Latter Day Saints--Living the Gospel Online

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is clearly one of the leaders in the race to leverage Web technology for spiritual purposes. The church debuted its first Web site in late 1997 and has been expanding its initiatives quickly, with its most recent incarnation launched in June.

"There has been a lot of work done about what the theoretical constructs are--what does the church want to have presented," says Franklin Lewis, president of Mstar.Net, the Web-development company created by the LDS church last year to build its online initiatives. "It's come down to a fairly simple decision; basically, the digital presence of the church has to reflect the overall priorities of the church. So LDS.org is really about living the gospel of Jesus Christ."

One of the earliest assignments for Mstar.Net was the Webcast of the church's General Conference, held twice a year. While the first Webcast in 1999 attracted more than 240,000 listeners, the latest audience is estimated to be more than 300,000.

The new portal is described by Lewis as a "state-of-the-art Web site" where information is continually refreshed and users can search thousands of pages of scripture, church teaching and related publications. And because the LDS church is particularly focused on the importance of family history, genealogy-tracking services are a central part of the online offering. The LDS church contracted Web-engineering company LavaStorm to build the complex infrastructure for that site, which features a terabyte of searchable genealogy data dispersed throughout the world on three separate databases.

Currently, the family-search function is the only interactive portion of the LDS.com experience, though Lewis says it's the intention of the church to expand those features over time. Mstar.Net is also looking into personalization applications--including translation services for several dozen languages--to make the site experience more dynamic for followers.

And while the Internet is certainly considered an important medium for the future, the LDS church plans to continue using established media to get its message across.

"We basically utilize every platform that makes sense for the audiences we are trying to serve," Lewis says. "That will continue, but the Internet offers the opportunity to create kind of a 'master directory' so people can have a content programming guide."

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