CyberLent

I have decided to give an on-line Lent course a go and will be facilitating a CyberCell Lent Course using material produced by the ministry team, and more...

• CyberCell is an on-line Cell Group. Cells are ways of "doing Church" in a small group which focus on four key elements: Welcome (getting to know each other), Worship (relating to God together), Word (engaging with the Bible together) and Witness (supporting one another in mission).
• The members of the group all have access to a password protected web site which only they can see. The activity of the group takes place through the web site.
• The group is intended to serve the needs of those who find traditional meetings difficult, e.g. commuters, those who work long or irregular hours or the housebound.
• The group has a facilitator who has the responsibility for coordinating their activity. The facilitator will often be the one who posts discussion starters or questions on the forums - or arranges for other people to do so. The facilitator will also deal with issues concerned with the membership of the group.
• New members need to apply to join and will be welcomed in with the agreement of all members of the existing group. A maximum of twelve members are allowed before the group should consider splitting. If this happens the two new groups will each be assigned a new facilitator.
• Members commit to visit the site at least once a week and contribute to the discussions. There are no "observers". Home group meetings usually last two hours so it would be reasonable to expect CyberCell members to commit to spend two hours thinking, praying and commenting.

I'll be advertising the group over the next couple of weeks. Those who want to take part will need to drop me a line and I'll set them up with a password.

The Return of CyberCell?

A few years ago (when Watling Valley was looking seriously at Cell Church) a few of us began to think about how we would do Cell/Church on-line. We actually got quite a long way into thinking about how this would work. We called the experiment CyberCell - and I bought the name. I also did a bit of web/logo design. CyberCell was ready to go - but my Team Leader responsibilities took over and the project languished...
At the same time the diocese was launching its Cutting Edge ministries - one of which was iChurch. A few of my friends suggested I apply for the iChurch job but it was half-time so I didn't. It has been interesting to watch iChurch evolve from something hugely ambitious into something remarkably similar to our early experiments with CyberCell. It's now a more realistic project - with its own strengths and weaknesses...

Time has now moved on. I've often wonderred whether CyberCell should be relaunched. It would certainly be a valuable fresh expression in a city with global commuters. I'm also interested in the growth of blogs and facebook as tools for church development. Peter Ballantine and Mindy Bell are doing an on-line lent course. The rest of the world seems to be catching up. Maybe this is the time to have another go...

I had a quick look at it this afternoon while I was waiting for the girls to come home. It took me about fifteen minutes to set up a page on Webjam using the rough format we worked out before - isn't web 2.0 woderful! I wonder...

I think I'm going to offer to do a lent course for interested people using the meditations and questions produced by the team. I wonder if anyone would be interested?