I posted to Brainstorms  (Howard Rheingold’s Online Community with a “Well” like feel) just a bit ago,  and thought it would serve here well also:

As soon as I began to see the form and the format and flow of the Weblog/Blogger genre,  I knew that I was seeing a sub-revolution within the older,  now more tamed Internet.   It is a ray of hope for me,  especially after reading Lessig’s “The Future of Ideas”,  to see another outlet for expression being made more accessible to all levels of Web-saviness.  

Of course,  with my interests in how all this affects the Theological Community,  I have been drawn in and spend my evenings combing around the Weblog world with a wonder that I don’t recall since firing up my first Mosaic session and browsing around the Web.  

My church is one with a very large per-capita involvement in political or social issues,  and so many members circulate emails and website sightings that deal with areas of their concerns.  The Weblog provide an ideal “storage” and “enabling” of disseminating this kind of information,  and with the ability to create Multi-author Weblogs (like in Radio’s “Categories”) and pull in rss feeds from other webloggers into one place,  a Church Community weblog can be established.  

We are convening a small Website committee to help me with my Web publishing tasks for the Church,  and I am intending to introduce them to the idea.  

I also see coming a Community Server idea that would not only host a “Church information site” but a series of member blogs (There is a little litany at our church where the speaker says “I am a COG”,  and the people say “A What?”  and the speaker says “A COG; A Child of God”……and last Sunday when I heard it,  my thinking lately immersed with weblogging,  I thought “a COG Blog”;  that would be a good service to provide,  as a way to express,  in the words of the members,  something of the flavor of the community.