Interview with Shane Hipps
In January of 2009, I interviewed Shane Hipps about his book The Hidden Power of Electronic Culture. I did this as a way to gain insight into the book for the students in my Internet Ministry course at Biola University. I have also shown this video as part of my “God in the Tubes” workshops that I held in Indiana in March 2009. I have been receiving quite a bit of positive feedback about this video (a recorded Skype phone call, actually) and so I recently asked Shane if he would have a problem with me making it available for others to see. He has given his permission, so I am making it available, at least temporarily, on my genesys11 web site. › Continue reading
Researcher at UC Irvine to study WoW
I wasn’t going to post again until after the new year, but saw an article in yesterday’s paper (yes, I still read the newspaper, get over it) that questioned the validity of NSF funding going towards researching online gaming. Below is a link to a story from a few months ago about the actual research project which sheds some light on what they are doing. While I don’t want to argue the merits of NSF funding going towards this, I do truly believe that we can learn a lot about Internet ministry by studying how people interact online through games such as World of Warcraft and the “not really a game” Second Life. See my write-ups here and here about this and read the news story below.
UCI tackles ‘World of Warcraft’ mystery
And Happy New Year!
Book: “Church Next”
Over the past several months, I have been reviewing books for my course on Internet ministry, trying to narrow down my choices and select books that will be most appropriate for the class. My goal for these books is that they would provide a range of views on Internet ministry, with an appropriate mix of theology, philosophy, strategy, and technology. I am NOT looking for books on how to create a web site or how to blog, etc., because these are secondary to first really understanding the concepts of online ministry. I also want books that are readable by the mix of students I will have and that will foster good discussions.
I have finally settled on three primary books for my course (though I still have a couple I am thinking about adding). Over the next few weeks, I will share my selections here on this blog. The first book I have selected is Dr. Aubrey Malphurs’ Church Next. Written with his son, Michael, I found this book to give a good overview of the current state of the Church and makes a great case for why the move to the Internet is the right one. For those who do not know who Aubrey Malphurs is, he is Senior Professor of Pastoral Ministries at Dallas Theological Seminary. He is also the head of the Malphurs Group.
Pew Internet Project: a great resource
As I am working on planning my course in Internet ministry, I am spending quite a bit of time reviewing possible books and other supporting materials. One invaluable resource that I use quite a bit for my own research that I will be using extensively in the course is the work of the Pew Internet and American Life project. As I stated in my last post, it is extremely important for us to understand the users of our Internet ministry resources. If you are interested in understanding how the Internet is being used by Americans (sorry, this resource is US-specific), then you will find the reports issued by this organization extremely useful. Below is a link to their home page, along with links to a few of the most recent reports that relate to Internet ministry. If you find these interesting, I highly recommend subscribing to their RSS feed so you will know when new reports are released. Unfortunately, the last report they did on the use of the Internet for faith-related purposes is now getting quite old (2004) – I hope they will be releasing an update soon!
Full research write-up posted
For those of you who have been asking me for documentation related to my presentation at the Internet Ministry Conference, I have now posted a six-page report on my web site that details my findings. In conjunction with this, I also wrote a short summary of these findings for the Church Marketing Sucks blog.
Genesys11 site back up and running
My migration from my old hosting service to Vine Hosting is complete. Both my blog and my companion site to this blog, genesys11.com, are back up and running on Vine servers. You can find much more detail about my research and who I am by checking out genesys11.com.
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Welcome to Lessons From Babel
This blog is where I share the latest thoughts on my research in the world of Internet ministry. Feel free to join the conversation by leaving a comment. For more information on what I am doing in 2010, see my first post of the year. 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
