One of my favorite things about Faith Formation 2020 is the amazing amount of resources it puts at your fingertips. And when I say fingertips, I mean both Old School—a book you can actually hold in you hands and flip back and forth through the pages, and New School—a website that lets you explore the content with your keyboard and mouse or your touchscreen. To highlight some of those resources, I thought I’d do some posts on the main areas of the future of faith formation the book covers. To kick things off, for the next few Fridays I’ll be looking at what the book calls “full-featured church websites.”
Two things to remember about these websites: first, “full-featured” refers to faith formation—these are websites that exemplify the notion of using the internet as a key component of a 24/7 faith formation network; and second, these are all Christian churches, so there’s lots of talk about God, Jesus, and the B-I-B-L-E. But we can handle that, right? Just set the input of your Universal Religious Language Translator to “Christian” and the output to “Unitarian Universalist,” then sit back and enjoy some pure Web 2.5 goodness. At any rate, I’ll start reviewing specific church websites next Friday. In the meantime, here are some of those features the Faith Formation 2020 folks took into consideration when they went looking for church websites that kick some serious you-know-what:
- a learning center with courses and webinars on topics such as faith themes, Bible studies, life issues, and Christian practices, self-paced and facilitated by church staff and church members at scheduled times
- audio and video podcasts of gathered learning programs at the church
- links to selected online learning programs and activities from Christian churches, seminaries, universities, and publishers; links to courses on iTunes University and other online course providers
- links to selected audio and video podcasts on iTunes, YouTube, and other providers
- links to free e-book libraries, such as Google Books and Internet archive, and online Bibles, such as Bible Gateway and Biblica
- a faith formation resource center with daily, weekly, and seasonal resources for all ages and families, including faith conversation activities, devotions and prayer, Bible reading activities and Bible studies, service projects, and rituals and traditions
- a milestones and life transitions center with sections for each milestone that include rituals, blessings, commentaries, personal stories, and a “gathering space” for sharing stories and ideas
- a worship center sharing audio and video clips of some of the sermons and other worship experiences, and extending it through the daily posting of images, songs, meditations, inspirational stories, prayers of the people, and online worship exercises
- an online parenting center with “how to” parenting articles and videos, faith enrichment resources, a “gathering space” for parents to interact, a blog staffed by parent mentors, parent-generated ideas and activities, and links to highly rated parent and family websites
- themed “gathering spaces” for synchronous and asynchronous interaction, including live text-based chat and live audio/video conferences, threaded discussions, collected blog links, self-paced tutorials on a range of topics, and so on
- a library pod with access to e-journals, e-books, archived streaming video of speakers and events, a clearinghouse-type collection of links to resources, and other Internet-mediated resources
- a mission/service opportunity clearinghouse for local, national, and international internships, volunteer opportunities, and jobs
- small group gatherings online for faith sharing, Bible study, and book discussions
- a calendar of events with locations, times, and descriptions, with Web-streamed audio and video recordings of select offerings
Biblica? Wasn’t that a spin-off of Battlestar Davidica?
Phil's Little Blog on the Prairie 
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February 18, 2011 at 7:25 am
J. Harry Feldman
Hi —
Have you previously posted some excellent UU websites? By “excellent” I mean sites that visually and in writing convey UU values and the seven principles in action, rather than those more traditional ones that emphasize the institution and hierarchy (yeah, a lot of UU websites are just like most “churchy” sites, only the labels need to be changed). I’ll be very happy to take a look.
JHF
February 18, 2011 at 8:26 am
Phil on the Prairie
Haven’t posted on that in the past, but it’s a great idea! What I may do is take a look at the websites the FF2020 folks like, then add a few UU sites that seems to get it. If you’ve got any suggestions, please feel free to point me toward them.
February 18, 2011 at 7:49 am
Nancy
Wow! Imagine a church like that! Filled with energy and action!
February 18, 2011 at 8:27 am
Phil on the Prairie
Exactly!
February 18, 2011 at 4:17 pm
John
I am always proud to show off our site at the UU Congregation of Santa Fe. We have an iTunes account and feed our audio and video pieces to iTunes. We also have a YouTube account and sermon archive. We also have some social justice videos.
February 18, 2011 at 4:21 pm
Phil on the Prairie
Thanks, John! YouTube and iTunes are great additions to congregational websites. Social justice videos are also a great idea; church websites should definitely feature how members are involved in the world.
February 19, 2011 at 1:21 am
Dan
There are other sets of criteria out there for judging online resources. Recently I was looking through the Willow Creek Community Church’s Web site, expecting them (with their huge resources) to have lots of stuff along these lines. To my surprise, they didn’t have all that much (I mean, not all that much for a church with 10,000 members!). What interested me was that Willow Creek appears to be pretty focused on getting you to come check out one of their small groups. They have online resources, sure, but their main emphasis seems to be on giving you a taste of what they offer so you’ll want to show up and join a small group.
I’ve also been checking out small group management software, and here again much the emphasis is on getting you to join the small group. So the software makes it easy to join a small group online, and then once you’re connected, you get a weekly email update telling you what happened in your small group so if you miss a meeting you don’t feel left out, and you want to come back.
I believe these approaches are grounded on an assumption that faith formation (what I call religious growth and learning) really takes place in a face-to-face setting. As someone who lives an active online life, I’m not sure I fully agree with this assumption, but looking over this material is helping me to come to terms with some of my own assumptions.
February 19, 2011 at 8:29 am
Phil on the Prairie
Spot on observations, Dan. Yes, the FF2020 folks are looking at online opportunities first, but the number one objective is to get people in the door for some face-to-face encounters. In fact, I was just looking at one of the “full-featured” websites they’re lauding, and the small group ministry aspect of the church’s ministry is front and center. I imagine that the thinking here is somewhat like Rick Warren’s attitude toward worship: a lot of folks are checking you out and many may even be coming by on a regular basis, but it’s really only a minority of those who are actually becoming involved in the church in a way that requires a real commitment. So with these website, there may be a lot of users, and some may actually darken the door of the bricks-and-mortar campus, but they may stop short of being as fully engaged in the church as the leadership would like. At any rate, the criteria for the church websites the FF2020 folks have looked at is definitely online faith formation opportunities for everyone, which different that Willow Creek.
February 28, 2011 at 1:38 pm
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