Leveraging Resources for Web 2.0

As the Alban Institute's Wayne Floyd said, the world of Web 2.0 technologies is exciting—and it also represents a potentially enormous timesink. For pastors and congregational leaders who may already feel stretched thin, the imperative to now master a new set of complex and rapidly evolving technologies can feel oppressive. In an "always on" digital world, where instant communication is the norm, how can a leader cope? Pastor David Ambrose put it this way: "I'm in my church lobby on a Sunday morning after services and sometimes I feel overwhelmed because I'm supposed to know a little bit about everybody there. And now I've just added this entire online component, which includes people that I ministered to eighteen years ago who I'm still supposed to know and think about. Being involved in these online networks at times can feel completely overwhelming. My first reaction to Facebook was, 'I can't keep up with this.'"

But Ambrose himself has found ways of coping. When he was puzzling over which technologies his congregation should start using, he said, "I really just prayed to God to lead me to the people he wants me to connect with. And he brought Jeff right into my life." Jeff Kivett, of course, was the owner of the media company who proposed a partnership to create the JustLife.tv site. Ambrose reflected, "What is my job as a pastor? To equip the saints to do the work, as it says in Ephesians 4, and not to do all the work myself."

For the despairing congregational leader, then, help may most easily come in the form of willing congregants. And Web 2.0 technologies, which are often built by amateur, individual users, lend themselves naturally to an everyone-pitching-in model. The fact is, a number of congregants probably have a lot more experience, either personally or professionally, with some of the online tools that might work best for your congregation. This fact can become a negative or a positive. Mosher pointed out that if a congregation doesn't set up a Facebook group, someone else will probably do it on his or her own. While someone taking such an initiative is great, it's a potential negative if the effort is unsupported by the congregational leadership and may duplicate or even muddle other communication efforts.

The positive approach is to actively engage congregational members who are proficient at new technologies. This can be a new form of ministry. "If a college kid in your parish can set up a Facebook group, then that's their version of hosting coffee hour," said Mosher. "It's good for church staff members to engage people like that and recognize their knowledge as a ministry and say, 'We can collaborate on this.'"

Another low-cost, low-risk way to bone up on and then keep up with online technologies is to share information and experiences with fellow congregations. One of Darim Online's popular offerings for Jewish organizations is its Learning Network, where congregational leaders and interested volunteers participate in discussion boards and webinars, all with the aim of sharing knowledge and experiences about Web 2.0 tools. (The network was originally open only to Darim Online clients; now it is open to other congregations for a yearly fee of about three hundred dollars.)

Ecunet is also based around the idea of a learning community, albeit without an explicit focus on Web 2.0 technologies (though a conversation on that issue could instantly be created). Because it has long been a forum for pastors and other congregational leaders to share experiences and insights, Ecunet offers a natural meeting point for people to swap stories and support one another in the quest to bring a congregation online. If you are choosing a vendor that designs websites or online services, ask if its services also offer this kind of opportunity for peer-to-peer learning.

Developing a network of knowledgeable people who are also working or experimenting with Web 2.0 tools—whether these people are congregational members, your teenage children, or a more formal network of fellow leaders—can go a long way to solving the problem of how to keep up with the breakneck pace of change online. "Church leaders that are wondering which technologies to use are ones who go online to do something rather than live online," said Floyd of the Alban Institute. "If you live online, then you adapt naturally to changes." In other words, if you're swimming in the river, you'll move with the current. And while not every congregational leader may be ready to fully immerse themselves in the stream of Web 2.0, every leader has the capacity to know someone who does.