Orthodox Biz Blog

The Great Commission wasn’t a suggestion. It was a commandment. We are to share the Orthodox Faith with the entire world. But how are we supposed to reach people? Stand on a soapbox on a street corner? Go door-to-door? Visit the sick, the needy, the elderly? Those are all good things that are worth doing. But did you ever think about using your Facebook account to spread Orthodoxy?

Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking sites are all the rage. People use them to find lost friends, connect with others with similar interests, and as an easy way to keep everyone updated with the latest news.

Content Management Systems are growing in popularity as a framework for running Websites. A Content Management System (CMS) automates many of the repetitive tasks associated with running a Website. Using a script framework and a database, a CMS lets organizations sponsoring Websites focus on publishing content to the Web. A CMS framework also comes bundled with all kinds of capabilities such as interactivity (discussion forums, comments, blogging), membership, syndication (RSS feeds), podcasting, and a whole lot more.

According to CIO magazine, a recent survey of over 200 CIO's for medium and small enterprises revealed that 83% of them were leveraging some kind of Web 2.0 technology. That is excellent news for those of us who are into the Web design space and don't care much for static Websites.

Unfortunately, many business professionals and Christian ministers will read that statistic and ask, "What is Web 2.0?"

The old saying, "A picture is worth a thousand words" may be a cliche but in the case of technical training - it's absolutely true.

Every Web designer has that moment of grace at least once. A moment when you look at the layout, the colors, the text, and the images - and the page just works. Everything is just perfect. I had that happen recently. I remember how ecstatic I was. This was the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, or at least so I thought.

As an Orthodox Parish Webmaster, 2006 marked the year that I wanted to take the parish's Web presence into the 21^st Century. First I did a Bulletin Board/Discussion Forum . Then I did a large-scale photo gallery. In the Fall of 2006, the next stop for the Web presence of the Orthodox Church of St. Stephen the Protomartyr was to go dynamic.

I speak frequently at civic clubs and political organizations on the subject of Christians in the Middle East. My undergrad background was heavy on Balkans studies, and so I spent a lot of time studying the life of Christians under Muslim rule. Little did I realize, of course, when I was taking classes like Ottoman History and Arab Politics back in the early 90's, that someday the topics of Jihad and Dhimmitude would be paramount concerns in the 21^st Century.

Images are important. Orthodox Christians know that better than any other Christian community, which is why we struggle to keep our churches adorned appropriately. Many of our icons, of course, depict scenes from the life of the Church. Great events in the Christian past are rendered in gold leaf and hung for all to see and venerate. We understand how important it is to visually chronicle our past as a community, and to honor that past.

I took over my first parish Website in 2000, when I was still a catechumen. Back then I was working primarily in the mainframe space, and the Web was both new and somewhat scary. I got an extra copy of Frontpage 2000 at the office, and started putting icons and gold coloring on pages of my own for Holy Trinity in Maitland, Florida.