World Wide Open Blog

We have been encouraged with lots great feedback from our beta group. Below is an excerpt from one beta user who is just as excited about WWO as we are:

Hello,

I wanted to tell you how much I appreciate what you have done here. I have been testing the markets to try and do something similar and was thrilled when this came across my desk.

My heart has been to connect those of us in the field to share thoughts, resources, and whatever else we can. There is great content out there that has never seen a publishing house sitting on hard drives all over the world. Not only that, but it is also sitting in minds but has not found its way to a form, because it is assumed there is no audience.

I wondered what it would look like to create that audience. I use the analogy that my wife is a great cook, but if she is by herself, she doesn't cook. She says it is hard to cook for one. I can tell you as a missionary who currently has one thriving house church; it can be difficult to pour a ton of energy into a message/Bible study when I know it will be used once for a handful of people. But if I knew that it might be useful to some other people who are ministering in similar situations - then that provides motivation and a purpose to create.

Anyway, I wanted to say "thanks." Watching the webinar was like looking at our old whiteboard brainstorms coming alive. It is one thing to come up with an idea like this, but it is quite another to see it realized. I have a firsthand idea of how much time, energy, and resources must have gone into this project. Praise God that you saw it through. It must be very exciting to see it so close to a public launch.

I will certainly be participating in the community, but if there is any other way I can ever be of help, please let me know.

Oh, and I laughed when you said that this is not a "Christian Facebook" The last thing we want to do is create another Christian bubble that recreates what the world has already done in order to keep ourselves separate and "safe." So I get where you are coming from - it made me smile.


Sincerely,

J

We are excited to announce the launch of World Wide Open Private Beta!

We have been hard at work creating a platform to help connect the local and global Church so that we can share our God-given knowledge, resources and experience in order to make a more effective impact around the world.

An alpha group has been testing the site over the past few months and we are now ready to extend an invitation to a limited number of key people, churches and organizations to join World Wide Open Beta.

Sign up here to get in line and help us test the site!


-- The WWO Team

Hi and welcome to World Wide Open. We are an organization committed to empowering Christians to make a radical impact, individually and collectively, in their local and global communities. We are coming out with a beta version of the World Wide Open website real soon and we are glad you are here to check it out.

As a bit of background, we have been alpha testing some ideas throughout Houston, TX for the past year and we are in the process of taking what we have learned about how Christians utilize the web to put their faith into action, move resources from areas of plenty to areas of need and advocate for important issues and building it into the new World Wide Open site. We should be up and ready to rock sometime in the fall. If you want to learn more about the idea, take a peek at the Flash intro, it can be found at www.worldwideopen.org/intro.

One last thing - as an organization, we like to deal in What Ifs and, also, If Then's. Let us explain. Once someone dreams a big What if (blank), the next step is If (blank) then . Make sense? For the past three years, we have been dreaming up a bunch of What Ifs about the Christian church. The World Wide Open website is an If Then, a response to a bunch of What if dreams. Still with us?

Some of the What Ifs we came up with, some of them other people told us, it is not important where they came from, what matters is that people are dreaming them. And not just a few people. There are a bunch of us, certainly thousands today and maybe even hundreds of thousands. God only knows. In case you are wondering, here are some of the What Ifs that have been laid on our hearts and others have told us:

1. what if, using some technology, every Christian could connect to a way to love the world that was perfectly matched to their unique giftedness?
2. what if the church was known for what its for, and not what its against?
3. what if I want to know, real-time, what is going on with the church in Tanzania or Turkey or Toronto?
4. what if two people, four doors apart, care about the exact same thing but have never met
5. What if those two people use the fact that they are alone in their concern as an excuse for not doing anything?
6. What if those two people could be automatically connected?
7. what if Christians could have a real-time, global view of their resources and the needs of the world?
8. what if resources within the church were moved as efficiently as they are in the for-profit sector?
9. what if two churches, right down the street from each other, could easily connect and collaborate in ministry?
10. what if every Christian gave 10% of their time and not just 10% of their money?
11. what if someone did not have to write a book to share the wisdom God had given them?
12. what if church was a verb that happened between Sundays?
13. what if there was a global platform to share wisdom, knowledge and best practices about ministry?
14. what if someone could instantly find all the other Christians in the world who were passionate about the same thing?
15. what if someone doing ministry in La Herradura, El Salvador or anywhere else in the world, could connect with others who had also served there?
16. what if someone with an accounting degree could do the books of a non profit in rural Uganda?
17. What if pastors in Joberg could share their ministry templates with pastors in Australia?
18. what if two non-profits could easily share their best practices for how to solve a local problem?
19. what if you could listen to any pastor in any language at anytime?
20. what if there was high-tech, predictive modeling for international missions scenarios?
21. what if it was weird when churches of different denominations did not work together?
22. what if Christians were known as being overly generous?
23. what if: you fill in the blank.

See you soon.

-- The WWO team

Labels: World Wide Open launch what if

We are pleased to launch the World Wide Open Blog, a direct compliment to World Wide Open. Sit tight as we smooth out all the rough edges.

-- WWO Team