LDSTech reports that about half of the 17,000 LDS Church meetinghouses around the world already have Internet connections. Many more will get connected in the near future.
The article states, “It’s clear that the Internet has become an important part of communication in the Church – not just for clerk software (such as Member Leader Services), but also for teaching the gospel, helping individuals with provident living, doing family history and temple work, administering in the Church, and ministering to those in need. In areas where members are remotely located, the Internet also reduces burdens related to travel and cost for meetings and training.”
Having all the meetinghouses connected to the Internet opens new doors to how the Church can communicate quickly and efficiently with leaders in every ward and branch. It also opens new possibilities in how the Church can provide information and materials to auxiliary leaders, teachers, and individual members.
What ideas do you have in how the Church can use these new technologies productively? For example,
- How could an Internet connection enhance teaching the gospel?
- How could it help in doing family history and temple work?
- How could it help in administering in the Church more efficiently?
- How could it help in ministering to those in need?
Here are some articles you may be interested in reading to start brainstorming:
- Church Handbook 2 “Internet”
- Benefits of Internet in meetinghouses
- “Internet Usage Helps for Members”
- “Sharing the Gospel Online”
- “Sharing the Gospel Using the Internet,” Elder M. Russell Ballard, Ensign July 2008
- “Uniformity and Adaptation,” by Elder Bruce D. Porter, Worldwide Leadership Training 2011.
I am currently our ward librarian and lately we have been working hard on getting our library up to date. A lot of the materials we talked about getting are available online. It would be a great help to teachers to be able to access those materials using library equipment, such as a TV that connects to a laptop or a library laptop that checks out for lessons. We do have an internet connection in our ward building, but it is secured and I’m not sure how to get the password – maybe I’ll try and hunt that down on Sunday. 🙂
We have had a connection for about a year. However, it’s so incredibly secure that it is nearly impossible to get on. The password is long and hard to get correct. I spent over an hour at a RS Meeting trying to get on to show the sisters all the church websites. I have had similar problems the other times I have attempted to use it. The only reason I get access to the passwords (or even knew about the connection) as because my husband is one of the bishops in the building.
I understand their desire to make it very secure. But, it’s also so frustrating that it’s not worth it. But, I would LOVE to use it in my Young Women’s lessons to show videos on Mormon Messages to help with lessons.
Larry, my experience with internet in the church building is the same as Katie and Kim. Our building does have it but hardly anyone knows we do and hardly anyone who even knows about it can access it. It is so restricted that it is essentially useless for any of the purposes you propose.
KLC, we look forward to the access opening up, such that any member could access it with an LDSAccount. If that were to happen, how would you use the Internet in your classroom or with your calling?
Hello Larry. I am a Young Men’s leader. I have connected to share Youth videos with member and non-member youth during Mutual. They were very well received. What a wonderful resource!
I would be curious to know what others think about the youth (and adults for that matter) think about those with smartphones and tablets accessing a meetinghouse’s Internet for personal use. We have several members who “know” the password and thus connect their devices to allow them to access the Internet – and not for purposes described above. Not that they’re looking at anything wrong, but not for the purpose designed. Thoughts?
I’m the ward choir director. We often don’t have a pianist available. I have had to resort to using cds for practice. But they don’t help working out a single part such as the Alto line of a song…. but the churches music section on LDS.org does. I wish I had access to that during choir. But that means a strong enough wireless signal to the chapel and access to a laptop and plugging into speakers that all the choir could hear. All very doable…. just not right know with current equipment and connectivity.
Cody, the new access would be through the member’s LDSAccount. Therefore, if a member abuses the privilege, his/her access could be locked out.
In the past I also taught Gospel doctrine. What an enrichment to lessons to be able to connect to the churches site for maps, videos, pictrues and such that all could see. Along with the internet a laptop and a projector would be needed. The laptop wouldn’t need a lot of processing power but providing this type of equipment still that is a $$ challenge for the ward and church considering how many wards and building there are. Internet access is great but tools and equipment is required to mine the treasures it has to offer. Not all folks have laptops to cart to church each sunday. Very few people have access to projectors (usually from work… that might not be quite appropriate to use for church.)
I know that in my calling in the Elder’s Quorum, it is difficult to enter home teaching, not because of MLS, but because of the Internet. Our reporting comes through a Gmail address for the Elder’s Quorum, and Gmail is blocked. I find myself pulling up Gmail through my Blackberry’s browser in order to find out Home Teaching! It’s frustrating.
I thought about the teaching opportunities, I think using it for scheduling/organizing/broadcasting would be a great help. What if all of the ward announcements, temple assignments and home teaching assignments were easily accessible or ward/stake calendars and ward lists easily accessible during ward council or other leadership meetings?
This would be great, if it were more open at church.
I currently use a lot of multi-media at church, and it would make things much easier if I could stream directly from Youtube, rather than need to download the videos before hand.
Also, I could use it to pull on Job sites, like indeed or the church’s provident living site, or even google local temp agencies. This would be a great help assisting those struggling in our ward.
Further, I could have easier access to resources like Psych Central, to assist the bishop in referring members to a therapist, as LDS Family Services is limited here.
I could bring multiple computers for mutual and do interactive training, with the youth.
The Possibilities are limitless.
Don’t want to ruin this for anyone, but in our stake, all one has to do is ask for the WPA key for the wireless access point, and you can get on via a smartphone, ipad, or laptop with wireless. I haven’t done much beyond hitting the church website for resources, but I do believe I’ve been able to get my gmail, hit a couple of favorite blogs, and CNN for sure (just not during Sacrament meeting). What I would like to be able to do is access the MLS from home to enter home teaching visits and update assignments, rather than always having to come to the clerk’s office. Internet access at our ward building and stake center is not tied to our lds.org account login and ID.
We also have projectors in all of our buildings in our stake in Washington State, and they do seem to get fairly frequent usage. My wife who teaches school, though, would prefer a ceiling mounted permanent projector and a white board to project on in the RS room, and a motorized projection screen in the chapels, rather than hauling around those clunky screens from the 50’s that you used to use with filmstrips or slide projectors. And why don’t we have whiteboards in our buildings as opposed to always messy chalkboards?
From what I can see most people are now using iOS or Android devices to read their scriptures, read the lesson and so forth. Even if you allowed general internet access but put a firewall limiting it to lds.org I think that would be much appreciated by most people. (After all the people browsing the web when they should be listening to the talk will be doing that on 3G anyway – but having web access that is fast within the building would be nice for the rest of us who are only accessing lds.org anyway)
kevinf,
Your Stake can get motorized projection screens for its chapels, if it really wants them – but probably only in buildings with satellite dishes. We had one added to our chapel about 5 years ago (by the way, I’m in Washington State, too, so I know it’s doable up here.) It’s been used numerous times for projecting stuff from laptops – mostly during 5th Sunday combined meetings. While we do have a portable projection screen in our building, the RS room, Primary, room, and the cultural hall all have pull-down screens (dating from the film-strip age, no doubt!)
p.s. About white boards: chalk boards are cheaper than white boards, and chalk is significantly cheaper than markers. Chalk boards are also easier to clean, and if you drop your chalk on the floor, it won’t cause any stains. Also, people tend to write on white boards with non-erasable markers, but generally don’t try to write on chalk boards with things other than chalk (well, except for children, who often seem to try writing on chalkboards with crayons!) And, finally, chalk doesn’t smell! So, while I personally like whiteboards, I think the church will continue to install and use chalkboards to avoid the potential problems of whiteboards.
As our ward web specialist, I could envision more open internet access facilitating my calling in helping people create an LDS Account and learn to navigate and use our ward website. (I think of the ward website as helping facilitate what I call “informational self-reliance.” If people know how to use this tool, it can also help us be connected so that information could be distributed quickly and easily when the need is there.)
I envision ward leaders using the internet during ward council to help me help them get calendar and other information out to ward members. Again, this could help facilitate the flow of information and informational self-reliance.
I could envision also working with ward leaders to consider ways to involve ward members in learning about and using tools such as vineyard.lds.org and discovering other resources that can be used for service in the kingdom.
As another example, just the other day, as an Activity Days’ leader (my other calling), we had the girls come to my house for a (carefully monitored) activity where we created a simple Google doc presentation about the Word of Wisdom that we are, in turn, going to share in “missionary mode” online. An activity like this could have been done at the church building where we usually meet if internet access had been available. I can think of myriad other types of activities that could be held with every age group, e.g., indexing or family history research activities, gospel sharing activities (creating Mormon.org profiles, making and sharing videos), etc.
I like the idea of Church members gathering together to use these tools for good, which could reinforce the truth in my mind that we have these tools to help us do God’s work. I think the more we can reinforce and experience the good together, the more it can help people recognize and avoid the opposition that is real with this medium.
In our stake there is a serious problem with members (youth and adults) texting or otherwise using their digital devices to distract themselves from sacrament meeting, sunday school, or even a stake conference meeting with a visiting general authority. I worry that making internet openly available would exacerbate this problem, and ultimately cause more harm than good.
Many of the other commenters here have said that there is wifi in their meetinghouses, but it is secure and kept under tight control. I think this is the way it should be. Perhaps we could equip each meetinghouse with a laptop or two (the way each one now has a couple of DVD players and TVs) for those circumstances when someone needs internet access for a lesson.
This is great to see the meetinghouse being updated for the 21st century and embracing the digital world that we live in. That will be neat when every meetinghouse is connected via an Internet connection. It would even be better if access to an Internet connection was through your LDS Account.
The possibilities are great for a meetinghouse connected to the Internet because they will act as a hotspot for people around the world to gather at a meetinghouse. Here they can communicate, teach, learn, perform research and even receive education just because of the Internet connection. The meetinghouse becomes a meetingplace.
Since it is a filtered Internet connection, this will open up so many opportunities to the people of the world. This is such wonderful news!
Lolz im from brisbane australia…did yue kno dat if yuh kno 1 churches internet password yuh have access to all chapels …i kno mine and i tested iht at anthr chapels and it worked
I am STS in my Stake. To keep wireless use under control, I have proposed having a pre-programmed wireless bridge and ethernet cable in the library. It would be checked out of the library for use with member laptops. The only problem I see with this is not being able to see the signal strength.
Has anyone else considered this option?