October 8, 2008

Stop Using Media

The Collide magazine blog just began "an ongoing and open-ended series devoted to convincing you, the church leader, not to use media."

Scott McClellan quickly clarifies, "Yes, Collide exists to encourage the use of media and technology in the Church … the proper use."

And number one is calling you out for using media just for the sake of using media. Keep an eye over there for subsequent posts (like this one with a rather painful picture). It will be a great challenge to church communicators who have gotten addicted to media and can't wait for their next Sunday morning fix.

Posted by Joshua Cody at 7:31 AM
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September 16, 2008

Social Media, Stories and Your Church

by Jeff Goins, Guest Blogger

I love my blog. Some days, I stay up until midnight working on it. Quite honestly, I tend to obsess over it. Yet, I know it’s worth the time investment (minus the obsession), because I’ve seen God use that little piece of technology do some amazing things.

About two years ago, I really got into social justice. It started with my friend and I visiting a group of homeless people living under a bridge. For Christmas, we contacted several local churches, co-workers and friends, asking them to contribute to helping meet the needs of this homeless community. The response was astounding. We carted two carloads of clothes and personal items downtown to celebrate the birth of Jesus with the poor.

Around this same time, I started blogging. At first, I hesitated sharing these stories of helping the poor via the web. I felt guilty for making a spectacle of them. Reluctantly, I posted a couple stories, curious to see how readers might respond. As I started to get some feedback, I saw how the blog was profoundly affecting other people’s lives. One reader in Oklahoma was so inspired after reading one of my stories that he immediately got into his car, found the nearest homeless person, and gave him a ride across town.

Continue reading "Social Media, Stories and Your Church"

Posted by Guest Blogger at 2:42 PM
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September 1, 2008

Factors That Improve Online Experience

Looking for a church web site overhaul? Or do you know a pastor who needs to be looking for a site overhaul? IDEA has released a study titled Factors That Improve Online Experience. If your church web site sucks, this is a great place to begin brainstorming something new. They interview three different groups--nonprofit organizations and cities, web designers and firms, and the general public. And you wind up with some of these gems:

• Designers are overly optimistic about visitors' ability to maintain orientation.
• Good visual design and up-to-date information are critical.
• Visitors want information fast.
• Visitors point to the lack of breadth and depth of site content as causing an “Information Gap.”
• Visitors still need handholding.

Some of these seem like "Duh" statements, but you can get a deeper explanation with their executive summary, or the truly adventurous can download the full report.

Posted by Joshua Cody at 8:29 AM
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July 29, 2008

Top Tweeting Church Leaders

Today the Catalyst blog shares a list of Top Tweeters & Church Leaders. So if you're on Twitter and want to see what church leaders are saying, check out the list. Be sure to check the comments for even more folks.

Oh, and I suppose it's worth mentioning that our very own Brad Abare made the list.

Posted by Kevin D. Hendricks at 8:30 AM
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July 3, 2008

10 Commandments of Web Design

We've learned about church web sites from John McCain and Barack Obama. But the lessons don't stop there.

Kem Meyer quotes a Business Week article, The 10 Commandments of Web Design. Here are four of the great bits:

• Thou shalt not abuse Flash. The technology can easily be abused--excessive, extemporaneous animations confuse usability and bog down users' web browsers.
  
• Thou shalt not clutter. The web may be the greatest archive of all time, but sites that lack a coherent structure make it impossible to wade through information.
  
• Thou shalt not overuse glassy reflections. Some experts say Apple's habit of creating glassy reflections under photos of its products has been far too commonly copied, turning the style element into a cliché.
  
• Thou shalt worship at the altar of typography. Designers say that despite the increase in broadband penetration, plain text has gotten a second wind in cutting-edge web design.

Posted by Joshua Cody at 7:28 AM
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June 20, 2008

3 Ways to Sink Your E-mail Newsletter

That's it. I tried to let it roll off my back, but no more. I'm sick of stupid mistakes in e-mail newsletters. If you want your e-mail newsletter to be effective, you've got to do it right. I've seen three e-mail newsletter mistakes in the last week alone:

Where Do I Click?
Offender number one is my VOIP-provider Vonage. They sent me an e-mail pitching their annual payment plan. Save $60/year. What a deal--where do I sign up? Turns out you can't sign up anywhere in the e-mail. There wasn't a single link in the e-mail, aside from privacy policy and unsubscribe (hmm ... tempting) links. I felt like a web rookie, clicking all over the e-mail trying to figure out who was stupider, me or Vonage.

Continue reading "3 Ways to Sink Your E-mail Newsletter"

Posted by Kevin D. Hendricks at 8:51 AM
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June 4, 2008

Twitter at Church

We've talked a lot about Twitter lately and some of you are probably wondering what Twitter might look like inside the church. Well, here's a real live example of using Twitter during a church service.

They ran the Twitter feed on the big screen and encouraged people to take part. Some people loved it, some people hated it, some people didn't care. It did give those who weren't physically present a chance to take part and the tweets ranged from light banter to theological reflection.

Some of the positive response included comments like, "I felt like part of what was happening," "I felt part of the community" and "I felt like it was more than just about me."

Organizer John Voelz said: "Bottom line, it is worth it to try these kinds of things. Out of this experience, we came up with a list of 20 other ways to use Twitter." (link via michaelhyatt)

Posted by Kevin D. Hendricks at 8:18 AM
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May 30, 2008

What Would Jesus Twitter?

We've been talking up Twitter--the 140-character message/mini-blog application that's sweeping the early adopters--a lot in the past few weeks (Oh, and if you're looking for church marketing Twitter friends, about 70 or so have identified themselves in the Church Marketing Lab). We'll try to move on to a new obsession, though I promise this post has a wider application.

Marcus Goodyear blogged about speaking the truth in love and how sometimes it's too easy not to do that, especially in an immediate response environment like Twitter (or blog posts/comments, message boards, IM, cell phones, etc.). He points us to Cheryl Smith's post, What Would Jesus Tweet?. I suppose it's the same question we've been asking since the bracelet came out (and for 2,000 years before that), but it's always a bit jolting to apply it to our latest technological fad.

Our very character comes across in the things we say and do on a techno-wonder like Twitter (or blogs or message boards or cell phones or pick your poison), and while that should be obvious, it's easy to forget. And as Joshua Cody reminded us earlier this week, it's important to remember that our actions are out there for the world to see, and they speak a lot louder than our words.

What are your Twitter posts (or blog commenting or text messaging or whatever) telling the world about your church or your faith?

Posted by Kevin D. Hendricks at 8:03 AM
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May 8, 2008

Small Churches Should Embrace Cheap Technology

Last week's poll/quiz revealed the encouraging stat that 62% of churches have a web site, up from 57% in 2005 and 34% in 2000. The results come from a recent Barna survey (nicely summarized with pretty graphics by Kent Shaffer).

One of the interesting, though hardly surprising, things about the survey is that no matter the technology--web sites, projection systems, e-mail newsletters, podcasting--large churches are adapting these new technologies much faster than small churches.

Continue reading "Small Churches Should Embrace Cheap Technology"

Posted by Kevin D. Hendricks at 8:02 AM
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April 23, 2008

Facebook for Pastors

Chris Forbes just released a free 32-page e-book, Facebook for Pastors. The booklet can help you make the most of Facebook for your church (beyond just playing Scrabble). Check it out.

Posted by Kevin D. Hendricks at 7:33 AM
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February 18, 2008

Lessons from 15 Compassion International Bloggers

Last week the child sponsorship organization Compassion International took 15 Christian bloggers to Uganda to see what child sponsorship looks like firsthand. Among those bloggers are musician Shaun Groves, BooMama blogger Sophie, worship leader Carlos Whittaker and Church Marketing Sucks guest blogger Anne Jackson among others. It's quite a group.

And they've been taking pictures, shooting video and penning words about their experience, describing how the $32 a month of child sponsorship can change a life. And not just a life, but an entire family's life.

It's big. You have to be made of stone to hear these stories and turn away unchanged. If I weren't saving every penny and selling half my crap for my own adoption, I'd be sponsoring one of these kids (even though I have my own questions about sponsorship).

What's central here is the power of a story.

Continue reading "Lessons from 15 Compassion International Bloggers"

Posted by Kevin D. Hendricks at 9:29 AM
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February 5, 2008

21 Factors to Consider Before a Redesign

If your church is thinking about a redesign (and who isn't?), you might want to check out 21 factors to consider before a redesign. It's exactly what it sounds like and covers a lot of the important bases when considering a redesign, from content to tech to design. It's a good way to make sure you ask the questions you need to ask.

Posted by Kevin D. Hendricks at 7:27 AM
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January 28, 2008

Twitter for Churches

The mini-blog application Twitter seems to be the new shiny tech toy of late (which means it's already old news). So what is Twitter? Basically you send out 140-character to updates to anyone following you via the web, text messages, Facebook, etc. Twitter prompts you with the question "What are you doing?", which when taken literally can be incredibly inane. But the more creative folks can get interesting--especially trying to work within the 140-character limit (Ana Marie Cox of Wonkette fame has good, entertaining coverage of the Republican primaries).

It's basically digestible, bite-size, temporary content.

So what's the point?

Continue reading "Twitter for Churches"

Posted by Kevin D. Hendricks at 8:35 AM
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January 23, 2008

Your Church, the Wifi Sharer

The geek world has been abuzz lately regarding Ars Technica's look at the ethics of stealing wifi. At Church Marketing Sucks, we don't make too much of an effort to be arbiters of morality. But we would love to be proponents of ideas.

How about opening your church up?

Continue reading "Your Church, the Wifi Sharer"

Posted by Joshua Cody at 3:33 PM
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January 17, 2008

Overnight Web Site Challenge

A Minnesota tech company is hosting the F1 Overnight Web Site Challenge, where teams of geeks will create fully functional web sites for Minnesota nonprofits in only 24 hours. Public radio's Future Tense covered the challenge on January 4 (scroll down):

"When you look at 24 hours of time from a team of five or six people, that's a lot of value we're delivering to the nonprofits," said Mark Hurlburt of Sierra Bravo. "We're hoping the teams are going to like working with the nonprofits and they'll continue to be working with them and making that donation as time goes on," he said.

I love this idea. Most nonprofits (like churches) have terrible web sites and don't have the resources to do them right. So here's a way to give one highly-caffeinated push and move those nonprofits into the 21st century.

I think it could work for churches, too.

Continue reading "Overnight Web Site Challenge"

Posted by Kevin D. Hendricks at 5:29 AM
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January 14, 2008

Four Pastoral Blogging Taboos and How To Fix Them

by Scott Magdalein, Guest Blogger

We see from the Blogging Pastor Poll Results that were posted back in November that 72% of pastors aren't blogging successfully. I can't imagine that the percentage has changed over the Christmas season, so we'll assume those numbers are still accurate.

Ignoring the fact that 56% said that they don't even have a blog, we'll jump straight to the next issue. What's keeping your blog from being as effective as possible? We're going to look at four common problems and offer four easy ways to fix them.

1. Using misspelled words and poor grammar.
While distracting readers is one risk, another is the possibility of losing credibility with your readers. Although there's little need to stick to MLA or Turabian formatting rules, that doesn't mean you're allowed to throw out intelligent writing altogether.

Continue reading "Four Pastoral Blogging Taboos and How To Fix Them"

Posted by Guest Blogger at 6:43 AM
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November 6, 2007

Death of a Podcast?

Tony Morgan, over at his blog, discussed the end of Yahoo! podcasts a while back. The service shut down, and it begs the question: Is podcast listenership in decline? He lists a few barriers to the success of podcasts:

• You can't scan through a podcast to find the good stuff.
  
• It's tough to carve out time to listen to podcasts.
  
• Other things like videos and reading sound more fun than listening to someone talk.
  
• Podcast quality often stinks.
  
• They don't lend themselves to viral distribution.

Why in the heck does this matter to church marketing, you might ask. Well, podcasts for weekly sermons are integral parts of many churches. Some churches even podcast more than just weekly messages. We have to ask ourselves if this form of media is something we should continue to pursue, and if so, how should we improve the state of the podcast?

Continue reading "Death of a Podcast?"

Posted by Joshua Cody at 8:44 AM
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August 15, 2007

A Content-Centered Internet

Ars Technica reports on a new study on the focus of individuals' time on the Internet. Here's what they found of people's time online:
In 2003:

• 34% of Internet users' time was spent reading content.
• 46% of their time was spent on online communications.

And today:

• 47% of their time was spent reading content.
• 33% of Internet users' time was spent on online communications.

These numbers almost completely reversed in four years. So, "How does this relate to church marketing?" you might ask.

Continue reading "A Content-Centered Internet"

Posted by Joshua Cody at 7:25 AM
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July 26, 2007

Church YouTube Contest

A few days ago we talked about online church video. We encouraged everyone to embrace the phenomenon of online video and harness its power. One church in Boston is doing just that.

The Greater Boston Vineyard is having a YouTube video contest for their fall kick-off service. It's certainly an interesting way to harness the power of web 2.0 and mobilize church members outside of church walls. I see some really good things coming of this.

Continue reading "Church YouTube Contest"

Posted by Joshua Cody at 11:25 AM
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July 23, 2007

Embracing Online Video

According to comScore, 75% of Internet users watched online video in May 2007, averaging 158 minutes per viewer. Nearly 8.4 billion videos were streamed online in the month of May. That's a lot.

Online video isn't a market that's too saturated to succeed in, either. It's not even a market that can become too saturated to succeed. If you missed the boat on the whole web 2.0 craze, you should read up on it. No matter how many videos stream online (in our case, 8,357,000,000), if you have a solid message and something fresh to offer, you can succeed.

Continue reading "Embracing Online Video"

Posted by Joshua Cody at 3:56 PM
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June 11, 2007

Where's the Church on Facebook?

If you're plugged into the social networking site Facebook at all you've probably heard about the recent launch of their developer's platform. For the uninformed, basically third party companies can now build applications for Facebook that integrate directly with the Facebook system. This isn't slapping badges onto a MySpace page, this is full-blown interaction with your Facebook friends. Your Facebook friends can now see your Flickr photos, check out your Flixster movie ratings, listen to your Last.fm playlist and interact in new ways.

Bottom line: It's cool (I go on and on about it on my personal blog).

Don't believe me? Check out the Cause application and the 125,416 people who have joined the Save Darfur cause, donating $9,517 since May 24 (as of June 11 at 10:21 a.m. CST).

Continue reading "Where's the Church on Facebook?"

Posted by Kevin D. Hendricks at 8:18 AM
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April 2, 2007

Understanding Attack Blogs

by Bill Seaver, Guest Blogger

There's a new and unfortunate trend in church disputes that you've likely heard of by now: the attack blog. Attack blogs are most commonly established by members within the church who take issue with some aspect of the church leadership or direction. In some cases, the attacks come from outside the church, like in Mark Driscoll's case last fall, but the majority of cases seem to be from within.

I personally know of four churches that are dealing with this to some degree right now. Here are two examples from Bellevue Baptist in Memphis, Tenn. (these are not blogs in the purest sense of the word but are text-only web sites that serve the same purpose).

The issues that prompt the attacks vary, but in each case the church is under fire from a small group of individuals who disagree with the leadership (either the pastor himself or the leadership as a whole). Also, in every case the churches had no idea what hit them.

Continue reading "Understanding Attack Blogs"

Posted by Guest Blogger at 7:53 AM
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March 27, 2007

RSS For Your Church

So today, I was thinking to myself, "Self, those guys over at the Barna Group have some pretty neat statistics, why don't you subscribe to their RSS feed?"

Problem.

I searched. And I searched. And I searched. Almost frantically, in fact. Where was the little orange button with the white circly things? You know, this one:

Continue reading "RSS For Your Church"

Posted by Joshua Cody at 7:42 AM
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February 12, 2007

Innovative Churches: Technology

Part 7 in a series on Innovative Churches. Be sure to contribute to the Most Innovative Churches list.

How will technology, including the use of media and the web, influence churches in the future?

Technology is one of innovation's best friends. Technology can be such a creative conduit for innovation. At the same time, technology can also be one of those friends that get in the way of innovation. I am weary of anybody that comes to me with a great idea for how to use technology to tell a story. It seems a little backwards. First, let's figure out the story and who needs to hear it, and then lets find a way to do it. This makes room for technology or methods that may not even exist yet! Imagine 100 years ago if we would have approached transportation through the filter that we must use cars to get everywhere. How foolish! We would have missed out on the train, the airplane and the spaceship.

Posted by Brad Abare at 7:46 AM
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February 7, 2007

Church Web Site Design Checklist

With Internet Evangelism Day fast approaching (April 29, 2007) you might want to check out the Church Site Design Checklist. It's an automated 51-question survey that will help you figure out how your church web site stacks up.

If your site needs some help you could always check out the Improving Your Church Web Site series. (link via Mike Atkinson)

Posted by Kevin D. Hendricks at 11:11 AM
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February 5, 2007

Visitors, Beer and Sex--Oh My!

Yet again the links have piled up around me faster than I can blog them, so it's time to blow the dam and just let you have them. Here we go...

• The Visitor's Card - The most potentially interesting of the new Outreach Magazine blogs, it's written by a non-Christian describing her experiences visiting church (via Dan Ohlerking)
• Beer and the Bible - Interesting news article about a church outreach that unfortunately draws too much attention to the alcohol. The pastor of the church in question offers some explanation in a comment on this blog post (via Brenton Balvin).
• Does Size Matter? - Swerve, the new blog from lifechurch.tv, has an interesting series on church size.
• My Dad Went to Church. Yay! - A video of a son taking his dad to church for the first time in 20 years--this is what it's all about. It's also so raw and quirky that it almost seems made up, but that's just the Internet hoaxist in me. (via Tony Morgan)

Don't worry, there's much, much more after the jump ...

Continue reading "Visitors, Beer and Sex--Oh My!"

Posted by Kevin D. Hendricks at 4:29 PM
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January 11, 2007

Outreach's Top 20 Web Sites for Church Communicators

In my haste to dump some links on you yesterday I forgot one: Top 20 Web Sites for Church Communicators. It's a web exclusive from Outreach magazine written by, oh yeah, me. If you read this blog regularly you probably know about many of these sites (like, ahem, #20), but you might find a couple gems you didn't know about. Enjoy.

Posted by Kevin D. Hendricks at 8:58 AM
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January 10, 2007

Post-Holiday Linkfest

My post-holiday recovery never quite happened, thanks to the fact that my family is trying to sell our house. So I've got a pile of links I haven't had time to blog about. But lucky for you I'll take the lazy route and throw 'em all up here in one big list. Enjoy:

• Congregations Go High-Tech to Deliver Message - From PowerPoint and basic web sites (ooh, shiny!) to podcasting and blogs.
• Location Doesn't Matter for Most - Storefront churches are working despite locations: "I quickly discovered that the absence of typical church decorations doesn't matter a bit. What makes a church 'church' is what goes on inside the heart and soul of the pastor and the congregation."
• How Toyota Would Run a Church - Church Relevance speculates about how Toyota might run a church.
• The 25 Most Innovative Churches in America - Outreach put out the list with help from Tony Morgan, but we'll link to Church Relevance since they have the list in non-PDF format and show what other lists those churches have landed on.
• What Makes a Church Grow? - Growing churches are often multiracial, have more men than women, make an effort not to be reverent and use drums in worship (gasp!).
• New England Churches Shy From 'Baptist' Name - Even NPR is getting in on the church name change game. Dawn Nicole Baldwin is even planning a series on church name changes.
• God Bless the Bulletin - Wow, some newspapers still run bulletin bloopers?

Posted by Kevin D. Hendricks at 11:16 AM
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November 22, 2006

More Pastors on MySpace

Churches using the latest technological tool (gasp!) gets more attention with a feature from San Antonio on pastors using MySpace. The piece includes some good examples of pastors making use of MySpace, including one pastor who received some four-letter tirades via MySpace for a direct mail piece the church sent. But rather than end with a tirade, the pastor was able to apologize and interact with the offended people.

"MySpace might be history in a year," [Pastor Robert] Emmitt said. "I'm not saying everyone's got to do this. Let's try it for a while and see what happens."

The article also includes a quote from yours truly going off on the proliferation of Christian MySpace knock-offs, but otherwise it's an interesting read.

Posted by Kevin D. Hendricks at 9:54 AM
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November 21, 2006

Church Loses Domain to a Porn Site

Here's some bad news for your marketing efforts: You lost your domain and a porn site snatched it up. Too bad you just handed out fliers at the local Apple Harvest Day with the old site--now sending lots of unexpecting potential visitors to a porn site. Doh.

True story. It happened to Hope Community Church in Dover, N.H. The mix-up happened when the church was switching Internet service providers and the ISP that sold the url admitted fault. But it's still a good lesson for any church--especially if your annual domain renewal could easily get overlooked by a non-techie staff member or volunteer who hasn't had the time lately. (link via Cory Miller)

Posted by Kevin D. Hendricks at 8:22 AM
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October 27, 2006

I Help Pastors Blog

Cory Miller is doing the ultimate Blogging for Pastors series over at Church Communications Pro. So far he's got 44+ five-question interviews with prominent church bloggers (including all your favorites: DJ Chuang, Tony Morgan, Mark Batterson, Gary Lamb, Kem Meyer, Perry Noble and so many more), as well as 23+ entries on how to blog.

It's a great place to send your pastor, especially until that much talked about blogging church book comes out.

Posted by Kevin D. Hendricks at 8:07 AM
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October 26, 2006

9 Lists for Web Designers

Some of these lists and resources are older, but they age like fine wine and can still offer some help and hope to church web designers.

• 8 Web Design Cliches of 2006 - Odd names and misplaced dots and gradients, excessive use thereof are my favorites.

• 9 Ways to Misunderstand Web Standards - This one's pretty techie in nature, but if you're a designer you've got to understand (and not misunderstand) your web standards.

• 5 Techniques for Picking a Domain Name - Some great ideas and tips for how to pick that pesky but all important url.

• The Worst Web Design Techniques Featured on Web Pages That Suck in 2005 - Don't do what they do.

• 5 Steps to Building Better Web Sites - A few basic ideas for starting a site right.

• 75 Helpful Web Design Resources - More resources than you can handle.

• 8 Web Design Warm Fuzzy Feelings - You didn't think techies were warm and fuzzy, but this is what makes them smile.

• 50 Redesigns from Scratch - Soon to be a series of 50--you guessed it--redesigns. So far it's only two, but the new designs and detailed explanations are insightful.

• The Next 35 Sexiest Designed Web Sites You've Forgotten - Ignore the tongue-tripping copywriting (and what was that about gradients?), and check out some web design that doesn't make your eyes bleed. You can also check out the first 35.

Posted by Kevin D. Hendricks at 6:19 AM
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October 2, 2006

Church Outreach & MySpace

by Joe Suh, Guest Blogger

In the real world, preaching to the choir is as effective in outreach as preaching to the choir. Community within church walls is great, but it makes for an easy excuse to avoid outreach outside the church building.

The digital world is no different. 80% of church visitors come because they were personally invited by friends. Now we have a fancy term for it: social networks. And now we have an incredible way to engage our social networks: MySpace.com.

You can choose to believe or reject the latest numbers about MySpace demographics. In taking surveys before creating MyChurch.org, I also found that MySpace users were older than what we originally thought. Social networking isn't just for teens and twentysomethings. The point is there has never been an easier way to connect with the congregations' social networks in history.

A year ago, we canvassed church flyers at the local shopping mall. Today we manually post bulletins and church events on Craigslist and blogs. In one year, we’ll be automatically syndicating widgets of the church event calendar and sermons onto MySpace profiles. It may seem ironic, but our purpose of creating online community at MyChurch is to drive content outside of that community. Shouldn’t that be the purpose of every church, both online and off?

Technology will continue to change. The need to outreach and evangelize to the un-churched on their own turf will not. MySpace is the new mall hangout.

Archbishop William Temple once wrote, "The church is the only organization that exists for the benefit of its non-members." We love our church communities. But it is not just for us to love.

Posted by Guest Blogger at 6:06 AM
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September 25, 2006

The Ageing MySpace Population

We've talked before about how your church can use MySpace and other social networking sites to connect with people, whether it's connecting your congregants or giving visitors a preview, but some interesting new stats prove that social networking sites aren't just for the youngsters. While MySpace.com (the runaway hit with 82% of traffic in the category) is perceived [and vilified] as the online hangout for teens, 87% of users today are 18 or older. If that's not shocking enough, 52% are 35 or older, which means the majority of users on the youthful M