An Internet Campus is an online interactive church experience in the virtual world of the internet. While the skeptics question if this can really be a church, lives are being transformed through an internet church experience.
“An Internet Campus is a community of people who are leaning about, connecting with, and growing closer to God in a virtual environment. The goals of the Internet Campus are similar to that of its brick-and-mortar counterpart…to use whatever tools available to help people enter into a saving relationship with Jesus Christ, equip them to serve their communities, and go into the world (both physically and online) to share the Gospel.”
Brian Vasil
Internet Campus Pastor
Potential Church
Cooper City, FL
People log on to their computers, engage in worship and the sermon, interact with others, respond to invitations & challenges, give tithes & offerings and are cared for by an internet campus pastor–all in real time. This church is not restricted by walls and can reach literally every inch of the globe.
I remember having the conversation a few years ago when I was on staff at Willow Creek in Chicago whether to put our weekend service on-line or not. Some were concerned that this would decrease our weekend attendance; others were concerned about protecting our brand and that our message could be distorted and misrepresented. We eventually decided to make our messages available online and discovered that attendance did not go down and that thousands of people were benefiting from our teaching on-line from around the world. Today Willow Creek and hundreds of other churches offer their sermons online and many of them call it an internet campus. Yet what makes an internet campus is not just offering a video sermon online, but offering the full worship experience, live online interaction with others, growth steps, and a dedicated internet campus pastor. Not many churches have true internet campuses, but there number is growing.
Here are three benefits of an Internet Campus:
- An introduction to your church. Your website is the front door to your church. A live online worship service allows people seeking a church home to experience whether your church is a place to visit in-person.
- An outreach of your church. People are coming to faith through online worship services in the same way millions have through watching evangelist Billy Graham in the privacy of their homes. For many people seeking God and faith, attending a church is too threatening. Visiting church online can be a safe first step towards coming to your church.
- A church multiplication strategy for your church. Thousands of people are logging-on to internet campuses from around the world, but also from your local region. Your internet campus congregation can reveal where to launch a multisite campus or a church plant.
Still in its infancy, the internet campus is a natural extension of the multisite model, but will outgrow the multisite movement in terms of sheer numbers. Like many recent innovations in the church, mega-churches led the way, but it’s no longer just a mega-church phenomenon. Any tech-savvy, outreach-oriented church regardless of size-can, will and are reaching into cyberspace. We will see an explosion of internet campuses in the next decade. The largest neighborhood in the world is at your fingertips. Millions who live there need a church like yours. Won’t you reach out to them? We can help.
MultiSite Solutions Associate Brian Vasil is an expert in assisting churches in developing an internet campus. He shares some good tips for launching an internet campus in my next MultiSightings enewsletter.
If you need some help adding an internet campus to your ministry toolbox contact us at MultiSite Solutions here.
Click away!
Jim
