Religion and Web Technology, Part 1: LifeChurch.tv
This week, as part of our ongoing Mainstream Web Watch series, we'll be looking into how religious groups are using Web technologies. As early adopters in the tech industry, many of us have near spiritual experiences about our favorite products - as Rob Cottingham highlighted in his RWW cartoon over the weekend! But let's look at how actual religions are deploying web technologies to spread their respective gospels.
In this post we'll look at a Christian church, LifeChurch, which is using the Web in an extensive way. In upcoming posts we'll cover other religions, such as Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, etc. Note that we're going to keep a tight focus on the technology - rather than what is being preached with the technology.
The first site we're looking at was suggested by a RWW commenter on Rob's cartoon, David Mackey from IT news aggregator Informed Networker. He pointed out LifeChurch TV, a sophisticated rich media site that aims to preach Christianity over the Internet. LifeChurch.tv describes itself as a "multi-site church" that provides video coverage to "enable all of our twelve locations to be connected as one".
LifeChurch.tv is a production of the Life Church, a Christian "megachurch" that formed in 1996 in Edmond, Oklahoma. It appears that the church started its tv operations in 2001, then in April 2006 the LifeChurch.tv "Internet Campus" was launched. This provided weekly live, interactive church broadcasts over the Internet, for anyone in the world to tune into. The website also began offering "online LifeGroups" (small collaborative networks). At the same time a sub-site called LifeChurch.tv Open started, with the aim of offering free content to other churches.
Last but not least, in April 2007, LifeChurch opened a presence in SecondLife. Andrea Useem attended one of the virtual world services, but wasn't overly impressed. "I was looking forward to chatting with people in the cavernous but furnished church lobby", she wrote, "[but] unfortunately, the 15 or so people who attended the service disappeared quickly, and I found myself as I usually am in Second Life -- wandering around by myself." (thanks Marcello for the link)
Praise Be Web 2.0
The LifeChurch websites today are an impressive and well designed collection of content, tools and online video. The main Internet Campus site features a blog which has many 'web 2.0' features: a variety of RSS feeds, embedded video widgets, 'share this' links, live prayer and help options, and connections to Facebook, MySpace, YouTube and Vimeo. Also the blog has a number of international translations via the Wordpress plugin Nothing2Hide - e.g. the Korean version.
The Open site also has a blog, written by the church pastors. Its most recent post at time of writing is about a new initiative called LifeShare, which Pastor Bobby Gruenewald describes as a "7-day challenge for the church to move together online with purpose." He describes how they're using the Web to connect with people:
"We're doing this at a few different levels, ranging from simple steps like tweets and internet campus e-invites to more in-depth efforts like sharing online how God is working in your life and embedding video teaching on your blog. We're connecting daily through a live video stream to talk about next steps and pray together. LifeShare is open to anyone, anywhere, so feel free to join us by signing up here."
LifeChurch's Web Apps
What's really great to see is how LifeChurch is using best-in-class web apps to create each different aspect of their online presence - Twitter for real-time communication, Wufoo to create their online forms, Blip.tv for video teaching, Mogulus for live broadcasting, and so on.
But they're also building their own apps, for example the recently announced ChurchMetrics.com, which is a web app that helps churches "track attendance, giving, salvations, and baptisms." As yet the app hasn't been launched publicly, but it sounds like a great example of web analytics applied to the real world (which on this blog means beyond tech!).
The main web app that LifeChurch has released so far is YouVersion.com, a free online Bible which presents Christian Scripture in a variety of media formats, including pictures, video, journal entries, and blog posts. The beta of this app was launched in October 2007. And yes, there is an iPhone app version!
Conclusion
Overall we come away very impressed by how LifeChurch is utilizing the Internet. It is using a variety of web apps to achieve its purpose, and creating its own as well. The church's websites and apps are visually rich and sophisticated in features.
Most importantly, the web activities of LifeChurch are bringing its message to many more people than they would've reached without an online presence. It's a great example of the mainstream web, using many of the tools and trends we've preached here on ReadWriteWeb over the years!
Tell us in the comments about other religious organizations using the Web. We're going to explore a few examples this week, from Christianity as well as other religions.
See also:
Religion and Web Technology, Part 2: Shalom Hartman Institute
Religion and Web Technology, Part 3: Inside Islam
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You might want to check in with Andrea Useem, who occasionally explores the intersection of faith and "web 2.0" at her blog, religionwriter.com. You can read her post on Lifechurch here.
Thanks Marcello, great link. I've updated the post with it.
Thanks for the great post guys!
Appreciate the post guys...thanks!
Great job guys! Praying for you and the online movement around the world.
Rocking. Guys are doing great stuff for Jesus. Keep it up.
Thanks Richard for the great post. It has been cool to be a part of the stories that have come from some of these tools!
Thanks for the post Richard!
how about lifechurch.tv secondlife campus? :)
Great post! I've participated first hand in Lifechurch.tv and it is indeed well-done. Easy for non-tech types to navigate around and not feel awkward.
Another online church campus just launched this month, for Judd Wilhite's Central Christian Church in Henderson, NV. Its found at http://www.centralonlinecampus.com/
(in the interest of disclosure: my company, 360Hubs developed the backend for CentralOnlineCampus)
There is a lot going on in this space!
No doubt... Lifechurch.tv is gettin it done. Nice work guys!
Dear Richard - I found this post through your Tweet, which I follow. I am the Website Manager of Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, Israel. Hartman is a wide-ranging Jewish educational and leadership training institute, so it isn't a church (i.e., synagogue/prayer center) per se. But we are a religious organization (Among other things, we train and ordain rabbis and run religious high schools for boys and girls in Jerusalem).
As part of my development of our site(s), I have done a significant amount of research into the Jewish world's usage of Web 2.0 features, and I think we are ahead of most. Here is some of what we are doing:
Our website includes weekly postings of original, Op-Ed length essays by our leaders and scholars on topics of interest to the Jewish/Israeli worlds. We include "talbacks" (reader comments) on our articles, some of which draw large responses.
We post educational material, as well, including complete course syllabuses.
We stream and host video lectures from our scholars and leaders both onsite and offsite. I have used Blip.tv for full-length videos, YouTube for short ones (we were named 2nd most-viewed Israeli non-profit on YouTube), and Jewish video sites Yideoz.com and JewTube.com for additional distribution (although both sites have their technical issues).
To upgrade the quality of our videos, which had been single camera plopped in front of a seated lecturer, we hired a professional cameraman this summer who intercut and edited the videos, as well as added intros and credits at the end. We have had interest in these from a Jewish cable TV network in the U.S., as well as placed these on an online Jewish Internet TV network.
We have done video-enabled distance learning to rabbis, teachers and community leaders in North America for 5+ years via dedicated, non-Internet lines. We are transitioning this fall to online video via Ustream.tv and/or Mogulus.com. Some of our courses are for small groups, so we will keep those streams private for a while before making the recorded videos public.
I started an offsite blog for our site - hartmaninstitute.wordpress.com - to allow us to use some Hebrew, to enhance search, and to give a less formal view of our activities.
I am working - with some frustrating lack of success - to launch an iTunes podcast audio and video versions - although I suspect the problem is more my lack of understanding than anything else (help appreciated!).
We have purchased URL's that correspond with the names of some of our leading individuals - donnielhartman.com, and rabbihartman.com (not surprisingly, davidhartman.com was taken), and are building individual sites for them.
We also are working on enhancing the Wikipedia entries others have created.
We are developing a Facebook strategy, as well. I use my FB page (Alan Abbey - real name - please ask to friend) to promote our content and videos, and have created a FB group for a group of North American rabbis studying with us. I regularly place our material on related Jewish/Israeli FB groups, as well as promote through Twitter. Several of our groups use Google or Yahoo groups, as well, and we are working to bring those under our umbrella (or at least to link to them).
We are weaker than I would like in social networking, however. Our existing audience is older than the standard online audience, and we are slowly making headway.
All this is not to say we are doing the best job in the Jewish world. There are some better-funded, and larger organizations with intensive Web operations. We are probably, however, one of the better organized "mainstream" Jewish organizations online (i.e., not Ultra-Orthodox, not "messianic" Jewish, and not "New Age-y."
I would love it, of course if you were to look at our ops and review, comment and critique. I could use some advice!
Regards,
Alan Abbey
Shalom Hartman Institute
Jerusalem, Israel
PS: I am the founder and former owner of TVMama.com, which probably failed - in part - because of your synchronous launching of last100.com. I am in frequent contact with Steve O'Hear, but I wouldn't presume on that relationship to get attention on R/WW. AA
Alan, thanks for the detailed background to what you are doing. I'm going to check it out for our next post in this series.
To others: if there are other religious organizations doing great things with web technologies, please leave a comment here for me to check out.
Thanks. Much appreciated.
Hey, thanks for telling us about lifechurch!
I attended an Easter service at LifeChurch.tv's SecondLife campus, and thought it was terrific! I blogged about it at http://ministry-it.blogspot.com/2008/03/easter-in-secondlife.html .
It's great to see R/WW giving LifeChurch attention.
They are strategically anticipating tomorrow's church, a place where the iGeneration will feel comfortable and engaged. Since online relationships are normative for people under 25, it only makes sense to design spaces (and apps) that will serve them best.
Good to see so many celebrating the work of a pioneer ministry embracing the web.
Alan, thanks for sharing all that you are doing at the Shalom Hartman Institute. It is great to see what other groups are doing. Wish you the best!
Web 2.0 has been tested in many areas. We now know how to use crowd-sourcing, social networking, and other web 2.0 tools to create business values in product development, recruiting, fund-raisers, marketing campaigns, politics, sales and support, and many other areas. Tutorials can be found at http://web20bizwebsites.blogspot.com/.
To get even more geeked out, attend a service at one of their campuses.
Not only do they stream a live feed online- they also have multiple churches across the country synced up via satellite feeds. Their installed A/V gear is pretty cool. And their video production quality is top-notch.
And once you get more involved locally, you'll find church leaders working in small groups with their own blogs, Facebook pages, YouTube/Vimeo/Blip channels, and more.
Very cutting edge for a church!
great interactive FAQ site:
http://www.questionyourreality.com/
Pretty forward thinking in web terms..
Mars Hill Church would be a great one to review. They have their own version of facebook, great digital content, and much more.
Great Post!! Visit also http://www.religion20.net
Sounds like an interesting series of articles. Just an FYI though: it should read "Islam," not "Muslim."
Joe, thanks for the correction. Updated now, and apologies for that.