Teaching is one of the primary callings of the church. Jesus commissioned us to go and make disciples by teaching. When the early church started to grow the Apostles delegated tasks so they could focus in on prayer and "ministry of the word". As we go through the bible teaching and learning is a constant theme and one that we should continue today. So, let's take a look at how we can effectively teach online, through our local churches, without putting a lot of stress on the local congregation.
Collaboration Is The Key
The key to have effective and high quality teaching covering much of what there is to teach is collaboration. If 100 churches generate the material rather than just the local one the teaching can cover more topics and those writing them can put more time and care into a particular topic.
Due to slight differences in theology this may seem like something far fetched. But, this is where denominations and church planting organizations have an opportunity to shine. If the member churches of a group were to work on something like this it would lighten the load on any one church, increase the quality, and effective bring online teaching to the masses.
This collaboration opportunity doesn't just stop there. A number of denominations have seminaries they have an association with. Some seminaries even feed multiple denominations. Imagine if seminary students and professors were able to be apart of something like this.
What The System Looks Like
I'm imagining a system that collaborates among many churches and does the teaching at the local church level right through the local church website.
Imagine someone who isn't churched going to your local church website and being guided to a section where they can start searching for answers to the questions they have on your site. In this section they can search for and easily find answers to their questions.
Then, imagine members of the congregation going to the church website and learning online. They can search for answers to their questions, take part in online bible studies, and even get the materials they need to lead a group bible study.
The system that manages all of this wouldn't be part of a churches website but integrate with it. This could happen via an API and web pages produced by the system; providing the freedom for churches that can take advantage of the technological mash-ups or for those that aren't as technologically inclined.
This system would, also, deal with quickly responding to people. On the local website someone can ask a question and that can be used to either generate something new for the system and the churches or it can provide an opportunity for someone to personally contact them to bring a personal teaching to them in a personal way.
A Pipe Dream?
If you are wondering if technology ready for this, it is. Everything I've introduced here is already being done in one way or another. If you are wondering if people are ready for this, they are. There are billions of people online. There are millions of people going to college online. School systems are using the internet to compliment and enhance the teaching they are already doing. The only thing new about this concept is bringing it to the church.
In The Meantime
Since this system doesn't exist, yet, and the calling is there for us to use our church websites for teachings we need to act in the meantime. A simple system that provides teaching on a church website, effective searching, and a system to take in questions and respond to people can be easily built with a tool like drupal.
God called us to teach others. It's time we started using the Internet to effectively do that.
just my two cents... it
just my two cents...
it seems to me like the teaching resources would not come first and foremost from the local churches (collaborating), but from a training/publishing resource like for example "stand to reason' (str.org). I actually work for an large global educational publisher and we provide public schools with the resources they need for online teaching/training.
The other side of this, which is the more interesting, is that the recipients (users) of the training should be interactively involved for this to really work (just my opinion). I'm not specifically referring to a a virtual classroom, although that would be good, but the teaching should entail a social networking aspect to it.
paul
Agreed
I completely agree about interactive aspect after a certain point. Initially, for someone just curious, I can see it being more of a Q&A. This would lead into something more than that with users and interactivity.
I can see much of this coming from a organization that does just this. But, many pastors at many local congregations are some great experts. Many have a masters degree that is equivalent to the amount of schooling that many fields have for their PhDs. These are some great experts. They, also, have life experience sharing it with people. I do see them being part of this.
But, I can see a company doing something like this, too. I would make sense. It's a business opportunity. My biggest concern with a company and especially a publishing company is the desire to make money over being accurate. I don't mean to point fingers or blame anyone but many of the teaching resources are just plain inaccurate and misleading. I really learned about this when I studied science textbooks not to long ago. I was reading PhDs pointing out flaws in the resources. I'd really like to see these experts involved in this process so what we have can be as true and accurate as possible.
Anybody doing this?
I'm ready to contribute to coding or whatever. Who's in? Let's get this thing up and moving.
Not Yet
@Josh - I don't know anyone doing this right now. I'd champion this project but I just don't have the time right now. It's sitting on the back burner until I have time or someone decides to pay me to do it. :)
If you want to take this on you are more than welcome to do so.