Church 2.0
While church attendance in Canada has been in decline, figures from Stats Canada show that most Canadians still consider religion important in their lives. The trend being towards ’spiritual but not religious’. So where does this leave organized religion? How do they maintain a voice, let alone a role in the moral and spiritual framework of people’s lives?
The United Church of Canada seems to feel the answer is be the platform for the discussion. Wondercafe.ca serves as the base of the church’s social network initiative.
The launch of the site is set to coincide with a series of ads that are both thought provoking and controversial. One features a shopping mall during the holiday season, where instead of sitting on Santa’s knee, a child sits on the lap of Jesus. Another shows a can of whipped cream, asking how fun sex has to be before it’s a sin.
The traditional parts of the campaign are quite well done. They are bound to spark a response and be the fodder for much discussion.
However, the technical aspects of the site itself seem a little dated in execution.
Where are the web feeds? Where are the trackbacks?
Where’s the ‘add to’ links for my favourite social bookmarking site?
Heck, where’s the ‘email this’ link to give a buddy a heads-up to join a conversation?
I have to register to comment? Frames? The site is using frames!?
The site, in essence, is a discussion forum … and a bit of a walled garden, at that. Walled gardens can be nice. It makes it easy to tend and keep an eye on - which certainly will be needed with so many contentious discussions arising. But a walled garden needs constant tending to, care and feeding. It can severely tax the sensibilities and energies of anyone assigned to the role of ‘gardener’. And without constant barrages and campaigns to drive traffic, as with the accompanying ad campaign, it will be an uphill battle to build and maintain a community that can thrive on its own.
The goal of the site seems to be ‘spark discussion‘, whilst providing an opportunity to assert the view of the church. Had I been lead on the project, I would have started by tearing down as many walls as possible.
Build a site that is an empty vessel, waiting to be filled, and then give as many tools, means and ways to fill that vessel, build it up, and share it with others.
Why not start your community with the building of the community? Have a good ol’ fashioned barn raising by open-sourcing the project and throwing it open for all of your church’s members to contribute towards the creation of. You can’t tell me that of the 3million Canadians that report themselves to be members of the United Church, there’s not a hundred or so with the know-how and willingness to undertake such a project. Then throw the project over to other churches and not-for-profit groups, both as a gift and as a means of infusing the technical community of this project with fresh blood.
For the site itself - borrow upon the best of all the social communities that have sprung up in the past couple of years. How about a Digg/Netscape approach, augmented by individual blogs and scrapbooks of media. Integrate the ability for users to podcast/vidcast. Provide, perhaps through tagging, microformats, or some other means, a way to track and collate the conversation as it winds through the individual blogs and comments. Give me as many ways to follow along and participate as possible. Audio and video to my portable media player. Text to my blackberry or cell in a ‘river of news’ manner. Digest emails of the content I subscribe to or individual feeds to my browser.
Throughout it all, the church will have its own interspersed platform from which to chime in on the discussion, provide some context, views or opinion and give its ministers more content for sermons than they can wave a cross at.
Add to the entire deal some contextual ads, a tie in with e-bay for auctions and a Craig’s List look-a-like and you have the revenue generators to sustain the whole thing and do some mighty fine funding of your charitable works.
