Andrew Jones, aka ‘Tall Skinny Kiwi‘, has been knocking it out of the park in terms of his last four blog posts about the ‘CyberChurch’ or Church Services that are given in a mediated, virtual, and synthetic environments oftentimes in 3D game-based platforms.

The most recent being the State of Faith-Based Online Communities in this virtual world context. His observations are well-worth a read and if you’re not subscribed to his RSS, you probably should be (you do need to update that RSS link of yours Mr. Kiwi).

The ones that really stood out to me were #4-#6:

4. People are people, whether off-line or on-line. Whatever problematic issues a bricks-and-mortar church have will not be immune from their online recapitulations.

5. Because people are people, those who prefer a high-church experience will end up creating high-church liturgical icon-rich services on the web. And those low-church people who have preferred the more organic, house church or 3rd space emerging church environments in the physical realm will most likely end up in non-service based web communities that are just as complex and simplex as their physical rivals.

6. Offline church people connect with each other through internet technology during the week as part of their church life. Online church people connect with each other (although sometimes little or never due to geographical distance) physically when possible to complete their church life experience. Both groups are online and offline. That line will get fuzzier as web technologies become more ubiquitous.

I think there’s a lot to be learned from the virtual-side of things in terms of how we do ministry and “do” church. The brick-and-mortars aren’t the only sources of information; the virtual ones are providing best-practices, innovative solutions, and are, in fact, doing ministry.

Share and share-alike, right?

If Mr. Kiwi’s gotten a hold of you, his previous three posts are just as good:

• Is the Virtual Church a REAL Church?
• CyberChurch Symposium Today in London
• How to Gate-crash a CyberChurch Service – Somewhat amusing here…!

[Image from PinkSherbert]