This is the second in a short series of posts springboarding from an article in The Jewish Week, written by Rabbi Hayim Herring.

Lagging Behind the World We Hope to Reach

I attended a convocation of churches this weekend. About 20 churches met to celebrate the Reformation, conduct some business and listen to some teachings offered by their bishop.

Today, as I waited for Hurricane Sandy, I went through the delegate list and visited every church website — at least those that had websites.

The websites were without exception static “brochure” web sites. A couple were very nicely designed, with full presentations of their ministry. Several others were minimal sites provided by directory services. A few had Facebook websites but they had done nothing with them except list service times. I was the ninth visitor to one of them, which indicates how effective they are.

Only one provided content that might attract traffic from outside their existing community and that was minimal.

As the Web matures we are starting to identify its evolutionary stages.

Web 1 describes the early days of the web from the early 90s, when organizations struggled with clumsy html code to produce static pages with no interactivity. Using the web well meant hiring some help. Help with technology is not on the approved list of church expenses. Organists and sextons are expenses church people understand. Web masters? Not in the budget. Pity! Web masters have real potential to influence the growth of a church! This has become easier.

News flash: You no longer have to know code to create attractive sites. Anyone can do it.

The move to interactivity began about 2004 and has been mushrooming. This is Web 2. Unfortunately many churches are locked in the frustrations they encountered in the infant days of Web 1. If fear of code and technical ability is stopping your church from using the web, relax. The web has become almost as easy to use for originators of content as it is for consumers of content. It is becoming more powerful every day — and that’s no exaggeration.

We can now become involved with the people who visit our sites. Isn’t Involvement why churches exist?

Web 1 influenced the world. Web 2 changed the world.

Most churches are barely embracing Web 1. This failure is creating a widening gap between them and their communities. Catch up is going to be a tougher and tougher hurdle. Still, there is a hesitance to believe that the web can be of value to church mission.

This is foolish.

• The web can connect your congregation’s members.
• The web can connect your congregation to your community.
• The web can connect you to other churches with similar or complementary missions.
• The web can connect you to the world.

It has never been easier to go out into all the world, yet the Church is late to the airport!

Congregations were never meant to live in isolation, yet we often do — barely aware of what the congregation a few blocks away might be doing. We view other churches as competition, not potential partners.

We are defying our mission.

Rabbi Herring discusses this in the essay we referenced in two previous posts (1 and 2). He suggests that organizations, including religious organizations are poised to enter a third era of Web capabilities— Web 3.

Having lived in the interactive era of Web 2.0 for not quite a decade, we have an understanding about the nature of online community, the need for a vital organizational web presence and the requirement of interactive and dynamic communication with constituents. While still in its early evolutionary stages,

I’d like to suggest that we are already in transition to a Web 3.0 environment. Web 2.0 meant that Jewish organizations needed to replicate their bricks and mortar presence online. Bricks and mortar and bytes and click ran parallel to one another.

Web 3.0 means that defining principles of online social media, like collaboration, co-creation, improvisation and empowerment must now be practiced in the physical world. In other words, the characteristics of the web that enable individuals to self-direct their lives must now flow back into all organizational spaces: in someone’s home, on the web or inside institutional walls. This is definitely another paradigm shift for organizations.

Rabbi Herring’s observations are astute. Those few congregations that have embraced the power of the media are about to take their interactive and collaborative experiences and transform what goes on within their brick and mortar churches. It will be the elusive formula for transformation.

We at 2×2 are starting to dip our toes into this water, cooperating with some of the churches that correspond with us. It’s exciting, It’s a little scary. But it is invigorating and promising.

Those that haven’t bothered to understand Web 1 and are oblivious to Web 2 will not reap the benefits of Web 3.

Someone said recently . . .

Bragging today about avoiding the internet is like bragging you can’t read!

Hey, Church, it’s your choice!

photo credit: gualtiero via photopin cc (retouched)