Doc (from this post):

Large institutions today — church, business, goverment, education, law enforcement, the courts (and crime as well) — are not just connected by the Net, but rely on its open, free and increasingly capable infrastructure. Activism can now be very direct and personal. The threshold of engagement, of organization, of raising and spending funds, is so low it has become negligible for all but the very poor.

For me, this is more of a HOPE than of a statement of fact. The reality as I see it, in the Church, is that there is virtually NO “reliance” upon the attributes of the net such as “its open, free and increasingly capable infrastructure” as Doc phrases it.

It is used , by Churches and by most, as a means of PR, and most of it absolutely clueless about the “open and free”. Bloggers have noticed this, such as Tim Bednar, Dean Peters, Mike James (to name a few who I frequently hear from)

I realize it is HARD to build online community (harder than shoveling out print material onto the web; oh, I suppose even harder than that. It’s actually hard like it is in face-to-face, bricks-and-mortar life. It takes intentional and dedicated effort. If its not done, it won’t happen except among those who see the need for it. Churches which agressively and doggedly pursue it and commit to it are the only ones who taste of it and have a prayer at maintaining it. You don’t, as a Church, build a Sunday School room and stock it with a table, chairs, dry erase board, and then assume that since its there, that people will come. You have to actually apply some resource personell, whether it be paid staff or volunteer; even when its volunteer it has to be given a proper priority in strategy and planning and constant upkeep/attention. These seem like obvious things, but this is excatly where Churches and its institutions are clueless. They simply don’t see it.