Founder & Editor-in-Chief Steve Hewitt - steve@ccmag.com Online Community Manager Kevin Cross - kevin@ccmag.com
Applying Tomorrow’s Technology to Today’s Ministry Volume 24
May 2012
No. 5
4 cover story
What do FellowshipONE, ConnectionPower and ServiceU all have in common?
Active Network Faith!
Contributing Editors Lauren Hunter Yvon Prehn Nick Nicholaou Kevin A. Purcell Russ McGuire Bradley Miller Michael L White Copy Editor Gina Hewitt
By Steve Hewitt
Corporate Home Office
3 Editorial
Play our Summer 2012 Scavenger Hunt and you could win a NEW iPad3 ! Steve Hewitt – steve@ccmag.com
8 Minstry Leadership
from ACS Technologies
11 Logos CMS
14 One Call Now
from LOGOS Management Software
Faith that Moves Messages Gethsemane Baptist Church
Kevin A. Purcell – kevin@kevinpurcell.org
become the property of Christian Computing®, Inc. upon receipt and may not necessarily be returned. Christian Computing® Magazine reserves the right to make any changes to materials subfor editorial purposes. The content of this publi-
How to Preach from an iPad
Kevin A. Purcell – kevin@kevinpurcell.org
19 Digital Evangelism
cation may not be copied in any way, shape or form without the express permission of Christian Computing®, Inc. Views expressed in the articles and reviews printed within are not necessarily
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the views of the editor, publisher, or employees of Christian Computing® Magazine, or Christian
23 The Power And The Danger Facebook Apps
submitted to Christian Computing® Magazine
mitted for publication that are deemed necessary
15 Higher Power With Kevin
A-May-zing Grace!
Christian Computing® is a registered trademark of Christian Computing, Inc. Written materials
How to Think Like a Technology Superstar
© Copyright 2012 by Christian Computing®, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
4 Steps to Reduce Staff Burnout
Mailing address: PO Box 319 Belton MO 64012 Delivery address: 306 Eagle Glen Ct Raymore MO 64083 Phone: (816) 331-5252 FAX: 800-456-1868
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By Russ McGuire - russ.mcguire@gmail.com
28 Nick at Church Media Files – What Do ‘The Studios’ Do?
30 Ministry Communication
Nick Nicholaou - nick@mbsinc.com
The Technology Advice from the new USA TODAY Publisher for Church Communicators Yvon Prehn - yvon@effectivechurchcom.com
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May 2012
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editorial Play our Summer 2012 Scavenger Hunt and you could win a NEW iPad3 Steve Hewitt - steve@ccmag.com
What do you have planned for this Summer? Things slow down, we take vacations and most of us have a bit more down time. We thought we would have some FUN this summer and hold our Summer 2012 Scavenger Hunt! And, we couldn’t think of a better prize than a free new iPad3. Many of our readers are probably like me. You have the iPad2 and just can’t come up with the reasons to drop the money for the iPad3. Well, let us help you out with that! Here is how the Summer 2012 Scavenger Hunt works. Sometime, during the next few weeks, I will send out a special email with instructions on how to play. The email will direct you to a special website with questions you’ll need to answer. The answers will be found in content (blogs, posts, PDF articles and even Christian Computing® Magazine
videos) in our online community (www. ccmag.com). This will be a great way to learn more about what has been posted! Answer all of the questions correctly and you will be entered into the drawing to receive the new iPad3. It’s just that simple! So, watch your email for our special Summer 2012 Scavenger Hunt information, and have some fun! We will close the drawing on August the 15th, and draw from those readers who have submitted their entry with all of the questions answered correctly! I hope you have some fun, and I know one reader is really going to enjoy this contest and their new iPad3!
Together We Serve Him,
Steve Hewitt Follow me on Twitter @stevehewitt email - Steve@ccmag.com
May 2012
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cover story
What do FellowshipONE, ConnectionPower and ServiceU all have in common?
Active Network Faith!
By Steve Hewitt
I
am sure all of our readers are familiar with FellowshipONE, ConnectionPower and ServiceU. What they may not be aware of is how they have all been acquired by Active Network, and how the best features and components of ServiceU and ConnectionPower are being added to FellowshipONE. And, from what I am hearing, the combination of leadership, products and services will be united with other products offered by Active Network, providing a suite of products and services for the church market. Recently I interviewed Jeff Hook, General Manager, Active Network Faith. I think you will find it very interesting!
Although one of the first Cloud-based ChMS, you are no longer a new kid on the block. Tell us a little about the history of Fellowship One. The software that became Fellowship One— or F1, as we now call it—started at Fellowship Church in Grapevine, Texas. The development effort had gotten too large to manage in-house Christian Computing® Magazine
even by a church as large as Fellowship; after all software development is not a core competency of churches. After 3 years of development, in 2004, I was approached about buying the software and taking it to market. So, I, along with 5 technical folks from the church, raised some seed capital and started Fellowship Technologies. We ended that first year with 60 churches; May 2012
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by the end of 2010, we were working with over 2,000 churches. In 2011, Fellowship Technologies was acquired by Active Network, the leader in cloudbased activity and participant management™ solutions, which serves over 50,000 customers in many vertical markets ranging from sports to business events. We, along with two other companies, Connection Power and ServiceU, came together to form Active Network’s new vertical offering for the Faith market. As the GM of Active Network Faith, my organization is focused on providing innovative church management solutions including operations, congregation engagement, data management, analytics and strategic development that allow church staff and volunteers to spend less time on the administrative and more time caring for the needs of their congregations. What was your vision for Fellowship Technologies? My vision for Fellowship Technologies
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started with my vision for the church. One of our earliest taglines was “changing the world by changing the church world.” My dad was an Assembly of God pastor so I have a long history with the church. As a Christian, I saw that as churches grew larger, they were unable to keep track of people and keep up with their needs. They could only guess at why their attendance or giving was stagnant or declining. Even if it was on the rise, I couldn’t help seeing that higher numbers didn’t necessarily translate into functional Christian families, marriages and, for that matter, lives. Christians’ divorce rates aren’t any lower than the national average; depression and moral failure track with the rates of non-Christians. I truly believe John 10:10, where Christ claims he came for us to live fuller lives, =refers to this side of the grave. As a businessman, I realized there was need for software tailored to the unique needs of the church that would enable leaders to track the lives of their members and attendees in order to
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come alongside them during the difficult stages of life. A church database needs to be so much more than a glorified Rolodex. Pastors and church staff needed a way to spend their time helping people, not just wrestling with administration. Like a modern business, the modern church staff needs information that enables them to make informed decisions based on real, trackable data, not just guesses. Once Fellowship One was underway, my vision for the company was to do such a great job of providing that kind of software to churches everywhere that we would be the best ChMS solution in the industry. What were your ideas for differentiating F1 from the market? A comprehensive, integrate-able, 100% cloud-based, single-sourced database. The cloud was the only way to provide the features, dependability, and security I wanted in F1. Internet-based systems were a relatively new idea for businesses back then, let alone churches. The other main differentiator was and is our services component. From the beginning, I knew that software alone couldn’t run a church. Pastors and church staff are handcuffed without information, but without logical and efficient processes and the right people to act on the data, technology is useless and the information unreliable. Many of our staff members are ministry leaders. By using their expertise, we set out to offer consulting, education and best practices for getting the right kind of data into the system and the most accurate data out of it. We want to help churches organize themselves in efficient ways and maximize the amount and quality of ministry they accomplish. What were your key motivators for selling Fellowship Technologies to Active Network? I wanted to take our F1 software—and the company—to the next level. We had reached a point where we were successful, but where accelerating our God-sized vision was going to require additional resources. There are so many product features envisioned, but it takes time to build industrial strength software right. I felt it was time to become part of something bigger so that we could leverage additional expertise for the Kingdom. Christian Computing® Magazine
Why Active Network? Active Network first became interested in us in 2007 and in 2011, the timing was right to join forces. After many months of prayer and deliberation, my executive team decided that Active Network and Fellowship Technologies cared about the same things: partnering with organizations through technology to enable more enriched lives. Active Network was offering in other markets, such as sports, outdoors and community-related activities, the same type of efficiency-improving technology we were offering churches, and for the same reason: to help organizations help people live better lives through activities and great experiences. What motivated Active Network to acquire ConnectionPower and ServiceU, and how will the three organizations integrate as you move forward? With ConnectionPower, we have integrated an organization that has a passion for the Church through a pastor’s eyes, its founder Allen Ratta. Allen is helping us take some of his ideas around church growth and health and adding them into Fellowship One. With ServiceU, we are adding capabilities that augment Fellowship One’s ChMS functionality with deeper expertise in facilities management, event registration and payment processing. We will continue to provide point solutions for churches in giving, resource management and ticketing, just as ServiceU always has, but in the future they will also be tightly integrated with an enterprisewide system. At our annual Dynamic Church Conference in May, we officially launched our unified brand, Active Network Faith, one of the most comprehensive, modern ChMS on the market benefiting churches worldwide. As we embrace Active’s ‘get, manage, build’ strategy into our software, we expect that focusing on our synergistic core competencies will allow churches to better connect to their communities and help people become more active in body, mind, and soul – thus creating more functional, abundant lives. How have your churches responded to the acquisition? Change always shakes things up! People May 2012
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need time to adjust and adapt to it. However, I’m a big believer that improvement requires change, so change is good! So far, churches have responded well to us taking on a bigger platform so that they can take a bigger platform into their communities. With Active Network, they have a technology partner to help them get there. So the strategy is sound; now it’s time to execute. What can you tell us about your product roadmap? I can tell you that Active Network is investing in product development for the Faith market. . We’re working toward a unified product suite as we fold some of the best ServiceU components and ConnectionPower ideas into F1. The 3-year plan I recently presented to our senior leadership has us really excited about where the product is going. Being part of Active Network, puts us in a unique position in our ability to serve the Church and connect the church to its community of active families. What’s your 30-second Active Network Faith “elevator pitch”? Active Network Faith is here to equip the church, to reach out to its community, to manage and streamline church operations, and to grow ministry deep and wide, all for the ultimate purpose of helping people live more functional Christian lives.
WHEN MANAGING YOUR
“This solution helped us meet our employee eligibility tracking and compliance initiative, with a one-year return on investment. I highly recommend it!” Joe Braddock CFO - Diocese of Jefferson City, MO
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Ministry Leadership
4 Steps to Reduce Staff Burnout from ACS Technologies
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here is something about working in a ministry setting that can easily deceive us into believing we have finally landed in the perfect workplace,” author Nicole Unice recently wrote. “Surely, between prayers, devotions and encouraging sticky notes, the church is the best place to work … but then you actually get that job in the church.” “StuIf you’re on staff at a church, you know there’s a lot more to the equation than fellowship and support. It’s incredibly easy for staff at churches and in other ministry settings to burn out, and while prayers can go a long way toward helping church staff avoid burnout, they’re not enough. In this article, we’ve outlined 4 concrete steps you can take to help reduce staff burnout. 1. Offload staff duties to volunteers when possible. Your staff has a lot to do day in and day out – why not make their days easier by offloading some repetitive tasks to willing volunteers? The ministry guide Workplace Flexibility for In-Demand Ministries tells the story of Linda McKiernan, church business administrator at Mill Creek Community
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Church in Shawnee, Kansas. Linda’s workload had continued to build up over the nearly two decades she’d put in. But rather than burning out, Linda got smart by enlisting the help of volunteers. “I have one volunteer who is very highly qualified, he was a CFO, and I have total confidence in him,” Linda said. She’s decided that the best way to utilize this volunteer is to allow him to work from his own home on contributions. “It saves me the work and the time,” she said. 2. Improve job satisfaction by implementing flexible work options. Everyone working on staff at your church is trying hard to balance family life with their jobs. It’s easy to burn out. Anything that helps employees have more control helps Church staff and their May 2012
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families, which, in turn, benefits the Church. Flexible work arrangements – which can be an adjustment in hours, or, even more effectively, allowing your staff access to key systems so they can work from home – are much more than just a perk for church staff. That kind of workplace flexibility helps reduce turnover – which is incredibly expensive! According to the Society for Human Resource Management, direct replacement costs can reach 50-60% of an employee’s annual salary. Total costs can reach as high as 90-200% of the employee’s annual salary. 3. Let your staff use the tools they’re most comfortable with. There are some policies you simply can’t be flexible on – everyone knows that. You must insist that security practices or cash handling processes be followed to the letter. But one way to keep employees engaged in their jobs? Let them use the tools they love. Popular new tools that are being used in many ministry settings include Mac computers, Apple iPads, and smartphones. According to Workplace Flexibility for In-Demand Ministries, it’s important to create an environment where “staff can use the tools they are drawn to, and that’s increasingly going to mean tools like iPads, because of their affordability relative to other computing tools, and the fact that they appeal to the comfort zone of the user.” 4. Empower your staff. It sounds simple, doesn’t it? But if you truly accept this as a central tenet of your vision, it can have big impact. The fact is, people are more engaged in their jobs when they are empowered. While Christian Computing® Magazine
Download the Raising Your Volunteer Numbers Ministry Guide for ideas and practical solutions!
ACS Technologies is the largest provider of church ministry solutions with more than 50,000 churches relying on our software and services everyday to assist them in reaching their ministry goals. We not only have the products to help you, we have the expertise to help you implement your plans and ideas to take your ministry further!
acstechnologies.com/volunteer�
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the leadership at your church should surely cast vision, remember that the reason you’ve hired your staff is because you trust their capability. Empower them to make decisions where possible about how to get work done – or even where! Do you have a data entry person who would rather enter contributions from home at night after her kids go to bed? Empower her to do just that – and maybe you’ll keep her more satisfied. There are few workplaces that can be more satisfying than the church – but there are some unique challenges to working in ministry that can easily lead church staff down the road to burnout. Taking the following four concrete steps can go a long way toward offsetting that burnout: Offload staff duties to volunteers, implementing flexible work options, letting your staff use the tools they’re most comfortable with, and empowering your staff. For even more detailed information and about getting the most out of your staff, download the free ministry guide Workplace Flexibility for InDemand Ministries today.
Christian Computing® Magazine
May 2012
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LOGOS LOGOS CMS
How to Think Like a Technology Superstar from Logos Management Software
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passionately believe that God’s church is strategically poised, at this moment in time, to be the most significant and influential thought leader on the horizon for using technology to make a real difference in our broken world. Imagine the power of orchestrating immediate help for an orphan or widow in need, or connecting the local body of believers to a wide range of Christian influencers and other resources designed to meet deep physical, social, emotional, and spiritual needs.
God has called the church to help the poor and minister to hurting people, and as we humbly acknowledge our mighty God and work for His glory alone, I believe we can turn this opportunity into a reality. More than ever we need to commit to being lifelong learners and strategically apply that learning to help our churches. Colleges and universities aren’t keeping up with the needs of this ever-changing landscape. In fact, the New York Times says there is a Digital Talent Gap. New digital skills are coveted by employers. Here are some practical ways to begin thinking like a technology superstar. Delve into the Devices you Already Own Get familiar with the devices you currently own: your phone, laptop, and/or your tablet. Commit to learning something new, maybe even as simple as a new shortcut, about your device once a week. As you increase in knowledge about your device, Christian Computing® Magazine
your confidence in technology will rise as well, not to mention your efficiency. Think about the way you use your devices. Ask yourself some questions: • What types of activities do you use your different devices for? • Which way are you most likely to communicate with your friends? With your coworkers? • How would you leverage the strengths of each device to better serve the mission/ vision of your church? Teach Others What You Learned In love and humility, seek to teach willing participants what you learn. Teaching completes the learning curve. If you can explain it to someone else, you get it. Plus, this opens the door to conversation to hear others’ thoughts on how they use their technology. Not only will this help you to grow, it will open your eyes to ideas May 2012
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to ideas you may not have had. Find Yourself a Mentor This one can sound overwhelming, but it’s not nearly as big a deal once you accept that you don’t have to know your mentor personally. In what area of technology are you wanting to grow? If you already know that, go out and find an industry blog in that area and subscribe to it. Voila. You’ve got yourself a technology mentor. One way to do this is to head to Alltop and check out some of the trending topics or put in a search of your own. You’ll find thought leaders galore. Once you find a blog you like (using your God-given discernment) and are following it, pay attention to how the person thinks. What questions are they asking themselves that bring them to the conclusion to which they have arrived? Is it possible to adapt and enhance ideas to make them work for your church? Can you learn to think more strategically like your online mentor? Ask the kids for help. At one Michigan church, the youth minister has a youth group member who serves as her “get it working” guru. Whether she needs help figuring out her cell phone or getting a YouTube video to display properly in a meeting room, he’s her go-to guy. While getting the answers you need fast, you’ll make your helper(s) feel important and cultivate ministry as a natural act of service.
the influencers are, etc., you are ready and capable to quickly adapt to changes. For example, the News Feed on Facebook has been slowly modified so updates (if the user allows others to see) have become more “shareable.” It’s easier to see what your friends, “like.” It’s easier than ever to share the content. Because of this, stigmas about “liking” or sharing a post from someone outside your network are diminishing. What can this mean for the church? How can we leverage the changing landscape of “share”? Can we find new ways to share? Also, in light of understanding human interaction, think about what types of content are better sent directly from your church’s Facebook versus a member of your
Spend Time to Understand “Social” The current social media outlets may not be around forever, but social media is here to stay. Understanding how social works will help you even as the look of social changes. Those of us on Facebook know how quickly the interface and functionalities change. Marketers often scramble to understand how to leverage the changes on a dime. However, if you understand how and why people share, who Christian Computing® Magazine
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church who has natural gifts at “social.” Some requests will receive more attention if it comes directly from a person as opposed to an organization. It’s not always a person on staff who should do this. In fact, sometimes there’s a chasm between staff and lay leaders. Taking the time to identify an influencer in your church – who is not on staff – may be the key here. And then ask that the staff show humility and be responsive to an individual who is helping but not “one of them.” As you uncover what works for your church, think out of the box. Brainstorm your ideas out loud with others so they can give input. Even the naysayers’ thoughts are valid as they may point out potential roadblocks you wouldn’t have considered. Go Visual Visual is increasingly more “shareable.” One of the best ways to think like a technology rock star is to learn how to make your information more visual. Whether it’s photographs or video, there are tutorials galore to help you on your way. For example, Vimeo offers their free Video School. Learn to Read and Apply Data Reading and applying data is critical and often daunting. The data that can now be acquired is incredible in scope. There’s one simple way to begin getting comfortable with research: spend time with number analysis. The technology rock star who understands number analysis is highly valuable. This person is adept at reading the numbers to determine which strategy worked best. When is the best time to send your organization’s newsletter? How do people interact with the website? What do the numbers tell us about our audience so we can better shepherd them? There are a wealth of tools and plugins available to you to capture information on those who come to your website. But more importantly, you need to know the right Christian Computing® Magazine
questions to ask or the data means nothing. Take risks. Be patient. Thinking out of the box means taking risks. Learning to think like a technology rock star takes time, and, realistically, you won’t move from novice to tech ninja overnight. The journey is worth it. And along the way, you never know the impact one of your ideas could take, not to mention the job security you’ll be giving yourself by staying up-to-date on the trends. Pick and choose one area you want to grow and then own it! Learn everything you can about it. Become the go-to person in your organization on that subject. Then take your skill and think differently!
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ONE CALL NOW
ONE CALL NOW
Faith that Moves Messages Gethsemane Baptist Church
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passionately Founded in 1984 as a 200-member church that met in a high school gymnasium in Newport News, Va., Gethsemane Baptist Church has since grown to more than 3,000 members, making it one of America’s largest churches.
THE SITUATION Gethsemane Baptist Church has more than 90 ministry groups. Contacting group members took hours of individual phone calls. “Each person who heads up a smaller group manually dialed the members of their group to get the message out,” said Rev. Dr. Dwight Riddick. When messages needed to be delivered to the entire congregation, TV or radio announcements were used. Riddick knew there was room for improvement. THE SOLUTION Since partnering with One Call Now in 2008, many ministry groups experienced up to a 50 percent increase in attendance and participation. “It’s so convenient! I can connect with the congregation like never before,” Riddick explained. He now communicates so often with the congregation, the church has saved more than 10,277 hours of calling time. Television and radio announcements have been replaced with proactive communication through One Call Now. With One Call Now, Gethsemane Baptist Church can do things that were previously unimaginable. In 2009, services were cancelled due to a severe winter storm. Riddick cacelled services AND delivered his message to thsands of people with just one phone call. He also scheduled a makeup service a few days later, and more than 700 people came. “It would
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have been impossible to do this witout One Call Now,” Riddick said. “(It) has become a part of our church that we can’t do without.” Contact us to learn more! INDUSTRY Religious – Large Church PROBLEM Communicating through individual phone calls and TV and radio announcements was time-consuming and unreliable PAYBACK 50% increase in participation in various church activities; 10,277 hours of phone time saved TOOLS UTILIZED Phone Calls, Text-to-Speech, Scheduled Delivery, Subgroups GEOGRAPHY Newport News, Virginia REPLACED Manually dialed calls for ministry groups; TV and Radio spots for congregation-wide messages “It’s so convenient! I am able to connect with the congregation like never before. One Call Now has become a part of our church that we can’t do without.” Rev. Dr. Dwight Riddick, pastor at Gethsemane Baptist Church
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higher power with kevin
How to Preach from an iPad Kevin A. Purcell - kevin@kevinpurcell.org
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wo years ago I began preaching on Sundays using my iPad instead of paper notes. I still use notes when I preach despite two seminary preaching professors telling me I shouldn’t. But, I like not wasting paper and using up my printer ink or laser printer toner. I like the simplicity of sliding the text up with my finger instead of shuffling through paper. I always have my sermon notes at the tip of my fingers, thanks to my chosen workflow. Let me show you how it works. If you want to save money and time, then follow my workflow. I’ll also share some alternative methods I’ve seen along the way. The concepts presented can help you do the same thing on an Android tablet, Nook Color or Tablet or a Kindle Fire. When they show up sometime after Windows 8 ships you probably could use this method on a Windows 8 tablet too. You’ll have to adapt the steps to fit your device. My Workflow First, I write all of my messages and Bible studies using Microsoft Word. You can pick any word processor or text editing app you like. Create the sermon or Bible study and save it Christian Computing® Magazine
as a document or text file so you can open it on your iPad or tablet. Apple offers some options for opening documents from a Mac or PC on your iPad, but using a third-party tool works best, making it easier and faster. You’ll need a file syncing app and service like one of the following: • DropBox – offers 2GB free and apps for iOS and Android • SygarSync – offers 5GB free and apps for iOS and Android • Box – offers 5GB or more for free and apps for iOS and Android • Google Drive – offers 5GB for free and offers Android app May 2012
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Search Google for the one you think will best fit your situation. I like SugarSync because it offers more free storage and a better iPad app. I also installed the others and use accounts with each of the above. Install the sync software on your Mac or PC and, from now on, save your sermons or Bible study notes to a file in the folder you’re syncing with the service. I don’t have room to explain how to use each of the above services, but let me explain a couple of differences. With SugarSync you can point the syncing software to any folder on your internal hard drive. DropBox, Box and Google put special folder on your computer that you must use. I like the flexibility of SugarSync. I put all my documents into a subfolder of my Documents folder on my Mac or PC and tell the program to sync that folder. On my iPad I open the SugarSync app and find the sermon or Bible study notes. You can view them within the SugarSync app or use the share icon (small square with an arrow in upper right corner of SugarSync) to open the file in another app. I open my documents in Pages on my iPad. Pages come from Apple and behave just like a word processor with formatting and page layout options. Search the app store for it. QuickOffice HD offers another great iPad office app.
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I open my file in Pages and then tap and hold some of the text in the document and choose Select All. I then use the font size option to increase the font size to 24 points. This allows me to easily read the words from far away. I’m a roaming preacher and I can look at the iPad from the side of the pulpit or from behind it. I still use my printed Bible when I preach. I like the visual symbol of a copy of God’s word in my hands. I can quickly make reference to it by simply holding it up and it instantly communicates the idea that the Bible reigns supreme as our foundation and guide to life. One day all generations will understand using digital Bibles. We’re not there yet, so I still keep my Bible in the pulpit or on my lectern. When I read scripture I open my paper Bible to the primary text I’m preaching, but I also usually copy the verse into my document so I can enlarge them too for easier reading. I format my preaching notes using headers, colors and bullets/numbers. For example, all sermon points show up in large bold font left justified. All subordinate ideas show up as paraMay 2012
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graph text. All Bible passages or quotations show up as red bold text indented half an inch. I don’t type out my sermons word-for-word in my notes. That’s a good habit while writing, but it hinders extemporaneous preaching to take the full manuscript into the pulpit. Set up the text in a way that makes it easy for your to see the outline. I like including space between movements. I single space a section of my sermon and then insert an extra line to show that I’m moving to a new section of my sermon. An Alternative Option – Bible Study App Notes If you prefer, you can setup your sermon outline in a note attached to the passage you’re presenting. For example, if you’re using Olive Tree Bible Reader or Logos on your computer, you can type or paste the sermon into a note attached to the verse. The note will sync with your device and you can open the file automatically. I only mentioned those two computers because they’re the only applications I know of that will sync with an iPad and both Windows and Mac computers. If I’m wrong, let me know and I’d be happy to give your solution a try. The benefits of using a Bible study program that syncs with your iPad: • Faster than my workflow due to fewer steps • Only one app needed for both Bible reading and notes • Your sermons will show up in future searches for passages and topics if you search the notes in those applications This solution does include drawbacks. First, you don’t get the powerful image of using your Bible in the pulpit, but you can still keep Christian Computing® Magazine
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a physical Bible with you and even open it to your primary passage. Second, it’s harder to use an iPad Bible app for Scripture and notes if you plan to preach from more than one passage. You
could alleviate this by pasting the text of secondary passages in the notes outline. Third, if you use your iPad for making presentations, you can’t open Bible app and your presentation app, like Keynote. There may be others I’m not thinking about.
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digital evangelism
A-May-zing Grace!
Michael L White - mlwhite@parsonplacepress.com
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ike every other month of the year, May is the perfect time to talk about the amazing grace of God to those who need to hear it. In fact, even believers love to hear about God’s matchless grace from time to time. We are reminded of that fact in the lyrics to the fourth verse of the beloved old hymn, “I Love to Tell the Story,” where we read: I love to tell the story, for those who know it best Sem hungering and thirsting to hear it like the rest. The story of God’s saving grace is truly more than amazing, more than marvelous, and more than matchless. In fact, it’s simply beyond description. However, I wonder how many evangelists present the story of God’s saving grace for what it truly is, an opportunity for salvation from Hell followed by everlasting life with Jesus Christ, rather than some namby-pamby, “good life” experience in this world that so many people tend to emphasize instead? While I don’t watch it every week, I watched an episode of The Way of the Master recently, Christian Computing® Magazine
hosted by Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron, on Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN). It’s a program I can highly recommend to every Christian who is serious about sharing his/her faith as effectively as possible. One of the most impressive aspects of this weekly program is the street-level interviews they conduct. It’s quite enlightening to learn what the average person on the street thinks about God, Christ, the Bible, the Christian faith, Heaven, and Hell. You can access and view this particular episode I’m referencing via the new iTBN video archives site at http://www.itbn.org/ May 2012
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index/detail/lib/Networks/sublib/ TBN/ec/1iN3huMjoqUdd2m8h47 vCRJfxEJWnRm1. If you feel that URL is too long and complicated for you to type into your Web browser’s address bar, just go to http:// www.itbn.org, and when that page loads, click in the encircled search area labeled “Search TBN programs, people, or channels …” located at the upper right hand side of the screen. Type in “The Way of the Master” and press Enter. After that page loads, look for the encircled text link “By Specific Date” near the top of the search results area and click on it. A calendar box will pop up. Next, choose the month of March and the year 2006 from the calendar. Once you choose those, click on the 22nd day to display the associated episode which was just rebroadcast. You can see that the length of the program is 28 minutes and 15 seconds. Now, all you have to do is click on the thumbnail image of the program to launch it onto a new page. The program will start automatically. While you can watch the program in this browser window, I recommend you click on the diagonally-pointing arrows in the bottom right corner of the video player to maximize the viewer to full screen mode for better viewing. Once the video finishes, just press your Escape (Esc) key to return to normal viewing. If you are interrupted or need to take a break during the playback, just click on the Pause button until you return. While Ray and Kirk usually focus on unbelievers during their interviews, in this episode they interviewed a number of professing Christians about how they share their faith with unbelievers. I was struck by how many said they would offer potential converts to Christ “a better life,” “a happier life,” “a great way of life” and other such ineffective claims if they would simply become a Christian. It was disturbing too, that they thought this approach to evangelism was acceptable. The concern in my mind is if they believe this attitude is what it means to Christian Computing® Magazine
be safe in the Kingdom of Christ, perhaps they themselves are not even saved! Furthermore, it gives me cause to pause and consider how many more churchgoers in congregations everywhere have this same misconception about what it truly means to be a Christian, a disciple of Jesus Christ. Before one can actually evangelize anyone else with the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, one must first have an accurate understanding of that truth and have accepted and applied it to his/ her own life. Inviting people to accept Christianity as a way to improve their lives is not only setting them up for failure, it isn’t even getting them to the entrance of salvation! It isn’t practicing Christianity that saves us, but it’s our faith in the atoning blood sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ and His resurrection from the dead (Romans 10:9; 1 Corinthians 15:17)! Truly, living for Christ is living the good life (and that manner of living is called Christianity), but one can’t begin enjoying that good life apart from first accepting God’s saving grace by faith in Jesus Christ, and then committing to living for Christ. Until we accept by faith what Jesus Christ May 2012
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has done for us to make that good life available, we cannot receive it, since that is His requirement for salvation (John 3:18; 8:24). Perhaps one of the simplest and best descriptions of taking this step of faith is found in the repentant action of the thief on the cross next to Jesus. After rebuking the thief crucified on Jesus’ other side for blaspheming Jesus, this repentant thief said to Jesus, “Lord, remember me when You come into Your kingdom” (Luke 23:42 NKJV). This simple, nineword statement demonstrates that this man not only believed Jesus was the long-awaited Messiah, but he wanted to live in this muchdreamed-of kingdom of everlasting peace that had been prophesied for centuries (Isaiah 9:6-7; 11:1-9; 65:17-25). That was all it took for Jesus to promise, “Assuredly, I say to you, today you will be with Me in Paradise” (Luke 23:43 NKJV). Just as it had worked with Father Abraham millennia earlier, it now worked for this repentant thief: “And he believed in the LORD, and He accounted it to him for righteousness” (Genesis 15:6 NKJV). According to the Apostle Paul, the saving grace of God continues to work the same way for everyone in the entire world even until now. (Read Romans 4 and Galatians 3, for comparison.) As you watch the aforementioned episode of The Way of the Master, you’ll hear them use the analogy of a blind man unwarily tapping his way toward a 1,000 foot high cliff while listening to the beautiful music that someone gave him in a headset to “improve” his life. Would any of us not try to intervene and warn the blind man of his impending doom? We need to get the same sense of urgency about sharing the Gospel Christian Computing® Magazine
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of Jesus Christ. Time is quickly running out. Although we can’t warn everyone by ourselves, we can, at least, warn those who live with us, who are related to us, who work with us, and even those who attend weekly worship with us. Maybe we could even warn a few of those strangers who stand in line with us at the theater, who ride the elevator with us, or who wait for the bus with us. In this same episode of The Way of the Master I’ve mentioned, Ray and Kirk refer to a message they received from someone which also drives home the point of this urgency to share the Gospel at every opportunity. A man living in New York City wrote in an email that he was working on a construction site in an office building on Park Avenue. At some point, he needed to get a key from a receptionist to use the rest room. When he returned the key, he attempted to share the Gospel with this woman, but one interruption after another kept interfering, so he just gave up and thought to try again the next day. However, the next morning, when he was returning to this same work site, someone had jumped off the 15th
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floor and landed just ten feet in front of him. To his horror, it was the same woman he had attempted to share the Gospel with the day before. We never know if we will get another opportunity to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ with someone, so we need to press on through and make the most of each opportunity we are given, as it may be the last one we will ever have. I pray that we will all get a greater sense of urgency about sharing the hope of Jesus Christ with everyone we meet. During this a-May-zing month of May and beyond, let’s commit ourselves to sharing the amazing, saving grace of God with whoever will listen. Michael L. White is the founding pastor of Wellspring Ministries in Mobile, Alabama, as well as an author and part-time independent Christian publisher. His books, including Digital Evangelism: You Can Do It, Too! (Parson Place Press, April 2011), may be viewed at his Web site books.parsonplace.com and purchased wherever books are sold.
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the power and the danger
Facebook Apps By Russ McGuire - russ.mcguire@gmail.com
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n the next couple of months, Facebook is expected to complete its massive Initial Public Offering (IPO) of stock. The company has $4 billion in cash and generates over $200 million in net income each quarter. With over 900 million active users, the online social network is clearly a massive force on global society. If Facebook were a religion (and for many, it’s at least an idol), it would be the third largest in the world, behind Christianity and Islam. If it were a country, it would also be the third largest, behind China and India. However, it is growing faster than Christianity, Islam, China, and India combined.
For Is that a good thing? I’m certainly not convinced that it is. In the book The Facebook Effect (Simon & Schuster, 2010), written with strong support by the company, author David Kirkpatrick says that Marshall McLuhan is a favorite of the company and quotes from a 1964 book of his to describe the kind of impact Facebook is having on society: “Rapidly, we approach the Christian Computing® Magazine
final phase of the extensions of man – the technological simulation of consciousness, when the creative process of knowing will be collectively and corporately extended to the whole of society.” Beyond the scary “New Age” spirituality reflected in this vision is the reality that Facebook is extending “knowing” to all of society and actively trying to knock down our sense of privacy. May 2012
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Kirkpatrick quotes Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg as saying “To get people to this point where there’s more openness – that’s a big challenge. But I think we’ll do it. I just think it will take time. The concept that the world will be better if you share more is something that’s pretty foreign to a lot of people and it runs into all these privacy concerns.” To advance this mission, Zuckerberg’s company has continuously pushed the envelope on privacy. At times, they’ve had to pull back, but it’s been a constant march forward – two steps forward, one step back. In fact, the core of how most people use Facebook today, the News Feed telling you everything your friends are doing, was initially met with a user revolt over privacy. Kirkpatrick quotes from a group post when the feature was launched in 2006: “You went a bit too far this time, Facebook. Very few of us want everyone automatically knowing what we update… news feed is just too creepy, to stalker-esque, and a feature that has to go.” Of course, the feature didn’t go – it became the definition of how Facebook works – but the company did have to pull back slightly by providing some level of privacy controls. That pattern has been consistent throughout the company’s history – pushing privacy limits beyond public comfort, pulling back a half step, and later successfully being able to step beyond the original concerns. Christian Computing® Magazine
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Zuckerberg’s vision for a more open world extends beyond Facebook, to the whole world, and to enable that, the company has progressively extended social sharing beyond Facebook’s boundaries. In May of 2007, Facebook held an event called f8 (read as “fate”) to launch a development “platform” so that software developers could create new applications that leverage Facebook users’ personal information. Within six months, 250,000 developers had registered with Facebook and had created 25,000 applications. According to Facebook’s website, “At the end of 2011, more than 7 million apps and websites integrated with Facebook.” Late in 2008, the company introduced Facebook Connect, which enables any web site to have visitors log in with their Facebook id. The site can then benefit from your Facebook information, and can send updates about your actions on their site back into Facebook for all of your friends to see. For example, when I visit TripAdvisor, it can tell me the hotels and restaurants my (Facebook) friends have highly rated, and when I review a destination, that can be reported to all my friends within Facebook. Millions of websites have implemented Facebook Connect. In April of 2009, Facebook introduced the Open Stream API, which enables any website to integrate Facebook’s News Feed into their site. Each year, the company Christian Computing® Magazine
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pushes the Facebook experience further into the rest of the world. What are Facebook apps? A Facebook application is a program written to leverage Facebook’s social network. It might integrate information from your personal profile, it might integrate your network of friends so that you can interact with them through the application, it might even integrate information from your friends’ personal profiles, or it might simply report your use of the application in your friends’ News Feeds (e.g. your new high score in a game). With millions of applications, there’s an incredible diversity of different applications. An early favorite called Causes made it easy for nonprofits to raise money (and has helped 27,000 nonprofits raise $40M to date). There are also Bible apps that make it easy to share favorite passages with friends and to have friends hold you accountable with your daily reading plan. But, the most successful Facebook apps have been games and there have been some incredible stories of companies formed to create games for Facebook that have made their founders and investors rich because of the viral growth Facebook enables. One recent example is the game “Draw Something.” The app was launched on February 6 of this year. By the third week of its life, users had used it to draw 10 million images. The next week, that doubled, and the following week it exploded to 500 million drawings. By the sixth week, users had created 2 billion drawings! On March 21, Zynga (another Facebook game company) acquired the maker of Draw Something for $200 million! Christian Computing® Magazine
What is the ministry opportunity with Facebook apps? Assuming Facebook demographics parallel the world’s population, at least two-thirds of Facebook users aren’t Christians. Leveraging Facebook’s social network creates an unparalleled opportunity to spread the Gospel . Although the Internet, as a form of media, has always promised incredible reach, Face-
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book actually makes it easy for ideas to spread virally and to enable Christians to engage their friends with the Gospel’s life changing truth. Furthermore, most of your church members are probably on Facebook. The service represents a unique way to reach and serve them. So, what’s the problem, then? Mark Zuckerberg’s vision is playing out in ways that are potentially dangerous to your congregants. The Wall Street Journal recently studied the 100 most popular apps on Facebook. I recommend reading the article (click here) “Selling You on Facebook.” Their findings are summarized in the article’s subtitle “Many popular Facebook apps are obtaining sensitive information about users—and users’ friends—so don’t be surprised if details about your religious, political and even sexual preferences start popping up in unexpected places.” The poster child for this problem is an app called “Girls Around Me.” A blog called “The Cult of Mac” exposed the dangers this app. I don’t recommend reading the article, but I link to it here to provide attribution for the following selected quotes. The blog post was in the form of one person demonstrating the app to another. (Note – I have never used, nor seen this app used. These are quotes from the article.) “Immediately, Girls Around Me went into radar mode, and after just a few seconds, the map around us was filled with pictures of girls who were in the neighborhood. Since I was showing off the app on a Saturday night, there were dozens of girls out on the town in our local area.” “These are all girls with publicly visible Facebook profiles who have checked into these locations recently using Foursquare.” “Most privacy settings on social networks default to share everything with everyone, and since most people never change those… well, they end up getting sucked up into apps like this.” “I tapped on Zoe. Girls Around Me quickly loaded up a fullscreen render of her Facebook profile picture. The app then told me where Zoe had last been seen (The Independent) and when (15 minutes ago). A big green button at the botChristian Computing® Magazine
tom reading ‘Photos & Messaging’ just begged to be tapped, and when I did, I was whisked away to Zoe’s Facebook profile.” “Okay, so here’s Zoe. Most of her information is visible, so I now know her full name. I can see at a glance that she’s single, that she is 24, that she went to Stoneham High School and Bunker Hill Community College, that she likes to travel, that her favorite book is Gone With The Wind and her favorite musician is Tori Amos, and that she’s a liberal. I can see the names of her family and friends. I can see her birthday.” “I tapped on the photo album, and a collection of hundreds of publicly visible photos loaded up. I quickly browsed them.” “So now I know everything to know about Zoe. I know where she is. I know what she looks like…I know her full name, her parents’ full names, her brother’s full name. I know what she likes to drink. I know where she went to school. I know what she likes and dislikes. All I need to do now is go down to the Independent, ask her if she remembers me from Stoneham High, ask her how her brother Mike is doing, buy her a frosty margarita, and start waxing eloquently about that beautiful summer I spent in Roma.” Based on the uproar from this article, this particular app has been shut down, but the privacy issues that enabled it have not been addressed. I hope the dangers are clear to you. It is my hope and prayer that these articles on the power and danger of technology will encourage you in your daily walk with Christ. Whether it is the printing press, personal computers, the Internet, mobility, Wi-Fi, social networks, or 4G LTE, new technologies continue to advance our ability to know God and to serve Him, wherever we go. Russ McGuire is an executive for a Fortune 100 company and the founder/co-founder of three technology start-ups. His latest entrepreneurial venture is Hschooler.net (http:// hschooler.net), a social network for Christian families (especially homeschoolers) which is being built and run by six homeschooled students under Russ’ direction.
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nick at church
Media Files – What Do ‘The Studios’ Do? Nick Nicholaou - nick@mbsinc.com
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he number of churches that use video is on the rise, and that presents some challenges to IT management! So I was wondering: what do the movie and television studios do? I got to interview someone who works in this area for one of the largest movie and television studios on the planet and was surprised at what I learned! The Challenge Media files are huge. HD video files are about a gigabyte per minute (a sixty minute video is about 70gb). With files that large, there are a few issues to deal with: • File transfer speed • File storage • Storage of final edited product • Storage of raw files for future use • Ability to search raw and edited files • File format changes over time • Asset Management
and often doing so at a much higher expense than necessary.
For church IT managers, the easiest thing to do has been to let the media team deal with it. Media usually seems to have a larger budget, and IT would rather not be responsible. But is that the best strategy? Maybe; but I haven’t found a set of best practices among media teams either. Each seems to be reinventing the wheel,
So how do they address the challenges I mentioned? Here’s what I learned: • File Transfer Speed. Production files are written to media called SxS cards (pronounced “S-by-S”). SxS cards are flash memory cards that fit into Express Memory slots on Windows and Mac OSX computers,
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What the Studio Does The studio I spoke with handles a lot of titles— movies and television and audio. In their building they have about a petabyte of storage available to manage their active files (a petabyte is 1,000 terabytes, or 1,000,000 gigabytes). That is a lot of storage, and it’s for their active files (which they refer to appropriately as assets).
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and they have transfer rates of 800mbps (burstable up to for media storage because of the file sizes and 2.5gbps), and they require a Sony driver. Their files are value. transferred to a SAN with fiber connections to facilitate • But data is data, so I recommend that IT at least be involved in the process. fast data transfer during editing. • Because backup and recovery is one of IT’s • File Storage. All raw footage is copied to LTO5 most important functions. IT can help ensure that tape, as is the final edited product. LTO (Linear Tapethe strategy employed is one that will meet the orgaOpen) is an open source standard developed in the nization’s needs in various scenarios. 1990s, and LTO5 is the latest version of the standard. • IT is responsible for buying a lot of hardware Released in 2010, LTO5 can store 1.5tb natively (i.e. and software, and often has the best relationships to without compression) each tape with a data transfer rate make certain that purchases are getting the maxiof 140mbps— that’s fast! To help ensure that assets mum possible discounts. will be available for future use, two things are done: • The file naming convention used surprised Were you as surprised as I was in some of the ways me! Rather than using metatags, they put all po the studios are managing this very important task? tential search terms into the name of the file sepaThey appropriately refer to it as an asset management rated by underscores! Their concern is that process, but some of their methodology was very differthe metatags could somehow get separated ent than what I had expected. from the files, and by putting them into the file names they accomplish the same thing with higher Nick Nicholaou is president of MBS, a consulting reliability. Their file names are very long! firm specializing in church and ministry IT and CPA • Tapes with files no longer being actively used services. You can reach Nick via email (nick@mbsinc. are transferred to cold storage to increase their com) and may want to check out his firm’s website lifespan. Older LTO formats are transferred to (www.mbsinc.com) and his blog at http://ministry-it. newer formats; they are currently converting all blogspot.com. data stored on LTO3 tapes onto LTO5 tapes. This helps keep the library quality high while making sure the files will be available with current technology. • Asset Management. Though I was surprised by the With Cloud technology, heavy use of LTO5 magnetic tape media, this is the area that your servers can be located probably surprised me the most. off-site. MBS has extensive The technology the studio uses church and ministry IT to manage, or track their assets expertise – let us host your is a spreadsheet! A very large Why put your servers in our private cloud? servers in our datacenter! spreadsheet! They looked at • Eliminate the distraction & hassle various databases and decided it Serving you and your team of hosting your own servers was the method they preferred, would be an honor! Call or • Reduce IT staff costs though they know some other email us today to learn more! studios use databases that were • Gain 100% up-time 714.840.5900 either purchased or developed. • We’re in the most advanced datacenter Should This Be Managed By the Church’s IT? That’s a question I don’t have a good answer for. I have conflicting thoughts in this area: • IT managers are often reluctant to be responsible Christian Computing® Magazine
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ministry communication
Technology Advice from the new USA TODAY Publisher for Church Communicators Yvon Prehn - yvon@effectivechurchcom.com
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SA Today just named Larry Kramer, founder of the successful MarketWatch website, as its new publisher. In discussing his plans, he made some comments that challenge the technology communication ministries in churches, when he said, “The paper will build ‘closer relationships with our readers’ through new uses of technologies. ‘We’re going to give people what they want, when they want it, where they want it. You want it on your watch, I’ll give it to you. Or inside of your sunglasses.” (http://wapo.st/Jw8EBg) In the church, though we also want “closer relationships with our readers,” we may not have the options available to USA TODAY, so what can we do? We don’t have the money, but we have the resources Granted, individual churches don’t have the money to provide communications in the multitude of channels—print, digital, and every variation imaginable in both these areas—in the ways that USA TODAY can. But that doesn’t mean churches can’t keep up with this constantly changing communication revolution with the resources that make them successful in every other ministry endeavor. That way is to realize that the task of providing communications in every channel needed Christian Computing® Magazine
for the church, isn’t a one-person job, but a challenge for the church body. No one person can keep up with technology; no one person can create all the communications needed for a church communications that ministers to all of the people at all the church. In practical terms this means: You need a communications team made up of people who are proficient with the various channels Quit looking for one person who can do it all. You May 2012
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need a team made up of some who love print; some who dream in HTML code; some who love images; some who love type and words in order; some who can create a great postcard and others who can text with their eyes closed, some who love the discipline of a monthly newsletter with consistent columns and articles, others who gravitate to the free-flowing forms of social media. You need people who are good in person-to-person communications, people who love the web, and people who manage databases effortlessly. As you do that, here are four suggestions on how to create and manage multi-channel church communications: Suggestion #1-People tend to create best and promote the channels and methods they personally love and are comfortable with. You can’t force a word-processing only church secretary to be excited about working on the website (although she might enjoy it with adequate training). It would probably be just as difficult to have someone who communicates primarily in text messages create a detailed, printed church employee handbook or a correct Sunday bulletin. Encourage the communication strengths of people and give them training in new skills if they want to learn new areas. Christian Computing® Magazine
Suggestion #2-Don’t make the mistake of assuming people of a certain age are more interested or proficient in certain areas than others or that a person of any age can’t learn new things. There are grandfathers who have been programming since the days when a computer filled a room and there are teens who are tired of technology. There are baby boomers who run the gamut of the super-tech savvy to the completely computer phobic, as was the case in our home until I told my pastor husband I wasn’t answering his emails for him anymore. I’ve used computers, as a writer, from when they were first invented. In contrast, computers were not in use when my husband attended seminary. Today we have his and her laptops. I caved in about the email—I still answer most of his email, but he now knows how to access them and how to do Bible research online. Suggestion #3-The skills and ages don’t matter; respect and mutual encouragement do. Age is unimportant in church channel skills, what matters is that the church communication team members mutually respect each other and realize that every channel can be and is used today to communicate the gospel message. Team members must not allow expertise in any May 2012
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tool or technological skill to be a source of pride. A person who tweets is no more valuable than one who writes postcards to the homebound. Remember Jesus could, at any time, raise up the stones in the parking lot to communicate more effectively than any of us are able. None of us have a skill or ability that is not a gift from God. We are all servants of the same Master and we are to constantly build each other up in our work and to never make someone feel small or inadequate. Newer tools do not necessarily make superior communications.
see a movie advertised; consider also that many churches think that to put the same message out more than twice in the bulletin is too much. This might be part of the reason that movies get much higher attendance than church events.
Suggestion #4-Don’t worry about changing the content of your message as you adapt it to different channels. The content of your message needs to be consistent. Your communication team can then take that content and put out the message using the various channels. For example, perhaps your content is a campaign to get the congregation involved in small groups. The communication team members, using the same content and similar colors and images, can create a variety of communications to accomplish your ministry goals including: a print brochure, a bulletin announcement and insert, a PowerPoint presentation, a website directory of small group times and locations, a Twitter feed, a Facebook page, a print directory with the same information for the welcome center, an email newsletter designed to inform and encourage people to sign up. This is important because if you are not consistent with the basic core content and look of your communications, people will think you are advertising different events. Repetition of the same event at least seven times is important for people to notice it and attend. If you doubt the importance of repetition of a similar message, think about how many times you see exactly the same preview for upcoming movies on television, often months before the movie is released. The media companies that produce them have done huge amounts of research and they know that repetition is vital if you want people to show up. Notice also how often they put out exactly the same message. If the message is constantly changing, it can be confusing to people who may not be paying attention totally. Consider the dozens of times you
For more on this topic: Blog article: More important than the channels–make sure your church communications have useful content http://churchcommunicationsblog.com/2012/05/17/ more-important-than-the-channels-make-sure-yourchurch-communications-have-useful-content/
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Final advice Keep an eye on USA TODAY in print and on its website—it will be interesting to see what Kramer does to expand the communication options.
Articles, strategy, ebook on Multi-channel Church Communications http://www.effectivechurchcom.com/category/strategy/multi-channel-communications/
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