Adventures in Church 2.0

There is a lot of conversation about Web 2.0. The thought is that Web 1.0 is primarily a one-way conversation. Web pages function like print media but on a screen. Web 2.0 is dynamic. People contribute. They customize, It is a two-way conversation. For the January 2008 issue of Church Production Magazine, I wrote an article called "Church 2.0" exploring this idea.  If Web 2.0 is both creating and reflecting a culture shift, then what happens to our Sunday morning worship services--currently a one-way conversation from the platform to the congregation--when people want to interact?

For the most part, the whole concept of Church 2.0 is uncharted territory. Yesterday morning at my home church; however, we gave it a try.

A bit of backstory:  Crosspointe is in the process of making a major transition.  We are letting our current building--which suits us perfectly--go in order to move into a community slightly north of us that does not have a church located within it. (If you are familiar with the Dallas area, you know, there are some pretty amazing churches and most bases are covered.)  In addition to that, our pastor, David Wahlstedt, is in Uganda for the next several weeks working with the Uganda Children's Project.

Making a transition like this requires a very real sense of God's calling.  However, even with God's calling, change can be difficult.  Really difficult for groups of people navigating change together.

Yesterday's text centered on Ex. 14: 10-14. (Children of Israel also dealing with transition.)  With David out of town, Tim Hill served as facilitator and Ron Martoia delivered a 15 minute teaching from his home in Michigan using the webcast feature at Shapevine.com which we displayed on one of the video screens. (There are other tools out there available for this, too.)  The bidirectional communication between Tim and Ron was cool, but we wanted a way for people to be able to talk back with a little bit of anonymity so we could gauge people's true feelings about the ministry transition.  Sort of like taking a pulse.

We rented an audience polling system from White Rabbit Communications. The system was very easy to use.  It consisted of individual voting pads with an RF stick (looks like a thumb drive) which we plugged into the USB slot on our laptop.  The software that runs the system has plugins for PowerPoint, so we simply set up the slides and typed in our questions with a. b. c. d. answers. (We chose four, the system will handle more.) We brought up each slide and asked questions of the congregation.  The responses took only seconds to tally and displayed in real time on the screen. The software plug in gives you options for how results are displayed.  (We used a bar graph and percentages.)

The polling results allowed the congregation to see in real time how others were feeling.  The church leadership was encouraged to find out that for the most part, people were excited (or at least wanted to be excited) about the move.  The interactive discussion portion of the experience allowed us to both talk about where we felt God was leading and to express our fears about the changes.

Of course, this type of interaction is easier to "test drive" in smaller congregations than in larger ones, but I'm interested to know who else is employing 2.0 strategies and navigating change. I would love to hear your experiences.  (Who knows, you may get a "guest blog" post.) E-mail me at the address below. (The comment function of this blog is linked to some other updates at churchproduction.com, and isn't live yet. But should be soon.)

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