The Margaret Feinberg interview will continue next week.  Today I pause for Internet Evangelism Day (original brainchild of Dr. Quentin Schultze) and tomorrow for One Day Blog Silence.

Internet Evangelism Day 

Use your Web …

… over 1 billion people use the Web
  … the Internet is changing the world
… God is using the Web to transform lives
        …“We’d love to use the Web for outreach; teach us”

Internet Evangelism Day is here to tell you about …

• what God is doing on the Web
• outreach strategies that work online
• how you, your church or Christian group can use the Web for outreach – and how to make effective church websites reach into the community
• planning an Internet Evangelism focus day for your church, Bible college or Christian group

Put a date on your annual calendar.

In other words, this site works at two levels. It demonstrates that the coming years are the ‘day’ of digital outreach. And it provides free downloads to enable you to create your own web evangelism awareness slot for your church or Christian group, on April 29, or any day you choose.

How we can help you: learn more.

Does your heart dance at the very thought of God?  Does your faith create a glowing light so others can find their way?  When you think of the Lord's attributes do you list bighearted, generous, kind, talkative & beautiful?  Maybe not. 

If life has somehow obscured your view of God, if your faith feels tinged with smog and you crave some of his pure breath, then Margaret Feinberg's newest book may be a good read for you.

    This is Margaret. Her speaking schedule is available on her website.

Her about-to-be-released book, the organic God is "an intimate and inspiring portrayal of what it looks like to hunger after God, to seek him, to hear his voice, and at the end of the day, to still sit in humble wonder of who he is and what he could possibly do next."

It’s a recommendation for stripping away all the things that stand in the way of our relationship with God – removing the additives, the artificial sweeteners, the processed formulas.

Margaret, who will travel most of this year speaking, graciously offered to answer some questions to reflect her heart in writing the organic God:

Can we really get our relationship with the Lord to be stripped of it's pollutants, additives and other distractions?    We will always face pollutants, additives and distractions, they are a part of our fallen world. But just as we make wise choices in the supermarket about what foods will ultimately be consumed in our bodies, we can make wise choices about what we consume spiritually and what will eventually feed our spirit.

It's easy to picture the spiritual fallen world because the physical world reflects it so well.  Yes, there are beautiful things here on the planet, things God created.  But often they are marred by the realities of the brokenness of life and the world. 

If we were to get specific about pollutants, additives & distractions, could you identify some?  The list is so long. Pollutants, additives, and distractions include listening to what everyone else says about God instead of discovering him for yourself, living your life based off other people’s prayers instead of praying your own, and filling your life with so much busyness that either stillness or silence become uncomfortable.

In describing the busyness of life, it seems we have a tendency to always be filling ourselves up, either with what is profitable or with what is unprofitable.  When you mention stillness and silence it reminds me of how uncomfortable it can feel to walk into a noisy space or an over-cluttered room.  It sort of screams at you - too much, too much.  

So what shall be our defense against the noise and against the cluttering up of our faith in the future?  Scripture is so crucial to our relationship with God. It’s our filter, our purifier, our healthy foundation.  Without the Bible, we are left to our own devices, which have a natural bent toward self-destruction (also known as sin). The Bible purifies us, cleanses us and allows us to grow vibrantly.

More of Margaret and the organic God in Part 3.

There's a lot of kindness in the blogosphere.   Whether it's another leader offering spiritual counsel, a geek offering technical support, a ministry sharing it's wealth or just a fellow blogger who takes the time to email and strike up a virtual relationship, cyberspace is increasingly resourcing our lives.  

Conversely, like too much of anything, online (and other) technologies can toxify our daily lives, potentially polluting, complicating and distorting our perspectives.  And technology is only one component of our postmodern existence. 

Sometimes our faith in God absorbs these external, polluting elements.  Additionally, internal spiritual toxins and impurities have the ability to cloud our hope, our joy and our pure devotion.  Even with the daily renewing of our mind, our view of God's will and work in our lives is subject to the pollution of spiritual dullness resulting in the loss of our inspiration, passion and purpose.

How can we simplify our faith, strip it down, detoxify and purify it?  How do we recalibrate our signal so there are no distortions in the frequency when we hear God.  How do we clear our vision so we see Jesus clearly?  How can we hunger purely for Him?

Margaret Feinberg is a popular conference speaker and author. She is noted for having a significant leadership voice to the next generation of Christians.  She has authored more than a dozen books including the soon to be released the organic God. 

Margaret graciously allowed me to interview her and offered some insights reflecting her work in the organic God.  The questions and her responses will appear at The Digital Sanctuary over the next few days.  In the meantime hunger for this…..

Natural, Pure, Essential.

the organic God

Later in the week, I'll be recommending an inspiring new book by Margaret Feinberg but before I do, I think it's only fair to confess what I've been reading lately.  I mean, and my Bible too, of course.

Typically, we celebrate the mighty works of God in our lives, proclaiming all His goodness, mercy, faithfulness and unfailing love for us.  At other times we are confronted with the undeniable fact that the reason Jesus had to enter the world was because it was broken.   It is a place where depravity can overtake a human heart and there are real situations where justice seems unattainable. 

In silence may we salute the lives lost at Virginia Tech and use our day to seek the Comforter, recommitting ourselves to being lights in the darkness.

                  _____________________________________________________

According to OneDayBlogSilence.com:

Silence can say more than a thousand words.

This day shall unite us all about this unbelievable painful & shocking event and show some respect and love to those who lost their loved ones.

On April 30th 2007, the Blogosphere will hold a One-Day Blog Silence in honor towards the victims of Virginia. 33 died at the US college massacre.

The Blogosphere is in deep mourning.

All you have to do is spread the word about it and post the graphic on your blog on 30th April 2007. No words and no comments. Just respect and empathy.

HT: Lorelle on WordPress

 

Sometimes it's worth stating the obvious.  LifeChurch.tv (Outreach Magazine's winner in the '07 innovation poll) is more than serious about using new media technologies to invade cyberspace with Christianity.  Whether they're freely giving away 'open source' style resources through their LifeChurch.tv/Open site or pioneering an online Internet campus, these over-the-top, tech-savvy pastors and their team continue to take online church from beta to gold. 

The multi-site ministry based out of Edmond, Oklahoma (and yes, I originally attended MetroChurch in the early 80's before it was LifeChurch) has conquered every obstacle they've encountered.  Undaunted by the uncharted nature of virtual worlds, their newest Web 2.0 accomplishment is a Second Life campus where you can join and teleport yourself into virtual reality church.

Terry Storch, co-author of The Blogging Church, blogged recently that a revamped website for LifeChurch may be released soon.  If you want to try to stay informed on their newest innovations, you can check out his blog or the Swerve blog co-authored by pastors Craig Groeschel or Bobby Gruenewald.

- Make that new site up today!  At least I got a peak of it checking my links out.

It's time for us WordPress fans to celebrate the "Inform, Influence & Inspire" folks at TypePad.  A handful of my favorite bloggers including Seth Godin, Tony Morgan and Kem Meyer (well, actually too many to list) are TypePad users.

Whether you're an aspiring pastor hoping to blog or an aspiring blogger hoping to pastor, I highly recommend TypePad as a blogging platform.  Although a WordPress geek converted me, I was never disappointed when I was using TypePad. 

Paid blogging services are an investment not an expense. 

Offering great design, posting and integration features plus reliability, TypePad is totally worth it.  For more information you can go to Everything TypePad. 

A U. S. national survey of teenagers released in January conducted by the Pew Internet & American Life Project reports that more than half (55%) of all of online American youths ages 12-17 use online social networking sites. (view Pdf) The report concludes that kids connecting online has rocketed from a niche activity into a phenomenon engaging tens of millions of internet users. 

The net generation (millennials, generation y) views online communities as normative.  "Today's youth are different from any generation before them. They are exposed to digital technology in virtually all facets of their day-to-day existence."  (The Net Generation)

Similarly, online support groups that are created around a shared need are increasingly popular across a widening set of demographic strata.  The commonality of sharing an interest, experience or need with a, sometimes large, handful of others is a compelling force online.  Whether it consists of a single blog, a blog ring, participation in a virtual world, or membership in an official social networking site, online communities are beginning to gain real world credibility.  The pre-internet counterparts might be a class, club or faith community.

Last year, my sister created amazing blog traffic quite by accident by publishing a diary of the journey she would take to adopt her daughter from China.  Originally, joining a Yahoo group seemed like a convenient way to share information and self-educate.  Putting up a blog was a spontaneous attempt at creating a photo journal archive of the trip for the group.  She had no desire to share her story beyond her circle of friends nor was she aware of any strategic measures to enhance her site (Google analytics, Technorati rankings, SEO, etc.) visits. 

But before the trip even began, "traffic" began to materialize.  These were the uncollected, other adopting parents searching online for support / information and looking for a place to congregate.  When a site was created that met their need, they came unsolicited and in good numbers.  With very little commitment and even less strategy, the blog received about 100,000 visits in it's first 12 months.  And the readers got a lot of cross-pollination by participating in a group with a common interest.

The traffic on her blog came from the readers' high need for information about an experience they are all sharing.  The most significant aspect, however, came not from them coming together at a single instance in time.   But, rather from them staying together.  They have remained a moderately cohesive unit and often inherit newcomers.  They participate in common experiences, have a shared history, have a well-developed set of known participants including nicknames for each other, celebrate together when one has a victory, provide support for each other when needed, exchange ideas, insights, and information, etc.  They are a network, by all accounts a community, a kind of technology tribe.

One of the many advantages of a corporate church experience is that individuals get to share aspects of their lives that reflect commonality and relevancy.  As the church embraces new ways of delivering the gospel to the next generation, it seems important that we understand who they are, a net-savvy cohort, a group who understands the world in terms of it digitization.  Thus, they relate significantly to hypertexting systems that bypass linear restraints and they respect the harnessing of collective intelligence and insight.  Rather than publishing, they believe in participating.  Rather than responding to lectures, they collaborate and comment. 

The impact of the diffusion of the new media both challenges the traditional status quo of institutional church and simultaneously offers opportunity for new reforms.  It is seemly quite possible that the church of the future may hold within it both a real world assembly and a collection of technological tribes accessible online.  The priesthood of every believer (I Peter 2:9) may find its newest expression on the internet in interactive congregations.  The value of new media technologies for tomorrow's church may be that they provide a forum for hypermedia-facilitated, participatory Christianity.

With Easter just around the corner, I thought it was a great time to recommend Faithvisuals, another excellent source of multi-media resources designed for churches.  I've been reading their newsletters for the last year and I am regularly impressed with the consistency of the quality of their products. They offers a wide range of multi-media visuals to add into your church services.  

Faithvisuals is easy to navigate and includes everything from a technical questions link to how to create a viral video; See how one church created a viral video phenomenon with a parody of Apple's Mac vs. PC commercials.   They offer stills, videos, loops, worship backgrounds and teaching clips (i.e. - Tony Evans and Elisabeth Elliot)

For more about the important shift to a visual culture and its effect on churches, see Andy Crouch's recent article, Visualcy, from Christianity Today.

FaithVisuals is created by the editors of Christianity Today International and Preaching Today.