What will the make up the next big Christian site? This is the question I've been pondering lately. For social networking we have mychurch.org, for bible reading web 2.0 style we have ebible.com, and for free stuff we have sites like crazychurch.org. What's next?
Each of these is a site that is a mirror of something from the past and the real world. The same goes for podcasting which is very similar to talk radio. It just has a different delivery method. I think we can look at the world around us and what works to see what might be next. The real question is, what is working? In the last year a couple of the big named modern practices of the church were said to not really be working buy their founders and biggest champions. So, for my predictions I'm going to go back to some classical ideas from the bible. Here are my predictions:
Social Network
Social networking is hot these days but that's not reason I think it should be part of this site. God made people to be social. When we look at the early church and Jesus teaching about how we should be as people there is an element of being in a social group. This even went for Jesus who was surround by many disciples and a group of apostles. It was a community. I think where we go should be about community.
Expert Teaching
In most of the world we aren't equipped to really see the whole picture the bible is teaching us because most of us can't read the original language, don't have an eastern thought process, and don't understand the culture. Professor James Voelz explains it by comparing it to watching a football game on TV in black and white vs. being at the game. In both cases the score is the same, the same events happened, and the outcome is the same. But, what you see is very different. On this TV you see a small picture without color. You see the details someone shows you like the camera showing you the player it zooms in on. If you were at the game you could see the routes all the players are running, you could see the defensive schemes, and all the aspects of the game.
I think the next big site needs to have some expert teaching so we can better understand what the teaching really says. So we can move on from black and white to color.
Social Action
Jesus healed people all over the place. John said that all the books in all the world could not contain all the miracles Jesus did. Jesus had compassion on people. His apostles had compassion on people. I think the next big Christian site should help people help others. It should help organize and equip people to show compassion to others.
I'd love to see some of all of these come to life in 2008. These are my big 3 predictions for the next big thing. What are yours? Computer monitors with built in water guns for virtual baptisms? Or, something even bigger?
Expert teaching....very much so
I totally agree with the expert teaching. Christians need to know what the Word "really" says for themselves. There is so much there behind the scenes. A lot of us just read through it passing by some amazing and powerful text. We tend to rely too much on simply what were told by pastors.
We are told to test what we are taught and search the scriptures ourselves to see if what we are being told is inline with God's Word.
There is simply a lot of "What I believe.." going on in Church today. Usually that boils down to it's what "MY" Church doctrine believes, not necessarily what Gods Word states. It really doesn't matter if what I believe isn't what Gods Word states right?
A site with the tools for us to better know how to understand the Bible and know for ourselves what it says would be a great asset for believers.
storytelling
Hi Matt,
I'm a big fan of stories being the "thing" that impacts culture most. I think expert teaching in the form of 'lecture' is good but I would love to see christians using the web as a way of showcasing stories much like independent films. I do understand that there is a creative 'learning curve' in producing 'film like stories' particularly for the average person, but youtube is taking us closer.
In any case, the first step would be Christians showcasing more video (in the form of blogs), and then eventually evolving to storytelling. That's on my wish list for the next big thing.
paul