Jeff Jarvis’s book, What Would Google Do? is one from which local church leaders would benefit. The enormously successful and omnipresent Google internet platform has become so by going where its customers are. Google embeds itself in our computer life. Open the browser, and there is the Google button. When I need help with websites I visit, Google’s handy logo is already there. Directions to a restaurant? A Google map is embedded at the business’s site. Wither can I go from thee, O Google? Google finds a way to be present and helpful in my world while requiring nothing much of me.
On the other hand, Yahoo is a destination. The internet traveler is lured to the Yahoo site to sort through all that Yahoo has to offer. By comparison, Google’s home page is spare, devoid of ads and extra frills. There is only the welcoming and familiar search box ready to meet the user’s need.
90% of local churches are in decline mode and continue to operate out of a come-to-us Yahoo mentality that seeks first to provide for those who are already comfortable with the program and know how to negotiate churchly culture. 21st century folks, rightly or wrongly, begin with themselves and add on those “apps” that work for them, kind of like an I-Google page.
Is your church doing whatever it takes to be where people are? The grocery store? The workplace? The gym? The soccer field? As folks assemble their lives’ “me-pages,”would they know to include your congregation as a community that offers meaning and purpose in life? Food for body and soul? Light in dark places? Small groups that can become family?
Interestingly, Google does not advertise itself. It depends on being viral; its happy customers are its evangelists, and they are everywhere! What a concept!
The worship service I attended this morning concluded with Holy Communion. Despite the winter weather and the rampant germs, the method was “intinction.” One is given a broken off piece of bread from a server who presumably has clean hands (and a pure heart?) and then one dips it in the cup, hoping that the fingers of others have not previously entered the juice. While it is the form of communion that is most symbolic of our unity in Christ, many people balk at this kind of intimate sharing, especially during flu season. I will take my chances. We have, after all, just passed the peace. Every trace of active bacteria in the village already belongs to every one of us!

