world.”

Wow.  The capacity to participate in church on your own, wherever you might be.  If this continues to grow in popularity we might see a completly new ecclesiology develop, a new understanding of what it means to be gathered in community.  No longer do we have to be physically present to participate, or do we have to be committed to engage.  We can drop in and out as we please and remain completly anonymous.

I would be interested in your thoughts.

Global Internet Evangelism

Check out this very cool ministry.. hats off to Campus Crusade.

Source: PRNewswire –

Millions of people around the world are searching for God. In response, Global Media Outreach (GMO), a ministry of Campus Crusade for Christ International, is sending faithful churchgoers … to their computers, training them to become online missionaries out of their homes.”People are looking for answers. And, not surprisingly, they are looking for those answers on the Internet,” says Dr. Allan Beeber, director of GMO’s Orlando office.

According to Beeber, about 3 million online searches are made daily that are of a spiritual nature (e.g. “I need God,” “Who is Jesus?”). GMO has created 90 themed Web sites — the modern-day equivalent of Gospel tracts — to correspond with those searches. There are sites in every major language on a wide variety of topics: from TalesofNarnia.com to GodLovesMarines.com to whoisJesus-really.com. The results are astounding. Continue reading »

The Future of Virtual Ministry

Today I preached my last message in the Anglican Cathedral of Second Life and chose to focus on the future of Virtual Ministry. I pointed out that research shows a majority of Christians don’t regularly attend church and stated that the usual solution of attempting to make church attractive is only part of the answer. I shared that we as a church need to go where people are, as well as expecting people to come to us.

To listen to the message click on the play button below..

And at the end of the service I was quite moved when those worshiping, spontaneously gathered around me to pray for me.

Check out the images from the service below…

To subscribe to my messages via iTunes click here.

Check out the Photos: Continue reading »

What does the future hold for Virtual Ministry?

This weekend I preach my final message before I formally retire from the Anglican Cathedral of Second Life.  Next weekend is my farewell service.  My final talk is, ‘What does the future hold for Virtual Ministry? ‘  I will offer some possibilities, some ideas as to where virtual ministry might be heading.  I can see two realities converging, which will fuel online worship: 1) A declining number of people calling themselves Christian yet not attending the local church, and 2) the massive growth of the internet.

The service I am speaking at is 8pm Saturday Los Angeles time.  Click here to see what time this is in your part of the world.  You are welcome to come and join us!

To get to the Cathedral to hear me speak:

If you are signed up to Second Life:  to get to the Cathedral to attend the service click here.

If you need to sign up to Second Life: check out my blog post by clicking here.

For more background info see: Christian Mission to a Virtual World (1527)

Praying People

Three weeks back I founded the Twitter account Prayer4U where people can send in prayers which are shared amongst the followers of the account.  It now has 381 followers and 148 prayers have been offered. Huge thanks to Blake Croft who co-ordinates it!

And then I thought, why not offer a similar thing for Facebook? So yesterday I set up the page Praying People where in becoming a ‘fan’ of the page you can then post prayers on the wall for others to pray.  Very simple idea, be great to see tons of prayer happening!

Check it out by clicking here.

You don’t seriously think that online church is real church!?

The question I get the most about the Anglican Cathedral of Second Life is, ‘How can a church online be a real church?’

In this message preached this past weekend in the Anglican Cathedral of Second Life, I answer this question!
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To subscribe to my messages via iTunes click here.

Twitter Church?

The most recent edition of Time magazine has a piece on Twitter being used in church services.  Throughout the service the congregation is encouraged to twitter about the service, with a large screen in the auditorium streaming the tweets as they occur.

The same piece also spoke about Trinity Wall Street Church who this past Easter twittered the passion play including, ‘via @romanguard1: I’ve got dibs on his robe, but if you guys want to cast lots for the rest of his clothes I’m cool with that.’  And this got me thinking… so much of our engagement as church with technology is attempting to fit the technology into our present model.  But what would church look like if we were prepared to allow technology to guide how we do church?

Jon Hirst spent some time studying some of the most innovative companies in the world with the aim of gleening some gems for the church.  His first point is, ‘The most innovative organizations are, at their highest levels, defined by innovation in technology’.  Hirst goes on to note,

Technology: In the early days missions were extremely technology driven as they used every tool to overcome huge obstacles. But we have given this distinctive up and now most of our core processes/services/products are not driven by innovative technology.

So taking this view of allowing the technology to guide how we do church I have an idea.. Continue reading »