Virtual Church

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

The Garden is a satellite ministry of St. Luke’s United Methodist Church with two physical locations at Beef & Boards Dinner Theatre and Oak Hill Mansion. Since The Garden’s founding in 1995, its mission has been to engage all in the quest to know and share the unconditional love of God. Both St. Luke’s and The Garden are particularly attentive and welcoming to those in various stages and paths of their spiritual journeys. As we move forward in the 21st century and continue to expand the boundaries of what it means to be church, we feel that more than ever, that we need to find new, creative ways to live into our vision that people experience God wherever they are. 

Consequently, through the “building” of a virtual church, The Garden is embarking on a different way of connecting people to God wherever they are. Traditionally, churches have expected people to come where the church is, that is to say, in order to experience God in the context of church, one must come to the church. However, with the monumental shift in societal modes of communication, digital communication through the internet has emerged as a viable means for substantive communication and community building. Existing social networking platforms like MySpace and Facebook have millions of subscribers who share personal details of their life with one another on-line. These virtual communities are thriving and continue to expand. In a strategic visioning workshop in 2000, The Garden began imagining how to share its Sunday morning experience on the Internet. With this original vision at the core, The Garden is uniquely positioned to utilize the most current online and virtual tools to creatively connect people to God wherever they are. The time is now right to act on that plan. Through the creation of our own social network, The Garden will create a virtual church presence that, again, can truly live into our vision that people experience God wherever they are—quite literally. The foundation for the virtual church will be a social network platform much like Facebook. A key feature of the social network platform will be The Garden’s On-going Spiritual Statement Workshop created by lay leaders and clergy. The workshop is an exercise/mini-course which guides people in writing their own spiritual statements.  To date approximately 100 participants have been through this exercise. The workshop format explores faith statements from different religions around the world and their respective views on issues of the nature of God, guidelines for living, and the expected outcome of living out those guidelines.   The Garden believes that this exercise helps people identify, clarify, and thereby be able to live by the set of values and beliefs that are most meaningful to them, not what an organized religion or even a valued teacher has told them is “their” Truth.  We believe this exercise can become part of the content that moves forward our desired attempt to build a virtual church on the Internet.  These grant monies will allow The Garden to design the interactive and archive functions needed to allow people to experience this exercise on-line. It will also tie in with our second development application that will encourage participants to discuss their spiritual statements on-line and use this interaction to further build actual and virtual Garden community.