Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Have You Heard?

Here's the 'piece de resistance' of my typical week. It's 'Ask Anything Saturday'... at the Unleavened Bread Cafe...



Special hat-tip to this segment's producer...



Ellen Spencer, Graphics & Design. Ellen was one of our completers of Crossroads Bible College's "New Media for Urban Change" course -- learning to implement today's tools to help transform lives & communities in the name of Jesus Christ.

The 'Ask Anything Saturday' internet-training program is just one of the weekly activities at the cafe, which is a multicultural ministry serving their neighborhood (truly) in the heart of Indy's inner city. At 10am each week several volunteers come have breakfast with cafe neighbors, and get to know them as they interact, asking many questions about the internet. And we tend to learn from each other along the way.

It's a lot of fun as you can see from the video. In this particular case, while we're waiting a few weeks for construction in the community room to finish, we were test-driving a new little camcorder and taking turns with it -- could you tell? LOL. Lots to be learned from this first venture with it, huh? *smile*

These volunteers have become known fondly as the 'Indy Christian Geeks', deploying the 'Each One Teach One' methodology... and thus neighbors now are showing other neighbors how to surf, email, and even publish online using the AskAnythingSaturday.com wiki.

Catch the vision: If you look across the citywide 'Church @ Indianapolis' and see the digital divide, the multicultural divide, and God's eternal divide... all starting to close... you might be seeing just a little of the impact of this little cafe in the heart of Indy.

[Stay tuned... it will also soon be felt on the eastside, as two new community computing centers are joining in... Victory Village Shoppe and the Kingdom Cafe.]

And it's (nearly) all for free. While you have to pay a little for the best pancakes in town, the cafe offers free hugs, free smiles and free wifi. And the training is also free. Oops, I mean $1 million... unless you train someone else. And anyone can help. Or Ask. Any Saturday.