But first, there was one more text to send, one more Twitter tweet to tweet, one more Facebook status to update, one more snapshot to share, one more YouTube video to upload, just one more connection to make in the digital world that now shapes real life.

This year’s four-day festival drew nearly 13,000 Protestants and Catholics from throughout New England, which means there were about that many cellphones, smartphones, tablets and other digital devices on hand. The screens glowed like fireflies in the crowds that gathered for the rock concerts each night on the lower slopes of the Gunstock Mountain Resort.

“Everyone’s connected everywhere. It’s continuous. This is how our young people experience life today,” said Heil, during his “Protecting the Playground” workshop for parents and youth leaders at SoulFest. “They don’t even look at the keys on their phones anymore when texting. …

“Lots of kids are more comfortable texting than they are talking and having real relationships. They have trouble with face-to-face intimacy because they’re so used to living their lives online and in text messages. Texting feels safer.”

But the harsh reality is that the digital world is not safer, stressed the 52-year-old Heil, who has a quarter of a century of experience as digital networker and designer. While many pastors and parents have heard horror stories about children straying into dark corners online, few are aware of just how common these problems have become — even in their sanctuaries and homes.

This is the kind of danger and sin that religious leaders often fear discussing, precisely because these realities have not remained bottled up in the secular world. Thus, Heil urged his listeners to ponder the following statistics in his presentation, drawn from mainstream research in the past year:

* Two-thirds of Americans under the age of 18 have reported some kind of negative experience while online. Only 45 percent of their parents are aware of this.

* Forty-one percent of children say they have been approached online by some kind of stranger, possibly an older predator.

* At least 25 percent of children report having seen nude or disturbingly violent images online. Heil is convinced this number has risen to 45 percent in the past year or so. The vast majority of children exposed to pornography first see these images on a computer in their own home.

“This is why, if I could convince parents to make one change in their homes, it would be to never put a computer behind a closed door. … Keep them out in an open part of the house,” he said.

* Among teens, 45 percent report having sent or received a sexual text message of some kind. One in five say they have sent or received a nude or partially nude image, the phenomenon that has become known as “sexting.”

* Among teens with Internet access, 40 percent say they have been affected by cyberbullying activities, such as malicious changes being made to their Facebook pages after the theft of passwords.

“There are Christian kids doing this,” said Heil, talking about various forms of cyberbullying. “Young people just go online and they open up. Things get emotional and they share what’s on their hearts. They just can’t help it. Then, before they know it, things can get mean and kids get hurt.”

Meanwhile, he said, it’s getting harder for adults to monitor what’s happening in this “dark alley,” in large part because young people are so much more skilled at social media than the adults who are paying for all of those smartphones and laptops. Many adults also fear legal complications if they try to trace their children’s steps online. Some church leaders — with good cause — fear getting involved in social media and having the young misinterpret their motives.

Apathy is not the answer, however, since children are getting hurt.

“It’s hard to do happy talk about this issue,” Heil admitted. “It’s painful and it’s hidden and it’s dark stuff. … This is a test of whether our relationships really mean anything in the church today, whether there is such a thing as accountability.”

When flipping through its pages, she said, one of the first things she notices is a missing word — Facebook. She needs to rewrite the whole book to cover this reality gap.

“That obvious, isn’t it? It’s so obvious that we ought to be using Facebook to tell more women about our Bible studies and prayer groups and retreats and things like that,” said Davis, who has been married to a Southern Baptist pastor and administrator for nearly four decades, working in Texas and Indiana.

This connection is certainly obvious in America’s megachurch subculture and the digital-media pros and market-research consultants who serve it. Davis, however, has focused most of her attention as a speaker and writer on churches that occupy corners in ordinary neighborhoods, not the giant sanctuaries that resemble shopping malls.

Lots of churches, she noted, don’t even have solid websites. Facebook? Isn’t it that computer thing all the teens use to waste time?

“Many small churches, or even our medium-sized churches, have nothing — nothing,” she said. “There are people who still do not realize that if you’re not online, or if you are not on Facebook, you do not exist for lots of people today. Your church simply does not exist.”

The disconnected leaders of these churches should start doing the math, she argued, in a Baptist Press essay offering advice to those who have remained unplugged from Facebook.

First, pastors should request “a show of hands to find out how many church members use Facebook,” she said. “The average Facebook user has 130 registered ‘friends,’ so if just 20 church members use Facebook, that’s potentially 2,600 people who could read posts about your church. One hundred members with Facebook could touch 13,000. … Convinced?”

Once they recognize the potential, religious leaders must learn how to handle life in the parallel universe of social networking. Here are some key rules drawn from work Davis has done with church leaders who have taken their knocks.

* It’s crucial to understand the differences between websites, which users enter on their own seeking information, and Facebook pages, which — through “friends” links — can send semi-invited messages into someone’s personal “News Feed.”

“With Facebook,” she explained, “you’re sending messages to your members, but you’re also sending messages to their friends and then, potentially, to their friends and on and on. So it’s more aggressive, in a way. You’re on offense, not defense.”

* Newcomers should proceed with caution in this casual, yet intense medium. Clergy, she said, “know they have to think before they speak. Now they’re learning that they have to think before they click. … For example, pastors are supposed to use the language well. But if you put something on Facebook that has two or three misspelled words in it people are going to think that you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

* It’s important to keep messages short, positive and audience appropriate. Facebook, she said, “is a good place to send out a prayer request, but it’s not the place to share details of someone’s surgery. This is not the place to talk about the fine details of your church’s finances.”

* Know that even simple amateur videos can help. For example, senior adults are more likely to feel comfortable visiting an exercise class if they can watch a short video showing others taking part. It helps to show newcomers what your flock is doing.

* Social networks cannot replace the human touch of true human networks. Facebook posts cannot replace a covered-dish supper, but they can help bring more dishes and people through the church door.

For example, as soon as news reports began about the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, Davis said her own church rushed out a message urging members and their friends to attend a prayer event. Then volunteers sent the message to other churches and their small-group networks. In short, the invitation “went viral” at the local level.

The result: Instant prayer service.

“That message went all over the place,” she said. “We could have never done that by telephone — that fast, to that many people outside our church. People came from everywhere. …

“This is real. This is something that more churches just have to try.”

The bishops gathered at the ancient Council of Nicea didn’t face that kind of communications challenge and, thus, produced an old-fashioned creed that in English is at least 1,161 characters long.

No wonder so many of the gray-haired administrators in black suits in the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops struggle with life online. It’s hard to take seriously the frivolous-sounding words — “blog” and “tweet” leap to mind — that define reality among the natives on what Pope Benedict XVI calls the “Digital Continent.”

“In the past, the church would often build new parish structures, knowing that people would recognize the church architecture and start showing up. On the Digital Continent, ‘If you build it, they will come’ does not hold true,” said Bishop Ronald Herzog of Alexandria, La., in a report from the body’s communications committee.

“We digital immigrants need lessons on the digital culture, just as we expect missionaries to learn the cultures of the people they are evangelizing. We have to be enculturated. It’s more than just learning how to create a Facebook account.”

This is important news in an era in which recent research from the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life found that the Catholic Church was retaining 68 percent of its members who, as children, were raised in the fold. While the church is making converts, those who have left Catholicism in recent years outnumber those who have joined by nearly a 4-to-1 ratio.

Almost half of those who left Catholicism and did not join another church exited before the age of 18, as did one-third of those who chose to join another church. Another 30 percent of young Catholics left the church by the age of 24. At that point, the departure rate slowed down.

Truth is, it is almost impossible to talk about the lives of teens and young adults without discussion the growing power of their social-media networks. For young people worldwide, social media and their mobile devices have become the “first point of reference” in daily life, warned Herzog.

“The implications of that for a church which is struggling to get those same young people to enter our churches on Sunday are staggering. If the church is not on their mobile device, it doesn’t exist.”

As recently as a similar report in 2007, it was clear the bishops were hesitant to discuss the digital world because they feared its power when used by the church’s critics, said Rocco Palmo, who produces the influential “Whispers in the Loggia” weblog about Catholic news and trends.

The Herzog report was a step forward, primarily because the bishops seem to realize this is a subject that they cannot ignore. That’s significant in an era in which many Vatican officials still cling to their fax machines and struggle to keep up with their email. During the recent Baltimore meetings, said Palmo, there were more iPads in the hands of younger bishops “than you would find at your local Apple store.”

“In the old days, that stone church on the corner was a sign of the presence of God in your community. Well, that’s what a church website is today,” he said. If bishops and priests cannot grasp “that one-dimensional reality in our culture, how are they supposed to grasp the two-dimensional, interactive world of social media?”

The theoretical stakes are high, noted Herzog, but it has also become impossible to ignore the raw numbers. For example, if the 500 million active Facebook users became their own nation, it would be the world’s third largest — behind China and India.

The bottom line: Catholicism may be “facing as great a challenge as that of the Protestant Reformation,” said the bishop.

“Anyone can create a blog. Everyone’s opinion is valid. And if a question or contradiction is posted, the digital natives expect a response and something resembling a conversation,” said Herzog. “We can choose not to enter into that cultural mindset, but we do so at great peril to the Church’s credibility and approachability in the minds of the natives. …

“This is a new form of pastoral ministry. It may not be the platform we were seeking, but it is an opportunity of such magnitude that we should consider carefully the consequences of disregarding it.”

Some religion-beat jobs have been killed, while others have been downsized, out-sourced, frozen or chopped up and given to reluctant general-assignment reporters.

Gentle readers, please rise for a moment of silence.

The Orlando Sentinel. The Dallas Morning News. Time. The Chicago Sun-Times. The Rocky Mountain News. U.S. News & World Report. The list goes on, especially if you include smaller newsrooms that have always struggled to support Godbeat jobs.

At least 16 major news outlets abandoned or reduced commitment to religion news as a specialty beat in recent years, according to the Religion Newswriters Association. Two of those empty desks — at the Los Angeles Times and the Boston Globe — were recently filled.

“In the 1990s and early 2000s, the largest papers often had multiple religion reporters. That has disappeared, for sure. That is where the biggest cut for religion has occurred,” said RNA director Debra Mason, who teaches at the University of Missouri.

“We suffer in the meantime, and one possible casualty is all our experienced, better writers. I do worry that the next generation of religion writers don’t have any mentors or internships, etc., to gain experience.”

Mason stressed that the religion beat is not being singled out. Sweeping changes in the industry, coupled with hard economic times, have been especially destructive in big-city newspapers that once had the resources to fund a variety of specialty beats — from the arts to fashion, from science to religion. Also, high profits in the 1980s and into the ’90s had inflated some newsroom staffs.

At the same time, Mason said she sees another trend. New forms of religion news and opinion can be found in a variety of settings online, including sites such as Politics Daily, The Huffington Post, Creedible.com, Read the Spirit, Immanent Frame, Religion Dispatches and the powerful Catholic weblog, Whispers in the Loggia. CNN leaders recently announced the creation of several specialty news sites, including a religion weblog. Beliefnet.com continues to evolve.

Dedicated readers have never had greater access to the work of journalists and public-relations professionals employed by major denominations and religious groups of all kind — from Baptist Press to the Episcopal News Service and everyone in between. Alternative news sources have sprung up in cyberspace, such as the Stand Firm network for Anglican conservatives, The Wild Hunt for modern pagans, Orthodox Christians for Accountability and flocks of Baptist blogs — from BaptistLife.com to SBCvoices.com — representing establishment and independent writers.

The harsh reality today, according to Rocco Palmo, the man behind Whispers in the Loggia, is that all too often readers who care about religion face tough choices. Will they place their trust in traditional news reports that are, these days, often written by journalists who have little training to prepare them for the rigors of the religion beat or the opinion-based work of experienced insiders and scholars who may have ideological axes to grind?

“There are fabulous religion reporters who are still out there grinding away in the mainstream media, but they are an endangered species for sure,” said Palmo. “I still think that basic, hard-news reporting is the gold standard and we need more of it. … But most of what you see when you go online is commentary and criticism. You don’t see that much original reporting being done. …

“If anything, people like me are just trying to step in and fill the void.”

Someone will have to do that because, year after year, religion keeps playing a vital role in shaping many of the world’s biggest stories, from the streets of Iran to voting booths in America, from scandals shaking Catholic sanctuaries to mysteries unfolding in genetics research laboratories.

It’s impossible to tell these complex stories accurately without grasping the role that faith plays in the lives of millions and millions of people around the world.

“Religion stories are the most exquisite stories to tell,” stressed Mason. “I believe that we’ll figure out how to effectively and efficiently tell stories about faith and values once this media transition is sorted out. The question is not whether or not we’ll have religion news, but whether or not there will be anyone left who knows how to cover it.”

“She was preeminently pro-life, against abortion and there to protect and underscore the dignity of every person,” noted O’Malley, praising the founder of the Special Olympics.

When Sen. Edward Kennedy died soon after that, the cardinal strongly defended his own decision to preside at his funeral — despite the senator’s public stands against church church’s teachings on abortion and sexuality.

“We must show those who do not share our belief about life that we care about them,” O’Malley argued. “We will stop the practice of abortion by changing the law, and we will be successful in changing the law if we change people’s hearts. We will not change hearts by turning away from people in their time of need and when they are experiencing grief and loss.”

The cardinal didn’t deliver these highly personal messages from the pulpit of the Cathedral of the Holy Cross. Instead, he posted them on “Cardinal Sean’s Blog” at BostonCatholic.org — his own multimedia journal.

O’Malley isn’t alone. A few other bishops and priests have made the jump into cyberspace. However, there will be many more bloggers wearing Roman collars if Pope Benedict XVI has his way. In a message addressed straight to priests — bypassing the offices of many cautious bishops — the pope has urged them to start spreading and defending the faith online.

“The world of digital communication, with its almost limitless expressive capacity, makes us appreciate all the more Saint Paul’s exclamation: ‘Woe to me if I do not preach the Gospel,’ ” said the pope, in a message released on Jan. 24, the feast of St. Francis de Sales, the patron saint of journalists.

“The spread of multimedia communications and its rich ‘menu of options’ might make us think it sufficient simply to be present on the Web, or to see it only as a space to be filled,” argued Benedict, whose online presence has risen with the birth of Pope2You.net and the Vatican YouTube channel.

“Yet priests can rightly be expected to be present in the world of digital communications as faithful witnesses to the Gospel, exercising their proper role as leaders of communities which increasingly express themselves with the different ‘voices’ provided by the digital marketplace. Priests are thus challenged to proclaim the Gospel by employing the latest generation of audiovisual resources (images, videos, animated features, blogs, websites) which, alongside traditional means, can open up broad new vistas for dialogue, evangelization and catechesis.”

For tech-savvy Catholics, it’s stunning news that the 82-year-old Benedict used the word “blog” in the first place, noted Rocco Palmo, the Philadelphia-based scribe whose “Whispers in the Loggia” weblog is a global hot spot for Vatican news and gossip. The tone of this papal message, he added, is relentlessly positive — a striking departure from the Vatican’s many downbeat messages about media in the past.

The bottom line, noted Palmo, via email, is that “against the backdrop of the widespread American experience of mass closings of parishes, declines in attendance, etc., we’re learning that one thing that helps folks want to keep staying close is when … the church realizes that one hour on Sunday just isn’t enough, that people are looking for something to help keep them connected and inspired through the week. So I think Benedict is calling priests to see that they have a crucial role in that, and to see this not as some sort of hobby or personal indulgence, but a vitally important extension of their ministry. Anything that bears fruit to that end lifts all boats.”

Catholic leaders will, however, need to be careful when working in this chaotic, even deceptive, online world.

After all, some early reports about Benedict’s message about digital media mentioned that Vatican officials marked the occasion by opening an official Twitter feed — @vatican_va — complete with the Vatican coat of arms.

It was a fake. Catholic News Service soon established that the Vatican has not taken up tweeting — yet.

“The whole episode has prompted some Vatican media people to remark, ‘It wasn’t us — but it should have been us,’ ” noted John Thavis, the CNS bureau chief in Rome. “So don’t be surprised to see a real Vatican Twitter feed in the future.”

That isn’t how the Internet Evangelism Day team sees things. It notes that “over 1 billion people use the Web,” the “Internet is changing the world” and “God is using the Web to transform lives.”

“The Internet has become a 21st century Roman road, marketplace, theater, backyard fence and office drinks machine,” proclaims the site’s webmasters. “Web evangelism gives believers opportunities to reach people with the Gospel right where they are, just as Jesus and Paul did.”

Tech guru George Gilder knows where the Web evangelists are coming from and offers a hearty “Amen.” He remains convinced that cyberspace is territory that religious leaders have to explore and, hopefully, master.

“The Internet is very good for building communities and, obviously, churches are communities. It allows a particularly charismatic, or brilliant, church leader to reach potential followers not only in his community or in his immediate locality, but all across the country and the world,” said Gilder, the author the trailblazing books “Microcosm” and “Telecosm.”

“This is the power of the Net,” he said. “It can free people from this sort of entrapment in a narrow locality and allow them to find support for their particular faith, wherever it may arise.”

But there’s a fly in the digital ointment. There’s a reason that Gilder’s online “Telecosm Forum” is for subscribers only — he needs to focus his time on serious questions raised by committed readers who are truly interested in the issues he wants to research. Gilder invests his time and energy in this one online flock.

That’s the bottom line: A decade or two down the digital information highway, people who are serious about the Web are learning to invest their time more wisely.

That includes religious leaders, who are as buried in digital junk as everyone else. Many ministers who once were anxious to think outside the local-church box have been stunned at the time commitment this kind of “online ministry” requires.

The good news is that ambitious religious leaders can do 24/7, online, multi-media, interactive ministry at the local, national and even global levels. And the bad news? Users will expect them to build and maintain these 24/7, online, multi-media, interactive ministries at the local, national and even global levels.

This is a mixed blessing for ministers who are already struggling to keep up with the fast-paced realities of life in the flesh-and-blood, analog world. Websites, blogs and email can become curses, as well as blessings.

The Net is, for better and for worse, a tool for interactive communications, stressed Gilder, who is an active churchman. Anything that amplifies speech has the potential to help evangelism and other crucial ministries in most churches, which are communities of believers that need to interact with the world around them in order to survive or thrive.

However, religious leaders need to ask serious questions about the size and shape of the online ministries they attempt, he said. Should forums about sensitive or controversial issues be open to all comers? If a congregation offers an interactive website for people who are asking religious and personal questions, is there anyone with the time and skills to maintain it? Will posting a minister’s online address produce contacts with people who truly need help? Who will screen all those emails?

There’s one more tricky issue that must be addressed. Many believers are highly skilled when it comes to talking to and arguing with other members of their own flocks, using a kind of “preaching to the choir” lingo that is mere gibberish to outsiders. The religious corners of the Web are packed with websites of this kind, which do much to promote insider debates, but little to reach people outside church doors.

“It’s crucial to break out of this kind of parochial language,” said Gilder. “If you are going to try to talk to people in the secular world, you have to have people who actually have the ability to do that kind of work online. …

“It’s quite exciting to actually go out into the wider world. But you have to have something to say and you have to know what you are doing.”

This is especially true when it comes to Anglican battles. Here is her take on the challenge facing Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams after U.S. Episcopalians elected Bishop Katherine Jefferts Schori as Anglicanism’s first female archbishop and then refused to retreat on homosexual issues.

Will the Anglican Communion shatter, with Third World conservatives pitted against modernists in Europe and America?

“All is not lost,” wrote Gledhill, just before the end of the American church’s 75th General Convention. “A kind of schism might result, but it will not be schism as generally known. Anglicans are great at fudging crises, especially liberal ones. … All Rowan Williams has to do is apply his formidable intellect to the question of how both sides can be kept at the same communion table, albeit at opposite ends.”

Gledhill has a right to her opinions, of course.

But she isn’t just another Anglican with a “weblog,” one of dozens of “bloggers” who flooded the Internet with news, rumors and opinions during the tumultuous events this week in Columbus, Ohio.

Gledhill is the religion correspondent for The Times of London. Thus, she writes waves of regular newspaper stories, as well as columns that mix traditional reporting with her own analysis. And now, blessed by her editors, she writes thousands of words each week at her “blog” — ranging from coverage of theological issues that may be too complex for the regular news pages to personal observations about her own parish and her own faith. She isn’t alone. The Times offers dozens of blogs by reporters covering everything from politics to fashion footwear, from movies to gay family life.

Many editors want their reporters to blog and many others do not. What happens when journalists who are supposed to write unbiased stories about hot issues start airing opinions online that tell readers what they really think? When is a reporter a reporter and when is a reporter a blogger?

This can lead to confusion. A Church Times columnist recently challenged Gledhill’s decision to refer to the Bishop of Chelmsford as an “extreme liberal,” calling it a sign of bias.

“This is a difference of opinion,” wrote Father Giles Fraser, who teaches philosophy at Wadham College, Oxford. “But Ms. Gledhill presents it as if she were seeking a degree of objectivity rather than admitting that she is a campaigner herself. … It isn’t that journalists such as Ruth Gledhill ought to keep their views under wraps. That’s why her weblog is so welcome: it is only when we know where people are coming from that we can learn to play their spin. In order to be empowered as a reader or listener, I want to know more about what journalists believe, not less.”

Actually, said Gledhill, she used the “extreme liberal” label because of the bishop’s role as a patron for Changing Attitude, an important lobby for “gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender” causes in the church.

When she first started blogging, said Gledhill, it was tempting to dig deep into her personal beliefs and experiences in an attempt to reach out to readers and to offer a form of writing that was completely different from her regular reporting. But it didn’t take long to realize that “this seam was going to run out pretty quick,” she said. She has also learned to pay close attention to the feedback she receives from readers, who can respond directly to her online posts.

After nearly two decades on the religion beat, Gledhill said she welcomes a chance to put more and more news and information on the record in The Times of London, even if it is published in pixels rather than ink.

“I?m never bored by the subject of religion, it was a little restrictive just writing news all the time,” she said. “There were things I so much wanted to say and there was nowhere to say them. I feel completely re-energized by blogging and am slightly addicted to it. I believe, and hope this is a true belief, that it is making me a better reporter because it is making me more accountable, making me think more deeply about what I am reporting and is also, in a strange way, making me more involved, more compassionate.”

But times changed and the high church of journalism was challenged by radio and television news, which was followed by a tsunami of news, rumors, opinions and criticism on 24-7 cable news networks and the Internet. The result has been a subtle change in doctrine at the Times, although the Gray Lady’s motto has stayed the same.

Around-the-clock competition has “caused us to shift our emphasis from information as a commodity and play to different strengths — emphasizing less the breaking facts than the news behind the news, writing more analytically,” said executive editor Bill Keller, speaking at last week’s National College Media Convention.

“We long ago moved from ‘All the News That’s Fit to Print,’ to ‘All the News You Need to Know, and What It Means.’ “

Keller’s address blended confessions about the newspaper industry’s sins with a litany of praise for journalistic virtues. Journalists at the Times, he insisted, still practice what they preach, remaining “agnostic as to where a story may lead” and maintaining standards of accuracy and fairness that prevent the “opinions of our writers and editors from leaching into our news pages.”

However, he also said he believes that “information is not what people crave. What they crave, and need, is judgment — someone they can trust to vouch for the information, dig behind it, and make sense of it.”

The question is whether critics, especially those in religious sanctuaries, will trust Keller’s team to provide an unbiased take on the news and then, as a finale, pass judgment on “what it means,” said former New York Daily News reporter William Proctor, author of “The Gospel According to the New York Times.”

“This intentional change in the motto — even if it won’t be printed by the newspaper — suggests to me that editorializing is being placed on an equal footing with straight news,” he said. The new motto seems “to be saying, ‘We’re recognizing that opinion has a larger role than the editorial or op-ed pages. In fact, opinion now has a place in the news itself.’ “

Meanwhile, critics may remember Keller — who won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting in the Soviet Union — as the Times columnist who once called himself a “collapsed Catholic” and lashed out at Pope John Paul II and the Vatican for rejecting female priests, gay rights, legalized abortion and the sexual revolution in general.

The struggle within Catholicism, he wrote, is “part of a larger struggle within the human race, between the forces of tolerance and absolutism. … This is, after all, the church that gave us the Crusades and the Inquisition.”

However, as executive editor, Keller produced a 2005 manifesto urging his staff to improve religion coverage, avoid the misuse of loaded labels such as “religious fundamentalists” and hire qualified journalists who offer a diversity of “religious upbringing and military experience, of region and class.”

Journalists at the Times, he said, must strive to escape “our predominantly urban, culturally liberal orientation, to cover the full range of our national conversation. … This is important to us not because we want to appease believers or pander to conservatives, but because good journalism entails understanding more than just the neighborhood you grew up in.”

This candor is refreshing, said Jay Rosen, who leads New York University’s journalism program and has written a provocative essay entitled “Journalism is Itself a Religion.” The problem is that many journalists want to escape old-fashioned straight news, but they don’t know what to call their new product. It’s hard to distinguish between news “analysis” and “opinion” writing that reflects the beliefs of the writer.

He knows the laws and lingo. Along with his BetaChurch.org colleagues, Merwin believes the World Wide Web can bring people together and spread new ideas. But when it comes to analyzing the impact of the new “information technology” (natives say “IT”) on many churches, he has some doubts.

“Lots of people are jumping into online ministry because they see that everybody else is doing it,” he said, during the 2005 convention of the Gospel Communications Network, a digital coalition of 300-plus ministries.

“That isn’t a very good reason. People need to stop and ask if they have the time and the talent and the energy and the resources to get into all of this. I’ve seen churches pour thousands of dollars into IT projects and then, when they crash and burn, it turns out that nobody was sure what they wanted to do in the first place.”

If this lament sounds familiar, it should. Not that long ago, flocks of businesses and investors lost their analog shirts while riding the cyber waves that rolled across the nation. Prophets of the new order berated doubters who failed to “get it.”

Everyone yearned for the next “Big Thing,” said Mike Atkinson, president of uneekNet.com. The whole economy was going to change. Stores would be swallowed by online start-ups. Newspapers would vanish as “push” technology zapped personalized news — for free — directly to computer screens. Everyone wanted to build “portals” rich with “stickiness” and registered millions of “hits.”

Many religious groups tried to copy the trends, building online sites that resembled grain silos full of information that, when users dug deeper, turned out to be tweaked content from traditional publications. The goal was to draw people into your silo and keep them there, while making sure that the contents of your silo didn’t leak out into anybody else’s silo. Sharing spiritual customers with others would be bad for business.

It was exciting. But ministers had to learn to be careful out there.

“The key is that all of this is about me — me, me, me. It’s about finding what works for me and then giving me what I want,” said Atkinson, who is best known for his work with the Youth Specialties ministry. “That’s the reality of the thing. That’s what the Web is about. … This feeds right into a consumer culture. It forces us to make instantaneous choices, whether they are the right choices or not.”

Millions of people are surfing in cyberspace, looking for connections that will help them find answers, he said. But they are doing this in a marketplace that emphasizes the total freedom of the individual. Online commitments are as binding as the click of a mouse. People are looking for community, but on their own terms.

Atkinson doesn’t think religious leaders should panic. He hopes that they study new forms of digital communication — from Google to Craigslist, from MySpace to Wikipedia — that are built on people sharing information instead of hoarding it. It’s time for more ministries to cooperate, rather than compete, with each other.

“We also have to know that all of this can shape how people think,” he said. “It’s a buyer’s market and people want what they want. … You can end up with people online shopping around and then saying, ‘Hey, that megachurch has this or that neat program and I want it. Let’s move over there.’ And off they go.”

Eventually, this consumer mentality can soak down into the messages that ministries deliver, said Merwin.

The hot word is “postmodernism,” but for many ministries the temptation is older and more fundamental than that. The bottom line is that it’s hard not to give people want they want, to tell customers what they want to hear.

“It’s that attitude that says, ‘You have your thing and I have my thing and that’s OK because it doesn’t really matter what you believe anyway,’ ” he said. “You stay with that and you have to end up with radical individualism and isolationism. You have people leaving one hip church to go to another hip church that does some hip things better than the first one. Where does it end?”

As he ended one recent oration, the sociologist, urban activist and evangelical gadfly fell to his knees, hands raised to heaven.

“I believe Americans must heed this call and turn away from our wicked ways,” said Campolo, who made headlines counseling President Bill Clinton. “We need to turn away from sexual promiscuity, turn away from the consumeristic materialism, turn away from our failure to pay attention to what we have done collectively to poor and weak peoples around the world. …

“Then, let our prayer be that God will hear from heaven, forgive our sins and heal our land.”

Many of the faithful said “amen,” lifted their hands or made the sign of the cross.

Then Campolo froze for a moment, as an hourglass icon hovered in the Romanesque arches of the Church of Fools, the world’s first 3D, interactive, virtual church.

This kind of thing happens when traffic jams the Internet.

The computer-generated “avatar” looked like Campolo and he was delivering a Campolo sermon entitled “Why Many People in the World Hate America.” But Campolo was not controlling his own computer image, since the site’s webmasters were not sure he could master the technology needed to preach online — line by line, gesture by gesture.

Actually, Campolo was at a clergy conference in St. Simons Island, Ga. But he stayed on the telephone with his Philadelphia office staff, which communicated with the Church of Fools in Liverpool, England, through an online instant-messaging program, while one of site’s creators controlled the “pixilated preacher.” The question-and-answer session was especially tricky.

“I wanted Tony to be animated, because that’s the way he is — live,” said Stephen Goddard. “I have known him for years and I know his gestures and style. I was sure I could get our Tony to preach like the real Tony.”

The experimental site — www.ChurchofFools.com — opened its doors on May 11, with help from the Methodist Church of Great Britain and others. The pilot project ends this weekend (Aug. and the future is uncertain. Goddard said he is confident they can keep the doors open — but not as often. The Church of England is also poised to open a digital church of some kind.

So far, volunteers have donated the time and expertise needed to create and run Church of Fools, with most of its $30,000 budget being used to purchase the bandwidth needed for interactive services. Goddard said the goal is to raise $300,000 to cover the next three years and to expand — hopefully including churches in America, China and elsewhere.

It is hard to picture what happens in a “virtual church” without images on a screen. At any one time, 35 worshippers can sign in and create characters that stand, sit or kneel. They can whisper or talk to nearby worshippers, slip into the church crypt for discussions or linger at icons in prayer. Another 1,500 can take part as silent ghosts. Campolo packed the pews.

Participants sang along as the organ played through their speakers, typing phrases from the hymns that seemed meaningful. During the July 28th service, one warden led the global flock in prayer, giving thanks for computers, satellites, bloggers, online friendships and their virtual church.

“Help us to use our networks to do good things,” she said, “to act justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly with you, our God, and to be good neighbors online and off.”

One thing visitors cannot do is jump the virtual altar rail. Early on, an avatar called “Satan” stormed the pulpit and cursed the Anglican bishop of London. That wasn’t cricket. Wardens now have the power to smite the rowdy.

“It only took a day or two to discover that there are lots of people who could not resist the chance to scream ‘wanker!’ in a church sanctuary,” said Goddard. “Actually, all that cursing was a good sign. It told us that we didn’t have the usual holy club in the pews. This wasn’t going to be just another safe Christian crowd.”

NEXT WEEK: Is an online church a “real” church?