In our last reading we learned that blogs are for those preachers who never shut up and we also know that Myspace is best for that social butterfly who wont stop bugging you, but what good are forums? On eministrynotes.com I have been discussing the different use of social networking sites, and one person was pondering about the future of forums and spirituality. In my personal opinion, discussion boards are the heartbeat of the evolved church. Not because it is the centerpiece or is vital, but it can pump blood/passion through the conversations that emerge in it.

This is the role that forums will have in the future: the central location for open-ended discussion about specific ministries, theological questions, and spiritual disciplines. Unlike blogs where one individual creates the conversation, message boards are open to any user. Any member of the church or any participant in a specific ministry, whether it be Bible Study, Men's Fellowship, Children's Ministry, or the Leadership Team, can add a new topic. This is only the tip of the iceberg.

In real conversations the topic and subject are over once the two individuals separate from one another, and in start a conversation a person must be next to another human being. These rules do not apply on the cyberworld. If you thought of an additional response or idea after a meeting was over, just head over to the boards and post a new topic. If the boards stay active and they are actually used then someone will have a reply when you return. On the other hand, the best Bible Studies can come straight out of the conversation that is occuring right in the forum. There can be sections just for specific Bible Study groups, Smallgroups, and Sunday school classes. Did something apply during the week that was discussed on Sunday? Go ahead and jump right on in...

Tags: forums, evolving church, bible study, ministries

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Links & Ministries: Keys to your Church 2.0

So you want to know the quickest way to make your church or youth group website sticky to members? The simplest and most effective way of doing this is a good links section with relevant & reliable content. If you consistently and routinely browse over different ministry & nonprofit's pages & add them to the website, then your members will see the site as a reliable source platform onto the web. A great deal of people that will be browsing the website do not know how to get to the good useful websites on the internet. They are always looking for the right places but do not fully know how to get there. When they can trust a website as a source to find good content, you can be comfortable in knowing that they will at least keep on returning at least to find good links.

You might reply, "yeh that sounds simple, but I don't have the time to be continuously browsing the web for good links". Oh how true, you do not have enough time for this. Who really does? This would be an extremely time-consuming endeavor, but as with most problems there is a good solution outside-of the box. Create a section on your links page where your members can submit links that they see as relevant. Truly this is the foundation to Church 2.0: growth & addition by everyone's participation. You alone cannot find all the good information out here on the internet, but if everyone submits a small 5 links the exponential growth is amazing. If you and 15 members submit 5 links then there are 90 links, but if this is a consistent addition for three months then there are 270 links. Amazingly, this could be quite a conservative number if you enhance it by drawing your members thirst for competition into it.

Tags: website links, church 2.0, ministries

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Church on a Budget? Free Web Hosting Options

 It has been my experience that many churches cannot and do not have the funds for a full fledged out website with their own hosting and domain name. Sure the prices have gone down to a manageable $100 a year for a good hosting company like Ipowerweb, but even still that is not pocket change for most struggling churches. Luckily, there are many free options out there for a church to get a voice out. There is Blogger, Myspace, Angelfire,  Yahoo User Groups, Google Frontpage, and the list goes on. While it would be good for every church's internet ministry (you have one of those right?) to be involved in more than just one option, it probably is best to begin with one and there is not one ideal for every church and their situation.

Blogger: The gift for the rambler

Blogs and blogger is probably my favorite of all the options simply because I like to write about nonsense. If you are looking for a place where the pastor can have an outlet to speak to the community for devotionals, Bible insights, sermon refreshers or whatever then Blogger is the way to go. It is the medium of choice for free-lance internet journalists and writers. The set-up and maintenance is user friendly and posting new writing cannot be simpler. As with most free hosting there are predesigned templates that the church can choose from and not have to worry about the design (unless they choose too). Whats really great is the comments section at the bottom of each post. Members of the congregation can add their own opinions, additions and viewpoints to keep the conversation going. I have seen some comments going years after the original posting was done. The main drawback though would be that the preacher or whoever uses it needs to be constantly updating it at least on a weekly but preferably on a daily basis....

Next Time: Myspace and AngelfireTags: internet church, myspace, blog, blogger, angelfire, web hosting

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Myspace for the church and youth group?

Over the past year there has been one site that has gotten more buzz and more critique beyond every other. Myspace is continually regarded as a place for a haven for Sexual predators and premiscuous teenagers, but sadly I believe it has been labelled way to badly. It is true there is alot of bad on myspace but it is only a reflection of our corrupted and imperfect world. For those of us who still do not the purpose of  this "vile" website, it is simply a place to remain connected with friends, family & network with interesting people. An individual creates their own myspace page, design the layout and add the people with whom they would like to be connected. On my personal page I have found many friends that I had lost contact with after highschool, and had a quick means to communicate quick messages to my current colleagues. These are only but a few reasons that Myspace is more than just a popularity contest...

Well, we might ask what does this have to do with my youth group or church? We all know that the church is the community and not the building, therefore our jobs as senior or youth pastors are to make sure that we can remain connected as a church outside the "building". What better way than through a connection site like Myspace? Church members can sign up, create their own page and be added to the Church's friend list. Not only that, but the youth group or church members can find each other just by being connected with the church myspace page. Two more great features about Myspace is that it comes with a blog and comments feature. In the comments section individual church or youth group members can add events, or announcements for the entire body, and the blog would be a great way for the pastor or whomever chooses to relay some type of message to the entire congregation. In the end the question probably isn't if it is right or not for the church but when they plan on using this vital resource.

Tags: myspace, internet church, church community, Church & Youth Group Ideas

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Torture Beyond Potato Peeling: Keeping the Church Website Consistently Updated

"I don't know why we even have a website, its not like anyone ever goes on it." One of the saddest states of affairs in today's church reality is that it really is hard to justify spending $100 or more on a website that seems to produce very little benefit. With many churches having a hard time trying to maintain the salaries of the current church staff, building maintenance and upkeep, and ministry development to the community at large, there is very little dollar signs left for unproductive expenses. As a youth pastor at one faith community, I was told that if some concept/event doesn't work then scrap it and move on. There is very little time or money for beating a useless dead horse when we are not racing horses but raising cattle. This is also the thought of many communities when it comes to their website. Little to no membership growth are due from it and the only site visitors are search engine spiders and spammers.

While there are many unsatisfied churches on the web, they didn't and many don't think this way before purchasing an exit on the information superhighway. There is an amazing sense of awe from churches who are looking into this investment. They hear of stories (many lies) about how this or that church gained thousands of people just by adding a space, but they don't understand that most sites simply become an expensive yellowpages advertisement. After the quick realization that Jesus not the internet is their saviour, then they are left with the question of what to do with this giant bill known as a website. Slowly the presence goes from being updated weekly/daily to maybe a month after an major event such as the Fall Fest. It becomes a strange experience when one goes onto a website in the middle of July and finds out that he or she can still buy tickets for the Christmas program. Is Christmas really in July?

One of the most painstaking things about website upkeep is keeping new information flowing in and weeding out the old. It would be so much more fun if we just kept working on the design instead of the event calendar. The monotonous work of information maintenance includes much more work than just the event calendar. There is also the church forum, working/dead/new links, news headlines, church bulletin information, staff & member announcements, and the list continues. Just reading the list will make your heart plop to the ground, but this shouldn't bring to much fright. This really isn't too much work, if one finds someone who can spend 1-2 hours a week working on just maintaining information updates for the church website. Even better yet, take it a step forward and give the controls to the entire congregation. Set up a simple form where the church members can submit in new events and take them out as they see fit by a simple click of a link. While doing both of these suggestions will not totally remove all the labor it sure will help cut off a large chunk of it.

The Web Church Manual:Pastor Blog

It has been a long and grueling month but somehow you have gotten pulled into the blog fad. Was it the peer pressure as you watched all your friends jump off the reality cliff or were you actually fooled by my "ideas for your website post“ into believing a blog might be a good resource? Whichever the reason, you have decided to make that jump into “well everyone else is doing it”. The truth is that there are more blogs being born every second then there are human beings. At least as a pastor you have something meaningful, important, and transforming to put out there in the blogosphere. The real dilemma is figuring out how to start one and make it look good without acting like a complete moron.
Getting Started
As a pastor or individual who is starting a blog for the first time he or she should stick with blogger or some other free blog provider. Blogger walks with the individual and muscles all the hard work in the creation of it. Even the most Internet ignorant pastor can have a good-looking blog on blogger. It is as simple as filling in your information, picking an overall design, and writing a post. In the information phase make sure that the username/password is memorable, the display name is the same as the name used by friends, and that the address is short and catchy. There is nothing harder to remember than having a blog address such as http://biblerockchurchseniorpastorphd.blogspot.com/. If the space is geared for the congregation anyways, they already know where they attend church. When it is time to pick the design, it might become a little overwhelming. There are a lot to choose from and so many different varieties. A simple rule is that the posts are the most important, so any design too visually distracting should be eliminated.
The Post
The most important part of a good pastor’s blog is the content/posts. Three simple things that need to be remembered are regularity, length, and tone. Whether the purpose is for a daily devotional or an invite into the daily life of the pastor, the readers do not to be preached at. It is extremely important to not have an extremely harsh or sarcastic tone in all posts to congregants. The point of the endeavor is to remain connected and grow together, not alienate the few people that still listen. Another good tip on keeping connections is the length of posts. The idea is for quick notes not manifestos. A good post will have no less than two paragraphs and no more than 5. If there is a lot of information that needs to be mentioned, split it up and give it out in a daily post throughout the week. It will make it easier to keep regular post updates on the blog. Regularly and routinely submitting new posts is probably the most important thing to remember when having a blog. If the members of the faith community are expected to surf to the blog, then the pastor must do it too. It doesn’t have to be 15 entries a day, only as long as the church and the pastor are on the same page about when it is updated.

Ideas for your Website: Blogging Pastors

We all know that pastors like to give their opinions, but at least it is one of the few careers that people actually care to listen. One of the most important parts when most people are “interviewing” churches is the personality, beliefs and openness of the pastor. He or she is the image shown on display. To prove my point, all someone has to do is look at any local congregation and see how similar the demographics, personality, and social class the pastor is with the congregation. Is this wrong? If it is, I don’t think it should be one of our crusades for the 21st Century. It is just the truth: people are attracted to churches and pastors that are similar to them.
In most faith communities, the congregation waits patiently for a message given to them from their pastors. The pastor is a source of inspiration, discernment, wisdom, insight and growth, and it should be this way. The devoted life to God through prayer, disciplines, and perseverance will always reap good revelations from God that is good for everyone. God wants the pastors to share the revelations every moment possible and now it is possible to communicate God’s words on a daily basis.
Simply a blog is an Internet platform for writers to share their works on a global scale within minutes. Professional “bloggers” (writers) can write as many works as he or she wants and nobody will be around to edit or throw them in the trashcan. What is even better is the loyal readers of a blog can add discussion to the work by posting a comment. As a pastor this emerging platform is an extremely useful utility to remain connected with the congregation throughout the week. One of the biggest obstacles for churches is to have individuals focused on living Holy throughout the entire week. If the pastor steadfastly remains committed with the blog and advertises it on the website and on Sunday celebrations, there is no telling how much impact and discipleship is possible through God in a blog.
Additional Research…
Blog: Wikipedia
Problogger.net
Bloggingchurch.com
Blog Platforms…
Blogger.com
Typepad
Wordpress.org

Review: Mambo Content Management System for the Church Website

This is my first review for a service/product that churches can use for their website. I have put ease of use, price, and design freedom as this week’s grading scale and will probably do so for most CMS (Content Management Systems). This week I am reviewing the Mambo CMS, because I have just recently played with it on a website that I work on.
What is Mambo, you may ask? In simple and quick terms, it is an internet version of windows for your website. A CMS makes it easy for you to build and store a complex website just like windows makes it easy for you to navigate your computer. It is all drag and drop, folder click, and option chooser. The user does not need to know any foreign internet language to work on it, which is a good thing for busy pastors and laymen who have enough on their plate.
Ease of Use 2 Stars The point of a CMS is to make building websites easy and doable for everyone. It is critical that it is simple. This is the worst part of Mambo, in my opinion. Right from downloading I became confused and frustrated. There is one site and many different files to choose from. There wasn’t one link that jumped out and said, “pick me, I am the complete package”. Yet I am a stubborn mule and continued to try it out. Once I got it uploaded and onto my site, I wanted to make some pages. This is where the real mess came in. There were categories, items, and menus but no simple create a page. It was an entirely complex system that was adding resentment against this software. About the time I figured out how to manage Mambo, I could’ve written an entire site with notepad. On the other hand, if someone does an anxiety against coding then Mambo is your answer. I was able to make a good website without looking at one sight of code.

Price 5 Stars
If you have not heard about Open Source yet, I highly advise you to do this. It is the greatest thing since sliced bread. Since Mambo is open-source it is entirely free. There is no hidden cost. I personally try to stay away from anything that isn’t open source, because I love the philosophy of it. On the other hand, just because it is free doesn’t make it the right choice. Mambo is not a finished product and has many gaping holes that you would not find in boxed CMS for $300. The choice is ultimately only the buyer’s to make: go for the free CMS or the costly one that comes with an instruction manual…

Freedom 2 ½ Stars
One of the most important needs of a good church website is the freedom to change and mold as paper in the wind. For me the most troublesome part of Mambo was this freedom issue. Unless you know code, it is extremely difficult to change the design and layout of the site to what you would like. Just the right skin must be searched for and downloaded from the web, and even then it will probably not look exactly right. This loss of freedom is true for any CMS. In order to not have to worry about pesky internet language, something must be given up.
Overall 3 ½ Stars In the end, I think Mambo is extremely useful for a certain crowd. If you have an already existing website for your church or any knowledge of HTML, I suggest that you think about a different route. On the other hand, if you need a site that is easy to put up, easy to maintain, and easy to show then Mambo might be right for you. A couple of years ago, the possibilities of creating a website without any coding knowledge was impossible. Thanks now to Mambo and other Content Management Systems, anyone with a vision and dream can claim a part of the Internet frontier.

Church Website Help

Do you have a question about your Church’s website, structure, purpose, relations that you would like to hear my opinion? Does it seem like I am beating around the bush and not getting specific to your situation? I would love to change that and discuss concrete examples and situations. In order to make more practical work I am freely giving out an email address where you can personally ask me questions. I work best when I am reflecting off a situation and I also believe that the person will be able to get more understanding and ideas if it wasn’t just me spitting out a monologue. After I read them, I will reply to you in email and also will post the discussion on this site so that more people can potentially be helped by it (Of course excluding personal info).
Miracles@songevolution.com

Lessons From the Sensei: Church Website layout taught From School

Behind a closed door there is an intense meeting that is becoming wearisome for many of the organization’s leaders. They are arguing about a simple issue of a website and how they can best use it for their polarized potential visitors. One group will view the site as a brochure to see if they would like to attend and the other group will view the site as current member’s needing resources, and connections with the faculty and other students. The frustration that is formed because there are two vastly differing purposes of potential visitors is hugely felt in today’s American Colleges and Schools.
The Problem
In today’s world, the structure and purpose of today’s local churches best reflect that of our school. We both are in the service business and we need a website that can advertise our services and also enhance our preexisting ones. Colleges offer education and can be greatly enhanced with online classes, forums, email, and online registration for their current students. On the other hand, they also need to advertise what they have to offer for prospective students that are looking for a school in the area.
Two worlds, two options
Nearly every college and private school has gone through this situation and has come to a very common answer. The website does not have to rely solely on one or the other, but it can effectively and efficiently speak to both by splitting the website at the front page. Both large schools like Princeton and smaller ones like Warner Southern College (a plug for a school I attended and website I worked on) have a menu where the viewer can select if they are a current student, prospective student, faculty, or alumni. Whichever one that the person chooses will take them to an index page which is best suited for their viewing needs.
Application
Most churches also run into this problem, whether they realize it or not. I have seen so many churches that waste important money on a brochure for a website. They put it up, don’t ever look at it again and hope that it will attract the potential visitor in the same way as the yellowpages. There are other churches who try to cater to both, but only cause frustration and confusion because they are doing too much with a limited space. It is like a good piece of music, there can’t be a chorus, verse, 3 styles of music, and four melodies going at once. There needs to be rhythm, consistency, timing, and respect of purpose.

A Comic Book Future: Internet Technology for the 21st Century Church

The year is 2006 but if we stepped into the church community, we would be transported back in time to 1986 reading comic books about 2006. In reading the futuristic comic books, we dreamed about the cool gadgets and technologies in the pages. In the year 2006, the future will be limitless with possibilities and progress. We all dreamed about those coming days where we could have body enhancements, teleportation, and instant food that materialized before our very eyes.
The years began to creep slowly from the great heyday of futuristic comic books toward 2006. The new millennium is nothing like how it was supposed to have been or is it? In the church, we have been caught up with our day to day building maintenances that the gadgets flew right over us. Body enhancements are here with cell phones that can connect anyone or any information at any time, Ipods that provide any published voice/song, and PDA’s that are a removable and transferable memory card for your brain. All of these gadgets backed by “Internet Power” can teleport us to anyone or anyplace.
The Question
The question that now emerges is “what does all of this mean for us?” How can we use these enhancements and teleportation abilities for the greater good and service to God? The answer rests in the word service. As Christians we are servants and the church is the collection of Christians, we have the ability to view the Church as a service provider and less of as a business organization. With the developments of the internet and cell phones, the total dependence on buildings has been shattered. We can now serve God, each other, and society without having a designated building. Through community sites like Ginkworld, The Ooze and even Myspace we can stay connected with everyone without having to go to a building to meet them physically. Locally, the church can use their website for more than a brochure. It can be a place for the collection of each member’s voice through “blogs”, a portal that links to useful faith sites, and even an useful tool to keep Bible Study and Small Group discussion continuing after the meeting. It is the right time for the church to put down those dusty comic books, walk out of the building and smell the potential in the air.

Church 2.0: Identity after the crash

In the deep towns of Florida there is a small church whose hearts are thrown in the mud and then hung up for the rest of the Christian world to have a good laugh. Before, in years past, this family-centered and loving church was tripling their legal fire-code limit. Every Sunday they had potlucks, and monthly they had baptisms down by the lake. These days of great community continued until the 1990’s began to roll around with the anthems of monstrous churches whose revenues would make Bill Gates a believer.
It was in this decade that the church growth movement and the Christian subculture grew to its peak influence. Large churches like Willow Creek Community Church and Saddleback, with numbers close to populations of some bordering towns, began to clone and package themselves for the use of other smaller churches. Today, these packaged churches with their Purpose Driven emblem pasted on their front door can be found in nearly every city in the U.S. Their hundred worship services are all professionally designed and the only cheese found is on the platter outside for visitors. If Billy Graham was the most influential evangelist when my parents were growing up, then Willow Creek and the Christian subculture were the most influential evangelists in the past decades that I have grown up in.
All of these churches, I believe, have sincere and authentic dreams for spreading the faith. Willow Creek coined the buzzword seeker-sensitive and were one of the pioneers in focusing the Church’s efforts on people not within the faith. The only little problem that I have found which has become a major devastation is when they cloned themselves many churches began to drown and could hardly stay afloat. These smaller churches did not have the same personality and vision as those other mammoth ones, but since everyone else was jumping off the cliff and landing into a bed of roses, they might as well also.
What these smaller churches and many others fail to realize is Willow Creek and Saddleback were extremely successful because they had a personal and community vision that they wanted to achieve. Churches are like individuals in that everyone is different and have all their own God-given talents, mission, and abilities. A man that does not have much artistic talent should not become a professional artist for the reason that his best friend became successful. Instead of trying to fit the package mold, churches need to pray and reflect about their relationship with God, each other, and society. After realizing all of the good elements they can bring to the conversations of these relations, God’s mission for them and how he wants them to accomplish it will be much more visible.