mychurch.org

as a general rule, i'm out on the whole 'myspace for christians' vibe. several sites are attempting to be this, and i'm not a fan. that's for several reasons, not the least of which is that the last thing we need to do as christ-followers is retreat further from culture to continue creating our own christian ghettto.

that said, i'm kinda digging on mychurch.org. it's got a good beat, and you can dance to it.

it looks to be very clean (as an app, not in terms of content; although i'm sure it's clean in that respect as well). it seems to have tools that churches would find helpful (blogs, sermon archives, groups, calendars, etc.).

as i think about it, a couple of things come to mind. 1) it could be a REAL competitor to companies that provide content management software to churches. 2) it could save churches TONS of money in printing and postage if they get widescale buy-in from members to check the site for info.

i'm not sure if their primary goal is to be a connecting/communication tool to existing members, but if that's all they're doing (and it likely is NOT all they're trying to do), then that alone could make them very valuable.

couple of things they'll have to contend with (which i'm guessing they've already thought of):

1) getting a church community to use their site on a broad scale. i'm sure 10% buy-in from a church has real value. 90% has infinitely more. if they can figure out how to motivate church leadership to push a significant amount of their communication through mychurch.org and incent people in the congregation to actually use the site, then they've hit a grand slam.

(maybe branding the site for individual churches? maybe providing rss feeds so that people can get info delivered directly to them? i dunno.)

2) deciding if their growth is going to be driven by church members or by church leadership. this is an interesting question . . . if it's driven by church members, it will be more organic, but will likely have less cohesiveness. if it's driven by church leadership, it will likely be really cohesive (complete information, etc.), but it may have more of an institutional feel.

and maybe it can be a both/and deal, but it seems like growth can be driven either way, with both having plusses and minuses.

at any rate, i was sort of energized to find a social networking-type site that wasn't just trying to be another myspace for christians. this one looks pretty good, and i think it could really have some legs to it. i certainly hope it does.