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

There are growing numbers of people taking a scholarly approach to studying ministry & technology.  I have a larger and larger list of scholars appearing on my reader these days.

So I’ve decided that over the next few weeks, you’re gonna meet some of my brainest friends and check out what they’re studying, evaluating, testing, hypothesizing, and just, well, all that kind of stuff.

Kicking off this “blog of the weekend” series, let me introduce you to Dr. Dave, as he’s called around here, aka Dr. David Bourgeois, a prof. at Biola University who blogs at Lessons from Babel.  I’ve observed Dave’s work for a long time, had the privilege of hearing him speak and even shared a meal with him.  He is an absolute pioneer when it comes to studying online ministry data.

His newest course involving Internet ministry launches next semester and in preparation, Dave recently contacted me asking if I had access to any online ministries who are pioneering corporate prayer on the internet.  Specifically, he’s looking for people praying together online, via text or voice.  In exchange for the info, the good Dr. is allowing me to audit (I mean crash) his course, so I responded.

Do I?   How about this example from the LifeShare online challenge hosted by LifeChurch.tv where I got to pray with people from all over the world.  Unfortunately, although you can get the live mogulus stream you won’t get to see the saved chat with visitors from across the globe.

You’ll be hearing more about Dr. Dave’s upcoming class here soon.  In the meantime, he’s also asking for other examples so if you’ve got links, post ‘em here.  He’s looking for options where there are interactive prayers going on (i.e. not like great services like Kindle where you can post a prayer.)

Who do you know who’s pioneering the work of online interactive prayer?    And while you’re thinking, add a feed from Lessons from Babel.

Wish I had time to post all that is happening here at the Internet Ministry Conference.  I’m hoping to get some of my notes uploaded in the next few days.

I don’t know how you view conferences but sometimes I question the affordability of such events and wonder about long term gains for any one ministry.  But this gathering has some unique elements that give it some distinctives.  Several things that seem ouside the norm include:

• attendance by women (of course there could always be more)
• a measure of diversity (scholars, geeks, ministers, professionals)
• a representation of Non-American ministries (Canada, France, England, Netherlands, etc.)
• good equipment / access / accomodations / atmosphere

There are a lot of really smart people here.  And I mean those who are reflecting deeply and profoundly on why we are using the internet, what for, directed at who and with what success.  There is a broad sweep of people who would argue that that online communication and real world communication are co-mingling in such a way that there are few distinctions between them.  There are equally scholarly people saying these communication experiences are totally different due to the fact that any form of communication with a technological element included differs dramatically from a real world face to face communication.  There’s also an apparent (and not surprising) distinction between generational perceptions on this topic. (Gotta remember my grad thesis was built around diffusion of innovation theory so I love that stuff!)

I enjoyed dinner last night with good conversation between a table of tweeters plus Peter Green of Agathon Group and Dr. Dave Bourgeois.

You can check out the Internet Ministry Conference blog for more.

The annual Internet Ministry Conference is well underway.  Calvin College is hosting this year’s event and our sessions are designed to give us a chance to absorb all there is to learn about ministry online.   The speakers are hand-picked experts in the field of internet ministry and literally I wish I could hear them all.

Last night our keynote was Gabe Lyons of the Fermi Project.  Taking a prudent inventory of all the technology we are using and combining it with excerpts from the book unChristian, the book Lyons co-authored with David Kinnaman, made for an evening of heady reflection and thoughtful evaluation.  As a parting gift he gave everyone the book The Hidden Power of Electronic Culture (I interviewed it’s author, Shane Hipps, last year here).

Today Dr. Quentin Schultze (who I recommend here often) will present the morning devotional.  Following devotions we’ll head into 3 days of internet-related ministry tools, skills and best practices.

Some sessions include:

David Russell of NCC – Crafting Usable Websites

Dr. Dave Bourgeois of Biola University – Best Practices in Internet Ministry

Kent Shaffer of Church Relevance – Internet Ministry Marketing and Tailored Internet Ministry

Brad Abare of Church Marketing Sucks & the Center for Church Communication along with Michael Buckingham & Holy Cow Creative & also CCC will help us define our Personality and, shall we say, frustrate, educate and motivate us towards better online practices.

I’ll speak on Thursday about Your Spiritual Gift Mix Online (how to successfully be yourself online!) so make sure and let me know if you’ll be here and we can connect.  If you’re anywhere near Grand Rapids swing by.

If you use Twitter, don’t use #IMC08 (that’s a marketing conference),  instead use #IMC2008 to follow status updates.