Leaders of the Seventh-day Adventist world church voted official guidelines for the construction and content of church-related Internet Web sites during a meeting of the church's Annual Council on Oct. 10. Delegates voted unanimously to accept the guidelines.

"This is a very important development as we hope that it will provide a blueprint for all church entities in what constitutes a Seventh-day Adventist presence on the Internet," said Rajmund Dabrowski, communication director for the world church.

Among the guidelines are stipulations that only official churches and organizations administered by the Adventist church can use the church's graphical logo and text. Other guidelines required the church's "beliefs and teachings to be upheld in content published on Web sites" and "must respect intellectual property rights when posting audio, video, pictures, text, and all other content."

Having a series of guidelines for Web sites is important to the Adventist church's growth on the Internet. Seventh-day Adventists were among the first Christian churches to harness the power of online networks, going back to various forums on CompuServe in the 1980s. The first Adventist Web site debuted in 1995 and, today, hundreds of church entities, as well as supporting ministries, look to the Internet as a means of evangelism, outreach and communication.

"We have moved beyond Web sites as a luxury to being very important to the way we conduct business as a church," said Lowell Cooper, a vice president of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

The item was passed without much comment. However, one lay member expressed concern that some unscrupulous Web sites could be linked to the church and supported having a "standard format that would be recognizable globally" as a Web site owned by the Adventist church. Cooper said it would be difficult to design a template that would fit across a diversity of organizations.