About 4 years ago I started playing with the internet and thinking about how it could be used for our youth ministry. I wondered whether it was worth it, or whether it would be a waste of time and energy. We decided that we would see what we could do with the net and how it could help our ministry. Over that period of time things have slowly evolved and there seems to be some genuine momentum created by ccecyouth's online component.

There are two things that have heightened my thinking in these areas in recent days:
#1) A number of friends have been asking me about what how we've been using online technology in our youth ministry.
#2) On the Poddy with Dave & Dan (our podcast radio show thing) has sat in the top 10 on iTunes all week (peaking at #6) and that has enabled Rhett (our youth and young adults minister) and I to start thinking "what if?" and "where to next"...

My understanding of the nature of church is such that the internet can never replace the physical gathering of God's people. E-church may keep trying to pop-up in different corners of the web, but God's people physically gathering around His word in fellowship must not be replaced.

What we do with ccecyouth.com is create a false community of sorts. It's not real - maybe it's virtual reality - but it isn't real community in the physical gathering sense. BUT I think that what we are doing when we create our online false community is help our real physical offline community.

The following are the things that we do with ccecyouth.com. Some we've been gradually developing and others are recent editions.
Associated with a day:

Monday Morning - Photoblog - this is new... but the aim is to remind people about the Friday night that has just passed. It is uploaded to blogger and then atuomatically sent out to 300+ email address (including parents) with google groups.

Wednesday Morning - Breaking News - this is basically a 'what's coming up' thing. It has been brilliant for communcation, particularly with parents.

Thursday Morning - Upload ccecyouth talkcast - this is brand new. So we have no idea how many people will download the talks. But doing them as a podcast is a lot easier to manage than having to upload to html based webpage each week.

Friday Night (late) - Record & Upload On the Poddy - the Poddy has been great in helping to build identity within our youth group. On the poddy is theirs. They might be a guest on it. They might have their fanmail read out. It's even been a tool to promote our ccecyouth via our youth group kid's iPod. I know of a whole bunch of non-Christians who are now regular listeners which opens the door to evangelistic opportunities. Having it uploaded Friday night is important because teenagers have a 48 hour window where they will ordinarily be able to find time to download On the Poddy. We currently have over 500 downloads a week. This current week we should easily go beyond 700!

Sunday Arvo(ish) - Upload Bible reading notes - I'm not sure how many download these, but all of our juniors know that they are there. We hand their daily reading notes out each week at youth group. But the teenagers know that if they're away they can download the latest notes from there.

Other:

Forum - the forum has had some 15,000 posts!! But it goes through stages. There was a period of time when 50-odd people were on there regularly. But currently there are between 10 and 20 leaders on there at least once or twice a week.

Articles - this is irregular but there has been good feedback from some teenagers. This is an area we are looking to develop in the near future.

Photos - these are really popular. They are a visual reminder of the shared experiences that we share at ccecyouth.

Games, about us, leader info, parents section, leaders section, info about camps, missions, outline of who Jesus is.

I think that we are doing some good things. We are currently working out how we can streamline things better and there are some big plans not far around the corner. Hopefully we'll be able to take it up another notch! One of the best things about the false community that is created is that it excites them for when they will physically meet again. We see them on Friday and Sunday. It means on the other days during the week they can be reminded of ccecyouth, they can be reminded of our real community and they can be reminded of Jesus who died to make that gathering happen.

Conclusion: The internet is great for passing on information and it is great to create a false community in order to enhance our real physical community. The net can never take priority over the physical gathering of God's people week-by-week in our youth group and church.

Note: Last year we had some Christian year 12s on schoolies week who google'd Central Coast Youth Group, found us and came along during their holiday!