Here I have edited the ideas expressed in an email I sent , where I suggest some of the roles I could play in a Seminary setting,  exploring,  implementing, and helping to provide resources to pastors and communicators in the Church about the possibilities for community and education online.  My reference to “Fellow” is reference to the “Fellowships” offered by educational institutions for grant-funded or scholarship funded work being done in conjunction with some field of study.  As you may know if you’ve read many other posts on this Weblog, I am very much advancing the idea of some serious focusing of effort by Churches,  and by implication,  the trainers of the leaders of those Churches,  the Seminaries,  on “getting to know” the Web and the ways we can do new kinds of communication using it. 

The following is an edited version of an email I sent today as I have been thinking in recent days about where else I might apply my skills and my passions,  and make a living doing it (and it doesn’t have to make me wealthy,  just provide enough to help move me forward,  and keep me in this pursuit of helping the Church “be there” on the Web:

With a few omissions and slight edits:

I am not an  “IT Manager” or Director , since I don’t see my gifts as lying in the administration tasks that tend to dominate those kinds of positions, but rather the part that is a liason between the ITDirector and the things like:  building Webs and Databases and setting up Weblogs for student and faculty, and doing research on Theology and the Internet, and Online community — that’s my bag. I was beginning a DMin program at ___ shortly after I graduated (1993-96) and was about to move into the project stage when I moved from Cincinnati to Nashville to take a Web Development job with a Church related organization.

I am exploring the idea of creating , somewhere, some seminary curriculum on Web development (I know ___ does some of this in teaching “Instructional Media”). My emphasis would be in Online Community and “Social Software” type things, in exploring how Online technology affects Community and can help “augment” face to face community.

At my website, http://theoblogical.org (which is a Weblog) , I explore lots of angles on Webs and Churches and lately, Smart Mobs, which is the latest book by Hoeard Rheingold that follows his The Virtual Community of 10 years ago, now in Second, Revised  Edition — which came out just when I was starting my DMin work. Most of that DMin work is on the website above under the New Media Communications link, which is most of my old website , as is, from 1996.

I think that where this Web communication can lead is into “Distance Education”, and a kind of a mini-Resource Center for Media, Religion and Culture (see http://www.colorado.edu/journalism/mcm/mrc/index.htm)

I just thought I’d give you a holler and tell you about what I’m thinking and working on (via my Weblog) and hope to spark some dialogue about what I might do for the __ and the ___ program in particular, perhaps to serve in some capacity (staff or volunteer or something in between) as a liason between the New IT director and some sort of Web/WiFi/Weblog building effort (all of that with special emphasis on how all this directly affects Church and Seminary culture and education).

I hope we can talk sometime. We often travel to Cincinnati to vist my wife’s parents, and I’d love to meet you just to begin talking about some of the possibilities of this. I am still good friends with Ken Bedell (we correspond quite a bit, and even pondered starting an ecumenical business about 3 years ago, providing Web hosting and Online Community platforms for Churches and Church agaencies….I still think that needs doing. I wonder if some group like ___ would be a helpful ally (well, I know they would) or some thing like the U.Colorado program, or both.

I hope to hear from you. I think part of the fulfillment of God’s call to me into something like this is that I need to find some insitutional “partners in mission” who feel a call to somethig like this”) So I am “on a mission” to sound a call like this and see who might respond, or someone even already way ahead of me with whom I can join forces.

Peace,

Dale Lature