[CS-FSLUG] wiki for spawning ministry ideas

[Stephen J. McCracken]

Hi, Micah,

It's nice to know you're still in the land of the living.

> I've been thinking a lot lately, having been rather disturbed at
> modern trends in Christianity....

> 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

Personally, I think the first point is a result of the underlying cause.
 I think it may have to do more with the lack of a true discipleship
program for Christians.  This results in a superficial Christianity
that, in turn, doesn't differentiate itself from the world that much.
People don't see anything attractive in a superficial Christianity and
so are leaving.  I guess this is more to say that I think there is more
to lack of knowledge as a reason for what is happening that your second
point implies.

> "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....

This will lock some out.  I would at least put a contact point for an
"application" somewhere more open to draw others in.  I guess this also
implies a mechanism to verify who gets in and who doesn't.  Private
implies closed and one thing you are trying to combat is the un-ability
for some to be involved in the discussion (e.g. "lay people").

If you don't have a good way to verify who people are that are going to
be involved, I doubt the usefulness of a closed board to allow more open
discussion.  If I can't verify with a great amount of certainty the
intentions and such of the people applying to get in on the discussion,
I don't see that I would be sharing more sensitive information than I
would on an almost open board.
> 
> 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.

It depends on how you want to organize it, but Twiki has a limit of two
levels in the tree:  The Web and a Topic.  If you want more levels, you
need to look for other than Twiki.  I did a search once and came up with
a couple of options that allowed more depth than two levels to the tree,
but I can't remember the options right now.

Hope this helps.

sjm