For most Church staff, online storage – i.e. Storage Area Networks – is a way to collaborate on planning. You can have a locally shared copy of planning documents, tentative copies of newsletters and bulletins, etc. But is it worth it these days?

With more and more resources found on the Internet, you can have virtually unlimited storage for Church documents. You only need to decide who has access and how is the storage organized. Here are some ideas:

• Organize the documents by Area of Ministry – e.g. Adults, Youth, Children
• Allow staff to access the documents in their Area of Ministry only
• Create a shared Church Administrative calendar, so everyone on staff can see what’s coming up and avoid conflicts

Since the files are on the Internet, they will be accessible online no matter where staff members go.

Of course, you want to make sure that anything that needs to be confidential has added access control. Ideally, you would log who accessed these confidential materials.

With a pandemic in progress, it will be challenging for congregations to continue holding worship services. Perhaps it is time to consider some Worship Alternatives.

The obvious alternative to consider is Live Streaming. This is where you hold the worship service with no one in the sanctuary. However, you broadcast the live video over the internet. This allows people to participate from their homes, or for that matter anywhere on a mobile phone. All they need is an Internet connection. While not quite the same as being there in person, it is a valid alternative. You’ll need to provide links to resources such as hymns and liturgy, either through email or chat. The Good News is that you can participate in the worship service through the stream. You can sing the same hymns, listen to the same sermon. The only thing you can’t do is hug or shake hands with other worshipers in the sanctuary (which might spread the virus). I would recommend that you hug your family instead.

Another alternative is to have the preacher record the sermon and distribute it via the Church web site. Likely you already have the sermons online in some form, either as video or audio files. This would just abbreviate the process, maybe recording the sermon in their office instead of the sanctuary. That way, people will be able to listen to the sermon at home via the Church Web Site. All they need is an Internet connection.

Speaking as one who has listened at home during a long illness, I can attest to the importance of providing these alternatives. In my case, the Tech Team recorded the sermon on CD and brought me a copy every week. Although I could not go to Church, I could still worship. If you provide access to the whole service via streaming, then your remote worshipers will also hear the same announcements, see the people, etc. The Church is the body of Christ wherever and however it worships! (1 Cor 12:27)

Does your Church include multiple buildings and/or multiple locations? Then it is an Internet Campus. This means that you have a network that defines all of the buildings. It may be a subnetwork in the cloud, to which all buildings are connected. Or it may be that you link routers together into a local network that covers your campus.

The advantages to an Internet Campus lie in security and efficiency. When staff in one building want to share information with staff in another building, they can do so quickly through the Internet Campus. They can logically see other equipment across the Internet Campus, such as printers and shared file systems. And they thus move information around more efficiently. If you have a school – i.e. even a preschool – then the Internet Campus supports the weekday programs of that school.

How can we use the internet for evangelism? Putting up a Church website is certainly a start, but how do you make the web site an effective witness? You can and should add social networking, where people can both witness and minister to others. Sharing a witness in a very public arena like the internet can be a little daunting. You will want to make sure that you do the following:

• Focus on Jesus Christ, not personal glory
• Limit personally identifiable information, such as addresses and phone numbers
• Identify scripture passages used and which translation – e.g. NIV

By bearing witness to the saving grace of Jesus Christ, you extend the power of evangelism to the web. That doesn’t mean we have to pursue God.tv, but it does mean we use the communication channels available to spread the Gospel.

How do you learn HTML? HTML stands for HyperText Markup Language. It represents the lingua franca of the Internet. Learning it, in all of its variations, is a mind boggling task. But you can get started on it with a simple editor and a browser running locally. You first have to learn the syntax of the language.

There are a number of excellent introductions to HTML. One is found at W3C School – i.e. the standards body for the Internet. W3C stands for the World Wide Web Consortium, and it has a web site at www.w3c.org that contains the standards. Their introduction to HTML can be found at introduction.