You are looking at an image of the logo on the first edition of Inspiren; a monthly newsletter designed by the originators of the Christian Web Conference (formerly GodblogCon).

As the web becomes a bigger part of our lives each day, faith leaders are challenged to engage people where they live.  For example, only a few years ago, the notion of belonging to an online church was unheard of.  Today, it’s often a central topic of discussion & debate.

Now with individuals spending greater amounts of time online each day and frequent personal interactions often taking place via online communication, some propose online church as the next logical step to effective gospel proclamation.

Inspiren exists to thoughtfully engage this and other topics that deal with the relationship of New Media and the Christian faith.

Each monthly installment will take the main purpose of the Christian Web Conference; idea collaboration with the intent of advancing New Media and its users for the Kingdom of God; and extend it formally beyond the weekend of September 11-12.

This first edition includes the article “Some Rough Notes on Technology, Exclusivity, and Online Church” by Matthew L. Anderson.  And the photo image above should link to my dear friend, Rhett Smith, and his article in the second installment “Christian Web Conference“.

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.

Finally have time to blog my great experience from the Dynamic Church Conference in Dallas recently.  I loved meeting all the Fellowship Technologies staff and was impressed by their mission and strategy to serve churches.  A couple of highlights include hearing the breakout sessions by Terry Storch, Digerati Pastor at LifeChurch.tv and Joe Suh, founder of MyChurch.org. 

Terry spoke on the future of LifeChurch's bleeding edge ministry to the next generation amongst other things which I could hardly wrap my head around. He breezed through pioneer works like internet campuses, metaverse church, YouVersion and OnePrayer and then got into his real passion "what if…"  Absolute inspiration to those of us who envision tomorrow's Church.

And Joe Suh gave an excellent overview of all things social media related.  It was particularly helpful to see the evolution of social media sites and view how rapidly they are establishing new expressions of community.

What a privilege it was for me to speak alongside these experts.  You can get some of our material as PDF downloads at the Dynamic Church Conference site.

And lastly, we got to hear a closing session by Randy Draper whose resources can be found at HeartSpring Media.  Randy is a member of Ed Young's Fellowship Church and is both an excellent story-teller and a passionate communicator.  

Following my time with Fellowship, I got to visit my friends at Bent Tree Bible Fellowship.  But that's another post.