Kyle's Random

The other day I happened to have a phone conversation with the pastor and author Douglas Estes.  When I got off the phone, I knew that I needed to check out his book, titled SimChurch.  I finished the book last night, and I have to say that it took me by surprise.

Honestly, when I first came across the book, I thought it was just another debate about whether or not the church can really meet online.  I was very wrong.

This book has challenged me in a huge way.  He brings up so many important concerns and ideas that hadn’t crossed my mind before.

Here’s one of many quotes that really made a bit impact on me:

…a recent survey of virtual-world citizens found that 50 percent of people surveyed don’t even believe the virtual world has sin in it. Why? Because it’s not real. Here the church is poised to fail big-time – to drop a ball of monumental proportions. Here’s how it will play out. As tens of millions of people flock to virtual worlds, traditional Christians who fear change in the church at large will see alarmist headlines about the virtual world and will dismiss the virtual world as one big sinful fantasy, as being not real. They will turn the virtual world over to its own devices, and tens of millions of people – with no true ethical compass – will embrace greater free agency and then write their own rules on what is right and what is wrong. Before long, sin in the virtual world will start to redefine [people's perception of] sin in the real world; what’s permissible in the virtual world will start to seem less wrong in the real world. After a generation passes, new church leaders will ask, “How did we get into this mess?”

It’s a well-written book, and it has bolstered my passion for the Faith Promise Internet Campus.  I’m very grateful for Douglas Estes’ thoughtful observations, and I’d highly recommend it to any pastoral staff who are interested in making a greater impact online.

If you’ve ever attended an Internet Campus and dropped into the chat room, you’ll probably like this video.  It’s a parody done by LifeChurch.tv, and I recognize quite a few of their staff playing roles in the video.

Funny stuff!  Thanks, LifeChurch.tv for your innovation and humor.

At Faith Promise, we just finished a marathon weekend of five productions of Home Invasion, Sacred Storm, a story of one family’s struggles and the spiritual battle happening around them.

The acting and script was great, and attendance was pretty amazing.  All services combined, there were over 5,300 in attendance.  From the stories I’ve heard, it’s clear that God impacted a lot of lives.

But not only was it an exciting day on our physical campus, it was also a great day on our Internet Campus as well.  Combined online attendance for the day was 504 – a figure that is nearly three times our normal online weekend attendance.

The graphic above is a representation of the 279 connections during our 9:00 broadcast this evening.

Some other interesting stats for the iCampus today:

• Over 600 hours of video were streamed
• People from five countries joined in
• 45 connected in the chat area
• Twelve people streamed the sign language video format

One of the many things I love about my job is the opportunities to build out event-specific websites.  The screen capture above is from the re-launch of the Sacred Storm website to promote the upcoming Halloween production at Faith Promise Church called Home Invasion, Sacred Storm.

Even if you’re not in the Knoxville area, you can still be a part of this event since there will be three broadcasts on our Internet Campus on Sunday, November 1st:

• 9:45 AM
• 11:45 AM
• 9:00 PM

We’d also love it if you’d do us a favor and help us spread the word by sharing this event with your social networks.  I believe God will use it to make a significant impact in people’s lives.

I’m in the middle of trying to kick off an online small group using webcams for people to connect with each other.  I think it will be a great way to build community and discipleship into the lives of people who are already connecting to our Internet Campus each weekend, and several churches seem to be using this technology very effectively.

Just in case someone else trying to do the same thing stumbles across this post, I’ve put together some guidelines and recommendations into a document.  I’m sure that it will be a work in progress, but you can download it in a couple of different formats below:

Online Small Group Guidelines (pdf) (Word Doc)

Today we launched our first Internet Campus with iPhone streaming, and it went great.  Josh was kind enough to get me some screen captures on his iPod Touch, and you can see them below.

The Faith Promise Internet Campus continues to make progress, and thanks to the help of Brad Roberts and the folks at Light Cast Media, we’ll be testing out streaming on the iPhone this Sunday at 10 & 11:45 am.  This is a brand new technology, and I’m glad we get to jump on board so early in the process.

If you have an iPhone or iPod Touch, you can test things out by going to http://faithpromise.org/icampus.  If you go there on an iPhone or iPod Touch, you should just see a iPhone specific countdown page.  From there, you’ll be able to select whether you want the stream with or without sign language.  (Yes, you’ll be able to stream the sign language video on your iPhone.)  Even without an iPhone, you can see what it looks like here.

If everything goes well, in addition to the iPhone stream, we will also see substantial improvements with both our audio and video quality.  Matt James has helped me to set up a better encoding process, and Phil Bledsoe helped me to work out some kinks in the audio – providing the iCampus with a better range of sound.

What a blessing to work with such a great team!  Pray with me that our iCampus will continue to make an impact in the lives of people online.

Thanks to the Hurculean efforts of Matt James, and the support of our great tech ministry at Faith Promise, we’re still on course to add an additional feed to the Internet Campus this weekend for the Deaf community.

This is a shot of our recording room.  The monitors in the foreground are for recording both of the video streams.  The board is for the sound recording, and the monitors in the top right are what the camera director uses to select camera shots. (In case you can’t tell, things are a bit of a mess right now.)

PS – In addition to the new video feed, I think we’ll also see improvements to the audio and video quality online this week, and video on the iPhone should be happening soon as well.

Today I wrote a post on the new Faith Promise Blog to recap some of the cool stuff that’s been happening on the Internet Campus.  I can’t believe it’s only been 13 weeks since we started, but the stories are great.

Well, the Internet Campus has gone great these past two weekends.  Here’s a bit of recap:

• Last Sunday, over 144 people attended a web broadcast of Sacred Storm.
• People from three countries and 20 states joined us.
• Today, over 60 people joined us for our worship service at 10 am.
• People from nine states joined us.
• Several people connected with one another in the chat area.
• A couple of people requested one-on-one prayer from iCampus volunteers.

If all of that wasn’t cool enough, I heard a great story tonight from a couple that’s been attending our Knoxville campus for about a month now.  As we were talking, I mentioned the iCampus, and the wife said, “Oh, I was on there this morning.”  I was surprised to hear that, but I was even more surprised about what she said next.  She said, “When I realized what the Pastor was preaching about, I decided that my family needed to be there, so I logged off, told everybody to get ready, and we came to the 11:45 service.”

I can’t wait to hear more stories over the next months!  We are doing ministry in very exciting times!