Being a Global Church Online
We are a global church online! You will hear this a lot this year, but I want to continue to bring awareness to the fact of what God is doing here. Whether you are from small town USA or from a small island in the North Atlantic, you are a part of a global movement. So what does that mean for each of us? How can we be more effective as a global community for the glory of God? Here are some starter ideas:
- Continually remember the diversity in culture, geography, and perspective as you interact on the Internet Campus. Be open and welcoming to those outside your normal sphere of community.
- Purposely find connection with someone outside of your country. Find out the differences. Find out the similarities.
- Purposely interact with news outside your country. Find out what is happening across the world that goes beyond just the tragedies. (Although Cricket is not a sport played in my country (US) I know through BBC World News that Australia and South Africa had quite a competition recently). Here and here are some other sources.
- Pray for those places and people that God lays on your heart.
It is exciting to know we are a global church online. This year we get to learn how to be a global church online.
What are some of your ideas to help us look and act like a global church? (Let’s have a conversation in the comments)
One thing that has helped our family think more globally is interacting with folks in our town who are from other countries. They are all around – we are on a first-name basis with the folks at our favorite Chinese restaurant. We talk to them life in general and about God answering prayers for our daughter and other things. We ask them where in China they grew up and what differences they see. When the earthquake happened last year in China, we checked with them to see if their families were ok.
The global community is really not so far away.
Over the last five years we have had a daughter living in China, a son in law in Iraq. We have traveled to China, India, Haiti and Mexico. It has been a life expanding experience for us not only to experience other cultures, but taping into the technology that keep us connected even thought we are far apart. I am a pastor of a church in a rural area so we tend to be a little isolated but through the interaction and the connections with people around the world I am more global in my thinking and my actions.
I think going on a missions trip to a foriegn country has been a big help to me personally.
One of my goals for 2009 is to learn a foriegn language. During which I will also gain a greater knowledge of a different culture.
What Amanda said is so, so true – the global community is right here in our own backyards; both on and off line. The internet has allowed us to connect with people in the craziest of places I NEVER would have thought I'd be able to connect with. One of my best friends lives all the way in Singapore! And offline, people from all over the world are living next door, down the street, and right around the block.
I really do believe that anything we do to advance the church, in any aspect, will advance the global church – especially since this amazing church we're apart of here caters to any and every single person who comes through its doors or loads up Firefox (or IE, but really, who uses IE anymore =P).
One thing I'm sure we've all seen in the Internet Campus chat room almost every Experience is the question, "is the message avaliable in (insert non-English language)?" I personally don't speak any other language besides English, but I can understand how cool it would be to have the message translated into my native language. So I'm sure that's something that's crossed your minds @ LC.tv. It's just a matter of what languages to translate to and if it's possible to do so during the live messages.
The new Map featured on the Internet Campus is SO great; it allows people to represent where they're from and it shows just how far the LifeChurch Outreach has reached.
I'm really genuinely excited and anxious to see what other ideas people will bring to the table here, and I'm sure 2009 is going to be another amazing year for LC.tv and the global church.
-bobbyb.
Yo pienso que seria muy bueno aprender otros idiomas… y de esa manera poder conectar con mas personas y causar un mayor impacto… Alguien entendio lo que dije?
Estoy de acuerdo en Alonso, en el sentido de que nuestra comunidad empiece a ver cómo se puede conectar a las diferentes regiones e idiomas de todo el mundo. Incluso hay quienes hablan inglés, francés o árabe o empezar a conectar y considerar lo que la asociación para llevar una experiencia vería.
Wow… tu español es formidable…
http://translate.google.com/here is a great tool to translate text to and from different languages. You can join the conversation with others through text even without understanding the lanuage. The translation is not perfect, but it works!
Hey brandon, Estoy muy emcionado con la oportunidad… muchas gracias. Lo digo en serio, Muchas gracias…
Brandon,
Do you plan to make messages and tools as well as sites in other languages? Portuguese for example? DO you plan to have campuses in countries other than English speaking?
Cheers…
We do hope to have subtitles for other languages sometime this year. It would start with our archived messages. Eventually we would go to some of our live content. I think that we will see experiences specific for different areas. Continue to pray for that and see how God could use each of you.
Exciting place to do ministry…here online!
Accessibility!! I think it's important to recognise that not all intarweb tubes were created equal….
As an example – lots of people here in Australia are on 256kbps ADSL (Our biggest Telco Telstra really push their 256k product). It would be great if video was available to people on slower connections. I invited a family member to an experience and it was lagging so badly they turned it off. They are on 512k. I’m not sure how much bandwidth is required as a minimum for the live stream??
Here is an example of how good a video stream can look at 150kbps. http://www.nasa.gov/55644main_NASATV_Windows.asx(Might require windows).
I agree with Idy Ferreira on the localisation of the tools, and sub sites in several languages. If You are going to reach out even further, I think You need local subsites and native speaking/writing people in charge of them. Messages with subtitels, etc. etc. This will be a BIG challenge to you, but a necessary step to reach out even further.
I currently live in China. We can watch your messages. However many cannot understand the fast spoken english.
In China a full time employee is only $200/mo. In other words, I don’t think it would cost much to have a translate type in the hanzi. If you were to create SRT files people could play the movie with subtitles. BTW. If you distributed your messages via bit torrent it would be very hard for the Chinese government to stop the messages from entering the country.