"All the believers met together constantly."
We have been "beta-testing" a concept this week that has promise. We have taken 7 people from our own churches who are "computer active" people. We suggested that, together, we create our own private blog that would allow us to interact with each other on a daily basis. Each day of the week a different person posts their own devotional thought or shares whatever God is doing in their life.
Because it’s a blog, others in this 7-member community can read the post each day and then write comments. In this way, we are developing a 7-person community that is interacting daily with each other. In our world, this may be the closest thing we can come to "meeting together constantly." In our case, we share some measure of relationship outside of this blog, but this is allowing us to deepen that through this daily interaction.
At this point, like any new community, we are a little formal and "stiff" in our writings. But I know this will shift and I believe we have great potential for developing a reasonably safe and meaningful cyber-community.
I won’t disclose the web address for this blog, because it is meant to be a private community. But here’s a little screenshot of what it looks like:
I was able to set up this blog through typepad in a way that allows 7 different authors to post. I don’t know how to do this with other blogsites, but if you want info on how to do it with typepad, you can email me.
Comments
3 responses to “Using Blogs For a Devotional Community”
This can also be set up through http://www.blogger.com by adding memebers and inviting them to your site through the control panel. Cool thing is you can get a blogspot account so you can do it all for FREE. This gives people no reason not to start one of these things. Think of the ministry possibilities if you start one of these things up and your community grows. Your readers Grow. Think of how cool it would be to minister to the nations from your computers?
btw.. your image didn’t show up.. looks like it is pointed to your hard drive. 😀
I love this concept. I think it is perhaps the only way we, here in the U.S., would be able to accomplish “meeting together constantly” without living in a monastary or something of the like. We’re just too busy for gathering everyday. For the most part, as much as we may think we may want everyday gatherings, our lives demonstrate otherwise.
But I think a blog has the potential to be a great extension of a gathering community. For all of the obvious reasons.
The trouble I’ve seen in the past is getting the intended users of the blog to actually make use of it, i.e. commenting & posting. I’ve found instead that many people are satisfied with simply reading what others have to say and don’t really want to put themselves out there and be vulnerable. But it is possible to create something that would work with an understanding from the users that it is to be inclusive & corporate. I see great potential in this.
Good thought.