A listserve is a way of facilitating an online discussion consisting of email messages posted by members of a group. These messages are disseminated automatically to all members of the group by a computer which retains the membership list of the group, and archives all posted messages. A listserve should not be confused with a "chat room". When you subscribe to a listserve you have the leisure to read and reply to other members' messages on your own schedule. That's called asynchronous communication. By contrast, in a chat room people communicate in "real time". That's synchronous communication. Chat rooms are exciting and spontaneous, but I prefer to communicate with time to reflect and compose my responses carefully. Both types of online communication have advantages and disadvantages. In this article I will discuss only the asynchronous communication that goes on in listserves.

My church has had a listserve for several years. Announcements, prayer requests, sermons, feedback on sermons, and articles of spiritual interest are shared there. It has been a wonderful way for geographically scattered members of our church to stay in touch with each other, including some who have moved away, and others who are confined by illness. If your church doesn't have a listserve, you might consider creating one for such general purposes; or, you might want to start a listserve to address a particular educational or pastoral need. For instance, you could start a listserve about the process of grieving, or one to discuss a book, or one to talk about raising children. There is no limit to the possibilities for content, so long as you can find a competent and diligent person to moderate the discussion. Now, let's think a bit about what makes a good moderator.

A moderator should be fairly skilled in the use of a personal computer, for he or she may need to give basic technical assistance to beginners. Above all, a moderator must have people skills. Sometimes discussions can become heated, and feelings can get hurt. A moderator needs to set boundaries for courteous writing at the very beginning of the group, and keep calling members back to those agreed-upon standards for communication. Sometimes a moderator must terminate a member if he or she cannot abide by those standards. Therefore, moderator must have the courage to lead, to take stands occasionally for the good of the group. A moderator must be willing to read listserve notes on a regular and frequent basis, and should be ready to stimulate further discussion if traffic lags. If a listserve is about a particular topic and that topic has been clearly defined from the start, the moderator should keep the group on task. If the content of notes diverges too far from the agreed-upon topic, the moderator might suggest forming another listserve to handle that discussion. However, if your listserve is for general purposes, the moderator can make the train of thought easier to follow by encouraging members to title their notes in a way that makes threads of conversation readily apparent. If a member wants to respond to another member's note, and does so by clicking the reply button, then that reply message will automatically be assigned the same title as the original note. This facilitiates topic "threading." However, members who want to start another topic for discussion should title their note differently. Otherwise, readers wishing to follow a thread will be confused.

New members of listserves should be cautioned to check whether the note they are reading comes from the listserve address or the private address of the writer. Why? Because if you reply to a note coming from a listserve, your response goes to every member of the listserve, not just the author of the note. Sometimes you might not want every member of the group to read your reply, just the author. So, remember to check the sender's address in your messages, and reply to a listserve note by hitting the reply button only when you want your message to go to everyone.

Another thing listserve members should be cautioned about is confidentiality. A good general rule for online communication is: Don't write anything that you wouldn't mind the world finding out. Yes, listserve providers are dedicated to keeping your communication private and confidential, but earnest and clever hackers can bust in, and besides, people do love to share information, and group notes can be forwarded. So, don't talk about confidential material online. I once thought that it would be helpful for a group of pastoral counselors to discuss cases online, provided of course that we would change the names of the clients involved, and some details of the cases. I was admonished by cyber-veterans that such measures are totally inadequate to protect personal privacy. Because cyber-communication is so extensive, because your writing can reach people you never thought it could, the mere changing of names and a few details will not throw off readers who know enough to connect the dots. Again, don't write anything that you wouldn't mind the world knowing about.

Now that you've read about how you could use a listserve in your community of faith, perhaps you might say: "Well, who needs it? I can make a discussion group just by compiling a list of email addresses and saving that list in my address book. Every time I want to discuss something with that group of people, I'll just invoke that distribution list." Granted, discussion groups can be handled that way. However, listserves have several advantages: First, messages sent to multiple addresses are likely to be filtered out by spam filters. Secondly, listserve messages are archived by the listserve computer. Newcomers to a listserve can easily read messages that were posted before they joined. This feature is not available with distribution lists. Thirdly, every time you receive a message from a distribution list, you have access to a bunch of email addresses that others might not want you to have, whereas a listserve does not reveal the personal addresses of its members. Only the moderator knows the addresses. Privacy is important to many people when they realize that the proliferation of their email address will likely invite more unwanted email (spam).

So, maybe you're ready to set up a listserve. To whom do you turn? There are companies galore that will handle your listserve for a fee, and maybe the service provider that your faith community already uses offers this service. Want to set up a free listserve instead? I'd suggest using Yahoo Groups or Google Groups. I used Yahoo for quite a while, but found that the web interface was awkward and frustrating, so I turned to www.googlegroups.com, which I find much easier to use. With free listserves you'll have to put up with ads along a border of your messages, but you soon tune them out of your consciousness. Go for free, I say!

This article was written by TCDavis

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