The basics...

What do you need to launch an Internet Campus for a Church?

This is the often question waiting for an equipment list, wires and other stuff, but... First thing you'll need is to think out of the box, further the walls of a regular building. The lead pastor has to be on board... The internet Campus has to be according to the purpose and vision of the Ministry. The lead pastor is who receives the vision from God, and any dependant ministry has to be fully aligned to that vision, and this, of course, includes an Internet Campus. Prayer and planning are key elements for a healthy start. When Troy Gramling had the vision to take Flamingo Road Church to the Internet, he knew what he wanted, so all we needed it was to fulfill the vision, based on the available technology.

Once we have that on the scenario, now we have to talk about the global concept. What is an Internet Campus? It is not just streaming video over the internet; the concept goes further than that. It has to be interactive and capable to work on both ways: A) To deliver the video, audio, text and graphics to the user and B) To receive the responses from the audience to provide a personalized response that allow the audience to experience community interacting with the pastor and with other church members. It is really to take all the advantages that Web 2.0 offers to creat a Social Network for a church, outside the church.

This are, from my perspective, the basic gears to start rolling your project.

Welcome to LIVE GEARS

I am in charge of the development of the Internet Campus at Flamingo Road Church. What is that? An Internet Campus is a "Virtual Church". It is more than just streaming a preacher's Sunday service. It is a place for social networking, interacting, learning, growing and to experience community about the subject of Jesus Christ around the world. Some times people misunderstand what a Church is. A Church IS NOT a building or a Sacred Temple. A Church IS a community of people with same believes: Jesus is our God and our Savior - now this is NOT a theological or religious blog. This is a forum to share my research and collaborate with others on how to use the Internet to reach the world LIVE. What are the “gears” behind the scenes, the challenges and the opportunities to grow and develop a complete new “live experience”? …we’ll see!

I often receive questions about what “gears” we use at our Flamingo Road Church Live Internet Campus, so I decided to create this blog to talk about it. So feel free to ask questions, leave a comment or post an idea... This blog will be tech driven. I know techs believe everyone else understands our language, but as I often rediscover that's not usually true. So I'll do my best to try to explain everything clearly in plain language as best I can.

Welcome to LIVE GEARS!
Arturo De la Mora
Pastor / Research and Development Director
Flamingo Road Church