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Intended for businesses confronted with the realities of losing control in a networked world, I thought this slide show, titled “Be Like the Internet“, might also be relevant to today’s church. A few of the slide titles could reveal a bit about the challenges for church leaders, for example “The ways for a business to thrive in a networked world is to adapt to the network” and “Most of what matters to your business is happening outside of your business”. Evidence is all around that church is happening outside of church walls - online church, sermon podcasts, Facebook groups, Christian blogs, and being part of today’s conversation in a networked world means letting go and having less control.

This point of “letting go” brings to mind the website for Epic Church in Fullerton California whose pastor, Kevin Doi, I met recently. To model their vision of a new church community, Epic’s home page prominently features the voices and links to blogs of six different people involved with Epic. Here’s where the voices of the community and network flatten the org chart of traditional organizations.

For Kindle, we’ve encountered those who maintain that prayer is a private matter handled face-to-face or in small groups, however, we see ourselves not as replacing those valuable personal experiences but as an additional channel to reach and touch others through prayer in a networked world. As we grow past our beta launch, we’ll be listening and evolving to see how our users will take to prayer in a networked world.

Read Cynthia Ware’s related post - “Is Your Church Leadership Interactive?“.

Next week, Kindle will join Fuller Fire to follow the prayers of Fuller Theological Seminary’s annual prayer event. Taking place next Monday through Thursday, April 12 - 16, students and faculty will come together as a community to intercede for a wide breadth of concerns, causes, and people groups from around the world. Different prayer sessions are scheduled every hour from 10am to 4pm and will be guided by the unique prayer methods of the session leader.

Fuller Fire prayer participants will be invited to post their prayer requests via the Fuller Fire Prayer Week prayer group on Kindle. Those unable to attend can follow the Fuller Fire prayers online through the Kindle group and also via the Kindle Twitter feed.

links: Fuller Fire on Kindle  |  Fuller Fire via Twitter

I had the chance to meet Keith Bower at Awaken 2008 last week where he was getting energized for his new project after leaving his senior pastor position of 17 years. His courage to take a step away from the comfort of his suburban church is driven by his desire to bring community transformation to urban Houston.

After returning home from Awaken, we took some time to learn more about Keith’s newest plans - plus a little about how he started using Kindle for his urban ministry.

What do you like about Kindle? How do you see it helping?
Prayer is vital. This is God’s work, not ours, and the only way He will unleash His power is in response to the prayers of His people. Kindle facilitates that, and not just locally as in traditional prayer meetings, but globally in a virtual prayer meeting that runs 24/7 worldwide. Kindle allows us to stay connected in both public and private prayer forums in a way that really supports the communal and collaborative culture we envision. We’re very excited about Kindle…and very grateful to you and your team, Robert, for creating it.

Can you tell us a bit more about what you’re doing?
I am working to ignite a new multi-ethnic, multi-denominational movement driven by young adults to create communities of spiritual and social transformation all across urban Houston. Previous generations would have called this “church planting,” and in a sense that’s what it is. But the KIND of “churches” we want to start are very different - simple churches that are more like lifeboats than cruise ships; churches focused on being disciples, on living the way the disciples lived, loving the way that Jesus loved, and doing the things that Jesus did; Bible-believing, Gospel-teaching churches with compassion, inclusion, and social justice built into their DNA; churches that can replicate virally to address the limitless needs of the city. That’s what we’re trying to unleash in Houston.

Read more

Ahead of May 11, 2008, we’ve created a prayer group just for Global Day of Prayer where over 200 million people around the world will unite in prayer to bring all nations and their people closer together.

Post a prayer: Global Day of Prayer prayer group at Kindle
Learn more: Global Day of Prayer website

Rob Bell answers some questions about prayer in his newest DVD, Open. The DVD is available for purchase directly from his site at Nooma.com.

It’s post-Easter and there’s not much rest for us these next two weeks. I just got back from the first day of the Asian American Leadership Conference tonight and will be there until Wednesday, March 26. Then, next week will Kindle be attending and hosting a booth at Awaken 2008 in Pasadena from April 1-3.

I’m looking forward to meeting lots of people and having great fellowship these next two weeks. If you’re attending any of the conferences and want to meet, send a text to 3106006821@vtext.com.

This is My Body LA is a Los Angeles-wide initiative led by Bel Air Presbyterian to help connect people and small groups from churches around the city. To help guide their mission, they created a Kindle prayer page and added a prayer widget to their website home page.If you have a ministry where you have a prayer team praying over your mission’s goals, try this combination of a group prayer page and prayer widget to communicate and extend the prayers of your leadership group.

link: This is My Body LA

One of our favorite free web tools is Widgetbox that helps people create widgets that you can place on your own webpages or blogs. When you “mashup” Widgetbox with Kindle, you can easily let your blog readers or Facebook visitors know about your personal or group’s prayer requests.

Below is a sample of a prayer widget created using Widgetbox for the Quest College Ministry.

How To Create Your Own Prayer Widget

1. Create a free account at Widgetbox.com
2. Choose the “Make a Blidget” feature
3. Copy and paster your personal or group page URL from Kindle when asked for “Your Blog URL”
   1. Examples are like “http://kindlejoy.com/users/show/74″ or “http://kindlejoy.com/group/Questcollegeministry”
   2. Click “Continue” and your widget will be generated.
   3. Follow the Widgetbox instructions on how to place the widget on your webpages, including Facebook and MySpace.

If you are new to all this, let us know and we’ll help you get started.

One of the original motivations of creating Kindle was to help our small group centralize our prayer requests. While emailing prayer requests is the usual way many small groups communicate their prayers, it’s not necessarily the best way to manage prayer requests. Over time, we forget what we may have prayed for in the past, and to find them usually means searching through one’s email inbox.

We developed Kindle as a way for small groups to easily record and track their prayer request history - essentially helping a group keep a prayer journal. With a journal, small groups can review their past prayer requests and see how God may have worked in our lives.

Do you have a story of how keeping a prayer journal has helped build your faith? If so, let us know how. We believe there are powerful stories of God’s faithfulness in all our lives, and sharing those stories brings us all closer to God and each other.

We just added RSS feeds to group and personal pages. Right now, you can access the RSS feed through your browser, and we’ll be adding an RSS icon link on the pages shortly.

Some ideas for using Kindle RSS feed may include:

• Adding your prayer group feed to your RSS reader such as Google Reader, Netvibes, or your customized Yahoo home page
• Share your prayer group feed on your Facebook or MySpace profiles using applications like Simply RSS
• Use your RSS feed to create a widget to place on your website or blog using free online tools like WidgetBox