new church life: november/december 2017
how best to do that. We’ve benchmarked other sites, and talked with some
stakeholders. Here are some of the things we want to tackle:
• We want to offer pathways – so that a user can choose an interesting
path, and follow it: start here, then try this, and this, and this….
• They could be “read the Bible in a year” paths, or
• Topical paths, e.g. “Fighting Addict ion” or “Wrestling with
Doubt” or “What the Bible says about Parenting” or many other
possibilities.
• Start with solo paths, with resources that are primarily one-way,
where users could read, watch videos, listen to podcasts, keep
track of where they left off, etc.
• Then we could gradually work our way up to offer shared
paths, perhaps with coaching/mentoring in collaboration with
the clergy, or to small groups that study together – secure,
confidential, maybe anonymized groups.
• Pandora-model: This is related to the pathways idea. In Pandora, users
can make their own radio stations, that play things that the user selects.
Users can have private stations, or public ones. We could have users who
construct Bible Study paths, and share them with friends, or with all
users. See www.pandora.com
• LibraryThing – The site, www.librarything.com, provides another
interesting model for us. On that site, users can add their libraries, share
what books they like, join groups of people who have shared interests,
and talk together. It’s a good model for us to look at for crowd-sourcing
and for study groups.
• Stack Exchange is another interesting model for us, and a potential
source of tooling for Q&A and discussion groups. Our software
developers (and 40 million other developers each month) use it as a go-
to place to get focused advice on technical questions.
• Bible Gateway, Bible Study Tools, Crosswalk, and many other Bible
Study sites offer reading plans, daily devotions, daily emails, and articles
like “10 things that the Bible says about x”. We think they all have some
useful ideas, and we want to create something similar that comes to it
from a New Church perspective.
• The “spiritual Fitbit” – what might that look like?
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