Weblight

Now Facebook, Twitter etc have been around for a while and we are starting to realize how hard it can be to keep that “status update” updated or write a new post in our blog.
The leader of the swedish opposition party (Mona Sahlin) was asked about why she quit using Twitter. She said that her reason was that she wasn’t able to get her message out in just 140 characters.
I think that there are many out there who would agree with that statement and who quit for the same reason, or chose not to start using it in the first place.

The question we’ve got to ask ourselves in my opinion is this; Are we ready to talk or do we just want to be heard?
If we only see the social web as a platform to get our message out to a larger audience we might be missing the point of the whole thing.

We don’t normally like to spend time with people who are constantly talking about what they are doing, what they are thinking etc but who are not the least interested in what you are doing or thinking. Doesn’t matter how interesting they might be but after a while we get bored or we feel unimportant.

Looking at Jesus we see that not even He was just one big loudspeaker but He took the time to talk to people, hear their thoughts and arguments. We can read some of these conversations in the bible, like the conversation with Nicodemus, Peter, Sacceus etc. These conversations mean a lot to us today.

So the questions is this. If Jesus took the time to answer people’s questions, are we too “busy” or “important” to do the same?
Of course you might not have the time to answer every question that people ask you, but you don’t have to.

I have said it before but I say it again. The culture of today is a culture where people want to be able to communicate with you, ask you questions and feel that they are able to come closer to you.

The web is a fantastic place for this to happen!

Some examples of what you can do practically as a start:

If you use Facebook for your ministry (or yourself as a pastor or ministry leader):
When people write on your wall try to answer them.
Write some questions where you invite people to give their opinions.
Read other people’s status updates and write some things on their walls.
Write a small birthday wish to people who celebrate their birthdays.

If you use Twitter for your ministry (or yourself as a pastor or ministry leader):
Reply to people who write to you
Retweet good things other people are saying
Try to answer other people’s questions
Search for what people are writing about you or your organization and get into the conversation

If you  Blog for your ministry (or yourself as a pastor or ministry leader):
Allow people to comment on your blog and answer their comments as much as possible (if they are relevant)
Write new blog posts that take up subjects that people are asking for in the comment section
Read other people’s blogs and comment on them, you can also leave a link to your blog if it’s relevant to the topic.

These are just a few of my thoughts… what are yours?

2009 has been a tumultous year for organizations around the world. Some have flourished, some have struggled and some even had to close their doors.

Looking back at 2009 we see that God has blessed our company with a great year.

We have been blessed to build websites for a couple of very exciting ministries both in Europe and America. I (Tobias Sturesson) have also had the privilege of consulting some major ministries on web strategy issues and meeting men and women around the world who are using their amazing talents to further the Kingdom of God through media.

The more I work with web strategies for churches and ministries I realize that the solution is not just in some technical systems.

Before we can even start thinking about the “tools”, we need to take a few steps back and look at your vision, strategies and goals.

Are they clear?

Do you know who you want to reach?

Do you know what is unique about your ministry and what God has given you that is attractive to people?

Even if your vision and mission is clear you might have to change the presentation to be relevant to the culture today.

The culture today is very conversational and people want to be able to be a part of the conversation, not just hearing your message. You can see that through the massive amounts of blogs and Social Networks that have sprung up the last years.

It’s not just about great content. It’s about creative ideas, great content and an open conversation.

I believe that this is a time of enormous possibilities. And if we can focus on those possibilities and not on the problems, then we can maximize this amazing time that God has allowed us to be a part of!

We want to team up with your ministry to help you become effective in reaching out with your message in an effective way online in 2010. Not just through your website but on blogs, social networks, Youtube etc.

We have attached a simple pdf that might help you in creating your online strategy, it’s our New Year gift to you.

Feel free to contact us for more information on how you can become effective online.

Kingdom Blessings from Tobias Sturesson and the Worldwide Webservices team!

• We have developed a lot of new systems and products to help you get a really interactive website. You can contact us for more information.
• During the year we have made some changes to our team to become more efficient and be able to offer even better products and service. We’re not ready yet but we believe that the outcome will be great.
• We now have an office on Adelgatan 5 in central Malmö, Sweden (2 minutes from the central station).
• We have gotten a lot of positive feedback from clients using our Support & Development system Dev Zone. If you haven’t received access to it yet, please contact us and we will help you out.

“It’s been a great pleasure to work together with Tobias Sturesson and Worldwide Webservices in the development of our new website. It has been an inspiring, motivating and exciting process. Worldwide Webservices offer professional advice, help, design, service and development, a very reliable company. They have set up a very easy system that enables you to continually develop your website. We are very satisfied. KBC warmly recommend Worldwide Webservices and Tobias Sturesson.”

Pastor Jens Garnfeldt, Copenhagen Bible Training Center

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Worldwide Webservices

Adelgatan 5, MalmöUSA: +1 713 893 7878
Europe: +46 (0) 701 900807
tobias@worldwidewebservices.se
support@worldwidewebservices.se
www.worldwidewebservices.se

Read an article in Charisma by Lee Grady named; Where is God going? Seven spiritual trends of the ‘00 decade.
Thought I should share this one point with you.

Read the full article

“2. The digital revolution opened new doors for evangelism. This decade began with fears that a Y2K virus would shut down all computers. The opposite happened. Technology exploded. “Google” became a verb, more than 200 million people joined Facebook, and analog TV faded into history along with phone books, answering machines, road maps, cassette tapes, floppy disks and rolodexes—unless you purchased those items on eBay for sentimental reasons.

Traditionalists complained about all the new terms technology added to our lexicon: TiVo, Twitter, Skype, iPod, iTunes, YouTube, Hulu, Kindle, webcams. But the shift to digital media happened faster than the speed of a wireless signal. It will forever change the way we live, work and play. Rather than fighting change, we’d best find God in the swift current and discover how He wants us to use new media. The possibility of reaching every person on this planet with the gospel has never been this huge.”

Bless,
Tobias Sturesson
Worldwide Webservices

We can have the greatest content but if we are not able to become a part of the conversation online we will not really ever become effective because people will have a hard time finding us in the first place.

I think the easiest way to become a part of the online conversation is to first establish who you are and what is unique with your church or ministry.

To give an example. I was sitting down with a pastor and his media director in Florida a few weeks ago. They were in the process of creating a new website with a nice modern look etc.

I asked them the question; what is the strength of your ministry, what is in your DNA? After some discussion they realized that one thing that is in their DNA is that they have a lot of manifestations of healing in their church. After some further discussions we came up with the idea of creating an online emergency room and I told them about how they could tap into the conversation going on online about sicknesses. There are lots of forums discussing sicknesses and health issues, that would be a great place for them to advertize their online emergency room and become a part of the conversation. I also adviced them to create video clips with testimonies of people who have been healed, name and tag them with the words of the sickness that they had been healed from  and put them on Youtube. So when people would search to find information about cancer on Youtube they would be able to find testimonies of people who were healed and directions to a website where they can receive prayer.

A few months ago I was consulting the pastor and the media team for of the largest churches Europe. One of the things I adviced them to do was to create weekly video clips where the pastor would be interviewed about some current events… say the bird flu, financial crisis etc. Because of his position and the respect people have for him in the global community, people are very interested to know what his thoughts are on these kind of topics and that would be a great way to tap into the online conversation.

It doesn’t at all have to be complicated, it can actually be really simple. But to be able to be really effective online you cannot be limited to your own website but you need to become a part of the different forums where the people might be that you want to reach. And don’t be so churchy… people might not be searching for healing or church or teaching. Most people don’t even know what they really want until somebody presents it to them.

The christian post had a very interesting article with Ph.D Peter Fischer-Nielsen.
Scholar: Churches Can Use Internet to Reach Non-Seekers

Here’s a quote from the article:
“[T]he church must not isolate itself on its own Web sites; instead, it must take part in the fluent online traffic and develop initiatives on various platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, and Wikipedia,” says Fischer-Nielsen in an article entitled, “Online Mission,” in the latest issue of Lausanne World Pulse.

What are your thoughts?

PS! Do you need help to find a strategy for your web in your church or ministry? Contact me at +46 701 900807 or tobias@worldwidewebservices.se. Worldwide Webservices is a full service web company, both offering help with web strategies and web development.

Bless,
Tobias Sturesson

The web as an organism is growing at an incredible rate.
Today many of us cannot imagine ourselves living without the web. Whenever we have a question, we Google it or check it up at Wikipedia. Through all the Social Networks like Facebook, Twitter etc we provide lots of information about ourselves on a daily basis. This thing called the web will soon know more about us than even our closest friends do. It knows what we are interested in, when we are interested in it etc.

I read these statistics on social networks in the Econsultancy.com blog:

YouTube

• If YouTube were a country, it would be the third most-populated place in the world.
• 20 hours-worth of video is uploaded to the site every single minute.
• comScore recently announced that the site had surpassed 100m viewers in the USA alone. They also reported that this US audience consumed over 6bn videos at the beginning of this year.
• According to Youtube themselves, over half of users visit the site at least once a week

Facebook

According to Facebook’s internal statistics:

• The site has more than 250m active users globally
• More than 120m users log on to Facebook at least once each day and more than 30 million users update their statuses at least once each day. Combined, more than 5bn minutes are spent on the site on a daily basis.
• The average user has around 120 friends on the site.
• Every single month, more than a billion photos are uploaded to the site.
• More than 50 translations are available on the site, with more than 40 in development.
• Mobile is a big issue, with more than 30m active users accessing the site through mobile devices. It’s well documented that users who access Facebook through mobile devices are almost 50% more active than those who don’t.

What is this telling us? That in the few years of it’s existence, the Worldwide Web has been changing the lives of a large percentage of the world’s population and there’s no indication that the growth will stop.

The bible tells us in Genesis 1 that we are created to rule and have dominion over the earth and everything created.

I meet lots of christians who try to stay ignorant concerning the web. I believe it’s time for all of us to realize that the web is “not going to go away” and that the best thing we can do is to use it as a tool to influence this culture with the values of the Kingdom of God.

We have an unprecedent chance to reach out to an incredible audience without having to spend millions of dollars, but we need good ideas or even God ideas to make it possible.

As I write this, a simple video on Youtube showing a very creative “wedding dance” has been viewed 20.000.000 times on Youtube!
How many pastors would give anything to get 5 minutes of 20 million people’s attention?

I think we are too scared to do things in a new way. We are so locked into the old ways of doing things, we think that if we like them, then everybody else will. But  in this time we really need to release our creativity to become effective online.

Yesterday evening I was sitting with a group of people who have seen their lives totally transformed from darkness to light through the power of Jesus. They were drug addicts and alcohol addicts with totally broken lives and now they have been restored. It’s wonderful to hear, but I was sitting there thinking that the world really needs to hear these testimonies!

So my challenge is this. How are you as a church, ministry or a person using your God given creativity to reach out with the good news online? Broadcasting your Sunday service can of course be a great thing, but for many people it’s still irrelevant.

One of the things that has proven to be very effective on the web is comedy video clips, but how many christians are creating really good comedy videos?

We need to do things in a new way, with a new passion and new tools to present the glorious Kingdom that Jesus came 2000 years ago to bring!
Bless,
Tobias Sturesson
Worldwide Webservices

One important thing to  think about is that the main goal of your media ministry is not getting people to visit your website. The main goal is to help them get hold of your content, your message.

For example. I have the bible in many different versions. I have it in book form, I have it in digital form on my PDA and my laptop and I can even access it online. It’s not really relevant WHERE I read the bible, the only relevant thing is THAT I read it.

Think about your content for a while, whether it’s blog posts, audio sermons, video clips, music or whatever it is. If you want as many people as possible to get hold of it you need to start with your own website, but not stop there!

In my church we have created a couple of video clips with reportages from trips etc. We put them out both on our website and on Youtube. They have now been viewed by 110.000 people, I think around 65% have watched them on Youtube and 35% on our website.

The truth is that many people use Youtube as a search engine, so if you’re not on Youtube you don’t exist in their world. Other people use Facebook as their main source of information, other again use Twitter and so on.

The great thing is that you don’t have to create totally different content for different platforms. You can for example create a Fan page on Facebook and automatically import your ministry blog posts and latest news  from your website through RSS feeds. In the video system on the websites my company, Worldwide Webservices, create you can upload a video to Youtube or Vimeo (or another service) and then just import it into the video system on your website and automatically get the title, description and key words etc. My goal as a leader of a company that builds web solutions for churches and ministries is that the organizations we work with should become effective online, not only through their own website but through using the fantastic free services that enables them to reach so much further like Facebook, Twitter, Youtube etc.

Another great thing with putting your content on many different platforms is that it improves your relevance in the Search Engines (if you do it right).

Smashing Magazine recently published an article that gave some great tips on what you can do to put your content in front of more people. I quote a few point here but you can go to their blog to read the whole article (and I really recommend you to take time and read it!).

2. Going Mobile

It won’t be long before the Web is accessed by more mobile users than PC users. In many countries, this has already happened. Traditional websites often render poorly or are hard to use on mobile devices. They do not take into account the context in which a mobile user browses the Web. Approaching the mobile Web as a separate channel to your traditional website, then, is critical.

Here are some methods of delivering content on the mobile Web:

• Create a mobile website.
  Mobile websites take into account small screens, different input devices and the numerous other unique characteristics of the mobile Web.
• Use text messaging.
  Text messaging is ideal for notifications and updates. It is a perfect complement to your website and a way of keeping users informed.
• Build mobile applications.
  Mobile platforms such as the iPhone and Android make it increasingly easy to build applications that run directly on mobile devices. They allow you to make your content available even when the user is not connected to the Internet or away from their PC.

Pushing your content to mobile devices is ideal if your target audience is often away from the computer or requires access to your content “in the field.”

3. Start Tweeting

Twitter has so much hype at the moment. However, it does provide a unique opportunity to reach a larger audience with your message. The question is, how best to use it? Some organizations use Twitter as a broadcast tool, turning it fundamentally into an alternative to RSS. An example of this is BBC News or CNN, which provide latest updates via the service.

However, using Twitter as a broadcast tool misses its true power. Organizations that really “get” Twitter include Zappos and Omnifocus. They use Twitter as a way to engage with their followers and even provide customer support.

Use Twitter as a way to engage with your audience. If a number of people work on your website, encourage them all to tweet, rather than having a single branded account.

4. Write For Others

Writing for other websites is an excellent opportunity to demonstrate your expertise and spread your message to a larger audience than would otherwise be possible through your own website.

Do not limit your words of wisdom to your own website. Look for other editorial websites and blogs that speak to your own audience and offer to write for them. After all, your audience visits many websites other than your own. Why limit your writing skills to your own blog when you can reach new audiences by writing for others?

Of course, any article you write for others should be more than shameless self-promotion. The owners of those websites will want quality content that fits their website and is of interest to their audience. For example, I recently wrote an article for a website whose audience consisted of franchise owners. If I had simply written about how great Headscape was, I doubt the article would have been published. Instead, I shared a case study of our experience in working with a franchise-based business. The content was both relevant to the publication and useful to its audience. However, it also raised our profile among a base of potentially new customers.

What websites exist that reach your target market? Would they consider publishing some of your content? How could you rewrite your content to make it more appealing to them?

5. Embrace Facebook

Another option for expanding your Web strategy beyond the website is Facebook. Explaining the importance and reach of Facebook is surely unnecessary. However, you may be tempted to dismiss it because your target market is not teenagers, who are normally associated with these kinds of social networks.

What may surprise you is that Facebook is no longer confined to a younger demographic. Over the last year, the number of users between 35 and 54 has jumped 276%, to over 6 million people.

So, how do you reach your audience on Facebook? Here are three good starting points:

• Create a group.
  Groups have been around for a long time and are ideal for building a dialogue with those already interested in your product or service. You can easily invite people to participate, and those people in turn can invite others. This makes groups ideally suited to viral marketing.
• Create a fan page.
  Fan pages are basically public profiles for organizations rather than individuals. Unlike groups, pages are public-facing. This means they can be seen by non-Facebook users and are indexed by search engines. Fan pages are perfect for building long-term awareness and for reaching people both inside and outside of Facebook.
• Create an application.
  Facebook allows third parties to build applications that can be added to user profiles. These range from games to RSS feeds. Unlike with pages and groups, building applications requires some technical skill. However, the possibility of users embedding your content in their profiles makes this an attractive proposition, if you have appropriate content.

Of course, Facebook is not the only social network. But it does have considerable reach and provides some the best tools for reaching its massive audience.

7. Offer Better Feeds

Not all approaches to putting content in front of more users have to be as time-consuming and complex as developing an API. Doing one other thing could increase your views within minutes.

Users increasingly rely on RSS feeds to consume content from websites. This is especially true for news, articles and blog posts. However, some website owners are so obsessed with driving traffic to their websites that they provide only teasers of their posts via RSS. To read a whole article, the user is forced to click through to the website.

This approach to RSS is counter-productive. When a user is browsing a large number of feeds, they are less likely to read your content if they have to leave their news reader to do it.

To maximize users’ exposure to your content, ensure as much of it as possible is displayed in the RSS feed itself. Require users to click through only when absolutely necessary.

It is also important to note that when users read content from an RSS feed, they do not have the context of your website. Ensuring, then, that your content stands on its own and that your copy incorporates calls to action is necessary.

8. Use Multimedia

Of course, limiting your content to the written word is becoming increasingly unnecessary. Creating audio and video content has become a trivial task. Services such as YouTube and applications such as AudioBoo make production and hosting easy.

Also, pioneers like Diggnation and Wine Library TV have shown that users care more about quality content than high production values. Both shows essentially have presenters speaking to a single locked-off camera. This kind of production value can be achieved with a consumer camera and basic editing software.

That said, creating popular content is harder than it appears at first. Many organizations believe that simply uploading their latest product demonstrations to YouTube will generate millions of views. That is simply not the case.

Good rich media content has to be engaging if people are expected to watch it and, more importantly, recommend it to their friends. This can be done through a passionate host, great content, humor or shock value. With thousands of videos uploaded everyday, standing out from the crowd is important.

However, don’t forget that your content has to be appropriate to your target audience. Shock tactics may work well with a teenage audience but may not go down so well with middle-aged business executives!

9. Start Streaming

The next wave of multimedia on the Web will be not pre-recorded material but rather live streaming. Services such as Ustream, Qik and Justin TV are all fighting to dominate this space. Each offers the opportunity to stream live content on the Web at zero cost. This makes the barrier to entry extremely low.

The main benefit of this approach over pre-recorded material is interactivity. The live format allows viewers to engage with the presenter in real time via chat. This brings a host of opportunities, including, but not limited to, the following:

• Live product demonstrations
  Live streaming allows you present your products and services while taking questions from the audience. This is considerably more powerful that showing pre-recorded promotional videos.
• Community sessions
  If you run an online community, live streaming gives you the chance to engage with that community on a much more personal level than with the written word. Social news website Digg has run a number of “Town Hall” meetings in which its user base engages directly with the CEO and founder.
• Online training
  Finally, live streaming is a perfect environment in which to provide remote training. Whether the training is on using your product or selling online workshops, live streaming allows users to both hear and see what you are doing.

Live streaming is still relatively immature, and few are taking advantage of this new opportunity. Your company has a real opportunity to differentiate itself through its use.

10. Don’t Forget Email

Amidst all this talk of video, audio and APIs, it is easy to forget the tools we have always had for reaching beyond the confines of our website. Although not the sexiest tool on our list, email had to make it on before the end of this post. Email should be a key tool for keeping your content in front of users. Obviously, email can be used for a lot more than syndicating content. However, for the purposes of this article, it can be used to subscribe to your content. If users can subscribe to your content via RSS, they should be able to do it also via email.

ProBlogger allows its readers to subscribe to his RSS-feed via e-mail.

Fortunately, there are services such as AWeber and MailChimp that make this easy. FeedBurner is an option, too; however, it lacks subject line customization and has very limited design customizations available. You can find more information about why FeedBurner isn’t good enough in the article FeedBurner’s Free RSS-to-Email Syndication: Why You Can’t Afford It. With one of these services implemented, users can subscribe via email with a single click of a link on your website.

A word of warning, though. If a user subscribes to your content via email, they are not giving you permission to spam them indiscriminately. If you fail to respect their email subscription, you are in danger of losing that user and inciting them to post negative comments on your website, which could put off others.

Bless,
Tobias Sturesson
Worldwide Webservices

I wrote an article a while ago for the blog “Church Marketing Sucks” (a great blog that deals with church marketing).
I wanted to publish the text here as well.

The Power of a Testimony

(Filed under: The Christian Walk)

by Tobias Sturesson, Guest Blogger

“And they have overcome (conquered) him by means of the blood of the Lamb and by the utterance of their testimony…” (Revelation 12:1, Amplified Bible)

In the marketing world, there is a great understanding of the power of a testimony. It doesn’t matter what you claim about your product, but it does matter that some of the people who have used your product share their experience.

I am involved in the marketing strategy group of a large Christian conference center in Sweden, and we encourage all of our guests to comment on their visit. Then, we ask for permission to use that in our printed material or on our web site, and it has proven to be incredibly effective for us.

In this article in the Wall Street Journal author Gary Hamel brings up some points that I think are crucial for us to understand as people who want to influence the web sphere with the Kingdom of God.

Here are his twelve points:

1. All ideas compete on an equal footing.
On the Web, every idea has the chance to gain a following—or not, and no one has the power to kill off a subversive idea or squelch an embarrassing debate. Ideas gain traction based on their perceived merits, rather than on the political power of their sponsors.

2. Contribution counts for more than credentials.
When you post a video to YouTube, no one asks you if you went to film school. When you write a blog, no one cares whether you have a journalism degree. Position, title, and academic degrees—none of the usual status differentiators carry much weight online. On the Web, what counts is not your resume, but what you can contribute.

3. Hierarchies are natural, not prescribed.
In any Web forum there are some individuals who command more respect and attention than others—and have more influence as a consequence. Critically, though, these individuals haven’t been appointed by some superior authority. Instead, their clout reflects the freely given approbation of their peers. On the Web, authority trickles up, not down.

4. Leaders serve rather than preside.
On the Web, every leader is a servant leader; no one has the power to command or sanction. Credible arguments, demonstrated expertise and selfless behavior are the only levers for getting things done through other people. Forget this online, and your followers will soon abandon you.

5. Tasks are chosen, not assigned.
The Web is an opt-in economy. Whether contributing to a blog, working on an open source project, or sharing advice in a forum, people choose to work on the things that interest them. Everyone is an independent contractor, and everyone scratches their own itch.

6. Groups are self-defining and -organizing.
On the Web, you get to choose your compatriots. In any online community, you have the freedom to link up with some individuals and ignore the rest, to share deeply with some folks and not at all with others. Just as no one can assign you a boring task, no can force you to work with dim-witted colleagues.

7. Resources get attracted, not allocated.
In large organizations, resources get allocated top-down, in a politicized, Soviet-style budget wrangle. On the Web, human effort flows towards ideas and projects that are attractive (and fun), and away from those that aren’t. In this sense, the Web is a market economy where millions of individuals get to decide, moment by moment, how to spend the precious currency of their time and attention.

8. Power comes from sharing information, not hoarding it.
The Web is also a gift economy. To gain influence and status, you have to give away your expertise and content. And you must do it quickly; if you don’t, someone else will beat you to the punch—and garner the credit that might have been yours. Online, there are a lot of incentives to share, and few incentives to hoard.

9. Opinions compound and decisions are peer-reviewed.
On the Internet, truly smart ideas rapidly gain a following no matter how disruptive they may be. The Web is a near-perfect medium for aggregating the wisdom of the crowd—whether in formally organized opinion markets or in casual discussion groups. And once aggregated, the voice of the masses can be used as a battering ram to challenge the entrenched interests of institutions in the offline world.

10. Users can veto most policy decisions.
As many Internet moguls have learned to their sorrow, online users are opinionated and vociferous—and will quickly attack any decision or policy change that seems contrary to the community’s interests. The only way to keep users loyal is to give them a substantial say in key decisions. You may have built the community, but the users really own it.

11. Intrinsic rewards matter most.
The web is a testament to the power of intrinsic rewards. Think of all the articles contributed to Wikipedia, all the open source software created, all the advice freely given—add up the hours of volunteer time and it’s obvious that human beings will give generously of themselves when they’re given the chance to contribute to something they actually care about. Money’s great, but so is recognition and the joy of accomplishment.

12. Hackers are heroes.
Large organizations tend to make life uncomfortable for activists and rabble-rousers—however constructive they may be. In contrast, online communities frequently embrace those with strong anti-authoritarian views. On the Web, muckraking malcontents are frequently celebrated as champions of the Internet’s democratic values—particularly if they’ve managed to hack a piece of code that has been interfering with what others regard as their inalienable digital rights.

Bless,
Tobias Sturesson
Worldwide Webservices

One of the author’s that I really appreciate is Frank Viola, author of books like Pagan Christianity, Reimagining church etc. These books give us a great insight into the early church and how many of the things we are doing today and the traditions we follow might not really come from the source we thought they came from (that is the teachings of Jesus and the practice of the early church).

Frank’s latest book is called From Eternity to here and it talks about “the timeless purpose of our God and His plan and mission for the church”. I would really recommend this book to anyone!

This is what Dr Myles Munroe says about Frank’s new book (Dr Myles books and messages have been a great blessing in my life with his incredible revelation of the Kingdom of God):

“From Eternity to Here is a masterpiece. A must read for those who believe and for others who want to believe. It reads like a movie on paper.”
~Dr. Myles Munroe, pastor and author of Rediscovering the Kingdom and God’s Big Idea

I asked Frank Viola a question about his latest book:

Me: First I really want to thank you for answering a lot of questions and shedding light on many things. I really loved the way you described the Kingdom of God in relation to the church and for a couple of days my mind has been pondering the realization that when we are able to create a really Godly community as a church, that is one of the most powerful ways to show His glorious Kingdom on earth! You’re talking about unity being that everyone gather under the Lordship of Jesus Christ. I totally agree with this point but around the world I see how many church leaders are moving toward a more institutionalized kind of unity.
Could you tell me a little bit more about how you see that the biblical unity looks like and how you think that the vision Jesus had that his church would be one will come to pass?

Frank: A very difficult question to answer. I address it in a whole chapter in my book REIMAGINING CHURCH. But the bottom line is that Christian unity is neither organization, institutional, or doctrinal, but it’s based in life. The life of Christ. If Christians would be seek to know Christ and live by Him, unity is a natural outgrowth. From Eternity to Here deals with how God sees the church, how He sees us who are membered to it. If we could get behind His eyes, it would change the way we view and treat other believers. That’s what a revelation of God’s eternal purpose does among many other things.

OTHER BLOGS PARTICIPATING IN THE “FROM ETERNITY TO HERE” BLOG CIRCUIT
Today (June 9th), the following blogs are discussing Frank Viola’s new bestselling book “From Eternity to Here” (David C. Cook, 2009). The book just hit the May CBA Bestseller List. Some are posting Q & A with Frank; others are posting full reviews of the book. To read more reviews and order a copy at a 33% discount, go to Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/Eternity-Here-Rediscovering-Ageless-Purpose/dp/1434768708/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1233609867&sr=1-4

For more resources, such as downloadable audios, the free Discussion Guide, the Facebook Group page, etc. go to the official website: http://www.FromEternitytoHere.org
Enjoy the reviews and the Q and A:
—–

Out of Ur
Shapevine (June newsletter)
Brian Eberly
DashHouse.com
Greg Boyd
Vision Advance
David Flowers
kingdom grace
Captain’s Blog
Christine Sine
Darin Hufford – The Free Believers Network
Zoecarnate
Church Planting Novice
Staying Focused
Take Your Vitamin Z
Jeff Goins
Bunny Trails
Matt Cleaver
Jason T. Berggren
Simple Church
Emerging from Montana
Parable Life
Oikos Australia
West Coast Witness
Keith Giles
Consuming Worship
Tasha Via
Andrew Courtright
ShowMeTheMooneys!
Leaving Salem, Blog of Ronnie McBrayer
Jason Coker
From Knowledge to Wisdom
Home Brewed Christianity
Dispossessed
Dandelion Seeds
David Brodsky’s Blog- “Flip the tape Deck”
Chaordic Journey
Renee Martin
Bob Kuhn
Living with Freaks
Real Worship
Fervent Worship
Julie Ferwerda
What’s With Christina?!
On Now to the Third Level
Irreligious Canuck
This day on the journey
Live and Move: Thoughts on Authentic Christianity
Spiritual Journey With God
echurch
The Jesus Feed
Book Disciple
My Journey – With Others
On Now to the Third Level
Christine Moers
Breaking Point
Hand to the Plough
Jon Reid
Weblight
D.L. Webster
Searching for the Whole-Hearted Life

Bless,
Tobias Sturesson
Worldwide Webservices

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Bless,
Tobias Sturesson
Worldwide Webservices