TruthBook Religious News Blog

Posted on Sat, Aug. 04, 2007

By MELISSA VARGAS
Star-Telegram staff writer

Large and small congregations in Fort Worth, Arlington and Northeast Tarrant County are beginning to join social networking sites to help bridge the Sunday-to-Sunday gap for members. Even more are creating their own Web pages in an attempt to appeal to a younger audience and make themselves more accessible.

Fellowship Web-site users can submit prayer requests, get more information on the church and watch excerpts of sermons and video blogs by the Rev. Ed Young. Some are linked through his Web page, Edyoung.com, or trimmed to present on YouTube. One YouTube sermonette had been viewed 6,282 times in just five weeks.

Sites like Mychurch.org, modeled after Facebook and MySpace, are slowly popping up to cater to younger, more computer-savvy users who spend time on the Internet to communicate with friends.

Online in numbers

More than 141 million Americans use the Internet, according to a 2006 survey by Pew Internet. Of those, 30 percent were using the Internet for religious or spiritual information.

The study found "that the Internet has become a vital force in many faith communities," the report states.

Religion researcher George Barna found that people are warming up to the idea of "cyberfaith." Currently, the most popular spiritual-related activities online are listening to archived religious teachings, reading "devotionals" and buying religious products and resources, according to a Barna nationwide survey in 2000 of 1,017 adults, 605 teenagers and 604 Protestant pastors.

Churches are vigorously adapting to the trend, and many local congregations such as St. Michael's Catholic Church in Bedford and Wedgwood Baptist Church in Fort Worth maintain Web pages and offer podcasts and e-mail contact with clergy.

Some religious leaders believe an online presence could replace the church experience for many congregants.

"By the end of the decade, we will have in excess of 10 percent of our population who rely upon the Internet for their entire spiritual experience," Barna wrote in his research. "Some of them will be individuals who have not had a connection with a faith community, but millions of others will be people who drop out of the physical church in favor of the cyberchurch."

Mychurch.org

The idea for Mychurch.org was sparked one Sunday morning when Suh and his wife were sitting in church and realized they didn't know any other parishioners.

Launched in September, the social networking site is viewed 3 million times a month, with 200,000 unique visitors, Suh said. Mychurch.org hosts 6,921 churches and 35,798 members worldwide. In Texas, 538 churches are registered, including a handful in the Dallas/Fort-Worth area.

Parishioners can search for their church by name or ZIP code and can connect with the pages of up to three churches. Once at the site, they can collect friends, share pictures and write blogs. Churches can even upload audio sermons, so people who couldn't make it to a service can listen to it.

As with other social-networking sites, Mychurch.org allows parishioners and church representatives to create their own personal profile on the site.

Cyberfaith

On mychurch.org, you can do the following:

Create a site for your church

Join a church's site

Communicate with your friends

Post and read others' blogs

Share your pictures

Coordinate church events

msanchez@star-telegram.com

Labels: Barna Group, church, information, Internet, Melissa Vargas, Pew survey