I find it difficult to imagine engaging with God through the Bible without holding a book or of sharing my faith without meeting people face to face. But I also know that the world is communicating in new and exciting ways and that if I am not to be left behind then I need to learn the language of “social networking”.

The good news of Jesus has been passed on for the last 2000 years. Originally it was in oral form, it was then written down by hand on scrolls and in books. With the invention of the press it became printed. We are now entering its digitisation where it will be available at the press of a button or the touch of a screen.

Some churches exist entirely as Internet churches. St Pixels, for example, is a stand-alone Internet church with 2000 members, one in three of whom regard St Pixels as their major or only contact with formal Christianity. I’m not advocating that we go this far [at least not yet!] but I do see that a social network will enhance our work as homegroup leaders at St Mary’s. With this in mind, Sean Fishpool has set up a site that we intend to launch at the meeting already arranged at my house this coming Saturday at 9.00 am. I know several of you can’t make the meeting but we will arrange to catch up with you later.

This is more than setting up a web site to facilitate our own internal communications: it opens up the possibility of sharing the gospel in a culturally relevant way.

Food for thought.  Facebook alone has more than 350m users, 2.3m them are in Britain. If facebook were a country it would be the third most populated place just behind the USA.

Here are some thoughts about the ideas behind this website.

What the site is...

• ...A start, and a bit of an experiment

• To start with:
• ...A place for homegroup leaders to read and discuss John's Snippets pieces, and a place to discuss them
• ...A place for homegroup leaders to recommend and discuss home group materials, and upload documents and files
• ...Collaborative and really easy to use. A few years ago, if a group of people had a website, they had to ask the administrator to change anything on it. Now, we can set the site up so that any leader or member who wants to can add pages, questions or notes as easily as editing a Word document or sending an email

• Potentially:
• ...A place for homegroup leaders - and later, members -  to share announcements, ideas, questions and answers
• ...A secure place to put prayer requests, perhaps
• ...A collaborative calendar of events
• ...Anything you want it to be. This 'soft launch'  is to get the ball rolling, for you to have a play

What the site isn't...

• ...Set in stone. All ideas, doubts, questions, wishlist items welcome, big or small. Assume that anything might be possible, and that no question is too silly. Please register as a member then click the Feedback tab near the top of the page
• ...Something that you just look at. It's begging for you to get involved, as we said above
• ...Ready for all homegroup members. At this stage, we'd like the input of leaders and maybe a few interested members. Then we can polish the site up, and get used to using it ourselves. ... Then we should regroup and discuss whether we can adapt it a bit more so it would be useful for all members, and if so, intelligently roll it out to them with really good communication.
  • If we do it right, it could be a wonderful collaborative resource, which any church member with an internet connection would benefit from using. If we do it too fast, or explain it badly, people may feel threatened, confused, or try it once and decide it's only something for the young techy people
• ...A replacement for the church website

What do you think?

Does that sound like an okay plan? And what would you most like this site to be?

Please do click the 'add comment' link at the top of the article and let us know