[CS-FSLUG] wiki for spawning ministry ideas

[Micah Yoder]

Hi all,

I've been thinking a lot lately, having been rather disturbed at
modern trends in Christianity.  Young adults from Christian homes are
leaving the faith in large numbers.  Prominent atheists like Richard
Dawkins are getting a lot of attention and mindshare.  According to
Barna Research, only 9% of self-proclaimed Christians have a truly
Biblical worldview.  None of this should be happening -- after all
Jesus predicted that the Church would overcome the gates of hell, and
that the Kingdom of God would grow like a great tree from a mustard
seed.

In my opinion there are two primary reasons for this problem, with
perhaps many more side-reasons:
* Hypocrisy in the church
* Failure of Christians in knowing the reasons why the faith is
reasonable and understanding the full implications of the worldview in
light of the fact that it is indeed reasonable

There are all kinds of things that can be done to rectify these
problems.  I have some ideas myself, and I bet a lot of other people
do too, or at least could come up with some if encouraged to think
about it.  Our churches tend to come up with "more of the same"
programs which may be good but obviously aren't good enough.
"Lay-people" in the church are rarely asked for ideas, in my
experience.  We just need more, new ways to make Christ shine in our
modern culture as an attractive alternative to secular humanism.

In light of that, one thing I plan to do Very Soon is set up a wiki
for the express purpose of getting Christians together to brainstorm
ministry ideas.  I plan for it to be a private wiki -- i.e. no open
Internet registration, though I would search for Christians to
participate as far and wide as I can.  It would be private as some
potentially sensitive ideas could be discussed.

Would you all be interested in giving some design advice for this?  I
plan to use TWiki, but could possibly be open to other ideas.  Twiki
is organized by "webs" and pages.  I figure the webs could be
organized by "General" which would have intros, general thoughts, and
a collection of links to sermons on revival (and maybe other things).
Then there could be "webs" for broad categories of ministries.

It may be up next week -- I just ordered a new dedicated server
(CentOS 5!) and I just have to move my stuff to it and figure out how
to set up TWiki.

Any thoughts so far?

Thanks & God bless,
Micah