[CS-FSLUG] wiki for spawning ministry ideas

[Micah Yoder]

On Dec 19, 2007 10:55 AM, Stephen J. McCracken <smccracken at hcjb.org.ec> wrote:
> Hi, Micah,
>
> It's nice to know you're still in the land of the living.

Hi, good to hear from you!

> 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.

I'd agree to that.  It's kind of intertwined with my points but you
brought out another aspect -- solid discipleship.

One ministry that I do believe has a lot of potential here is Focus on
the Family's new "The Truth Project".  See http://thetruthproject.org
It is a 12 (or 13 depending on how you count) week small group video
teaching series that really hits the nail on the head.  It aims to
show that "there is no direction one can look where God has not
spoken," looking at truth, good vs. evil, science, history, social
order, government, etc.  I'm in a small group now and hope to lead one
next year.  It is based on a multiplication scheme, where one needs to
be in a group before you can order the DVD set to lead it.

> 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").

Yes, that will be an interesting problem.  Ideally, churches would
like the idea and bring up the opportunity with their members, and we
verify through them.  Of course, that involves reaching out to
churches and overcoming the Not Invented Here syndrome.  Any ideas on
that?  Alternatively there could be an open application where one
could write their church, a pastoral contact, and why they want to be
involved in this.  Problem there is there's a potential for fake
answers and I don't really want to be in the business of calling
pastors to check identity.

> 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.

Right.

> 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.

Seems to me like two levels would be enough.