The Wilderness of Church 2.0

Nick Charalambous is the web campus pastor for NewSpring Church in Anderson, SC. Well, I guess if you’re a web campus pastor you’re not technically located in a specific location, but he lives in SC.

As I’ve started to develop what the web campus for The Ridge will look like, I have been learning from some amazing people who believe that the Internet can be used as a powerful tool to take Jesus to people who need Him. Leaders like Nick C & Tony Morgan from NewSpring and Tony Steward from Lifechurch have provided some great insight. Church online is relatively new and is changing frequently with the culture. I’m thankful that I have leaders like these guys holding the torch as we venture down an unpaved path called Church 2.0.

Nick recently posted a blog entry about preparing the way in the wilderness with church online. Since the web church concept differs greatly from the traditional physical church model, we really have no specific guide about the most effective way to reach as many people as possible online. Here is a conversation between Nick(ipiphanist) and I about grassroots advertising strategy for church online.

Chris Hill says:
January 22, 2009 at 7:22 am
Since web church is the wilderness that we’re walking through, there is no known good-better-best way to get people to show up. What has been NewSpring’s strategy for inviting people to the web campus in a couple weeks?

ipiphanist says:
January 22, 2009 at 10:43 am
Good question, Chris. So far, we’ve just been relying on the organic buzz that we can generate through NewSpring’s social network presence through staff like me, Tony Morgan, and the volunteers we are depending on at launch. That’s mostly intentional since we want to iron out any issues in the way we manage the services before drive people to the web campus with full force.
I haven’t discussed this without communications director exhaustively, but I would assume that we will communicate with our physical attenders to point friends and family to the web campus if they don’t live near physical campuses. We’ll explore some keyword advertising, too, very possibly. Do you have any ideas?

Chris Hill says:
January 23, 2009 at 10:52 am
Social media networks are definitely the best means. If we want to reach people through the web, we’ll have to find them there. Personally, I’m more likely to visit a website if provided a link through email, facebook, twitter, etc..more so than if I’m given a web address through traditional means of advertising.
I guess social media is the new “word of mouth” advertising.
Maybe we can discuss this topic more at Unleash.
I’m excited for this ministry and the unknown possibilities that web church has to offer.