I am glad that Chris Brogan had a good experience with church online at LifeChurch.tv. Chris is a well known social media practitioner and has a good deal of influence in some circles. He wrote about his experience with worship online at Digital Church.
I am glad that more people are spreading the word about church online. Resurrection Online (www.rezonline.org) is still in its infancy and has room to grow. A rising tide lifts all boats.
This wraps up the series on the benchmarking trip to LifeChurch.tv to look at their internet campus. I want to make sure you know where we have been and where we are going on this series. First, previous posts in this series:
Next week, I am going to respond to some questions about internet campus including:
What else? I want to hear your hardest questions that you have when thinking about an internet campus and will seek to respond to each one. You can post a comment here or email me directly with the link in the About Me page. Thanks.
We were able to spend some dedicated time with Terry Storch while we were at LifeChurch.tv and I wanted to share what amounts to notes from a brain dump / Q and A time with him. Good stuff.
One of the things that I found to be most fascinating in the trip to LifeChurch.tv was that currently the content used for the internet campus is not live. While the content (video stream) is not live, the worship experience is live. Those who are there to worship together make the experience live, even though the content was recorded at a worship experience at an earlier time.
They had previously had live streaming from one of the physical campuses, but found that this did not allow for production for the internet campus to match what was happening in the video stream. It turns out that people do not care if the content is live, the experience is live and worship happens.
Who knew?
As I am currently serving as a Congregational Care pastor at Resurrection, I was particularly interested to hear how LifeChurch.tv does care on their Internet Campus.
There is a team of volunteers that serves to pray with people live before, during and after the worship experience. This seems to be a key area in which care is provided for the people of the internet campus. Life groups (small groups) are encouraged to be able to respond to life events. The life groups that meet physically may be able to provide this support more tangibly than those that meet online.
Brandon Donaldson, Internet Campus Pastor, does have counseling sessions with members of the internet campus – primarily via phone, although Skype has also been used for this purpose.
As mentioned last week, I recently went on a trip to visit LifeChurch.tv with Clif Guy, Brian Slezak and Chuck Russell. Our purpose was to benchmark their internet campus. If you are interested, read my thoughts on benchmarking and also thoughts on a worship venue benchmark trip.
This series will chronicle some of my thoughts about the trip. I have been processing this trip over the past several days and there are several things that stand out. I will work to focus not on the entire picture, but instead on a few details that have kept me thinking. At the conclusion of this series, I will seek to respond to any questions that you may have about an internet campus – in particular or in general. I will respond to comments along the way and address any larger questions in separate posts.
Clif chronicled the trip in pictures…
Over the past few days, I have been on a benchmarking trip to LifeChurch.tv in Edmond, Oklahoma to listen and learn about internet campus. I have traveled, questioned, conversed and lauged with Clif Guy, Brian Slezak and Chuck Russell. We had the opportunity to meet Bobby Gruenwald and have spent time in conversation with Terry Storch and Brandon Donaldson.
It has been an excellent experience and I am still processing the trip. I am going to post more on this trip later in the week. In the meantime, Clif has captured the first day in narrative and pictures here.
