1. Give second life to your best sermons
by sharing them with a world-wide audience.

    If you create your sermons on a computer,
you may find it easy to shorten the best ones
to launch into cyber-space as cyber-sermons.
This is a new form of narrow-casting
—sending electronic messages to people
who have specifically chosen to receive them.

2. Get more feedback.

    Your cyber-sermons will attract
more feedback than regular sermons
because the readers are already seated at the keyboards,
ready to respond to each paragraph as they read it.

    And because these readers
are not members of your local congregation,
readers might feel more free to speak their minds.

3. You might benefit from detailed comments
on your cyber-sermons.

    Whether the feedback is positive or negative,
readers' responses might encourage you
to revise your cyber-sermons
to make your points even more forcefully.
Small ambiguities, which led to misunderstandings,
can be eliminated
so that the future readers will not have the same problems.

4. Make a permanent record of your thought,
which will always be available to new readers in the future.

    All cyber-sermons released by the FUUCI
will be permanently stored in the FUUCI Library,
where they can be called up and read at any time
by anyone with Internet access anywhere in the world.
New people will benefit from your thought literally years later.

5. Introduce new people to your thought.

    If your cyber-sermons are linked to your
full-length sermons already present on the Internet,
with other articles, books, recordings, web sites etc.,
readers may be introduced to your other expressions
by reading your cyber-sermons.
Most people who read your cyber-sermons
would not have come across your thought in any other way.

6. Attract new people to your congregation.

    If they live close enough geographically,
people who read your cyber-sermons online
might want to hear you more regularly in your congregational setting.
Or perhaps in their travels, they will have occasion
to visit your congregation some Sunday morning.

7. The content of your cyber-sermon
is the only criterion for selection.

    Everyone has an equal chance to 'speak'
to this first such online community in cyber-space.
You do not have to have an established reputation.
You do not need to occupy a prominent pulpit.
You only need some interesting and meaningful ideas to share.

8. Your audience selects itself—according to your subject.

    You do not have to try to please everyone.
People who have no interest in any particular subject
will simply skip reading that particular cyber-sermon.

    Be as intellectually-challenging
and spiritually-profound as you wish.
Some readers somewhere in the world
are already interested in what you have to offer.

9. Address a larger audience than your local congregation.

10. Cyber-sermons are excellent outreach
to people who would never attend a UU gathering.

    Many people will be introduced to UUism thru cyber-sermons.
If your sermons show that UU thinking is radically different
from their rejected childhood religions,
your cyber-sermons might be the means by which some people discover
that in spirit they have been Unitarian Universalists for years.
They just did not know that such a religious movement existed.

    Some people who first encounter UU thinking in a cyber-sermon
will ultimately join a local UU congregation.
It could be your congregation.
But more likely it will be some other UU congregation,
close to where they live.
Your cyber-sermons might have such effects
far beyond what you can now imagine.

    And even people who have
no lively UU congregation nearby to join
will still be able to continue reading cyber-sermons
as long as they continue to have an Internet connection.

    Even tho the creators of cyber-sermons
receive no pay for this service,
you might see such mental efforts
as a part of the outreach ministry of your local congregation.
If you are a UU parish minister, preparing weekly sermons,
the hard part of the work has already been done.
You were paid for this creative effort
by the regular salary you receive.

    The small additional effort needed
to convert a spoken sermon into a cyber-sermon
could be seen as an outreach service paid for by your congregation.
Your Board of Trustees would probably approve
of you using paid professional time to create cyber-sermons.

    But if your Board of Trustees does not approve,
you can still perform this service for the
First Unitarian Universalist Church of the Internet on your own time
—just as you do many other volunteer community services
that you find meaningful.

11. Cyber-sermons enable you to get inside the minds
of very skeptical readers.

    If your cyber-sermons are forwarded by their original readers,
they will appear in the mailboxes of people
who would never think of darkening the door of a UU church.
These readers might begin with a negative attitude
toward anything called a "sermon".
But your brilliant thought—forcefully expressed—might win them over.
And the concept of "sermon" will be redeemed in your cyber-sermon.

    These very skeptical readers do not care who you are.
Perhaps they have rejected
every manifestation of religion they have ever encountered.
But because your cyber-sermon was forwarded by a friend,
they are ready to give 30 seconds or three minutes
to reading the synopsis of your cyber-sermon.
They might read with their mouse pointing to the "delete" button.
However, if something in the first two sentences
rings strong and true in their minds,
they will be compelled to read further.

    Your cyber-sermons will reach people
who would never enter your church
—no matter how much advertising you do.
Your cyber-sermons might not directly benefit you or your church,
but they will give other UU groups somewhere in the world
a second chance to be considered
by these intelligent, skeptical people.

    The additional effort is small
compared to the potential long-term benefits.
Can you think of a better way to devote an hour or two
that could potentially have such a far-reaching impact?

    Back to the Cyber-Sermon section of the FUUCI home page.
Here you will discover how to submit a proposal for a cyber-sermon,
the criteria of excellence recommended to the members,
who select which proposal will become the next Cyber-Sermon of the Month,
and see some examples of actual proposals for cyber-sermons.