Church 2.0 | Main / OnlineGovernance

Online governance

In a Church 2.0 setting, provision can be made for moving at least some governance to online methods, hopefully allowing participation in governance without geographical restriction, and hopefully increased participation in governance for deaf and/or blind persons. However, not all persons will have easy access to the internet due to financial reasons, so there should be redundancy built in allowing face-to-face governance and online governance to co-exist relatively seamlessly.

Email

Using email to conduct governance

Wikis and blogs

Using wikis and blogs to conduct governance.

Prairie Star District

Prairie Star District has based their district Web site on a wiki platform. All district leadership get passwords, and can contribute. According to their Webmaster, they have created their own hack to customize the sidebar on their site. They have also added e-commerce capability to allow for conference registrations (and presumably donations).

Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Tuscaloosa

The UU Congregation of Tuscaloosa has created a leadership wiki, for leadership documents such as canvass planning, leadership planning, etc. http://uuctresources.wikispaces.com/

Putting such documents online does at least three things: (1) it lowers the likelihood that the documents will be lost -- when, e.g., the old Board chair forgets to pass along the big notebook full of documents to the new Board chair; (2) it increases the transparency of leadership in the congregation; (3) it allows other congregations to see how this congregation does things.

First Unitarian Universalist of Nashville

The FUUN Blog is an announcements forum for First Unitarian Universalist of Nashville, Tennessee. Announcements range from social events -- "After the second service, let’s try some Indian food at Sitar. [Driving directions removed.] There is a very affordable lunch buffet available" -- to adult classes, to hard-core church governance -- "The Nominating Committee is beginning its annual search. Will you serve? Do you know of someone else who is a good prospect? Please help by filling out our online form." The idea of online volunteer job applications is a nice touch. Visit the blog at http://www.firstuunashville.org/wp/