Face to Face interaction

We know community can happen using the Internet. Many of us have experienced it in our online LifeGroups, during the weekend experience, through this blog, and in our lobby chat. In fact the Internet has brought us together with people we would never have known without it. Now what? How can we strengthen the community and connection we have on the Internet Campus?

In a great post called “Face-to-Face Trumps Twitter, Blogs, Podcasts, Video…,” Kathy Sierra gives some great insight. Here is a portion of her post “…The point is, face-to-face still matters. And in fact all our globally-connecting-social-networking tools are making face-to-face more, not less desirable. Thanks to the tools y’all are building, we now have more far-flung friends–including people we’ve never met f2f [face-to-face]–than ever before. We now have more people we want to connect with in the human world, often after years of electronic-only contact.”

This is what I have discovered on the Internet Campus. We have a desire to meet face-to-face not because the internet can not build community. Instead, the internet has enhanced community, and it pushes us to that one thing that cannot be duplicated…face-to-face interaction.

Let’s continue to build our community. Let’s come up with creative ways to connect. Let’s use this internet for all it is worth to move us to action in our physical communities.

Some ideas:

• One online group is meeting in Oklahoma City to attend some experiences in person and hang out with their LifeGroup. What a great idea!

• How would you like an event once a year put on by the Internet Campus that would invite any online LifeGroup to connect here at a live campus and connect with each other? We could do baptisms together. We could eat together (always fun). What do you think?
• Start a physical LifeGroup. Invite some there in your town to join you.
• Use some of these great web tools (like Meetup.com) to connect to people in your area who are similar in passion and taste.
• Mission opportunities like LifeReach or Revolutionary Love will get you into your physical community while giving you the heart and mind to love others with Christ’s love.
• Start your own mission there in your community with a group or alone. Serve at the food bank. Serve with underpriveleged children. Volunteer at your school. Volunteer at some other non-profit.

What are some other ways you think we could continue to build our community from all over the world?