Wednesday, July 7, 2010

More About Anderson Campmeeting

My friend and colleague, Jerry Webb, has been reading Patrick Nachtigall's new book and has commented that:
"A read of Patrick Nachtigall's Mosaic will convince that you are right about # 1. I, too, think it should remain in Anderson. But, multisite can be used for more than across the street. We should experiment with regional sites where there are large COG populations"

I find that an intriguing possibility. We are already using streaming video across the internet and it was reported that there were 800 hits on that venue. A "hit" represents individual access once. So, it could be that there were several thousand viewings of services but only 800 individual computers that logged on to the site. As to Jerry/Patrick's suggestion that regional centers could be established, I think this is a great idea. I know we attempted to have our local congregation gather in the sanctuary at one point to view a service. On the West Coast, that means folks coming together around 4pm for the service. Maybe some delayed broadcast or if the streaming can be on demand would help facilitate a better starting time for those out West.

Regional centers would help multiple congregations to gather together, affecting connectivity in a positive way. Large regional centers might also connect larger areas than just say, all the Church of God congregations in Portland, Ore. or Oklahoma City. I know the District Unity Service idea is not used very much, but it could be revived for something like this. A Saturday picnic/pitch-in or a Sunday evening service time could be adopted for sharing together with Campmeeting. Another idea would be to broadcast the GA so that ministers could "attend" without traveling to Anderson. I don't think that would decrease GA attendance but it might increase Movemental awareness.

Anybody else want to join in? What are your ideas?

1 comment:

Wayne said...

hey you guys!! Jeff, having pastored in CA knows the provincialism of the movement and the value of expanding our Centralized services, not sure about you Jerry. ANYWAY, what's wrong with using some new NAC sites for helping " grow" some new areas of strength. Not saying its right, but I have advocated for 40 years rotating GA back and forth across the 4 times zones. Had we done that, we might have 4 Andersons today instead of 1.