virtual church conference paper
A couple of months ago I spoke at the ASCM Virtual Church conference about Northern and signposts.
I notice that one of the other speakers has put his paper online - way more organised and laid out than my scribbly notes to myself that I spoke from. I basically pinched some of what you guys had been saying in this thread and used that 
His pdf is an interesting read. I especially found this section on the metaphors that we use to express and understand church helpful.
Metaphors of church that influence the use of the Internet
More important to my research at this point is the question: How does one understanding of church
impact on their creation of, or involvement in, virtual church, or religion online? After a very short survey of online religious content I can identify three ways in which “church” may be described, and this has produced different online expressions.1. Church as place.
The notion of church as a geographic location, building, or meeting point is expressed online in a variety of ways – from graphic interfaces to chat rooms. Examples include www.churchoffools.com, where a visual image of the inside of a church frames the movement of graphic avatars, and a variety of conversation networks, called chat rooms or cafes (borrowed from the 1970s-present café church model). In these sites the focus is on the creation of a “virtual” space, where symbols mark points of entry, departure and movement, and sound and vision is important in creating a sense of being in a virtual environment. Language employed in the text is also intended to imply that the user is “in a place”.2. Church as institution.
Sites such as www.hillsong.com and the Uniting Church site at victas.uca.org.au offer a shop-front to resources, materials and people in an organised institution of religion. The design of these sites is not meant to create a sense of being “in church”, but of access to information.3. Church as movement.
For those who view the church as a vehicle for social change, or as an organisation that needs to
change itself, the use of CMC takes a different form. Here the focus shifts from user/audience to the site’s creator, where the web site employs sound, text and imagery to promote a search for identity, belonging, and a quest to identify the world or context in which it is situated. Blogging has become an accessible and useful form for this to happen, where bloggers can place a thought into the ether and hope for, or expect some response. The result is the creation of an online community of bloggers.