Picture the prototypical Old West preacher dressed in battered boots and dust-riddled black garments. Bible gripped tightly in one hand, reins to his trusty steed in the other, the preacher man forges his way across the windswept plains determined to bring the word of God to the most remote reaches of an untamed land.

Fr. Michael Bayard, SJ has a similar mindset when he settles into the saddle of his office chair, boots up his personal computer, and heads off into the vastness of the internet and the world wide web.

Like that old-time preacher, Fr. Bayard, associate pastor at Gesu Parish in Milwaukee, has a Bible and knows the Gospel well. He straps on his Roman collar when he heads out for priestly service. But his Old West is the whole world, and his steed of choice is a mouse, which he guides skillfully across the flatlands of his computer pad.

"The potential for evangelization is enormous," Fr. Bayard says.

Packing the fastest processor available, he gallops off to the farthest reaches of the globe in nanoseconds to preach, talk, and meet new folks, all the while doing God's work.

"This is another avenue for reaching people," says Fr. Bayard of today's rapidly changing computer technology. In addition to his sacramental responsibilities, Fr. Bayard's primary duties as associate pastor involve marriage preparation and adult formation.

He likes to unwind from his pastoral work at the computer because it offers an outlet for his creativity. One of those outlets is updating and maintaining the web site for the Wisconsin Province of the Society of Jesus (www.jesuitswisprov.org).

"The internet presents Jesuits with a new frontier, a new mission, and another means to help people encounter God," says Fr. Bayard, visibly excited by the potential. "We have a connection to the world that is incredible! I can sit in my room in Milwaukee and go to New York, Madrid, or Omaha and never leave my office. I can reduce a 27-hour flight to Manila to a few seconds.

"This technology is like the horizon of a new world. Every time you push the boundary, you find something new. That's where I find creativity, and, as a result, push my personal boundaries too."

Fr. Bayard comes by his computer instincts genetically. "Dad's an electrical engineer. When I was very young he worked at General Electric in Syracuse, N.Y. on defense contract projects. Computers weren't his specialty at work, but they were all around him at the job, and we had them around the house all the time. He used to make them for fun. He made them so long ago I don't even know what language he programmed them in. They were these little self-contained things that performed simple functions like addition, subtraction, multiplication, and things like that."

Fr. Bayard started making his own computers and games in middle school. "I would program and create simulated adventure games. At that time they were just text games, no graphics. As you read through the game, you'd get to a point where you had to make a choice. Each choice took you down a different path. As you continued, you'd build up points by collecting treasure, shields, and weapons. Everything was programmed onto cassette tapes."

By his college years, computers advanced fromtapes to disks, and Mike Bayard went to Marquette University to pursue a career in computer science. Along the way, however, he heard the call to be a priest. Not until he was well into his Jesuit training did Fr. Bayard's interest in computers pique again.

"A friend in Boston who works at Harvard Business School got me interested in doing web pages. He tutored me and I developed a habit of using web technologies as a creative outlet to unwind," Fr. Bayard says. "I reached a point in building my own web site where I wanted to do image maps. That's when you click on a picture and another file comes up. He said those were too difficult. I didn't take no for an answer. So I went out and taught myself how to do image maps. So two weeks after learning how to do HTML, the basic web language, I got back into this stuff again and fell in love with it."

In 1997, one year before his ordination, Fr. Bayard was assigned to do campus ministry at Creighton University where he learned about the U.S. West Computer fellowship, applied, and was accepted.

"Fellowships are for faculty at Creighton who, for a full year, are taught and mentored by other U.S. West fellows about how we can better use technology and the web in education," Fr. Bayard says. "Their message is clear. This technology is here. It's for our use. How do we better use it to get things across to people? Let's be creative, because this is where we're going."

Fr. Bayard makes use of computer technology in several ways, including a personal web site he uses to tell others what his life as a Jesuit is like. He visits another religious site to help him develop his homilies. He routinely reaches out across oceans to dialog with others about building up God's kingdom in daily life. His creative juices flow like whitewater through a narrow canyon, surging ahead in search of a larger end.

"Ever since I participated in the fellowship, whenever I do something I ask myself: how can this be used on the web? I agree with the instructor who said that everything you do, you should think of in terms of how it can be put out on the web. If it's important to you, it's important enough to share with others."

He laughs nervously and waves a hand as if apologizing for an obsession. Then the Old West preacher in him springs back to the fore.

"You know, people are always talking about all the smut and bad stuff there is out there on the web. Well, the web is there for good things too. All we have to do is use it. It's like Paul says in his letter to Timothy (2 Tim 2:9): 'There's no chaining the word of God…' no holding it back. And this technology can get the word out fast."

Fast, Pardner, real fast.

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