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Here we have prepared examples of how the church and its members may find the Internet a useful tool in their life and ministry. We have grouped the examples into those for individuals, for churches (that is, worshipping communities based in particular local areas, such as parishes) and for groups of churches (such as dioceses), and also for other Christian Organizations (which serve not a particular geographical area but a particular rôle, such as mission organizations).
To look at how we can use a computer network, we first look at different kinds of communication, and, although the classifications we'll make are not hard boundaries, we can classify actions of communication by the numbers of entities originating the information and the number using it. Further on in this document, we'll use these classifications in discussing various situations where we communicate in our Christian life and ministries. So, at this point, you may like to read a short document on Types of communication. There are also links to this from the relevant places in this document.
Having looked at the kinds of communication involved, we can now look at how individuals and organizations can use them.
If you're reading this on-line, you will probably know most of the terms used; if you're not sure of any of them, try our glossary.
It is possible to find today's services on the web, or have them emailed to you, so you can take part in a shared act of worship even if you can't get to the place where your local church worships.
The Church of England services of Morning Prayer, Evening Prayer, and Night Prayer for today and tomorrow are on the internet.
Also available is the OREMUS daily office, which is posted by email each day to the list oremus@oremus.org.
The Daily Office from the ECUSA Book of Common Prayer is available, as is Celebrating Common Prayer (from the Society of Saint Francis) and daily meditation prayers in Sacred Space from the Jesuit Communication Centre, Dublin.
Although there is much on the network that is neither scholarly nor edifying (and there is some which is incorrect and unpleasant), there is also a lot of useful information provided by people who know what they are doing. Search engines such as Lycos make it easy to find the information you want, drawing together information from many sources to find what you need. New search engines for the Internet seem to be announced every week, but most users will tend to become familiar with one or two and use those in preference to others. We've prepared a short list of search engines; of course, at any time new ones may appear so we can never claim that the list is complete.
There are mailing lists and newsgroups for discussion of many aspects of Christianity, including Christian living, prayer, theology, liturgy, music... and if there isn't one for your interest, but you can find enough people who are interested, it may be possible for you to start one.
See the details of COIN mailing lists for more information.
One of the most popular uses of the net by individuals is to communicate with their friends by email on a one-to-one basis.
It is possible to receive church announcements and newsletters on the Internet. One of the first examples of an on-line church newsletter is the Ely Ensign, the newsletter of the Anglican Diocese of Ely, which is put on-line by a COIN member.
For a church to take an action as a collective body, they must appoint some individuals to be the hands through which the action happens. In many local churches there will by now be at least one member who has the technical knowledge and ability to take on such a rôle; in some, there will be a rich choice of people from whom to choose, and in others, someone will have to learn specially. Some ministers are happy to take on use of the computer directly, and may be happy to put out announcements and so on themselves, but that is not traditionally the minister's job, and it is usually good to spread the load and appoint other people to help with such work.
The Internet provides new ways for a church to keep in touch with its members. One of the simplest possibilities is the distribution of announcements by email by sending to a list. Obviously, except in the cases where an entire church community is on email, the announcements must also be distributed in the old ways too, but use of the net is expanding and you can reach more people more quickly and more reliably this way. For regular issues such as newsletters, it should be sufficient to mail out an announcement that the new issue is out, and put the contents on a web page (it is also easier to put pictures on web pages than it is to put them into email). But for reaching people for occasional announcements mailing to a list of members can be a useful supplement to "telephone trees" etc.; for example calling people to special action and prayer groups for some situation that has arisen.
Local churches often have many connections with local secular organizations, and if your local community has a web server, you may well want to tie in with that... they link with you, you link with them. This helps people looking for local information to find you, and helps your members to find other local information with your church as the starting point. If your church has a web server (rare as yet), you might consider hosting suitable local organizations' pages on it, perhaps starting with those that you make your church buildings available to: childrens' clubs, youth groups, women's institutes, shelters for the homeless, folk dancing clubs... the church hall or equivalent can be a central tie between the church and the rest of your community and you may like to reflect this in your use of the Internet (not just in your web pages!).
The World-Wide Web can be a means for your church to put up an external noticeboard (rather like on at the entrance to the churchyard, that can be seen from the street) for anyone browsing the Web to find. This can be a form of witness; to be effective, your pages should be not only clear but also interesting and noticeable; so if you want to be found by people surfing around or following threads of information other than about your church, it's helpful pick some aspect of your church and its life that ties your church in with life around it in some useful and distinctive way. For example, you could pick a church activity that you think your parish does particularly well -- a youth group, or music group, or bell-ringing -- and link that in with your pages which cover what your church is really about. There are people around who may not take much note of conventional Christian witness... but if they see something which ties your parish in with an interest of theirs, they may come in to have a look around. So if you have something distinctive -- perhaps your youth group have built a hovercraft -- put it on display and let the webcrawlers find it -- and don't forget to provide a link back to your main page!
Just as an individual can use the network for information mining, so can a church, through one of its members. An example of this is a minister looking for sermon notes or other teaching materials on the Web!
Just as an individual can find liturgical material for use at home (or in the office or laboratory) a local church can make use of the same services. A vast amount of study and worship-related material can be found such as:
the new Church of England Common Worship material,
the Revised Common Lectionary Commentary,
Sermons & Sermon-Lectionary Resources,
Visual Liturgy - Web site dedicated to this popular worship and service planning software,
Worship That Works/Selected Sermons
Anglicans Liturgical Resources.
Where a local church is part of a larger group of churches (for example, parishes making up a diocese) the group of churches can provide information to its member churches and to their members. Perhaps the most obvious example of this is the Diocesan magazine -- such as the Ely Ensign -- but there are many others, such as putting up a cycle of prayer to link the member churches in prayer.
Christian organizations other than churches can use the Internet for publicity and communication... COIN itself is one example; others are
Christian Aid,
The Diaconal Association of the Church of England,
The Mothers' Union, and
Tear Fund.
The Internet is a not only a way of letting the wider church and the world know what you stand for, but also a way for them to find and contact you.
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