It's Church, Jim, but not as we know it.

Some stats from Mark Brown's paper, The Bible in the Digital Space:

In just a short period of time the net has grown to around 35 billion pages with some 1.6 billion people using it.
There are around 55 trillion links between all the web pages in the world.
Every day there are some 100 billion mouse clicks made.
Every second, 2 million emails are sent.
Every two seconds in terms of data size, the equivalent of the Library of Congress, the largest library in the world, is moving across the web.
The internet is massive and growing at an extraordinary rate. It’s predicted that this year more information will be created on the Web than in all previous years combined.

And this phenomenal growth it isn’t simply limited to western nations, with Africa as an example, experiencing more than 1,000% growth in net users in the past 8 years. There is also a big push happening at the moment to make available internet access for all people, including those in the two-thirds world, with such projects as the Google backed O3B network (The Other 3 Billion).

Mark asks: What if we were to move into this digital space and offer an experience of church, of the Bible in the language and the culture of the digital environment?

Like it or lump it, this is a huge harvest field....to paraphrase: It's Church, Jim, but not as we know it.

The other 3 billion

I've only just caught up on this story, so excuse it being a little 'old.'

The 'other 3 billion' is a phrase used to describe the 3 billion people on the planet who don't have ready access to the Internet. O3b Networks is based in the Channel Islands and has a project well under way to provide 16 satellites that will drop the cost for ISPs and operators to provide Internet access over 3G (third-generation) and WiMax networks to people in countries like Africa, Latin America, the Middle East and Asia.

Partnered with HSBC (a worldwide banking corporation), Google, and Liberty Global, a private equity provider that provides phone and Internet access in 15 countries, this project will use medium range satellites, which can recieve and send signals at around 120 milliseconds, which is close to that of a fibre network. While fibre networks were already available in developed countries, the laying of them is not economically feasible elsewhere.

Why is this of interest to the Church? Because the Internet is one of the most extraordinary gifts humankind have received in the last century. It enables evangelism, outreach and ministry on a scale undreamt of, and achieves these in a myriad of ways. Certainly, like any other system, it has a dark side, but this isn't a reason to ignore it.