If this is true, then, maybe we shouldn’t be spending so much of our time becoming experts in a new technology until this evolution has happened.  In his paper (and subsequent book) “IT Doesn’t Matter“, Nicholas Carr makes the case that organizations should not be “first movers”, but should instead let others take the chances and then, once the best practices for using a specific software package are discovered, jump in and begin using it. This minimizes risk and allows the organization to focus on their business instead of the latest technology. Many would argue that ministries should follow the same pattern: focus on your ministry and don’t jump in to a new technology until it has stabilized and reached the mainstream. In many ways this makes sense: for those ministries who put a lot of effort into Friendster and now are wishing that they had waited and put this effort into Facebook instead, this sounds like a great idea.  And maybe it is for some ministries.

But ministries aren’t corporations trying to improve the bottom line. We don’t want to be risk-averse: in most cases running a ministry is a risky enterprise.  We need to go where people are, and, if possible, we need to go where they are going to be!  By moving to social media tools early, we learn how to use them, we can innovate new solutions by experimenting and then, when the tool becomes popular we are already there. And if, like Friendster, the tool only has a short popularity before something takes it place, we can learn from our experience there and use that experience to quickly move into the new environment.

So if you feel that learning how to use Twitter for your ministry is something you should take a “wait and see” attitude on, you risk not learning how to utilize a “micro-blogging” platform for your ministry. And even if Twitter is dead a year from now, the experience of learning how to use it will better prepare you for whatever comes next.  If you are wondering if you should get your ministry into Second Life, again I answer that you should at least begin working with it enough to understand its implications.

But, you say, you don’t have enough time or people to do all of this! Well, no ministry can do everything, but you have to have a strategy in place that drives your decisions.  This strategy should help you understand who you are, who you are trying to reach, and what methods will be used to do this. I will write on strategy in an upcoming post – right after I give my Internet ministry strategy workshop in Indiana later this week!

UCI tackles ‘World of Warcraft’ mystery

And Happy New Year!

The author, Mark Stephen Meadows, defines an avatar as “an interactive, social representation of a user”.  And here is where it gets interesting: while we may think of an avatar as something that only exists in a virtual world such as WoW or Second Life, he also points out that anytime we create an interactive, social representation of ourselves we are, in effect, creating an avatar. So that Facebook account you keep where you present the most interesting side of yourself to your “friends”: avatar. That blog you write where you put all of those highly intelligent posts: avatar.  Even that car you drive that tells everyone something about you: avatar.  The way I see it, all of us have multiple avatars, whether we use them in interactive online games or not.

So what does this have to do with Internet ministry?  It’s all about relationships. From the book:

When someone slips into an avatar, they slip into the ability to be competent, to be who they want, and to spend time with a community that they choose. Being able to do all three things at once is a rare experience for many people – perhaps because of appearance, gender, race, sexuality, age, or simply the fact that they want more friends of different sorts…

Second Life Avatar

Each avatar we encounter online, whether it be the more two-dimensional kind in Facebook or three-dimensional in WoW or Second Life, represent a real live human being with a soul. A person that is just as important to the Creator as we are.  This person has created their avatar as a way to connect with others in a new way. They are looking to connect!  And how do you connect with an avatar? While not addressed directly in his book, it seems that the author would caution against trying to get past the avatar to the person – he counsels that the important thing is the avatar and that the first step in the relationship is the avatar. Connecting with the “driver” behind the avatar may or may not happen.

This is a beautiful book that is both engaging and disturbing.  It includes some mature content describing activities that go on in some of these virtual worlds – if discussions of the acting out of alternative lifestyles bother you, you may not want to read it. If you are interested in the study of how to use virtual worlds and online gaming as a method for reaching others, then it is a book that will further your understanding.

You can buy this book via our new genesys11 bookstore at Amazon.com. Support our research and buy books through our bookstore!

“The Anglican Cathedral on Epiphany Island was built to support the Anglican Group in Second Life, which was founded in November 2006 by Bill Sowers, who is a member of St David’s Episcopal Church in the Diocese of Kansas.“

The services are led by Mark Brown, who is licensed as Deacons Assistant by the Bishop of Wellington in New Zealand. You can see a video of their first service here. Mark also has written a good article on ministry using web 2.0 tools that complements much of what has been written in this blog.

The title “Should churches be in Second Life?” was prompted by the latest entry in Mark Brown’s blog. It seems that the web site Anglicans Online has taken issue with doing church in Second Life, comparing it to the phenomenon of televangelists in the US. They raise issues with how “real” Second Life experiences can be (also raised by me in response to LifeChurch’s SL presence). The overall tone of the article is that Second Life is at the very least not important and at the very most to be avoided altogether.

I disagree. As a church, we need to go where the people are – and there are people in Second Life. I demonstrated SL to my MIS class last week and someone asked me what I thought it would look like in several years. I said that I didn’t know whether SL would even be around in a few years, comparing it to the experience of old BBS services that were the precursor to today’s social networks. But something will be around in a few years, and the more we understand about how to be effective in Second Life now, the better we can minister in that new environment. Mark Brown, as you might expect, also disagrees; read his well thought response here.

Other Christian ministries have also begun using Second Life. Besides previously blogged about LifeChurch, the Church Advertising Network has created an online town modeled after “Bible Times”, where you can explore and find answers to questions about the Christian faith. Now that’s creative.

But are any missions organizations giving this a focus? I honestly don’t know…but I’ll find out!

Many of you know of the phenomenon of Second Life, but for those who don’t, the easiest way to explain it is that it is an online world where you can live out your life as someone else. It is kind of like being in a cartoon with a real person behind every character you meet. And you can fly. For more details, see the description on the Second Life website. There are now over five million (yes, million) participants in Second Life.

There seems to be a growing movement by different ministries to begin doing evangelism in Second Life, seeing it as a way to interact with people who may have no interest in going to church in this world. One particular ministry I have been following is LifeChurch.tv, who have been early adopters and innovators in many different areas of technology. They held an Easter service in Second Life this past Sunday, but I have yet to hear of any feedback on how it went. The picture is a representation of their building within Second Life.

So, back to the question, if someone is saved in Second Life, are they saved in this life? I don’t think so. After all, the persona used in the virtual world has no soul. However, by by exposing a participant in Second Life to the gospel, it may spur the person behind the avatar to search for answers back in real world. And in the case of LifeChurch.tv, they have the perfect real world answer: an online campus of their church! Of course, that leads to more questions, but that will be covered in another post.