I was one of a number of bloggers (but don’t ask me how many — could have been five or 500) invited to participate in an online conference today at which we were shown the new United Methodist Church web site. It was a conference call accompanied by a sort of synchonized slide show so that we were seeing a screen caputure of whatever page the current speaker happened to be referencing.

I had already seen the basic web design — and mentioned it here, as I recall — a few weeks back, but I didn’t realize that they have implemented an online community, a sort of Wesleyan MySpace. They are calling it the first such social networking system ever implemented by a denomination. You can even make blog posts. Someone who didn’t already have a blog, or who wanted a separate site for their faith-related posts, could easily post there.

I have set up my profile page but haven’t added any contacts yet. I’ll add a permanent link to the profile page here.