Mark Brown is Chief Executive Officer of the Bible Society in New Zealand and an Anglican Priest. In January 2007 he planted an Anglican Church in the virtual world of Second Life which now offers several services a week and has grown to more than 500 members.
You have to ask: why would people want to attend a church service in a virtual world? Mark's response is: The rallying cry of the Digital Revolution is:
Just for me, wherever I am, however I want it, whenever I want it.
This revolution has come about through the extraordinary growth of the internet. In just a short period of time the internet has grown to around 23.01 billion pages with some 1.3 billion people using it. It's predicted that in 2008 more information will be created on the Web than in all previous years combined. The computer is no longer a specialist tool but is now very much a part of our every day environment.
Jonathan Carson, International President for the research company Nielsen Online, notes, ‘The Internet is no longer a niche technology - it is mass media and an utterly integral part of modern life. Almost no aspect of life remains untouched by online media.'
Internet based applications now play a part in major advances in science, business, environmental care, transport logistics, government and education to name a few.
You can read a (long) post on the topic by Mark here. While this particular post focuses on the Anglican Church, everything that is said is relevant to other denominations as well.
Mark's personal blog is called: brownblog.
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