INTERNET MINISTRY & OUTREACH

    The information superhighway
and our approach to religion
are ideally matched.

    The Internet depends almost entirely on words.
And our approach to religion (for better or worse)
depends almost entirely on human intellectual capacities.
Other approach to religious questions depend largely on emotion.
Being present in the religious meeting may be more important
than anything that could later be put into words.

    But the Unitarian Universalist approach to religion does not appeal to everyone.
In fact, it may appeal to so few people in any given location
that it is very difficult to create and sustain a face-to-face congregation.
Now, however, these limitations of time and space
can be transcended by Internet communications.

    Our Unitarian Universalist movement is all about communication.
And now we have some powerful new tools
that can allow us to communicate with literally millions of people
who would never otherwise try our approach to religious questions.

    In contrast to other uses of the Internet,
we are not trying to sell anything.
We are trying to give it away!
Cyber-space is overwhelmingly a place for free expression
—free in the sense of being unlimited by a central authority
and also free in the sense that the readers
usually do not have to pay for what the Internet has to offer.
Therefore, let us see how much free expression we can give away
to the millions of people who chance to come upon us on the Internet.

    Any person sitting at a computer screen
anywhere in the world can read whatever we have to offer
when we post something on a public website.

    The major problem is being found by some of those
millions of people sitting at their keyboards and screens.
People expert in Internet presence and placement
should be able to help us raise our profile on the Internet.

    And then a secondary problem is something to offer
—if people do accidentally discover us.
Here we already do have a wealth of information to offer,
but it has not been well crafted to be easy to read on a screen.
Everyone who reads websites
knows which forms of presentation communicate the best.
So, we can learn from the best websites on the Internet
how to present our ideas so that surfers of the Internet
will stop awhile to read what we have to offer.

    (Something as simple as dividing the lines of the text
into lines that fit easily on a computer screen
can enhance communication.
You may have noticed this
in the the presentation you are now reading.
Every sentence begins at the left margin.
Lines are divided at meaningful places in the sentence,
instead of at some pre-determined mechanical length.)

    This home page for Internet Ministry & Outreach
will attempt to gather links to the diverse means of using the Internet
for ministering to people who already think of themselves as UUs
and for outreach to others
who might like to identify with our movement if they knew about it.
By sharing our successes and failures
—perhaps by means of this Facebook Group: On-Line UU Ministry—
we can improve what we are trying to do on the Internet.

<>    In the 21st century, the Internet can only become larger and larger.
In 2015, the people who have Internet access are 2.5 Billion.
How soon will the majority of the human race be on-line?

A BEGINNING LIST OF EXAMPLES OF UU INTERNET OUTREACH

    Almost every part of the UU movement
that has any Internet presence
is already doing outreach—whether intentionally or not.
What we intend as communication among ourselves
also presents a public image to those who decide to listen in.

    Maybe there are 10 or 20 different ways
to use electronic communications in Internet Ministry and Outreach.
If we can find each other,
our combined efforts may be even more effective
than we have been in isolation.

    This beginning list will briefly describe these efforts—with links—
so that all of us involved in Internet Ministry and Outreach
may be simulated to try similar projects
—and probably create even better ways of using the Internet.

1. Cyber-sermons

    Cyber-sermons are very short (3 pages or less) written discourses
presented on the Internet
and available to be circulated around the world by e-mail.

    Many UU congregations with websites
already post full-length sermons.
Cyber-sermons can easily be created
by shortening and re-formatting such spoken sermons
to make them easier to read on a computer screen.

    The content of the cyber-sermon
will be more important than the author.
If the words on the screen transmit a compelling content
to the mind of the reader, he or she may decide to forward
that cyber-sermon to others on the Internet.
And if the second generation of readers also like it,
they will pass it on to still others,
in ever-widening circles of meaningful communication.

    This concept has been developed for the
First Unitarian Universalist Church of the Internet.
The specifics of this concept of cyber-sermons will be found here:

1. Introducing Cyber-Sermons.

2. Format for Cyber-Sermons.

3. Criteria for Excellence in Cyber-Sermons.

4. Examples of Proposals for Cyber-Sermons.

5. Complete list of Cyber-Sermons by James Park.

    Other examples will be added here
as they are suggested and described.
Some other possibilities that come to mind include:
(1) The Church of the Larger Fellowship
uses the Internet for outreach.
(2) The UU Young Adult Network
creates a content-rich section of its home page.
(3) The UUA creates an outreach feature for its home page.
(4) Individual local congregations use the Internet to attract visitors.

    Please send examples
(with e-mail contacts and links when possible) to:
James Park: e-mail:
PARKx@TC.UMN.EDU
Other examples of Internet Ministry & Outreach
will be included here as soon as they are received.
And they will be grouped according to similarity.

revised June 16, 2002; 10-17-2007; 2-5-2015;

Return to the UNITARIAN UNIVERSALISM page.

Return to the beginning of this home page:
An Existential Philosopher's Museum.