My next project
After I was done speaking at the Internet Ministry Conference last week, several people came up to me and asked “what is your next research project?” Several people suggested different areas of research, including a couple who offered up their own ministries as research subjects.
So, what is next? Well, there are two answers to that. First, my next big project is planning and teaching my course in Internet Ministry here at Biola. This course is being advertised for students at the seminary (Talbot), the School of Intercultural Studies, and here in the School of Business. Here is the course description:
The Internet is the greatest communication technology ever developed by man. It is imperative that the Church learns how to use it to its fullest potential. This course will study the use of the Internet as a tool for ministry using a combination of lectures, case studies, and hands-on laboratory work. Special attention will be paid to the effectiveness and limits of using the Internet as a ministry tool.
The course could take many directions and my hope is that several more research ideas will come from the course. Additionally, I may develop a textbook for these kinds of courses as there does not seem to be any yet. As I develop and teach the course I plan on blogging about it – so stay tuned.
The second answer to “what is your next project?” is that I will probably continue to dissect the data from my Internet ministry survey and continue to break down the results. These will also be posted to my blog. If you have any ideas on what sorts of data analysis you would like to see, please let me know by commenting on this post or sending me an email!
1 Comment to My next project
I’d love to see some breakdown of the number to show specifically what makes church sites successful. Few churches are pushing this technology for all it is worth, and there is so much potential there. I would also be interested in seeing how that research would break down based on size of church, denom or non-denom, percentage of church budget applied to Internet Ministries/site and or total amount spent on site. More data that might be useful would be what church staff members associated with success of the Web, such as, does having the pastor or administrator, elders, other staff people, etc. directly involved change success rate? What range of success measures are used by churches to determine their site success? What percentage of churches are making an impact (or even trying to)beyond their local communities (those who could potentially attend in person)?
Just some ideas…
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Welcome to the Lessons From Babel blog
This blog is where I share the latest thoughts on the world of technology and faith. Feel free to join the conversation by leaving a comment. To find out more about me, my company, and this web site, or to see what resources are available on this site, click on the images right below this.
- Dave Bourgeois
November 1, 2008