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United Methodists, Houses of Worship link technology, communication

June 18, 1998        Contact: Tim Tanton*(615)742-5470*Nashville, Tenn.
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PITTSBURGH (UMNS) -- The United Methodist Church has launched a service
that will enable local churches around the country to get their message
onto the Internet.

Through a Pittsburgh-based organization called Houses of Worship, the
denomination has begun a process of editing Internet pages for every one
of its 36,000 churches in North America. The pages are shells waiting to
be filled with information by each church. 

As people browsing the World Wide Web click on a particular United
Methodist church on the Houses of Worship site, they will see a message
from United Methodist Communications (UMCom) in Nashville.

"We are enthusiastic about the potential of having every United
Methodist congregation in North America connected through our
participation with the Houses of Worship site," said the Rev. Judy
Weidman, UMCom general secretary. "As the local churches step forward to
edit their own pages, they convert content to dates, schedules, times
and messages pertinent to the congregation.

"We have a long history of linking our congregations through prayer,
presence, gifts and service. United Methodists are tied together by a
unique structure enabling a strong presence throughout the world, and
our local congregation is a vital part of that connection," Weidman
said.

The Houses of Worship site includes a searchable database listing every
Christian church in the United States and Canada. Each church is
offered, at no charge, four Web pages to edit and localize.
Congregations with existing Web sites may link to or from the HOW church
database. 

"When you join a United Methodist congregation, you become a member of
the total United Methodist connection," said Ezra Earl Jones, general
secretary of the United Methodist Board of Discipleship. "The Internet
has proven itself to be a powerful means of reaching out to people
across the continent. I expect United Methodists will use the technology
in support of ecumenical, educational, evangelical and other ministries.
We encourage our congregations to talk with one another, locate church
resources, find new outlets for service and reach out to people they
want to reach."

The Houses of Worship Internet project was created by the Pittsburgh
Leadership Foundation and OnTV with initial funding from the American
Bible Society. The project's designers have established Web pages on the
site for the more than 300,000 Christian congregations in the United
States and Canada.

"There is no other place on the World Wide Web where all the churches
appear," said Robert Thibadeau, a professor at Carnegie Mellon
University who started the project. "It is our dream at Houses of
Worship to put all the world's churches, estimated at 2 million, online
by 2000."

The Pittsburgh Leadership Foundation is a nonprofit group of Christian
pastors and community leaders seeking to support the urban church.

The United Methodist Church, the second largest Protestant denomination,
has about 8.6 million members in the United States.

By accessing the site, http://www.housesofworship.net, visitors will
find the searchable database listing churches by keyword, ZIP code, city
or area.

United Methodist News Service
(615)742-5470
Releases and photos also available at
http://www.umc.org/umns/