A Church Gets in on Social Networks

"What if church wasn't just a building, but thousands of doors? Each of them opening up to a different concept or experience of church - and a journey that could change our world. Would you come?"

That's taken from the site http://www.10thousanddoors.org/ , a social networking site sponsored by the United Methodist Church. The site takes social networking to a whole new level. They include recent news and events, places where people can share their videos about "people making a positive difference in our world," and there is even a "Talk" feature that allows you to post a question and get a fast reply from other users.

There is a lot of interactivity all throughout the site, you don't even need a login for it. You can share everything just using a Google account. There is even a listen feed where you can listen to audio clips and even music streaming through the site. The United Methodist Church realized how Social Networks are becoming popular online because it is a fast and easy way for people to get in touch with each other. This seems fit for a church organization because it is a way to spread faith, word, etc. to many people at one time.

We've learned in class that the distance between any two people in the world is fairly small, about an average in 6. However, sometimes it is hard to get into contact with someone that may be a distance of 6 away from you, because you basically don't know them. A methodist in California may have a short distance to a methodist in New York but they may never speak to each other. With the church using a social network, this distance can either become smaller, making it easier to find a person of the same faith far away, or these two people may eventually know each other and be directly connected to each other using the network.

NY Times Article about the site: http://www.nytimes.com/external/readwriteweb/2009/05/07/07readwriteweb-united-methodist-church-listens-responds-to-12208.html

Churches using this degree of online networking are as new as the technology, but Churches and other places of worship have been nexuses of society since their inception millenia ago. Especially before the advent of fast transportation and communication, communities were much smaller, and the diameter of the world's social network was probably much larger. People were very limited to their own community. And since more people actively practiced religion back then, the church was a link between almost everybody in each community. Even today, many churches who are not nearly as net-savvy as the Methodist Church seems to be act as the focal point in their respective areas.