I actually have a few questions in that I am doing my senior project for my MDiv on web ministry..

1. Do you see the web pastor as becoming more prevalent among us?

2. Do you see the cookie cutter sites that have given every adventist church a website as helpful?

3. What part do you play in the life of the congregation apart from the web? Do you preach? Are you in the services of the church?

4. I see that you have a ton of sites, how active are you in maintaining them content wise and technically.

Almost every Sabbath there is a report of emails from all over the world. Many of them request DVDs of the various series and sermons. The church pays for copying the CDs/DVDs and Pastor Morris puts them in a basket. He then asks for members to send them at their expense...Two weeks ago a set went to Zimbabwe...$35 postage...............There are never any left in the basket waiting to be sent.

Sherman:

I'm not sure if I'm supposed to save my answers for when I have my actual interview or not, so I'll at least give you some brief replys.

1. I see the position of Web Pastor becoming more prevalent if churches start to utilize the internet more. Not every individual church uses the Internet or tries to focus on putting their services and/or resources online, so until that happens there is little value in having someone identified as a Web Pastor.

2. If the goal for having a website for every church is so that people can do a web search for a church in their area and find a website, then having a website for everyone is helpful. Whether people will be motivated to actually attend that church based on the website that they find may well depend on how well-maintained and up-to-date that website actually is.

3. I play as much a part in the life of the congregation as any of the others on staff. I attend all the usual staff meetings and so forth. I do preach as much as the other "non-preaching" staff (our senior pastor is a teaching pastor and the young adult pastor also preaches regularly for his service) and I am part of the regular rotation for doing announcements. One main difference between me and many of the other pastors is that I attend church online 50% or more of the time on average.

4. The amount of work that I do with each site varies with the specific site. My goal as Web Pastor is to not be the chief content provider for every website. I want to empower groups and individuals to develop their own content and manage their own websites or sections of a website. Fortunately I work with a very capable group of people who can do just that. My role is more one of support, though in some cases I may lead out first in the development of a particular website and then hand it off once there is a team around that site.

Thanks for your great questions. I'd be interested in hearing more about the results of your studies.

--delwin