Online Easter offerings

For Filipino Catholics, the experience of celebrating Lent, the Holy Week and Easter might be a mere mouse-click away.

According to the Philippine Daily Inquirer, the media office of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) has launched Visita Iglesia Online, offering would-be churchgoers a multimedia presentation featuring 14 shrines and pilgrimage sites that correspond with the 14 Stations of the Cross.

Closer to home, City Impact Church, which has churches in Balclutha, Queenstown, Invercargill and Auckland as well as overseas, offers a slick, user-friendly website that currently features a video entitled Portrait of a Hero, a 30-second Easter-related promotional clip that features a man carrying a woman from the rubble caused by the Christchurch earthquake.

The image of the ordinary man taking matters into his own hands has an obvious Messianic parallel, according to University of Otago PhD student Sam Stevens, who adds it is just one example of how the internet and new media use is regarded as an addendum to the normal church experience.

Mr Stevens is working on a thesis documenting internet production values among contemporary Christian groups, from revivalist Pentecostal groups to traditional ministries.

"Certainly, two churches I have talked to describe the internet as a powerful marketing tool and are quite open about that. It is a point of difference as well. They don't want the old, static, brochure-type site that looks like an ad in a paper; they want a dynamic site that their target demographic - my word, not theirs - is expecting, because they see that format on other sites.

"There are so many uses and users of sites, but you do get a demographic shift of younger, youth-oriented churches typically using more Flash (a platform used to add video, multimedia and interactive content to web pages) as well as hyperlinks to social media sites.

"Some of the more sophisticated primary websites, the content is like a commercial site or a very sophisticated interest-group site. It is designed to draw you in, perhaps to stimulate an interest in all the archival material that might be there."

Mr Stevens points out his research has not involved talking to different users about their online habits and preferences. Instead, he has interviewed those involved in producing church websites.

"The overarching thing is, yes, they are trying to include people and present their message in a very accessible way.

"The people who put the content up are very aware that they can't control how people access something like Facebook or Twitter. But they are not worried about having control over it ... they are just pleased people are accessing it because it leads people back to that in-church or community group experience.

"That's the power of social media: it stimulates people to get into that sort of group, or it gives them an appreciation of other people who might be like-minded.

"I think social media does encourage people towards a group experience; whether or not they are then motivated to foster that spiritual relationship or deeper church involvement, I don't know."