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Saturday, June 28, 2003

coming to California?
Since I don't quite know when I will get to Indianapolis next (yes, I was there once! for a Promise Keepers event where I was press) I'm inviting all you Wireless Coffee types out to Pasadena to visit Harambee Center when you are in town. If you plan ahead you can probably stay in the John Perkins Retreat Center on our premises (a decent bunk bed, nice kitchen, pergo hardwood floors). Also, I'm pleased to announce that in a very, very indirect way, Urban Onramps is a beneficiary of a Beaumont Foundation grant. The Harambee Prep School - which was spun out of Harambee Center, where the BlogJefe of Urban Onramps works - has been promised 24 brand-new, DVD playing, 15 inch screen Toshiba laptops. Yeah. Praise God! We are excited about using this stuff to get Kids Excited About God's Word and teach a few digital skills along the way. "Using Technology To Love People" - yeah!

Friday, June 27, 2003

"Crossover Arizona, Crossover Indiana, and Transform Indiana?"

Just a heads-up. I've highlighted a great story link today from "Got Change for a Blog?". Start thinking, guys & gals... How can we best facilitate this upcoming Indianapolis event, by doing what we're doing.... really excellently?

Sunday, June 22, 2003

Saturday Morning Together...

Guys/Gals... Just wrote a few notes over on my personal journal, ("Got Change for a Blog?") about our time together Saturday. Ya'll are great. Thanks for making these sorts of synergistic situations possible.

Wednesday, June 18, 2003

Can Chilliwack Get Overcooked? Not Likely.

I greatly enjoyed Tony's evangelistically-reviewed page re a neat church site up in Chilliwack, Canada. And he gave us some great analytical questions to ask ourselves re (any) church sites. I'd like to get your feedback about those questions on Saturday morning over "Wireless Coffee", for those of you who can make it. Btw, Woody is compiling the topics list, for future Saturdays... and perhaps a city-wide "Innovation Forum" again sometime this summer. So get your favorite mini-topics to him to add to the list (and a good marketable title for your topic, if you can think of one).

Tuesday, June 17, 2003

Introducing myself
Greetings! I recently accepted Neil's invitation to become an "Honorary Hoosier" by joining this blog. I'm pleased to be a part of this esteemed group.

I'd like to start out by posting an invitation for people to read the draft introduction (yes, it's still very much a draft) to the revision of my 1999 book about Internet evangelism (E-vangelism: Sharing the Gospel in Cyberspace). Sorry to start off with such a shameless plug, but I'm looking for input on this project as I go along. I truly value the input from those who are trying to be a witness in the online world.

After you read it, please leave me a comment here on this blog, or over at e-vangelism.com. I shall appreciate it very much!

With that, I'll close, but add that you can read more of my occasional thoughts at bloggedy blog and e-vangelism.com (usually, but not always, pertaining to Net evangelism).

Grace and peace,

Andrew

Sharing Testimonies?

If 'sharing your testimony' is important, how important might it be to be able to easily share shared-testimonies? That is, to have a growing bin of acceptable testimonies that any webmasters could draw from? We're kicking the idea around via the global internet evangelism egroup I participate in. Your thoughts, anyone?

[If you want to visit our local attempt at a flat page of testimony links, see DoYouKnowForSure.com . If you want to see a neat new site under development, but still seemingly 'flat' in structure, see... MostImportantThing.org .]

Monday, June 16, 2003

"Indiana E-Servants?"

I've just added a brief page of explanation & instructions for those who are interested in being an "Indiana E-Servant". Thanks Keith, for the idea.

Sunday, June 15, 2003

Yeah, I know. I've been absent for a while. Lots of things going on.

To make up for my recent absence, I've started an RSS feed through BlogMatrix. I'm also looking into adding comments, so we can have conversations on topics without constantly editing posts. The big issue seems to be finding an appropriate site; right now, HaloScan looks like the most promising one.

As with the other side links, let me know if you don't like the way I've added the RSS link on the right.


UPDATE: OK, comments are here, provided by enetation. Please leave feedback on this as well.

Friday, June 13, 2003


A PRAYER FOR THE SKATERZ
We want to send these three skater kids in our neighborhood to Soul Survivor USA, a great camp near Newport Beach, CA that has lots and lots of skateboarding ramps - something I haven't seen at any other urban-friendly kids camp. We pray that they will be touched with God's love and grow in their desire to know Him. BTW, this is our ministry which they attend.

Tuesday, June 10, 2003

City Models To Review...

[Btw, Rudy... since we don't yet have our 'comments' feature running, let me take this opportunity to say thanks for posting these great links and concepts. And IMHO, you're right about the microbusiness becoming more and more effective.... perhaps most quickly among younger, less apprehensive xyz-generations. Also enjoyed your April/May article you linked to. After reading it, I'm all the more convinced that Christians need to work on solving problems... collaboratively. We'll never get much of a job accomplished, trying only to beat back the gates of hell from our individual silo-churches. So I continue... by linking to some other city models not previously reviewed... ]

At a little greater length from our behind-the-scenes log at... "Got Change for a Blog?", I added a number of new city-models to review and consider. Also a couple of digital supporting groups helping them to happen. And it's a great example of how techs can sharpen one another (IMHO).

YBIC,
Neil

Sunday, June 08, 2003

This has to mean something for technology and urban youth ministry
A confidential memo leaked onto the web and says that Apple Music Store is a wild, wild success. People pay 99 cents per song, and that microbusiness is effective. They figured out how to limit the number of times a song gets copied (preventing the Napsterization of a song). What this might mean for ministry... uh... somehow our youth can sell music or movies or songs - or the youth workers can sell sermons or powerpoints or sermon outlines - or I can sell my articles... because at 99 cents PEOPLE WILL BUY THEM.

Friday, June 06, 2003

Streaming Video Gospel Presentation

How tough would this be to do, ourselves... with a more generic look & feel here for Hoosiers, and perhaps then supported by the Transform Indiana network of churches & ministries? (say, from WhenYouNeedSomeone.com)

Woody, this is right up your alley.... any video-thoughts?

Other guys/gals... what are your thoughts about this? [Btw, Jeff L... which I just now realized MUST stand for "Linux" **LOL** This would be a great time to have a blog-comments feature, huh?]

YBIC,
Neil
IndyChristian.com

Wednesday, June 04, 2003

I finally made it for "coffee", Neil.

I'd like to address Adams strategy (June 2). I am working with Paul Hoy in the central Ohio area to create a long-term strategy to move the christian community from a current state to a collaborative state. Although my first reaction was similar to Adam, build a database, and draw the orgs to the website etc, I think that for us it's begining to make sense to start slower and employ a push strategy rather than pull. The ideas are still cooking so I'll have to follow up with you but we are working to develop a conceptual mockup and then do some test marketing. You can pray that God gives us wisdom to understand.

Blessings, Men of God.

Tuesday, June 03, 2003

"California & Chicago Change-agents Chime In..."

Rudy... Thanks for participating all the way from California. And with Adam's comments from Chicago, it made an opportune time to push the envelope on alliteration. [Columbus Jeff... where are you when we need you? LOL] See IndyChristian.com's special Site of the Day feature... "Pray California". Guys... notice again, the regional connection methodology they're deploying.

Rudy... Appreciate your regular insights from Urban Onramps. Thanks for blessing urban Indy in this way.

Monday, June 02, 2003

Must reading for urban ministry nonprofits
This article is making the rounds among private foundation people: Equipping the Street Saints by Barbara J. Elliott. It's about how capacity building might be the best way to support struggling city ministries.

Adam... Great links. I'm especially interested in the neighborhood-mapping you've shown via your Prayerwalking link. How easy might it be to replicate any or all of that, say to Indianapolis? What would it take? How might you believe we could start?

Jeff... Atheist's insight link?

Where was that perma-link for your atheist tec-friend's insightful post about Christians & atheists?

UPDATE: There are several: first, second, and third.

This is an edited email conversation between Neil and I. I would like to see comments about two things. First, tech and non-tech Christian leaders working together for the benifit of both. Second, Ideas about tracking churches and ministries in a meaningful way. My early edition of this is at www.praychicago.net (prayerwalking, share, care, prayer areas)

Adam


(Neil)
If you would, take a look at our planned strategy for geo-sectioning the state of Indiana, and hopefully identify (and encourage & help) geo-zone leaders who also are interested in network for Prayer, Care and Share in their counties, cities, and neighborhoods.

Our approach is 2 stages -- one constantly sweeping up behind the other.

#1. Encourage these geo-zones to at least put their contacts info out onto a webpage in their area (whichever size-level they want to partipate in... be it county, city or neighborhood).

#2. We want to constantly gleen that contact info from their websites and build a better, more efficient database to house all the info. We notice you're also building a db for Chicagoland -- so of course, we'd welcome your ideas.

But we're aware that we shouldn't wait til a great database system is built before starting to locate collaborative-type leaders around the state. And we want them to feel some autonomy over their geo-zone -- ie, Indianapolis is not DRIVING them, but rather, working WITH them to build out this statewide network. So they need their own webpage and their own team of solid Christians to work together in their city or neighborhood. And if they need our help with a webpage, then sure, we'll help 'em.

(Adam)
Do you have a strategy on the website somewhere? I was able to start our church database with some purchased databases. Then I been going on the www.whitepages.com to confirm each church and update any churches that aren't there. There are two weaknesses of this. One is that it is very time consuming to confirm on Whitepages each of the churches. Second is that this is a one time job. I haven't figured out a good way to maintain the list.

The only maintence idea that I have come up with is to get several para-church organizations that want to use the list as their mailing/contact list, then they will feed updates to the list in order to keep it accurate for their own use. If you used several organizations then each of them would receive a benefit for the the list, the maintence would be split between several groups and smaller organizations that couldn't pay for a good list would be able use it for their own ministries. We have been talking to a couple of orgs about this but we haven't found any takers yet.

I have one source that might be able to get a church file for you. I will look into it.

(Neil)
Thanks for the feedback.

No, our database building strategy isn't exactly spelled out on our site. But as I said, it's really fairly simple... a 2-phase thing.... the first just being to try to find leaders who would at least be good contacts in particular counties, cities or neighborhoods (working on the 92 counties first). Then phase 2 is to come along behind and gleen those contacts from the web-pages, and put 'em into a real database... and make it a web-based database for the future. We anticipate that the toughest part is not the technology; but rather, finding key contacts who will be willing to at least serve as a contact-person per county... etc.

We think we'll be able to have some e-capable people ready to assist those leaders by actually building/maintaining a page for them... if indeed we can find those leaders in the first place. So when you think about it... how tough can it be for 1 person per county to serve as a webmaster... especially if we're not necessarily (yet) asking them for fresh content all the time? Even 1 e-capable person to come alongside a neighborhood leader... how tough could that be? A few minutes per month maybe.

Btw, if/when we have organizations who might be willing to share their data with us, we expect to use Excel format as an easy, common file type to use.... and probably they can easily get their data into an Excel format to suit.

(Adam)
I use a Access database that is formatted for use with FrontPage. It can export to excel, but excel can not do the query work that Access can. But you are right, virtually everyone can see and use a basic excel spreadsheet. The tech is not the problem, you are right. Tech is easy. it is information and people that are the work.

The one person per county thing is probably ok. It just depends on how much updates you want to do. I know I don't put much more than 10 hours a month in to PrayChicago (not that the much sometimes). The key is trying to find people (both community leaders and tech support) that can talk to one another. The tech needs to be patient with the community leaders about the tech. And the community leaders need to have an idea about the potential of the web and what can and can't be done on the web.




Sunday, June 01, 2003

Links changed

I just changed the "links" on the side to include links to Neil's and my sites. It doesn't have to stay that way, but I thought those links would be better than big ol' EDITME non-functional links.

If we want to do something different with those links, let's talk about it. Edit this post and give your point of view.

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