World Church: License Signed for netAdventist Name, Software

The license agreement makes a software package available to denominational entities at no cost. The software combines localized Web sites with live streams of information and resources from the global church. The license provides for future ownership of the software by the Adventist church’s General Conference and permits local churches to tailor the software to meet their individual needs.

At present, the software requires Adventist institutions to host their sites with TAGnet, which is based in Fallbrook, California, United States. Within the next year, TAGnet says, the software will be revised and re-released to permit hosting on any Internet server, including those controlled by church institutions. All church-owned entities, including local churches, are eligible to use the software under license provisions.

“Global connectivity of denominational entities via the Internet will be a huge benefit to Seventh-day Adventists worldwide,” said Pastor Lowell Cooper, vice president of the world church. Cooper also chaired a committee preparing the netAdventist agreement with TAGnet. “The opportunity to use a single software platform simplifies the sharing of information resources,” he added.

Use of the netAdventist system is optional. Seventh-day Adventist organizations may choose whatever software package they wish as the platform for a Web site. The netAdventist software package has been designed specifically for the Seventh-day Adventist Church. The license permits denominational entities to create new features according to their needs and interests. These new features will be considered for availability to all other users.

Expanding Adventist witness online has been a goal of the Seventh-day Adventist church for several years. As one of the first Christian communities to harness the power of networked communications, going back to its innovative use of CompuServe, the Seventh-day Adventist church was also one of the first churches to establish an Internet presence in the early 1990s.

Since then, thousands of church institutions have published their own Web sites, while potentially thousands of others have been held back due to a lack of access to technology or the skills needed for complex Internet Web site design, management and publishing.

Systems such as netAdventist remove many of these barriers. By offering Web hosting, TAGnet, and eventually Adventist institutions, can make a Web presence broadly available to local units in a secure fashion. With a content management system such as the one netAdventist provides, those with even limited technical ability can use online tools to create and manage content.

“This agreement is the church’s next step in seeing that technology is used intentionally in the church’s mission,” said Rajmund Dabrowski, communication director of the world church. “What is so special about the netAdventist program is the cutting edge approach to making the various media and Internet features convergent in one place. You have the church resources in one place, instantly and interactively.”

“The netAdventist program is, architecturally, a distributed system and users will be able to run the software on any server in any Internet-connected location,” said Danny Houghton, executive vice president of TAGnet, in a telephone interview with Adventist News Network. “Eventually, [the church] will have the right to take control of the code and manage it themselves. We are building it to give to the church, because that’s where it belongs.”

Houghton added, “I think that what you see happening is the desire on the part of some of our lay people to be able to empower the local church member to use the Internet as a witnessing medium and have a place they can point their community to, to understand who we are, what we represent, and to invite that community to become a part of us.”

A brief review of the software reveals that through netAdventist, local churches and organizations will have access to information streams from the world church headquarters all the way to sister congregations in the local area. The netAdventist software aims to close the communication gap between the local church and the conference, union, division, and church ministries. It also enables church-to-church communication, enhancing cohesiveness within local areas.

By providing multiple streams of information sources from various administrative levels and from other church sources, netAdventist empowers evangelism in a local context while maintaining and reinforcing the global unity of the church and its distinctive Adventist perspective.

The netAdventist program also provides a framework for translation into any written languages (Unicode). This is another specific method built into netAdventist software to strengthen unity through both intra-church communication and intercommunication with the larger world population.

A plus of the netAdventist system is the ability to take audio and video recordings of local church sermons and place these online for listening and downloading, Houghton said: “More of the media content that Seventh-day Adventists create can be accessed locally without having to buy a [satellite] dish.”

Locally developed content, Bible study resources, Adventist television programs on Hope Channel, video podcasts from “It Is Written” media ministry, and others, are being made available through netAdventist. “Ground 7 News,” the weekly podcast from Adventist News Network is also featured.

The agreement comes a few weeks after the church’s Executive Committee voted to establish guidelines for Seventh-day Adventist Web presence. [See ANN story, October 10]

Already, eight of the Adventist church’s 13 world regions are in discussions about deploying netAdventist in their areas. Church officials say they hope netAdventist will assist them, and the church, in developing a global content management system. According to Dabrowski, information on availability of the software and application procedures will be made available to church entities from their regional (division) offices.