Growth and technology on the Internet has helped members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints worldwide feel more closely connected to the church and its proceedings.

"The church has been capitalizing on computers since the 1940s," said Bruce Rasmussen, a part-time adjunct professor in the religion department at BYU.

People have been researching how the church can use computers, he said.

The Internet is expanding, and the church is taking advantage of that growth.

"It (the Internet) has such a great outreach to be able to get information quickly into the hands of people around the world. I've found that to be very satisfying professionally," said David Kenison, senior developer at Millennial Star Network (MSTAR) in Orem.

MSTAR is in charge of maintaining the church's official Web sites such as lds.org.

One part of MSTAR is LDS Gems. Kenison started this e-mail distribution service, sharing information about the church, news items and historical church items.

"We watched our subscriber numbers grow and grow; people all around the world joining," Kenison said. "For that group of people, for them it was very satisfying to get rapid updates."

This news service helped members receive current information in a few key situations in the past. One of these was when missionaries were kidnapped in Russia in 1997.

"For church members this was a very traumatic thing to happen," Kenison said. "We followed that story closely and gave updates about what the Church was able to announce."

"We felt Church members benefited greatly form just having information about a story that was of high interest to them. They would have had tremendous difficulty getting current information any other way."

The church has used the Internet in other ways besides relaying information on Web sites. It is trying to further its reach even within the church, Rasmussen said.

A live streaming technology was set up in Alaska for a stake conference recently.

Some members had to fly on planes in order to come to stake conference because the stake boundaries were thousands of miles, Rasmussen said.

"The church used live streaming technology and people saw stake conference for the first time," he said.

The church has used other options to help members to participate in church meetings and functions.

Rasmussen lived in Egypt when the Deseret News broadcast general conference for the first time.

"To be able to have that stuff right as it was happening helped us feel very connected - helped us feel like we weren't missing a beat from what was happening in church head quarters," Rasmussen said.

Kenison helped post general conference on lds.org and saw it help the lives of others as well.

"That, more than anything else, we've seen members blessed and touched. We would receive messages from people who said, 'For the first time in my life, I felt like I was actually participating in conference,'" Kenison said.

"For those who don't live close to Salt Lake City, knowing they can access material, they feel more a part of the church. People are feeling more connected than they ever have before."



Copyright Brigham Young University 26 Feb 2001