I found this article on another blog but thought it was interesting enough to pass along.
"The geek world has been abuzz lately regarding Ars Technica's look at the ethics of stealing wifi. At Church Marketing Sucks, we don't make too much of an effort to be arbiters of morality. But we would love to be proponents of ideas.
How about opening your church up?
These days, there's more to being welcoming to visitors than putting "Welcome" on your church sign. Shoot, it even goes beyond having official "greeters."
What if your church had the sweetest wifi in the town, some really comfy chairs and a few friendly faces? How great would it be to have folks normally hostile to "church" be able to say, "I'm gonna go hang out at the church and get some work done."
As a connoisseur of fine seating (ENO and Love Sac, if you're wondering) and a constant searcher for the perfect coffee shop, I can tell you this: if I found somewhere with good coffee or sweet tea, open spaces and comfy chairs, I'd be there in a heartbeat. Folks lucky enough to work at home, thankful as they should be, need to get away sometimes.
So bump up your Internet speed, get some decent coffee, sweet tea or pastries, and invite folks on in. This is the 21st century. Maybe it's time that the church is a friend for the friendless, a home for the homeless and an office for the officeless."
Alright, it's Marc again. All that being said, here are a few things to keep in mind
1. Will offering this necessarily bring people back to church (if that is even a goal)?
2. How stringent is your content filtering? (how do coffee houses offering wifi prevent objectionable/illegal material ie. porn? do they at all? I really don't know)
3. Would this even be worth it or would it be fighting a losing battle to the 900 Starbucks type places already established?
Thoughts?
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This is Greg Osborne by the way, first thanks for the invite to crash the Sawyer House Clergy Party Blog. Even though I didn't live in the Sawyer house I did find myself over there a lot watching the Office and disrupting you guys and your homework by watching hours of youtube videos while you tried to do Greek homework. (and boom goes the dynamite) and by the way i am a youth ministry major not an english major so deal with the writing errors.
So lets jump into some blogging. I think the idea that is presented in the article is really practical in today's society. and marc you raise some good questions. You have to have some sort of protection up if you are hosting this WiFi site at your church. It doesn't have to be indepth but enough to block out major sites that would cause concern. Next question, I don't know if ones goal for doing this is to add numbers to the congergation, and honestly I don't know if it does or doesn't. My feeling is this is just another outreach event to the community. I know many churches in my community that host basketball nights or volleyball nights, and I don't know if they are trying to draw people to their church to come Sunday morning and boost numbers or just trying to create an enviroment that people can come and do what they enjoy in a safe and welcoming enviroment. Maybe having a WiFi coffee area is the same thing as an open gym basketball night but is just reaching a different genre of people.
And I think the thing with Starbucks isn't a big issue because I know many people in churches that would love a thing like this in a church because they don't care for Starbucks at all.
The biggest problem I think with this whole Church WiFi Coffee Shop thing is that unless you are really lucky most churches don't have an area to do something like this unless they intially build it in the church building plans.
I don't know if any of that makes sense or not but that is my response to the blog. It is good to have a place to talk about church things with people that are my age and in the same fields as me.
God Bless and take Care!
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