WHY?

In the spirit of our church's current series, WHY?, I thought I would take a moment today to tackle why we are moving forward in launching an internet campus as a church and even more personal, why launch an internet campus environment for students? Before going into all of that, I just have to say I love Craig Groeschel's "defense" for doing church outside of the box: "to reach people that no one else is reaching, you have to do things that no one else is doing." That is the very heartbeat of our church in this huge next step in opening up our new internet campus. As a student ministry we must add a generational element to this. How do you reach 20s and younger if their parents didn’t raise them in the church? How do you bring them back? Well, you go where they are–and they aren’t all hanging out in bars anymore. Nowadays, students are sitting at home browsing Myspace, playing WoW, or blogging. Our DNA as a church is to take what is familiar and spin it toward Christ–Jesus did it with parables, and we need to keep up the effort.

I have found my own blog and our website to be a real point of connection with people and I find the more effort I put into these mediums, the more people frequent these sites. The internet generation expects to be able to connect online with a church community as well as in real life. It would be a mistake to avoid the step of an internet campus simply because it really is like taking sail on unchartered waters. We should be at the forefront–not the tail end–of engaging culture.