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Web 2.0 with Greg Atkinson
Worship Leader: Do you think there will come a day when churches are completely online and with no off line interaction? Or do you see it always as one being augmenting the other, one being foreground, one being background or mixed?
Greg: I think they work best in concert with each other. I do think somebody will eventually start an online only and, not have anything brick-and-mortar, I think it's just inevitable. I don't necessarily think that's the best way, but I think that it something that will happen over time.
Worship Leader: Who is the biggest presence as far as web church?
Greg: I think
LifeChurch.tv is breaking new ground: definitely pioneers, and innovators and leading the charge as well as the front line of ministry. They are the front line of front line ministry as far as the Church is concerned.
Worship Leader: What makes them that in your estimation?
Greg: Just their heart and vision for kingdom minded causes. The digerati team works on resources like open and video teaching and
YouVersion.com, the Bible app online and on your iPhone. They're working on things for the body of Christ to use as a whole. And, they give it away
for free. They are leading the way in showing this open source mentality of "It's all for the kingdom; it's all for the big C Church" and they just want to be a resource for all churches everywhere.
Worship Leader: What other aspects do you feel put them really on the forefront?
Greg: Well, they're really good with multi-site; they have 14 campuses now, and they are very strategic and very intentional about who they put as a campus pastor at each of the campuses.
Worship Leader: 14 brick-and-mortar campuses?
Greg: Yes.
Worship Leader: And, then they have a whole online campus?
Greg: Yeah, they have what used to be called their internet campus-now called church online as of last week. And, they, they're having people come in from hundreds of countries to attend worship and they're seeing hundreds of people come to Christ. They've been working on this new feature where people in different countries can type in their native language and when you read it on the online campus you read it in English and you can respond to them in English and they read your response in their language.
You can have a conversation with somebody in the Middle East and speak in Arabic.
It's pretty cutting edge technology.
If you go to their website, you can be a part of a worship experience on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. And, it may be led in London, Australia, or from their base in Oklahoma. And they are raising up volunteer leaders to run them because the staff can't be there for every service and some of them are at 4:00 a.m. They have people meeting in apartments overseas, gathering people together in their homes. And, they've given them the tools and the resources to be able to facilitate worship. And, so it's kind of like a new house church movement...
Worship Leader: Could you name some of the other values of the Online Networked Church movement?
Greg: I think the on demand aspect: the fact that you can worship anytime, anywhere. When I speak or go to a conference, I run into people that I've been worshiping with online and doing Bible studies with online. You don't feel like it's been a long time since you've seen someone, even if physically it may have been. We've been staying in constant contact through Twitter and through FaceBook and through blogs and video chat, and various things like that.
Worship Leader: What other values are significant for the online church.
Greg: There are a couple of things built in with the online church. One, denominational barriers are broken down because [sometimes] you don't know [who your worshiping with], all you see is user names and you don't know if they're Presbyterian, Methodists, Baptist, Charismatics, Sons of God, you just don't know what or who they are. You're just worshiping alongside them. The focus is on Christ. The other thing is you don't see race. I see a name and that person could be Indian, they could Hispanic, they could be African American, they could be white, they could be Asian. I think there are a lot of walls being broken down through these new technologies.
Worship Leader: Can you tell me who do you think at this point seems to be moving quickly to embrace this new media network church way of doing things?
Greg: It sounds kind of like a broken record, but first and foremost Life Church is at the forefront. They are the absolute leader and everybody looks to them. The only other church that I know of that has a digerati team is Flamingo Road and they have a two man digerati team, but Life Church has I think 12 to 15 people on their digerati staff. And, that's 12 to 15 people dedicated to working on projects that benefit other churches. They are doing it with their budget, which is a huge, huge deal.
Worship Leader: What about online missionaries?
Greg: One of my good friends is a digital missionary. He spends his entire time, his whole work week online and in a virtual environment. He raises support just like a regular missionary. I think he's the first of many. There will be several future digital missionary groups, people who raise support as a missionary. But, they will spend their time online chatting and building relationships and nurturing virtual communities.
Worship Leader: What new spiritual practices do you see emerging from the online church? And, what traditional practices do you see being renewed or transformed?
Greg: New: I think service is a huge part of the online generation and what they're passionate about. They're starting to do online mission trips and service projects: lining people up in various cities and various countries to do service projects, social justice projects and movements.
Traditional practices: I think an area where they're gonna need to grow and I think will grow-is in giving and tithing. When, it moves past being a spectator and a voyeur and just coming online and watching a service-Tuning in and tuning out-to "I believe in this ministry and I want to give to support it. I'm gonna give biblically." I think that's when the sky's the limit and, when digerati teams at churches all across the country and the world can really take off.
Worship Leader: What do you think a fully networked church is going to look like?
Greg: Well, I think the use of what I call digital tools, digital ministries, digital opportunities, the whole online generation-whether it's an Internet campus or just using tools like Twitter and FaceBook and the way you use your communication structure, tools like
Unifyer and
360Hubs-the use of these various tools will become more fluid and more common, where it's just the norm.
Right now, we're still in an early stage, a lot of churches are late adopters, and it'll be a while before they get onboard. But, the beautiful thing about web 2.0 tools is that they're free and so they're highly accessible. You can blog for free, you can do Podcasts for free. You can do FaceBook for free, you can Twitter for free. Through LifeChurch's digerati team they have a program and a software called Church Matrix where people can go online and track their attendance and records in giving. And, almost have their own CMS program absolutely free. It's something that Life Church gives away.
Worship Leader: What other things do you see changing?
Greg: The worship world is going to be huge. And, being able to use tools like Unifyer is a whole new world where it's not top down. And the thing about web 2.0 is it's user-generated. And so in the Church 2.0 world, I talk about ministries being user-generated-meaning people take ownership of them.
If you're involved with Unifyer, you can start a scrap-booking ministry at your church, or you could start a film ministry which some have done, or a bike riding ministry, or chronic pain or a strong-willed child, parent group. There are all these groups that people have created and other people join. It didn't come from the senior leadership, it's a user-generated ministry. And, the pastoral leadership doesn't have to get people to buy into the groups because they've already taken ownership of them when they created them. They created the ministry and so I see the immense potential with allowing people to take ownership in ministries and to lead. It's an exciting time, and technology is just a tool.
Worship Leader: How do you see worship in the new media landscape?
Greg: It's constantly changing, but in a good way. You know I was a worship pastor for 11 years and my degree is in music. I'm very passionate about the music side of worship, but the thing that I see happening with the home church movement and the small group movement and church planning movement is the opportunity for more and more people to step up and lead worship. And, it may not be up on the big stage in front of a thousand people. But, you have somebody who says I play guitar and I can lead some worship songs. And, they're able to do that in a cell group or a small group or a home group. And, I think more and more people being able to express themselves as artist musicians is a wonderful and beautiful thing--with these online tools a lot of people in various countries are grabbing a guitar and leading, or a keyboard and leading worship in an apartment or a home somewhere overseas.
And, then watching a Craig Rochelle message or a Greg Surratt message or an Andy Stanley message. You know, I've been helping behind the scenes with Life Church's
VideoTeaching.com. That's an amazing new resource where you can download the best sermons from powerful communicators. And, so I see that impacting the role of campus pastor which we see now at multi-site.
But, I think, I think the role of campus pastor will be a more common role for pastors across the country where they start implementing video teaching. Most churches don't always have trained pastors. If they took a gift assessment test, it would probably come back saying that they don't have the gift of teaching. Whereas they could have the gift of shepherding, and so I think something that I'm foreseeing is to have pastors that occasionally preach, but for the most part function as a campus pastor and shepherd a congregation regardless of the size, and make use of tools like VideoTeaching.com. One week, they have Louie Giglio speak and the next week Francis Chan and the next week Andy Stanley, Dino Rizzo, Dave Ferguson, Erwin McManus or Rick Warren. All of these great teachers are giving solid meat to chew on and to build up your body.
And, so that's a little snapshot of what I think will become more of a norm seeing, pastors transitioning from a teaching pastor to campus pastor.
This is an excerpt from Worship Leader magazine. To read more articles like this - click here to subscribe.
