Ecic anders tingström - merging online and offline ministry

1MERGING ONLINE AND OFFLINE MINISTRY : : ANDERS TINSTRÖM

& Offline MINISTRY

MERGING Online A model for Online Ministry and how the Online and Offline Ministry meet

Speech given on the 15TH EUROPEAN CHRISTIAN INTERNET CONFERENCE in Sigtuna

By Anders Tingström, Project Manager :: @webchurchgbg :: [email protected]

2 3MERGING ONLINE AND OFFLINE MINISTRY : : ANDERS TINSTRÖM

Photos on front and page 4 from www.sxc.huOther illustrations by Anders Tingström


ContextI WORK AS a Project Manager in the Church of Sweden in Gothenburg. The project is called The Church’s presence on other websites, meaning other than the Church of Sweden website. I will begin by giving a brief introduction to the organi-zation and the context I work in.

In Gothenburg there are 30 parishes and they are a part of the diocese of Gothenburg, which covers the entire west coast of Sweden. The organiza-tion is basically a traditional episcopal one. Each parish has a vicar, who is the pastoral leader as well as CEO for the employ-ees in the parish. Laity elect a parish board, a board of direc-tors headed by a chairman. The parishes sort under the diocese of Gothenburg, with the bishop as its leader and just like the parish board there’s an elected diocese board.

The Church of Sweden in Gothenburg is an organization outside this pastoral structure. The 30 parishes in Gothenburg has a joint administration pro-viding service and handling certain matters that are of a city wide interest. Online ministry is one such matter where a central resource was created in form of the project.

A long time ago...… BACK IN THE 1990S going on-line meant sitting by your com-puter, running the TCP-client, dialling up with your modem in order to connect and start your browser. Today the Internet is available everywhere, you can be online while you’re on the bus using your mobile phone.

When you depended on your dial-up link the online world was for the most part completely sep-arated from the offline world. You stayed online only for as long as you needed, since the phone bill was ticking and the phone line was busy. Today we use voice and video calls while we’re online, and the phone line is not affected at all. And if the phone rings we don’t disconnect our web access, but stay online.

Before the digital revolution Mass media was a one way broadcast, but today the offline media is just as much an online media. Today the morning news studios on telly have laptops, in-tegrating responses from social media in the broadcast. Parallel to this there can be debates on the Facebook page. The viewer can have live communication with the news studio and also with other viewers.

Computer games have also merged with the offline world. One example is the virtual world Second Life where the in-world

currency Linden Dollar, have an exchange rate to the US Dol-lar, your in-world money can be exchanged to offline currency. Nintendo Wii is another example on merging virtual and physical. Your physical movements con-trol your virtual in-game avatar, your Mii. Doing the exercises in Wii Fit can be quite exhausting, which the sports games in the 1990s weren’t.

Online churchSEEING THIS DEVELOPMENT I can’t help asking myself – How do we as a church relate to this? I think we can all agree on one thing, it’s not a question whether we shall engage in online ministry or not. The question is how we shall engage in online ministry. And the next question is – How does online ministry relate to offline ministry? And based on the increasing merge of online and offline, how do online and offline ministry merge? I’ll show a model I’ve developed to help us with this.

Church of Sweden in Gothenburg

The Church of Sweden in Gothenburg is a central administration for the 30 parishes.,


Three dimensionsIN MY MEETINGS with the parishes in Gothenburg three dimensions for online ministry emerged. Each one represent one aspect of online ministry.

1. PurposeThe first dimension is the pur-pose of the online ministry. Your online activities will be very dif-ferent depending on your pur-pose. Without considering the purpose the web is a very vast maze of resources and oppor-tunities.

• BRING PEOPLE TO OFFLINE CHURCH

You can engage in online activities aiming at bringing people to offline church.

• PLANT AN ONLINE MINISTRY

The purpose can also be to have online activities that are meant to stay online. A person may still join a local church, but it’s not the purpose for the online ministry.

• CREATE/UPHOLD CONTACT

There’s also the purpose when you don’t really care whether

people end up in an online or offline ministry. Creating and upholding contacts can be a purpose and if it brings people closer to God it’s a good thing.

2. Level of communication• INFORMATION

This level refers to one way communication.

• COMMUNICATION

This level refers to two way communication.

• RELATION

This level refers to when we start forming relations with our online contacts. And peo-ple form all kinds of relation-ships online, both professional, friendship and romantic rela-

tionships. Statistics from The McKinsey Study showed that 1 out of 8 couples in USA who got married in 2007 have met online. Match.com reported in April 2010 that it’s 1 out of 6.

3. Base of relation• ONLINE

Online contacts are the people we’ve never met offline.

• OFFLINE

In this model offline contacts refer to the people we know offline and spend time with offline, but also have an online contact with.

• UPHELD ONLINE

Most of the people I know who have a Facebook account have reconnected with old friends. It can be former colleagues, old school mates, friends who moved to another city. This is the kind of contacts that are upheld online. Without the on-line contact we wouldn’t keep in touch at all.

Without considering the purpose the web is a very vast maze of resources and opportunities.


The 3D roomTHE THREE DIMENSIONS form a room. There are three “floors” and each floor has nine rooms. There are in total 27 “rooms”, each one describing one aspect of online ministry.

I will now give examples on what these aspects can be. The list can of course be longer than the ones I give.

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Purpose Offline Uphold contact Online

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Purpose: OfflineOnline contacts

• Online advertising• Calendar, information about activities on the parish website

Purpose: Uphold/CreateOnline contacts

• Online mission outside the church website• Socialize on communities• Engage in forums• Comment on blogs• Write wiki articles

Purpose: OnlineOnline contacts

• Online parish• Online prayer group• Online bible study


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Purpose: OfflineOnline upheld contacts

• Online invitation to a reunion for a confirmation class.• Personal invitations to events and activities.

Purpose: Uphold/CreateOnline upheld contacts

• Birthday greetings on Facebook to a member of an old confirmation class, who never joined the youth group.• Online contact with mission partners and linked parishes

Purpose: OnlineOnline upheld contacts

• Keeping in touch with members of the parish who have moved through a parish fan page on Facebook or a forum on the parish website.


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Purpose: OfflineOffline contacts

• E-mail newsletter to members of the parish• RSS fees, twitter with information

Purpose: Uphold/CreateOffline contacts

• Online contact during holidays• Set up pages on the major social media and invite the members to join.

Purpose: OnlineOffline contacts

• A parish community or forum, where the parish’s activities, sermons, ideas for coming events can be shared. Contact between the meetings in the church.


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nline Offline

• Display the parish website, Facebook page, Twitter feed, RSS feed somwhere in the church.• wi-fi.• Include tweets, posts in a forum in the sevice.• Integrate youtube clips in the service• Talk to mission partners via Skype

• Participating in social networks, blog, write wiki articles• have a community for the parish, where the sermon can be discussed and people can keep in touch between meeting in the church.• Online advertising• E-mail lists, e-mail/SMS/IM reminders of events• Prayer requests sent online.• Online mission and ministry

• Traditional activities - service, worship, choir, youth group

• Church on the hospital, prison• prayer groups meeting in homes• Going out to the shopping centre, soup kitchen, street priest/pub priest• Advertising

Merging online and offline ministry

ON THIS CHART I show how one parish can combine online and offline ministry. The online and offline world are not separated from each other.

If they are considered as to separate matters we will most certainly see an increase of de-churched people, without any contact with offline church. If we believe that Christians are all a part of the Body of Christ need

to embrace online church, sup-port those engaged in it, include them in their prayers, offer as-sistance when needed, learn how online ministry can improve off-line ministry.

We are living in a world where the online and offline worlds are more and more merg-ing. How does we as a church handle this?

Further contactYou are most welcome to contact me if you wish to fol-low the progress of the work I do in Gothenburg.

Anders Tingströmproject manager

+46 737 73 87 [email protected] on twitter

Spiritual

Ecic anders tingström - merging online and offline ministry