Church 2.0
Posted on September 23, 2006
The Red Herring has an interesting article about churches and religious groups that are starting to embracing Web 2.0. Most churches are embracing Web 2.0 very slowly according to the article.
One has Psalms, the other has podcasts. One creates meaning out of Latin, an ancient language; the other finds new meanings through derivatives of common words, like "digg," "friendster," or "flickr." One community meets every Sunday, the other meets with every click of a new web browser window.The article discusses tools like Cross Connector, MyChurchEvents, eBible and People2Pray. The article also mentions social networks like Oaktreeidea.com, MyChurch, MuslimSpace and Koolanoo.Alone, the power of the church is as undeniable as the power of the web 2.0 upswing. While the former has been around for centuries, permeating every inch of the globe, the latter has needed but a few years to make its mark on the Internet landscape. And each, in some ways, is following the same business model: the church wants followers every bit as much as MySpace does.
But in the cross-section between the two juggernauts lies a barren desert.
"The church is probably handicapped in the sense that the least likely place you'll find twenty-somethings is in a church," said Kevin Hendricks, creator of the 30,000 visitor-strong blog Church Marketing Sucks. "The few of us who are there are stepping up and trying to pull the church kicking and screaming into the 21st century, and it happens in small ways."
If this is all there is in religious 2.0 then the Church Marketing Sucks blog is aptly named. We do know that they missed Xianz and Christianster, two social networks for Christians. There is also a blog going by the name Church 2.0 and a documentary film (in progress) called Church 2.0.