July 2008

A friend of mine recently schedule a coffee with me to have us plan out how a new Sunday night service could try and connect with those attending through Facebook. This basic strategy could also work for any churches wanting to experiment with extending their worship services into a social network like Facebook - sort of an internet campus “starter kit”

Internet Campus Starter Kit

1. Script, shoot, edit and post a 3 minute video for the Facebook community once a week

• Content
  • Graphic Lead in and Close for Service branding
  • Announcements
  • Teaching summary (”campus pastor” does a brief overview of main scripture and teaching)
  • Teaching challenge (”campus pastor” explains the challenge)
  • Prompt to share challenge results or teaching questions in discussion topics “below”
• Bonus / Extras
  • Ministry Highlight (small groups, retreat, etc.)
  • Event Highlight (social, movie night, etc.)

2. Monitor Facebook Community Daily

• Leave Wall comments on all new “fans” to the page
• Have “facebook team” friend all the people who are fans of the page
• Monitor discussion topics and be as catalytic as possible for generating conversation
• Create a topic for every weekends teaching title the same as the sermon with “Sermon:” then the title each week
• Create a topic for every event, and send out and event update

3. Post 2 Updates to Fans a Week

• Announce the Posting of the Video
• Send a post with service and church announcements

4. 24 Wk Strategy for Initial Phase

• 1st 8 weeks: Building trust that you are going to show up each week and refinement of the content creation and posting processes. Don’t expect any significant growth or engagement
• 2nd 8 weeks: Community should start to grow along with engagement. Start recruiting people to be a part of the FB community team.
• 3rd 8 weeks: Start evaluating process, engagement and ideas. Work on implementation plans for new content, and activity on Facebook page - and look for 1-2 other social networks you can start a 24 week Initial Phase on.

What would you add, adjust or take out?

Greg asked that people twitter in some questions for the Church 2.0 forum he is doing in southern California today. Here are the questions I had off the top of my head - what are yours?

• Twitter faster than AP NewsWire and more dependable than AT&T (for today…)
• My wife’s favorite things (including delicious banana bread)
• All you need for a Personal MBA
• A conversation on Thinking Ahead
• Keep your content online Portable
• If you want extraordinary results from your people be committed to providing them an extraordinary environment
• Would you hire an illegal alien?
• 50 Steps to establishing a consistent social media practice… (chris brogan is the man!)

Whoa, was just in the Apple store in Irvine when I felt my first legit earthquake. It was just a big shake and then everything swayed for about 45 seconds. Craziness!

We are in very exciting times! Ever since the Internet has come about people in the church have recognized what a tremendous opportunity it presented – but for over a decade we have been sort of “scratching our heads” on how to use it beyond a digital bulletin. Now there are lots of opportunities online, especially with the rise of churches using multi-site and Internet campus strategies. With that in mind I thought it would be good to start a conversation around all the different methods that the Internet presents to help the local church extend its ministry online – starting today!

1. The Internet Campus Method

This method actually has many different expressions depending on the church, the vision and purpose in having it. For some having an Internet campus is just a way to put the weekend teachings online for current members to see while remote, and for new people to get a taste before they come to the physical location. Others find themselves more invested in making this a legitimate church experience for people who don’t attend their (or one of their) physical location(s). There isn’t a “way” to do it, but there is a reality that once you start “speaking” on the web people have an expectation that you are also “listening”.

There are high tech (custom development) and low tech (Mogulus.com, Ustream.tv, Justin.tv) ways of pulling this experience off – but what is most important is having people who are specifically paying attention to those that come and that the team is ministry minded. The Internet is incredible at attracting when used right, but the same rules apply for follow-up as people who come on the weekend – get to it!

2. The Church/Pastor Blog Method

Again there are a lot of levels with this, from an official Church blog for news, announcements, post sermon conversation, and 100 other types of relevant news your community generates; to the Pastor blog where the lead pastor posts devotional thoughts similar to what many churches have in a weekly – quarterly newsletter. The point is that instead of thinking that having a blog means you have to write all “bloggy”, realize that blogging technology is a great platform to keep people informed and to receive feedback. If you are doing this I would bet the farm it is the most viewed page on your entire site because it is interactive and consistently updated(and the reason that it should be your home page or at least feature on it.)

3. The Distribution Method

This is the most natural method most churches have used the Internet for, and it is effective. I like how Marshill Church in Seattle, where Mark Driscoll preaches, is very intentional in splicing up their weekends and distributing them through many channels. From podcasts, to youtube and the other sites that exist, this is a great way for the message of your church to literally travel on its own. (Youtube.com, Vimeo.com, Blip.tv, etc.)

4. The Online Community Method

I don’t know of any churches specifically pulling this off – but in my mind it is as valuable as any of the other methods previously mentioned. In my limited experience is seems a lot of church strategy focus primarily on attracting people to itself. Whether through the weekend services or through an internet campus, a lot of the time if people are going to connect to us they have to do so on “our turf.”

The really cool opportunity that has happened on the Internet is that everyone is now participation and sharing their lives online – and 90% of it has the ability for people to leave comments and to reply. As a church would just started listening and engaging in the online communities that their people are already involved in (Facebook, Forums, etc.) they would be able to interact with people on “their turf”.

It might not seem this way, but people LOVE to get comments and feedback on what they post online. Going through and looking for opportunity to leave comments, walls posts, and blog post replies on the online properties of your community is a powerful way to value people, and to connect with their networks. This approach is much more likened to a “missional” mindset.

So, three questions:

1. What methods have you seen or are currently putting into practice?
2. What methods do you see as happening in the future?
3. Where are the potential dangers in extending ministry online?

..

Here is a screenshot of my dock (click to enlarge) on my MacBook Pro - what does yours look like?

Well the Steward family is moving into another big leap in our journey! Over the past two years we have been in Southern California learning, volunteering and connecting with the amazing people and staff at Saddleback Church. We have been so blessed, mentored and cared for here by this church family that is it impossible to put into words. The hardest part in following God in this next move will be all the good friends we won’t be able to see as often as we would like (well that and the beautiful beaches and constant 72 degree weather).

Mandy and I both felt that 2008 would be the year that I found a “fit” in a church - and he has come through big time. A little over a month ago my good friend John pointed out a job posting for LifeChurch.tv titled: Online Community Organizer. Later, when I read the description of what LifeChurch.tv was looking for to Mandy we both agreed that this position seemed like a perfect fit for what God has been developing in me over the past two years - so I applied.

Since then it has been a fun whirlwind as we started the process of interviewing for the position. This last weekend we flew out to see LifeChurch.tv and the Internet Campus/Digerati team, and for a final round of interviews. This week were thrilled to accept the position of Online Community Pastor with LifeChurch.tv, serving on their Internet Campus/Digerati team.

Needless to say we are humbled just for the opportunity to be around the amazing talent and the hearts of the people at LifeChurch.tv. And I can accurately say this is a dream job on the dream team. The more we saw this weekend the more we were blown away by the faith and talent of the people there, and the vision they have.

So, pray for us as we take another big plunge in this journey. We have to get our house ready so it can start a schedule of showing to be re-leased, we need to settle up all the details here and we hope to be in Oklahoma by beginning of September!

Merlin Mann continues to bring a lot of not-so-common sense to the world of email:

Lose the shells?

So, the peanuts.

The idea here is that you probably don’t have a place in your home or office where you store the shells from every peanut you ever ate. If you did, you’d definitely want to organize them by the year in which you ate them, perhaps keeping separate jars per-month or per-location where you ate the nut. You know. For posterity.

But you don’t do that. It would be insane. Once you eat the peanut, the job of the shell is done. So lose it. Ditto dead email. Never organize what you can simply discard; and if you can’t discard it, throw it onto one big pile.

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