Man, you should write for church internet magazines and stuff- like The Ooze or Antithesis or something. I’ll wholeheartedly agree with you in the context of a personal blog with community in mind. When it comes to chuch sites, I’m a bit leery. Why? Well, because transparancey cannot be forced upon anybody. In making a church site blog with this level of transparency, you may inadvertantly alienate those “weaker” brothers in a congregation, causing them to introvert rather than transparentify (ok, that was a word I made up. Hey, our wonderful Commander-in-Chief can do it, why can’t I? [no sracasm intended]).

I’d wonder about how someone who is not “ready” to step into a realm of commentable articles (which mostly are comments based on opinion) would handle someone being brutally honest. What if they don’t get it and think to themselves “oh, this guys being honest, and I really don’t like him so I’ll be honest back”- the original posting person would have had the intent of being transparent while the responadant would have the intent of malice. There must be misddle ground so we don’t wind up like this http://biblegateway.com/cgi-bin/bible?passage=1COR+8&language=english&version=NASB&showfn=on&showxref=on

I need to point out that Christ himself held things back from those who were not His closest of friends on this Earth. Some things were reserved for only his closest friends (I.E. – the transfiguration [to only 3 disciples] http://biblegateway.com/cgi-bin/bible?passage=MATT+17&language=english&version=NASB&showfn=on&showxref=on , the explaination of the seeds parable http://biblegateway.com/cgi-bin/bible?passage=MATT+13&language=english&version=NASB&showfn=on&showxref=on , etc.). I’m not saying the church should stay in a little “moralizing shell”, just that 100% transparency to 100% of the people 100% of the time is not advisable due to the varying levels of maturity in a congregation. If a couple has serious marital problems and the husband posts a comment about it [being a knuckleheaded male- we men all are knuckleheads sometimes sometimes], that transparency is hurtful and destructive to the marital community.

But I digress to your suggestions of moderate moderation (HA! I like that phrase!). Some conments and some transparencies are inappropriate and should be moderated (for example , the husband mentioned before. His comment should be removed, and he should be advised to take that issue up between his wife, himself, God, and possibly some exceptionally close friends [or even a pastor]). There are varying levels of openess. I’m trying to understand which is appropriate for a large church web community (such as Bethlehem), since the church is still mainly driven by small groups within the larger congregation. Should each small group have a password protected web community? This way only the closest friends could be there and be 100% transparent, knowing the maturity of the other members within the small group… it’s a thought to ponder I guess… Still unsure about that though.

But do you see my point? What is the appropriate middle ground? The internet is almost the whole worlds community… how does a web community handle that excessive level of viewpoints and maturities and malices and loves? Not everyone is going to understand it.

I think a web community can only be a suppliment to a real community, not a true community in and of itself. There is certainly some merit in being A LIGHT unto the world, not holding back the Spirit of God from your life will yield to “the overflowing of your heart” onto articles and comments. This is favorable. Heck, that’s what the writers of the Bible did! They “blogged” (or rather logged) their hearts (reflecting God’s heart- or even at times speaking God’s heart [the prophets]) into a fully accessable book. Not everyone’s heart is yet at where the prophets’ and aposles’ was/is (I’m sure they’re dancin’ in Heaven). That being the case, how then shall the web community in question exsist?

Darin’s HFG site will be a good example I think.

When I had used the word “transparency,” I’d only meant it in the context of accountability to people of differing values and beliefs, and not at all in the context of personal one-to-one accountability. In other words, if a church is going to commit to taking feedback in response to their sermons, essays, poetry and so on, then they had better commit to taking the good, bad and the ugly–rather than looking to moderate discussions to make it look like everyone agrees with them. Does that make sense?

Personal one-to-one accountability (a term that is getting way too much mileage in regards to personal relationships, I should note in passing) should always /only/ happen between people. When I insist on “open” dialog, I’m not insisting that everyone post all of their dirty little secrets on an open forum (such as the marital strife you’d used as an example)–anyone with an ounce of common sense would know that this kind of behavior isn’t just destructive, it’s flat-out stupid. No, the church is made of relationships and, as you noted, web communitiy is supplemental to those relationships, not substitutional.

My vision for the web community is a forum to wrestle with ideas–the sovereignty of God, ways to help the poor, the unity and diversity of the church, the power of language, and so on. It should /not/ be considered a broadcast medium to air one’s petty grievances. In fact, that would be a good thing to note in the “ground rules” I had mentioned earlier in this post. On second thought, though, I would be a bit more willing to give people the benefit of the doubt and hold off on creating such rules until the need presented itself.

Although I’m a little afraid to forward what I consider to be good church website examples due to your fairly high standards, I’ll risk it.

http://www.citypres.org

Scott

I’d like to send you more links. If you don’t want me to, let me know.

http://www.theooze.com

Not so much a “bricks & mortar” church as an online web community…Get an account, browse around, and let me know what you think…

I recommended this church to my parents to check out, and I did notice they have commenting on at least one section of their site:

http://www.fortworthpca.org/DesktopDefault.aspx?tabindex=0&tabid=30

Pez

I just came across this site from our denomination (The PCA) which is blog style. I thought you might dig it:

http://www2.pcanews.com/editorial_opinion/monthly_umpired_debate/monthly_umpired_debate.html

I’m currently in the process of building a website/blog for a home fellowship group (hfg) which Krissy & I will…