The churches and Internet

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The churches and Internet

• Nairobi, November 2002
• Jean-Nicolas Bazin

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Contents

• Presentation
• The sharing of Knowledge
• The progress of the use of technology
• First experiences
• Difficulties and challenges
• Opportunities and duty
• Useful links

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From a company to the churches
1. Presentation

• Previous job consultant in IBM
• Now working for the WCC helping to implement
  methodologies and tools
• The church gives a sense to what we do
• The churches need to attract the know-how of the
  companies and use it with a different set of
  values

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Internet is mainly a tool for sharing of knowledge

• Knowledge is what people know personally
• Skills / Talents
• Experience, memory
• Information is semi structured and captured in
  documents
• e-mail
• word document, excel sheet
• a manual, a book
• Data is structured information that can be
  processed
• database
• excel sheet

Knowledge
Tacit
Information
Data
Explicit
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Many factors need to be there for a good sharing
of knowledge

• Social enabling
• Trust
• Communication, language
• Culture that promotes knowledge creation, use and
  sharing
• Informal networking
• Transfer, learning and sharing
• Facilities
• IT environment
• Common methods and procedures

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There is a need for accompaniment of the growing
use of technologies in Africa

• Number of lines growing
• Number of possibilities
• Mobile phone
• Internet cafés
• Still need for resources (Web services)

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First experiences

• Blooming
• The mail and list servers
• Thematic portals
• Institutional portals
• Search engines
• Emerging
• Group discussions and QA
• Intranet
• On-line giving
• Services (downloads, newsletters, etc)
• Virtual churches

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Difficulties and challenges

• Difficulties for churches
• Culture of human direct contact
• Training of the clergy
• Fear to be destabilised
• Challenges
• The language
• The digital divide - cultural - technical
• The complexity and the new concepts
• Internet as a refuge
• The culture of spontaneity

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Opportunities and duty

• The opportunities
• A universal media
• Transversal communication
• Low cost
• Our duty as a Christian
• Populate the Internet with our Christian values
• Give our knowledge to our sisters and brothers
• Consider the Internet as a part of our world

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Some useful addresses

• Organisations
• www.wcc-coe.org the world council of churches
• www.ecuspace.net a sharing space for ecumenical
  partners
• www.aacc-ceta.org the all Africa counference of
  churches
• www.sacc.org.za South Africa council of
  churches
• www.coratafrica.com CORAT Africa
• Christian resources
• www.unboundbible.org biblical search, different
  languages
• www.gospelcom.net Christian information portal

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Sharing of experiences

• Knowledge sharing in the WCC
• The protestant church of Geneva
• The reformed church of France