God On Line - A sermon by John Slothower

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Note: If you read the fine print of my resume you will discover that in addition to my years in publishing and the Internet, I am also an ordained clergyman. The line gets a little thin sometimes, as this sermon I delivered in July, 1999 shows. The main body was done in a Bob Newheart-style one-sided telephone conversation. I have tried my best to visually present something intended to be listened too. For best effect read this out loud.

God On-line, a sermon

One the interesting aspects of living and working in a field of cubicles is the one-sided conversations one hears. I always wondered what the conversation would sound like from the next cube when God called the Internet consulting company to find out about getting a web site. It might go something like this – with apologies to Bob Newheart.

Slothowers and Associates, good afternoon, how may I direct your call?
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This is John Slothower speaking.
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Yes, we do create web sites. Very good ones in fact.
(pause)

You want to know about web sites? Well, I should be able to help you. What is you would like to know?
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What is a web site? Well, it is a collection of electronic pages and services which people access over the Internet. Basically it is a way to tell your story, and get people to do something.
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You like the story analogy? Well, I think its pretty good too.
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You want one? Well we certainly would be pleased to help you. Why don’t I get some basic information and let’s see what we can do.
First, what is your name?
(pause)

Is that with a big G or a little g? (pause) Big G. Right.

Okay. What I want to do now is run through some basic questions about your goals so that we can give you some idea of what will be involved in creating your web.

Let’s begin with the basics. Who is your audience?
(pause)

Everybody? Isn’t that kind of broad? Our experience, backed up with extensive market research, shows that an effective web sites focuses on a specific customer. You need to define your target audience so you can tune the message to their needs.
(pause)

Adjusting the message isn’t your style. Right. Okay, maybe some of this will become clearer to you as we go along. The next area we need to look at is product. What is your product?
(pause)

Salvation. Okay. Do you have a fulfillment process in place? The federal trade commission gets very nasty if you promise something but don’t deliver.
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You do fulfillment, and you haven’t had any complaints. Well that’s a pretty notable achievement. O, before I forget, do you take credit cards?
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No cards. Okay. Well that’s a problem we won’t have to deal with then.
Lets talk about branding. (pause) You know, Brand names. The name people recognize your products by?
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Yes, uhuh. Christianity. Certainly everyone will recognize it but you may have a problem getting a trademark - its generic, you won’t be able to get a trademark. (pause) You don’t care.

Anything else we can use? (pause) You’ll think about it? Okay.

How about a tagline (pause) Like a slogan. AT&T uses ‘reach out a touch someone’, or GE’s ‘we bring new things to life’. (pause) Yea they really did use that.
(pause)

Uhuh, Uhuh. No No. I don’t think ‘God or else’ is user friendly. You want to attract people, not scare them. (pause) You DO want to scare them. Well, maybe it will work then.

Have you given any thought to the name of the web? (pause) You have. Good what have you thought of?
(pause)

God.com . . . actually I don’t think they will let you have it. It’s on the restricted list so people won’t be offended. (pause) No. Chirst.com has the same problem.

Maybe we can do something with your name. What about Jahwha.com. No wait. People might confuse it with Yahoo.com.

How about your name in Hebrew. Let’s see what we get with a variant on I AM WHO I AM. Let’s see.
(pause)

IAM.com . . . no, a cat food company has that already.

How about IAMWHOIAM.com . . . as long as we don’t confuse it with Popeye the sailor. (pause) What? Oh, an old cartoon character. It looks like this is available. Let’s go for it.

Now have you thought about visual presentation? Do you have a creative team you work with?
(pause)

You are the creative team. Okay. I see your point. But do you have any experience with optimizing graphics for the web?
(pause)

I suppose that you did the original web should count for something. Any experience with user interfaces?

Another detail we need to deal with is privacy policies, disclaimers and Terms and conditions. (pause)

What are terms and conditions? Those are the rules for your users.
(pause)

You’ve written those. Good. That’s thinking ahead.
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O, you wrote them a long time ago. Have you thought about updating them?
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They’re carved in stone. Yea, I guess that could be a problem.

Okay, I’ll tell you what , let me work up an estimate and get back to you.
Yea, Yea. Probably next week. . . . I expect this will take me about six days.
Uhu, Uha. Yes. O, and please send your credit references. Bye now.

What is this all about?

When I first started working up this script I thought I would be highlighting the differences between the fast paced, in-your-face character of the internet world and the slower, more measured pace of the life of our faith and church.

However the farther I got into it the more the similarities outnumbered the differences.

There certainly are some incongruities between the pace of our world today, for at least some of us, and the more traditional approach of our faith. But, as I applied the marketing mentality to the idea of talking with God about a web site, the more I came to believe that in many ways the web is merely the use of a new technology to do what we already do.

In essence the recipe for a successful web is three simple steps:

Tell your story to someone who is ready to hear it.

Give them an opportunity to act

Support them and follow through on your promise.

That’s it.

Sounds a lot like basic Christian methodology.

There are some powerful analogies here. In the dialogue I mention using the web to "tell your story", and this is how I present it when I am making sales calls.

Story telling is the basis of the sharing of our Christian faith as well. We tell the story of God in the old and new testaments, we tell the story of Jesus, and we tell our own story. In addition we listen to the stories that others tell.

We give people the opportunity to act . . . come to our church, join our community, we will share with you the exploration of the meaning of faith.

And finally, support. In business we call it customer support. Here it is community support. We listen to others and are for them.

I know this will surprise everyone, but I won’t beat this into the ground. But the next time you are surfing the web think about how God’s web site would look, what it would offer, how it would follow through - and smile as you realize that all those webmasters out there are trying to do what you already know how to do - reach out and touch someone.