Today is a “Mass Blogging Day” for those of us who are meeting in Los Angeles at Biola University on September 11 – 12 for the Christian Web Conference. If you have any interest in the dialog about online faith communities (can digital be incarnational?), this will be the place to have your questions explored.

One of the highlights of the conference is a debate on the virtual church taking place between Andrew Jones (Tall Skinny Kiwi) and Matthew Anderson of  Mere Orthodoxy.

Since I’m never one for debate, thank you Andrew for representing the affirmative argument.

But The Great Debate is only the beginning….  check out this who’s who of a speaker list and their topics!  It’s gonna be incredible:

• Tim Challies: Tweeting the Truth with Love
• John Mark Reynolds: Christian Ideas in a Hostile Environment
• Jon Acuff: Three Ways Satire is Changing We Talk About Faith Online
• Charles Lee: New Media and the Development of Compassionate Justice
• Joe Carter: Medium-Sizing the Message
• Abraham Piper: Serving Your Audience by Getting Out of Your Own Ideas
• Mel McGowan’s walking tour: Walking in Walt’s Footsteps
• Drew Goodmanson: Internet Strategy: What does the gospel have to do with Social Media?
• Anne Jackson: Changing the World One Blog at a Time
• Marcus Goodyear: New Ways to Listen?
• Rhett Smith: Twitter: Collaborate, Connect, and Resource via Your Story
• Paul Watson: What will it take to plant the Gospel in every population segment represented online?
• Dr. Dave Bourgeois: Developing a Philosophy for New Media Ministry
• John Carley: Seven Successful Strategies for Web 3.0
• Yours Truly: Envisioning the Future of Faith Online

And here’s a partial sponsor list:

• Torrey Honors Institute
• High Calling
• Desiring God
• VOXBIBLIA
• Monk Development
• Internet Evangelism Day

The blogosphere will be missing a couple of faithful bloggers over the next season.  Heather Whittaker (aka Whittakerwoman) and Crystal Renaud (aka PinkHairedGirl) both long-term bloggers are on blogging sabbaticals of indefinite length.

Heather, one of the sweetest gals ever and wife of well-known North Point – Buckhead Campus worship leader Carlos Whittaker, is going to focus on her family and take a break from the fishbowl she lives in.  Her public blog will likely resume in the fall following a summer break.  (If you’re a personal friend of Heather’s you can email her and she’ll give you access to a “private” site she’ll use for keeping those of us updated who will miss her public blog.)

Crystal Renaud, a Kansas City based gal who’s on staff at Westside Family Church, is taking a refreshment break and will devote any writing she does to the book she is working on.  I first learned of Crystal and her unique ministry through Anne Jackson and look forward to the many ways God will use her in the future.  Her departure from the blogosphere might seem abrupt but actually she’s been contemplating for awhile….

If you follow either of these ladies blogs, would you consider praying for them while they use their time off for rest, motivation and fresh inspiration.

I, too, am planning a blogging sabbatical and will take at least a month off during the summer for our relocation from SoCal to NorCal – more on that later.

Of course, none of us will stop tweeting (women have daily word quotas to meet ya know) so it’s easy enough to follow our lifestreams via microblogging on Twitter:

• http://twitter.com/whittakerwoman
• http://twitter.com/pinkhairedgirl
• http://twitter.com/cynthiaware

Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to mourn the passing of Anne Jackson’s FB page.  After a season of contemplation, Anne, known to the blogsphere as FlowerDust.net, has pulled the plug on her facebook page – well actually deleted her account completely.  You can read her entry here.

Fortunately for Anne’s community of followers, it doesn’t really matter.  She’s present in so many ways online that she will still be connected and reachable.  You can find her on twitter (@flowerdust) and at her blogsite FlowerDust.net.

In fact, Anne, whose blog has 2 key features – a large readership and an engaged, connected community – will still be considered a leader in online community ministry.  As you may know, she’s an experienced wired fundraiser who’s been known to ask for support and raise $1800 in 18 hours, $800 in 15 minutes for Compassion International’s Global Food Crisis, etc.  Oh, no wait, …that’s her online community.  Anne just acts as a conduit for the generosity of her readers.

I was just in Nashville a couple of days ago and got to visit Anne’s church, CrossPointe.   She mentioned nothing to me of her impending demise!  I got to spend quite a bit of time with Anne’s Pastor, Pete Wilson who is equally involved in mobilizing his online community.   Ironically, he told me how amazingly useful his Facebook profile has been for helping him accomplish some of his goals.  More on that later as it will be part of a larger article to be published over the summer…..

Goodbye Anne Jackson’s FB page, may you Rest In Peace.

LifeChurch.tv has done it again.  They have pioneered a new iteration of convergence by getting the Facebook team to allow LifeChurch.tv to integrate status updates into their online church Easter experiences and into Facebook itself.   You heard me right.   This is what happens when the Digerati Team eats their vegetables.

Here’s a detailed email I received from Pastor Craig Groeschel:

Easter is coming this weekend and I couldn’t be more excited about what God is going to do at each of our campuses. Let me share a few things I’d love to get your help with this Easter:

This weekend kicks off our new series, Can You See Him? This is a great series to bring along people you know! In the few minutes it takes to invite a friend, you could play a role in changing someone’s eternity.

Church Online (previously known as the Internet Campus) is exploding and we’ve got a really cool feature lined up for the Easter experiences.  Facebook has allowed us to integrate Facebook status updates into our online church Easter experiences and into Facebook itself. It’s an amazing opportunity to share the Easter message with a huge audience. You can get the full details here, but the best way to understand it would be to come to one of the 14 Church Online Easter experiences starting this Saturday night. And bring your friends on Facebook with you!

We’re adding experiences at many of our campuses and preparing for lots of new visitors everywhere. It would be great if you could serve for an extra experience, attend one of the less crowded experiences, and make an extra effort to give a warm welcome to the people you meet.

Thanks for being a part of what God is doing at LifeChurch.tv. It’s a privilege to partner with you!

Craig

Thank you Tony Steward for tipping me off early in the week about this opportunity.  And here is the LifeChurch.tv Easter link.

This is a good video clip summarizing The Idea Camp and what it was designed to achieve.

The entire event (free, of course)is  still openly challenging all of us who are used to paying for conferences to see speakers we can listen to rather than those we can collaborate with.

And yet, Generation “We” seems to clearly resonate with a new set of values.  Open source cross-pollenation, dynamic conversational collaboration, elevating innovation, celebrating creativity, participating, dreaming, designing, doing.

A taste of things to come.

Good thing we’re all wearing name tags!  The place is packed with people whose teachings we watch on tv, or whose books we buy, whose blogs we read and those we know virtually, etc.  It’s confusing to keep everyone straight.

It’s pretty well known that conferences, in general, are becoming increasingly unpopular.  The reasons are numerous.  But the one thing that conferences do offer is the real world contact that invigorates us with face to face conversations.

In addition to the 100+ presenters, here are some the bloggers and/or twitterers who are with us today and tomorrow at Innovation3.

Tony Morgan tonymorganlive.com
Greg Atkinson gregatkinson.com
Rhett Smith rhettsmith.com
Camron Ware visualworshipper.com
Jaime Jackson jamiejacksonxp.com
Charles Lee charlestlee.com
John Atkinson http://johnatkinson.typepad.com
Jason Curlee http://jaycurlee.blogspot.com/
Kent Shaffer churchrelevance.com
Scott Williams www.bigisthenewsmall.com/
Mary Beth Stockdale http://marybethstockdale.wordpress.com/
Bobby Greunewald swerve.lifechurch.tv
Dave Gibbons davegibbons.tv
Dave Ferguson daveferguson.typepad.com/
Mark Driscoll theresurgence.com
Ed Stetzer edstetzer.com
Todd Rhoades toddrhoades.com
Dave Travis davetravisnow.com
Sherry Surratt sherrysurratt.com
Geoff Surratt geoffsurratt.com
Eric Swanson ericjswanson.com
Marc Payan http://marcpayan.com/

Just a reminder, if you are looking for topical information – in this screen shot – Church (see also: Christianity and Religion) related articles – Guy Kawasaki’s Alltop.com still performs beautifully.  No matter what subject you’re looking for information on, chances are, there’s an Alltop page to serve you.

Kent Shaffer, known around our house as the human encyclopedia of all things “church statistics” related, and known to the blogosphere as Church Relevance, has compiled a substantial research list of the Top 60 Church Blogs.

Likely you can guess what my favorite thing about this list is.   And no, it’s not the fact that I appear on it.

It’s that I love seeing the uniqueness of the body represented in the blogosphere.  This list displays diversities of giftings… Pyromaniacs side by side with The Ooze, The Resurgence along with three female bloggers (Anne Jackson, Kem Meyer & myself), Ragamuffin Soul & Desiring God all on one list, each of us standing side by side serving God.  The list reminds me how particularly individual the gifts, assignments and callings of of God are in each of us.

Thank you, Kent, for serving the global body of Christ by painstakingly compiling the data and producing the work that saves so many of us research time.

Who would you add to this list, especially if it were Top 100?

“Communication technologies change, but the fundamentals of good, true, and beautiful communication are age-old.  How can we communicate better with one another—along with or sometimes in spite of new technologies?”  These are the thoughts of this week’s media scholar and Blog of the Weekend, Dr. Quentin J. Schultze.

Dr. Schultze (the “e” is silent) is a professor, writer, and speaker who earned a Ph.D. in communication from the Institute of Communications Research at the University of Illinois.  He is the Chair and Professor of Communication Arts and Sciences at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan.  I was fortunate enough to participate in a devotional he presented at the now defunct Internet Ministry Conference several months ago.

Dr. Schultze’s scholarly publications have appeared in several dozen journals.  He has also written over a hundred articles for general-interest periodicals.  He has been quoted in most of the major media, including The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, U.S. News & World Report, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, Fortune, the Chicago Tribune, USA Today, and many other publications. He has been interviewed by CNN, CBS Radio, NBC TV, National Public Radio, and dozens of additional radio and television stations.

Professor Schultze received the Presidential Award for Exemplary Teaching at Calvin College in 2000.  He has consulted for a wide range of non-profit and for-profit organizations on communication-related issues and opportunities.  And he mentors communication scholars and practitioners across North America.

His  book Habits of the High-Tech Heart addresses some of the issues surrounding the new media and Christianity. I highly recommend the conscientious & prudent mindset of Dr. Schultze.  He says, “much of my research has focused on the impact of communication technologies on groups, corporations, families, schools, and religious institutions.  I am particularly interested in how new communication technologies such as email, blogs, twittering, and podcasting are affecting society and individuals.  Are they making us more responsible and compassionate?  More effective at work?  Do they improve our communication?  Are we more patient and empathetic because of new technologies?  Or are we more prone to gossip and snap judgments about others?  How can we use the new technologies wisely and well?”

What is Blog Action Day?

Today, October 15, 2008, has been designated as the day set aside for thousands of bloggers with millions of readers (last time I checked over 10 million feed readers) to unite for the purpose of discussing a single issue – poverty.

The hope is that global discussion across the blogosphere will raise awareness, initiate action & shake the web.  If you need web resource links to educate yourself, they can be found here: Poverty Action Site Resources. You can also Learn More | Register.