The Pope and The Internet!
I found a very inspiring video interview of Sister Judith, Director of the Vatican Internet system. She discusses the future and ways the Vatican is doing online ministry or evangelism. She mentions she has a team of 17 web developers that work on the Vatican website that currently receives around 15 million hits a day. This interview is a must see for all leaders in Christian denominations. Link Oh, by the way, she said they just started using Macs internally!! Wonder what that means? 
Assess Yourself!
I have a fairly new service for you to try! I’m sure most have taken a personality test in their lifetime, and found out some interesting things. Have you ever taken an assessment that tracks your personality to how well, who and at what method you work best in ministry? AssessME has done just that, plus strung some social networking into the mix. I found the assessments very helpful in providing feedback for my own ministry and how I might work best with others. The ePersonality test I was ranked as a "Guide" as they call it and the leadership assessment, I was a "Pioneer". I tell you this, so that you can compare your personality with mine and maybe create a dialogue of conversation or connection. AssessME also has the ability to find and link other skills and personality’s together in ministry. I recommend you setup your own free trial account, which gives all you need to identify yourself and share it to your cohorts. I think AssessME is a great way for Pastors and members to join together and develop natural roles within the church.
I also recommend E-Church Essentials and Online Discipleship two other connected and related programs that can enhance your ministry. I hope to review these more in detail at a later date.
Quiz: Your Current Belief System?
Take the Belief-O-Matic quiz, see where your religious roots and current beliefs match to the many different religions. I don’t think it’s totally accurate, my results were skewed a little!
Biblical Visualizations
Speaking of visualizations, I came across an interactive diagram of what a social network of biblical names would like. It shows the deeper relationships and tries to standardize the interconnections within the context of New Testament names. This process is called and derived from the Semantic Knowledge Base. You will also notice that there is a tree representation of the same data, all this made possible by another visual service called "many eyes" of IBM.
Self-Optimization
We are a visual society that has many distractions that can take us away from the important things life. I found a great site that gathers hard to find data for study, which also can be used for contributions or self reflection. One such example is a lady named Nicole and her blog "The Petri Dish", she uses the Swival technology and graph’s life’s changes and actions. This way one can self optimize one’s life and see where one’s life is leading/leaning toward. There is a spiritual connection to this, one that can be seen visually if one is truly honest with oneself. I have an idea for one: Why doesn’t one try and graph their time spent with the Lord or in Bible study compared to the everyday activities over time.
Open Source Religion
Recently there has been an increase in Open Source Religions. An alternative belief system that is quite different than traditional religions. In a sense it’s the religion of technology. Everything can be accomplished through community, dialogue, refinement, organization, and "software". Of course this is my outside opinion, but their seems to be a focus on faith that can only be proven or is reality based. There is one such example in a story about a Jew that wanted to take a open source approach to the study of the Bible. He brought out a good point that most haven’t really read the Bible very much. It’s the Laodicean or lazy attitude of our generation that brings ignorance to the table. So he decided to do something about it and see if there would be an interest in someone that doesn’t know anything about the Bible, read the bible and then Blog their impressions and understanding. So that’s what he did and it has become a huge hit, so much that he can’t even keep up with all the e-mails coming in. He call’s it Blogging the Bible project. If he can do it, and then so can you.
Here is another site that appeals to the Open Source lifestyle to the study of the Bible: Skeptics Annotated Bible
This reminds me of Bibleinfo.com in format only.
