The following terms reflect the culture of the Church of the Brethren, a denomination grounded on the principles of Anabaptism and founded through the Pietist efforts of Alexander Mack, in the summer of 1708 near the small German village of Schwarzenau. This resource is not an exhaustive compilation of all denominational terminology, for space precludes the incorporation of vast amounts of information, which might also be garnered from other Brethren works, such as the Brethren Encyclopedia, Brethren Bibliography, European Origin, Brethren in America, Ephrata Cloister, 19th Century Acculturation, Brethren Timeline, Brethren Groups, and Brethren Genealogy. We have also included a few Internet related terms because this technology is fast becoming a part of our denominational culture. You are encouraged to share your comments, suggestions, or corrections with the Web Administrator.

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Delegate

    A person who is elected or appointed to represent the interests of another, usually authorized with power to vote for policy changes. Each congregation and district may send delegates to Annual Conference, which is the final authority in the Church of the Brethren. The number of elected delegates from each congregations is allocated according of the size of it's membership, and delegates elected from each District to the Standing Committee are calculated according to the size of the membership of that the district. This combination of voting delegates to Annual Conference from congregations and districts is referred to as the Delegate Body. Non-delegate visitors are permitted to express their opinions during business sessions, but are not allowed to vote. See Annual Conference for a breakdown of delegate allocation, representation, and attendance.

See also Standing Committee.

Disaster Response

See also Disaster Relief Auctions, Emergency Response/Service Ministries.

District

    Congregations are geographically incorporated into one of Twenty-three Districts in the Church of the Brethren. When the Brethren first came to America, their congregations regularly asked for support from each other and exchanged advice through a visiting Elder, who also presided over local council meetings, officiated elections, and determined the validity of question intended for Annual Meeting (Conference). This circuitous process remained sound until the denomination began growing and expanding across the nation, placing undue burden on the annual gathering. Subscribing to the concept that leaders best understand local matters, Conference delegates granted approval in 1856, for the establishment of Districts that would be able to minister to the specific congregations of their geographical region.

Atlantic Northeast Atlantic Southeast Idaho Illinois-Wisconsin Indiana Northern Indiana South-Cen

Michigan Mid-Atlantic Missouri-Arkansas Northern Plains Ohio Northern Ohio Southern

Oregon-Wash Pacific Southwest PA Middle PA Southern PA Western Shenandoah

Southeastern Southern Plains Virlina Western Plains West Marva

    Districts also hold a conference each year, mostly in the fall, to officially hear congregational concerns, approve financial budgets, listen to reports, elect officers, and refer policy questions on to the next Annual Conference of the denomination. Each District has a Board that is often composed of Commissions such as Ministry, Nurture, Witness, Stewards, and Church Development; and a staff which is often a selection of a: District Executive, Associate District Executive, Administrative Assistant, and Receptionist.

www.cob-net.org/church/

Distribution Center

See Brethren Service Center, New Windsor.

Domain Name System (DNS)

    Every computer on the Internet has a unique number called an IP address, a four bank series of numbers with each bank separated by a period - [ 208.148.72.3 ]. Computers talk to one another over the Internet using these numbers. Since it would be difficult for people to remember these numbers, technology has allowed for us to use an alias or a Domain Name that is much simpler to remember. That should be good news for us, because there are over 36 million registered domain names, with an estimated 70,000 being added each week.

    The Church of the Brethren Network has the domain of cob-net.org with an IP address of [ 216.71.108.63 ]. If you click on this IP number or the alias of cob-net.org, both will link you to the same place. Underneath an alias can also be a sub-alias, and these associations are part of a database system with each service provider. Thus, COB-NET.ORG is a sub-alias of our service provider. When you request to visit us, your provider has one computer filled with domain names and the ability to determine the correct numerical path to our web host, which in turn determines by the alias name how to eventually deliver appropriate web pages from the COB-NET directories. This entire system is called DNS - Domain Name System. It is a hierarchial system that relays queries through a relationship of roots, domains, sub-domains, and alias names.

For example: www.biology.school.edu

edu = Root
school = Domain name
biology = A sub-domain

    The domain biology.school.edu might be a file server (computer) in the Biology department of this educational institution and it is different from the main school.edu file server, additionally, this machine could be located in an entirely different building. The following chart will explain what all the different roots mean.

Root           Type
---------------------------------
.com/          Commercial
.org/          Organization
.edu/          Educational
.net/          Network
.gov/          Government
.mil/          Military


Prefix      Type                What it represents
-----------------------------------------------------------
http://     World Wide Web      Browse HTML documents
ftp://      FTP                 Download files
telnet://   Telnet              Log into a server
news:       Newsgroup           Read and write to other users


Extension   What it means or performs
-----------------------------------------------------------
.html       Hyper Text Markup Language - The most common web document.
                                It displays static text and graphics 
                                with very little interactivity.

.htm        Web document - As above minus the "L" (same thing)

.shtml      Web document - that is often required by a file server when
                                SSI (Server Side Includes) has been
                                called.

.asp        Active Server Page - Document asks the host computer to do
                                things before display, such as look up 
                                information in a database.

.cfm        Cold Fusion Document - A quick application development system
                                that offers one of the fastest ways to
                                integrate browser, server and database
                                technologies into powerful applications.

.cgi        Common Gateway Interface - An executable program that works in
                                cooperation with other web documents to 
                                request information or perform various 
                                functions.

.xml        Extensible Markup Language - A proposed specification that will 
                                make documents multidimensional, capable of 
                                being processed by different programs, 
                                delivered by different methods and viewed 
                                differently by different users.

    Some domain names are case sensitive while others are not, depending on how the service provider has configured their system. "MyHomePage" and "myhomepage" will not be the same, if the host computer is setup for case sensitivity. If it is case insensitive, it does not matter.

    Directories usually end with one forward slash. We store our congregation homepages in the "church" directory (www.cob-net.org/church/). Some host computers require the forward slash after the last directory name and some do not. If you are unsuccessfully linking to a web site by manually typing the address in the URL location window of your browser, try adding a forward slash to the "end" of the directory name. The file server which hosts COB-NET is case sensitive but does not require a final slash after directory names.

See also Homepage, URL, InterNic, Glossary of the Internet.

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