Connecting Small Groups Online

I am a big fan of the Internet. I have been connecting with people online since 1994 and I have many new friends/acquaintances because of blogs like this one. I have a personal blog where I keep friends and family up to speed with my life. You can find pictures of my kids, videos, and other random stuff that I think about from time to time. There are a lot of online communities springing up all over the place. A lot of people are now using Facebook to connect with other people and blogs have become places for community to thrive.

So, I ask, how can we utilize online social networks, blogs, or the next new online service as a tool to help our own small group communities connect and grow?

I have experimented in the past with a blog for my small group. The blog was a place where everyone could go to see updates, announcements, prayer requests, stories, pictures...etc. I was posting recaps and notes from our meetings each week. This was nice for people who happen to miss that week. Comments were left open too so that discussion could be had online during the week. It was a very simple setup really and worked great for a time. It was bridging the gap where communication of the group had been lacking. And then suddenly it all fell apart.

The small group blog that I created failed because of lack of participation. I would post updates or questions and people became too busy to visit the site and check for updates. It was agreed that email was the best way to communicate, so I blew up the blog and we went back to emailing everything.

I still believe that online social networking has great potential to be a very useful tool for small groups. Most of the services out there cost nothing so it is a free tool to use. I think that small groups can benefit from connecting more often than a few times a month and the Internet provides the tools necessary to do so. It doesn't require another meeting for everyone to make time in their schedule to participate. You can login whenever you have time and participate as much or as little as you like. Share a lot or share little or nothing at all. The sky is the limit.

I know there are not many readers of this blog yet, but I would love to hear your thoughts and experiences with small groups using online technology. Also if you have any questions about how to get setup on something, I can help with that too.