"We prefe face-to-face"

We often come across many people who tells us that they prefer face-to-face when we share with them the benefits of having an online community hub to enhance their community life. Sounds great, afterall who doesn't prefer face-to-face? If we go down that line of logic, why bother to even write email and make phone calls, let's just meet face-to face all the time or whenever we can. When we digged deeper, we begun to realise that the truth is, most people belong only some kind of pseudo-community where relationships are relatively superficial. Hence there isn't a need for deeper or more connection opportunities. The once-a-week or monthly face-to-face meeting is more than sufficient for such superficial relations, hence maintaining status quo is preferred. On other hand, in a true communnity where members are often connected with one another through different means, an online community hub can truly help to enhance their connectedness. This is true even if members often meet daily because there is so much to share and collaborate with one another among the members.

New Feature Release - Forum

After a month of hardwork, forum is finally released. You can add Forum as one of the templates to Activities.

What do I use it for?

Forum is teacher-centered and good for formal learning
Forum is useful as part of the learning sequence that is designed by the mentor. It flows with the other activites on the folder content page. Only a mentor can add a forum to the folder content page. However, he has the option to allow mentees and guest to add topic.

Other uses of forum
Forum can be used to organise icebreakers such as My Favorite URL, Online Bingo, etc
Forum can be used as a workspace for them to share information regaring a certain assignment, eg research for a composition on a visit to Chinatown.
Forum can be used for online debate debate.
Forum can be used as a collaboration workspace for them to work on an assignment together.

And I am sure you can think of more...

When do I use blog, conversation or forum?

Conversation is learner-centred and good for informal learning
As for Conversation, these are good for informal discussions, that are outside of the learning sequence like where shall we go for our outing next week etc. Conversation is learner-centered tool as learners can initiate any discussion on within or without the curriculum.

Blog is learner-centered and good for sharing of reflections.
Blog is a learner-centered tool, meaning learners can initiate a blog to share any of their reflections, learning journey etc. The authors main aim is sharing and not discussing about an issue.

Other uses of Blog
In the context of learning English where mentees are ask to blog specifically about a topic, in that case it is initiated by the Mentor

There is really no hard and fast rules. What we share are just the orginal intent of the design. Do post any ideas you have in the forums in Reference.

A Clear Discipleship Process

Although Jesus' commission to His church was to make disciples, many Christians have no idea what is the process employed by their church to transformed new believers in Christ to matured disciples of Christ that radiates Christlikeness. Often the reason is because the process is not there or far from being adequate. Most of the time Christians are supposed to somehow become discipled into Christlikeness amid a plethora of church programs and activities.

Thom Rainer and Eric Geiger wrote an excellent book entitled the Simple Church, based on their study of 400 churches in America. They observed that vibrant and growing churches had a clear process for discipleship that was streamlined and simple whereas struggling churches had no clear process and were complex and cluttered with programs. Hence they defined a simple church as one that is designed around a straightforward and strategic process that moves people through the stages of spiritual growth. The leadership and the church are clear about the process (clarity) and are committed to executing it. The process flows logically (movement) and is implemented in each area of the church (alignment). The church abandons everything that is not in the process (focus). The flow is simple: Clarity > Movement > Alightment > Focus.

This is in line with the experience shared by Pastor Larry Osborne in his book, The Sticky Church that described how NorthCoast grooms its members into matured disciples of Christ through sermon-based discussions and community service in the context of Small Groups. Not only is its process characterterized by clarity, movement, alignment and focus, they have developed the necessary structure to support the process. For more information on the importance of structure, please read Is Complexity Killing the Church?

Note: vHUBs advocates Community Discipleship as the path to move people through different stages of growth towards spiritual maturity by engaging them in the simple iterative process of Community Learning and Outreach.

Community Platform Update

We have just released the feature of importing learning activities from one hub to another as long you have the access right to do so. This helps users to save a lot of time if they need to duplicate the same learning activities in another hub or even within the same hub itself.

Another important faciltity that we have just release is the Reference within the hub. Over the next few months, we will fill this facility with online tutorials, highlight best practices and put in forums for users to give their feedback and suggestions.

Structured for Spiritual Growth

There is an excellent article in the latest issue of the International Journal of the Frontier Mission. The article 'Social Networks and Fruitfulness in Church Planting' describes the two models which church planters operates in, depending on their paradigm. The first is the attractional model while the other is the transformational model. The latter is obvious much more substainable but in practice, many churches still operate based on the attractional model. This happens when churches are not truly structured for spiritual growth as stated in the book 'The Sticky Church' (p46). The author, pastor Larry Osborne, explained that 'Front-door churches that fail to structure for spiritual growth risk becoming merely a birthing center.. Back-door churches that fail to structured for spiritual growth will end up with programs and ministries that keep people from leaving but do nothing to help them grow or reach out to those who need Jesus."

Besides fostering a culture of community learning through small groups, mobilizing the discipling communities to engage in community outreach is also critical for spiritual growth. There is another excellent article in this issue of IJFM that describes how YWAM rediscover the importance of engaging in outreach in the society. Download and read it!

Looking for Community Leaders!

We are providing free trials to Small Group Leaders who are interested to strengthen their existing communities online. If you have a small group (can be a workgroup or a school group) or a member of one and would like to enrich your community through online learning or/and outreach, our Community Platform is designed to meet your needs. Do write to us so that we can get you on board to be one of our early users today!