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 (711)

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.

Bible Engagement Online

I have been doing a lot of thinking about Bible engagement:  how can we encourage people to engage with the Bible?  In my paper: The Bible in the Digital Space (1196) I outline the importance of church attendance, with more church attendance equating to more Bible engagement.  I offer that we need to go where people are as well as expecting people to come to to us, to a physical church building.   And an obvious place to find people is online.

One simple example is The Bible page I started on Facebook where I post a short passage of scripture which appears on the wall of each of the presently more than 30,000 fans.  A number of people then comment on the text and on each others comments, offering prayers, thoughts and affirmation.   In terms of being an effective engagement tool, my sense is that the Facebook Bible page is on the right path, but not quite there yet. Spent some time yesterday chatting with Stephen Opie, Bible Engagement Advocate for Bible Society New Zealand, thinking through how we might create an engagement resource within Facebook.  And we are not alone in exploring these sorts of questions.  A number of agencies are creating tools to encourage Bible reading in the face of shocking engagement statistics.  The American Bible Society have just recently launched an excellent website called Engage the Word well worth checking out @ engage the word

And in October, Stephen and I are leading a think tank called, Scripture Engagement in Post-Christian Societies which is part of the World Wide Scripture Engagement Consultation, where such questions will be explored and hopefully some concrete ideas formed.

Another organisation who is engaging well with the challenges of Bible reading is  Scripture Union - England and Wales. While I was in Durham I caught up with Darren Hill, their Digital Content Manager  who shared with me that their online Bible reading resource, WordLive was about to get an overhaul.. and this has now happened, with the new look WordLive being launched today.  It is a quality resource offering daily Bible passages in a number of formats: podcast, mobile, email etc..  the format is clean and easy to use.  I particularly like the About God section.. very cool presentation.  So big congrats to the team over at  Scripture Union - England and Wales, well worth not only checking it out but signing up.  Head to: WordLive.

Screen shots: Continue reading »

My thoughts on the Christianity in the Digital Space Symposium

My first words to the Christianity in the Digital Space Symposium last week at St John’s, Durham were, ‘The world is dramatically changing.’  So yes I walked right past the usual fluffy intros and took a seat at the serious table.   So what was I referring to?

Right now the internet is driving a seismic shift in how we relate, how we understand ourselves and the world around us.  I made the point that it is absolutely essential we in the church begin to think strategically around how best to respond to this digital revolution.  Which is why the Symposium, hosted by CODEC, was so important.

So new is the churches interaction with this digital revolution that much of our time was spent attempting to define the questions. At the end I believe we had some direction defined, and what is now needed is for someone like CODEC (waving to Pete Phillips) to now start to shape a strategy of how best to move forward.  This may include a follow up consultation with church/agency leaders; funding research specific to the area of church engagement with the digital revolution; writing a book or three addressing the challenges and possible ways forward; and perhaps starting an org. committed to resourcing the church in its engagement with the revolution.

One interesting meta-theme emerged worth mentioning : a continuum between those who saw online ministry as only effective if it resulted in an offline, ‘normal’ experience of church, and those who considered an experience of ministry online in and of itself sufficient. An example of this is the discussion around identity:  how are we represented online?  Can a dragon lead a church service? Or do we need to transparently represent ourselves online as we are offline?

My view is somewhere in the middle (well I am Anglican), but I can see that the momentum is moving more towards the recognition of the virtual space being in and of itself sufficient an experience.

Here are my highlights: Continue reading »

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 »

God Speaks My Language!

Today and yesterday are auspicious days in the NZ Church Calendar: Bible Sabbath/Sunday where churches around NZ recognize a particular aspect of Bible Society’s work.  This year it is translation.  For approximately 350 million people worldwide, there is no Bible or even a single book of the Bible in their language - the Bible is a book that only comes in someone else’s language.

Some of the facts around translation:

There are 6,909 languages spoken in the world. There are 2,479 of these languages with all or part of the Bible - for many, that means just a book of the Bible or maybe the four Gospels. There are 451 languages that have a full Bible - 13 more than last year. There are 1,185 languages that have a full New Testament. There were 71 new Bible translation projects begun this year. Most of the translation work is done by native speakers of the language they are translating into. All Bible translations under the aegis of Bible Society use the original Greek and Hebrew as the base for all translations.

It takes a minimum of 12 years to complete a translation of the full Bible. Bible Societies around the world are currently involved in 650 Bible translation projects.

For a free resource kit click here.

And check out this inspiring video about Bible Translation:
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For more info click here.

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 »

Video Presentation of ‘The Bible in the Digital Space’

CODEC have uploaded a video of my presentation.. see the first of them below:
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To watch the rest of my presentation click below…
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Continue reading »

The Bible in the Digital Space

Today I presented my paper, The Bible in the Digital Space at the Christianity in the Digital Space Symposium at St. John’s, Durham University.  To download a copy click here: The Bible in the Digital Space (1196)

Note:  Can you let me know if you can’t download this!  Thanks.

Video Stream Address

The Christianity in the Digital Space Symposium is about to start.. looking forward to it!  I am presenting my paper,’ The Bible in the Digital Space’ at 9am, Tuesday the 14th (UK time).  To watch it live online head to:  http://www.ustream.tv/channel/codec-vidiblog   to find out what time this is where you live click here.

Christianity in the Digital Space

A heads up:  this Monday (UK time) the Christianity in the Digital Space Symposium starts at St. John’s, Durham, UK.  On Tuesday (the 14th) I am presenting my paper, The Bible in the Digital Space at 9am.  I believe it will be streamed on the net (both audio and video)  click here to see what time that is where you are.

At the end of my presentation I intend to make my paper available on brownblog for download.

Info about the streaming + notes and commentary will be on the Symposium blog over at  http://digitalsymp.blogspot.com/  They have also set up a twitter feed : @digitalsymp and the Twitter hashtags are:   #digsymp or #digitalsymp

For info on the Christianity in the Digital Space Symposium click here.  Other speakers include Bishop NT Wright, one of the world’s leading theologians, who has published over 40 books, and Andrew Graystone who is Director of the Churches’ Media Council. It is going to be an excellent event.

So wherever you are, you can in some way participate as questions and comments via the blog and Twitter will be communicated to the Symposium.

Looking forward to it!!