I've been having fun playing with [url=http://www.wordle.net]Wordle [/url]. What's Wordle? In its own words:

"Wordle is a toy for generating "word clouds" from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and colour schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends."

There are a couple of ways to use Wordle. Firstly, you can type in a web address and Wordle will create a cloud of words, emphasising which words are used more frequently, by the size the word appears. The larger the word, the more frequently it's used on the website. For example, here's a word cloud I generated earlier this year for my website, Communicate Jesus.

It is especially interesting and helpful to compare how this word cloud changes over time, to see if you are sticking to your main message.

You might like to try out Wordle on your church website, and see what kind of cloud is generated. This picture might be helpful in understanding how 'outsider friendly' your site is, what takes prominence, and whether the content on your website accurately reflects what you would like to be communicating.

There's a second way of using Wordle in ministry - to create word clouds of Bible passages. Wordle allows you to type in a slab of text, and it will automatically create a cloud for you. Here's how to do it in just a few seconds:
1. Go to the Wordle [url=http://www.wordle.net/create]Create page [/url]. 
2. Then you insert the text for the passage you are studying. You don't need to type it in. To save time, you can just use an online Bible tool, such as [url=http://www.biblegateway.com/] Bible Gateway [/url].
3. Click 'Go', and Wordle will create a word cloud for you.

For example, here's the cloud that was generated from the text of Romans 8.

Interesting, isn't it?

OK I admit it, the scales are leaning in favour of this being a fun tool, rather than a powerful Bible study resource!

Nevertheless its limited application makes it interesting in the very least, and potentially helpful and insightful, particularly if you're more of a visual learner and processor.

Can you think of any other applications Wordle might have for ministry?