ldsWebguy

The Church’s Newsroom site just posted an article about how members are expressing their feelings and beliefs by posting blogs and videos online.

My new blog RichmanRamblings.blogspot.com is where I post stuff that doesn’t fit on ldsWebguy.com or any of my other sites.

LDS.net is a network set up by the More Good Foundation as a place where members can blog, chat, share testimonies, and participate in groups and forums.

A lot of good things are happening on LDS.net. See the LDS.net blog for a description of 4 people who have been baptized because of LDS.net and other investigators who are learning about the Church.

If you want to learn more about how to participate in things like LDS.net, see the More Good Foundation Web site or the LDS Online site.

A few days ago, I blogged about creating social network called LDS Online at LDSonline.ning.com.

It’s been up for only 3 days and already has 52 members, 7 forums, and 3 groups.

I have launched a social network called LDS Online at LDSonline.ning.com. (Ning is an online service that lets you create, customize, and share your own social network easily and for free.)

LDS Online is intended to be a community of Latter-day Saints where they can share ideas and collaborate on how to best provide accurate and positive information about the Church on blogs and Web sites. It is intended to be a resource for people who want to respond to Elder M. Russell Ballard’s challenge to participate in a gospel discussion online.

It is not intended to compete with either of these two great sites, but to be complimentary to them:

• LDS.net is the premier LDS site for blogging, chatting, sharing testimonies, and participating in groups and forums. LDS Online is the place to help you learn how to do these activities, and also to provide some resources to get you started. It also lets you collaborate with others in forums and discussion threads so you can learn to do these activities more effectively.
• The More Good Foundation Web site is a great resource with ideas to help you share testimony online. LDS Online has a similar purpose, but provides forums, groups, and discussion threads you can use to share ideas and collaborate with others so you can learn to participate online more effectively.

I invite you to participate with us at LDSonline.ning.com.

LDS Online is not owned by or affiliated with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

On April 19, 2008, Elder M. Russell Ballard gave a speech at the Brigham Young University Management Society in Washington, D.C. Most of his speech was about using the Internet to share information about the Church. He said that many people go to the Internet to find information about the Church and they find a lot of misinformation and outright falsehoods.

Let me quote several paragraphs from his speech:

“Gradually, accurate and positive information is rising to the top of lists generated by various search engines. Those seeking information are more likely to encounter accurate information today than at any time since the Internet began, even though we still have a long way to go.

“So let me pose a question. What are you prepared to do about it? If you are a member of the Church, what is your responsibility during this period of unusual attention and debate? Interest has continued at a high level and probably will for some time. If a national conversation is going on about the Church, are you going to be an active participant or a silent observer?

“Church leaders must not be reluctant to participate in public discussion. Where appropriate, we will engage with the media whether it’s the traditional, mainstream media or the new media of the Internet. But Church leaders can’t do it all, especially at the grass-roots, community level. While we do speak authoritatively for the Church, we look to our responsible and faithful members to engage personally with blogs, to write thoughtful, online letters to news organizations, and to act in other ways to correct the record with their own opinions.

“However, I emphasize that it is not always about correcting misinformation. Sometimes it is about getting solid information and ideas out there in the first place. Share your experiences – those from your own life – that show how your values and your faith intersect. It doesn’t matter whether that’s face to face with another person, or whether you do it by participating from your own blog or contributing to someone else’s blog. The most important thing is that you let people know that you are a Latter-day Saint, and that your behavior and attitude always reflect the high standards of the Church and what is expected as a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ. Of course, you will be speaking as an individual member and not as an official representative of the Church.

“Clearly, in this context I am not talking about declaring your testimony of faith in the traditional sense. Naturally, you can and should do that where the setting is appropriate and the audience is receptive, such as a church meeting. Rather, I am talking about taking part in everyday conversations in an unforced way, where your values and your religious beliefs will arise naturally. No one likes to have religion thrust down their throats. Instead, allow people to see how your beliefs lift and shape your life for the better. How does the gospel help you as a parent engage with your teens? How do your values encourage you to participate in civic affairs? How has your experience as a home or visiting teacher enlarged your compassion or care for the sick and needy? How has your Church life helped you to avoid such things as pornography and immorality? How have family councils or home evenings helped you resolve differences of opinion with members of your family? How has your experience in speaking in church helped you address large public groups? Where did you learn to respect and not to criticize other faiths? And so on.”

Elder Ballard concluded by saying “We should join the conversations on the Internet or anywhere else where we can clarify the great purpose of God in restoring to the earth the fullness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ through the Prophet Joseph Smith.”

You can read the entire transcript of Elder Ballard’s speech at the Brigham Young University Management Society in Washington, D.C. on the Church’s Newsroom site.

You may also be interested in reading two other recent talks by Elder Ballard on this topic:

• BYU-Idaho Graduation Speech
• BYU-Hawaii Graduation Speech learn more

More than 1,400 Brigham Young University-Idaho graduates were urged to make their influence felt in the digital world in an address given by Elder M. Russell Ballard, a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, at winter commencement exercises held Friday, April 11.

“Your experience here is not the end of your quest for knowledge,” Elder Ballard told the graduates. “We are blessed as Latter-day Saints to view the acquisition of knowledge from an eternal perspective… Of all the things you have learned at this institution and during your life so far, the most important is that you know the gospel of Jesus Christ has been restored to the earth through the Prophet Joseph Smith and you know that the Church is true. Your knowledge and testimony of this will always be your foundation and your polar star throughout your life.”

Elder Ballard told the graduates their strength and knowledge is needed in a world torn between good and evil. The evidence of this battle is apparent in popular media, including the Internet. “While there is so very much good, informative information on the Internet, one of Satan’s most seductive efforts is the increasingly present pornography appearing in all kinds of media,” he said.

Along with the terrible effects of pornography, the Internet and other media are often used to spread falsehoods, Elder Ballard said. “Every month there are 60 billion searches for information on the Internet. Many are seeking information about the Church; and while some are finding the truth, others find anti-Mormon sites that mislead them and defame the Church,” Elder Ballard said.

With all the falsehoods and misconceptions about the Church found online, Elder Ballard urged the graduates to use their knowledge and testimony of the gospel to influence seekers of truth. “Today I want to encourage you to reach out to others in the world to help change the perception and even the hearts of millions of our Heavenly Father’s children by correcting misunderstandings by sharing with them the message of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ,” he said.

Elder Ballard suggested that graduates join in conversations on the Internet to share the gospel and to explain the message of the Restoration in simple, clear terms. As they participate in these new media, Elder Ballard continued, the graduates should remember first and foremost that they are followers of the Savior Jesus Christ.

Read the entire BYU-Idaho News Release

There is an interesting article in today’s USA Today about religious podcasts.

• “…podcast technology is opening the doors to a wider variety of religious teaching than ever before, available on demand and delivered automatically to the computers of a growing number of Americans hungry for spirituality.”
• Even small churches can use podcasts to reach large audiences. More than 1 million sermons are accessed monthly from SermonAudio.com, a site that small churches can use to distribute their sermons. The site is now branching out to allow people to access their sermon library of nearly 170,000 sermons by iPhones and iPods.
• “A survey last year by the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that more people used the Internet to look for religious and spiritual information than to download music, participate in online auctions or visit adult websites.”
• GodTube, a Christian alternative to YouTube, has about 2 million users a month. It plans to launch a program that will allow churches to set up their own social networking home pages and post slide shows and audio.
• Experts expect that the easy access to religious teaching from podcasts probably won’t keep people from church, just as TV and radio didn’t hurt church attendance.
• In some cases, a good podcast might be better than a traditional passive church experience. If a person goes to church and passively listens to a talking head give a sermon, then leaves, a podcast experience might be more engaging.
• WorshipIdeas offers tips for contemporary church worship leaders.

I am often asked whether individuals should update entries about the Church on Wikipedia, or if the Church will take care of it.

Wikipedia is written collaboratively by volunteers from all around the world. It is not intended that an entry about the Church be written and updated only by the Church. In fact, Wikipedia will only accept a certain amount of updates by the official organization that relates to an entry.

We encourage everyone to routinely review entries for accuracy and update them as individuals.

A computer-animated video featuring the March 2008 special issue of the Ensign and Liahona is now available on the new Web page SpecialMagazine.lds.org.

The video testifies of the Savior Jesus Christ and visually outlines the contents of the March 2008 magazine issue, which is focused exclusively on Christ. It describes the messages and testimonies included in the magazine and emphasizes the central position of Jesus Christ. The video can be linked to or downloaded and e-mailed to those who may be interested in the message or in obtaining a copy of the magazine for themselves.

SpecialMagazine.lds.org provides information on accessing the magazine or its contents in several different ways. To obtain the special issue, visitors can download the issue in PDF format, order a copy or subscription at ldscatalog.com, or visit the Web site JesusChrist.lds.org, which includes the full text of many of the articles from the magazine.

After this initial focus on the March 2008 special magazine issue, we will use SpecialMagazine.lds.org to highlight the other special issues of the magazines.