UNITED METHODIST INFORMATION PILOT

This idea came from a three-person telecommunications committee, which was established by our 1980 General Conference -- the denominational legislative body that meets every four years.

 This committee decided that the church needed to be moving into some experimentation with computer communication. So, they set up this pilot which was a short-term experiment (May- Sept., 1983). It only included 14 participants. They used their own equipment and paid their own online costs. Systems used were The Source for Email and NewsNet to access an electronic newsletter, called United Methodist Information.

 They found out they needed more time to recruit and train users. They had problems with the technology and inadequate resources. The constituency was less knowledgeable than they thought. But they saw the potential and wanted to continue exploring this medium.

 Also, Bob Cramer, whom some of you know, was a consultant on this project. He has been our consultant on all our computer communication experiments.

CBC'84

The second pilot, CBC '84, used NewsNet to transmit daily full-text news stories, commentaries and news briefs from General Conference. We also carried online news from our jurisdictional conferences which handle the election of bishops and other national leaders. Users could have information about the elections immediately after they were voted.

 We received good response from this experiment. Funding was provided through a grant from our national church contingency funds, and the only costs to users were online charges. People were so excited about this experiment that they recommended that we go for a low-cost bulletin board.

CBC'85

CBC '85 was another experimental project for which we received grant funds. UMCom contributed in-kind services, too.

 We wanted to foster personal interaction through computer communication. We put special emphasis upon enabling leaders in ethnic minority caucuses and pastors of small churches to expand their own channels of communication.

We produced training materials and a printed newsletter, "Teletalk", which Bob Cramer and I did on computer. We shuffled our copy back and forth between Nashville and California. He would stick up the final copy on boards, ship it to me express mail. The next day I gave it to the printer. It was the fastest produced printed newsletter I've ever done. Time saving is one of the real values of this medium for tight-deadline print creation.

 We awarded about $10,000 in matching grants to ethnic minority caucus groups and small churches to purchase equipment and pay for online time. This was designed to enable people to actually begin using computer communication. We chose the University of Washington's Cyber system as the host computer for our bulletin board and Email.

 At the end of the experiment, many of the folks felt that we'd again demonstrated the potential of this medium. But they thought it wouldn't reach its greatest use for them unless the people they wanted to communicate with were online - which is understandable. They did think we should continue in some regular way, however.

CIRCUITWRITER NETWORK

So we formed the CircuitWriter Network. Bob Cramer came up with that name, by the way - a very appropriate name for United Methodists.

Now the CircuitWriter Network is on two computer systems - the University of Washington and NWI, as part of the ECUNET family. On the U. of W. we have several bulletin boards, including one on sermon resources, which one of our users is doing. On NWI, our United Methodist News Service is using the system as an archival source for daily full-text news stories, as well as news briefs.

REMARKS

Susan Peek, the director of the CircuitWriter Network, and I have talked long and hard about the future of computer teleconferencing in the church. We think that in the future, people will be communicating by computer routinely, just as they use the phone now. When this revolution of daily use of computer communication will happen, we have no idea.

 I don't know about you, but I get frustrated with the amount of time I lose using the phone - either hanging out "on hold" or finding out the person I'm calling is out of town and won't be back for a week.

 Usually when I make a long-distance business call, I need to know something right then. Now if the people I want to contact have a "laptop" with them and they check their email every day, we can get our business done in a hurry.

 Of course, it's frustrating when you send electronic messages to people and they don't respond for two weeks. I could have sent them a letter.

Using electronic communication is giving us a heightened sense of communication as caring for people. No one has addressed online courtesy - how we behave online. I'd like to see something happen with that. The value of this medium is fast response. That's just a little sermon.

 Right now, our major problem is funding - to market the medium and to educate and train persons to use it. We are running on a shoestring.

 I work part time, so if some of you try to reach me, know that I'm not there all the time. Our $5,000 budget is primarily used to pay for my time. Susan Peek contributes in- kind services from her budget. So we are doing this network with our little fingers. And we both love it. We would love to be doing this full time. (laughter)

 Another problem that I see is a phenomenon I call "peer fear". I sense that persons in our church will more likely communicate with persons from other denominations rather than with each other. Pastors seen reluctant to communicate personally with other pastors. They're wondering if they will tell the bishop or the district superintendent. There's this guarded communication which goes on. I think that the value of ecumenical communication is that some of those barriers might break down.

 Another thing we face is concern about cost. Naturally we want the costs to come down. But we have to deal with what we have. We've not been able to persuade the United Methodist Church to subsidize an experiment such as the Presbyterians have done.

 So we have to keep demonstrating practical applications for this medium on all levels - local churches, regional offices and national offices. And it looks like we have to do that before we are ever going to get anything out of the budgets to go further.

 I covet and want sincerely any of your modelling. Please send it to me or Susan Peek, because we want to share that information. That's one of our functions - networking - people and ideas.

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