As a member of His family, God is deeply concerned that my life produces spiritual fruit (John 15:16). But, how do I walk that out as a Web worker? In the regular, daily routine of carrying out my work online, what does it mean to increase spiritual fruit in a digital world? How do I do that?
How Can Church Web Workers Increase Spiritual Fruit in a Digital World?
Right after I acquired Church Website Ideas more than a year ago, I felt so apprehensive. I couldn’t put my finger on it. As I prayerfully considered God’s purpose for the blog, I just had a sense that writing about design strategy, ideas, and techniques was only a portion of the work I’d been given to accomplish.
Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. John 15:4-5 ESV
For the first time, I had a real sense that there was more to church website design than developing a strategy, choosing colors and fonts, creating intuitive navigation structures, and applying content creation best practices.
Too much emphasis seems to be placed on the pragmatic. Something is missing in the way we generally think about and talk about and go about building and tweaking and maintaining and using our church websites.
That’s why I’m so grateful for the like-minded communicators—gifted brothers and sisters in Christ— who’ve put words to the stirrings in my heart!
As they labor to complete the work God’s given them, their commitment to “hold fast to the faith”, and to teach and encourage others to do the same, is such a blessing to the Church.
Kent Shaffer is one of those dear brothers.
Yesterday afternoon, I had the pleasure of listening to a talk he gave this past June at Biola University. Leading a breakout session in the Theology track at Biola’s 2014 biola.digital conference, Kent explored how we can increase spiritual fruit in a digital world.
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Kent also published notes from his talk on ChurchRelevance.com.