Digital @ Leadership Network

churches everywhere join in prayer for 4 weeks

The Lectionary has connected churches and Christians for centuries to read the same Scripture passages from week to week. Now, One Prayer is connecting all kinds of churches using web and video technologies! 

For the month of June 2008, hundreds of churches around the world will share and use video messages from pastors of many denominations to teach & preach about prayer, to demonstrate how Christ's one church together can exemplify Jesus' prayer to "make us one." At the time of this writing, 759 churches are joined in, with a few more weeks to go, maybe there'll be over 1,000 churches connected into this One Prayer.

In short, churches are joining in for 1 week of teaching from their own pastor along with 3 weeks of video Bible teaching on prayer from other excellent Bible teachers. Free communication resources are available to mobilize  churches for a month of corporate prayer, missions outreach, and more -- read more details for how this works and how your church can get connected.

Aside: I'm just a little bummed that I didn't stay up on the pulse that LifeChurch.tv was in New York City the same time I was there, to shoot their video teaching for One Prayer. Bobby Gruenewald has posted raw footage from their NYC adventure.

-- DJ Chuang, 1 Director among many in Dallas for Leadership Network quarterly team meeting

Tips on Concepting a Webpage

Sometimes when starting a new project, we just start from scratch and try to get somewhere successful without really planning for it. While that might have used to work when the internet was a wild west of opportunity, nowadays it helps to have some structure, thought and planning to our online decisions. In this video I go over some of the steps I take when planning out a new webpage to help me process through what the site really needs to be like.

- Aaron, LifeWay Digital Media Production

Private Church Social Networks

I see a few organizations offering a gated social network for churches (ex. OneBody, MyFlock, Ning), and I also see a couple churches building their own gated social network (ex. Mars Hill and Seacoast Church).  By gated, I mean it's private to the church itself and not open to people outside the church community.

(If there are other vendors providing private-labeled social network solutions for churches, please comment and I will update the post.  And if there are other megachurches that are building their own private network, I'd like to mention them as well)

Does a private social network for a church make sense?  We know that forums and message boards don't work well for churches.  But maybe social networks will?  I tend to think so.

Social networks need network effects and critical mass to thrive - if your friends aren't on it, then you won't stick around.  An intimate community like a church is conducive to network effects - most of your church friends will be in your private social network.  But your non-church friends hang out at Facebook and Myspace.  So network effects are actually pretty limited for gated communities if most of your friends don't go to your church.

It'll be interesting to see how this plays out.  I can imagine most large churches having a gated social network of their own in a few years.  Something for their members to log into - linked from or integrated into the church's main website.  Especially when they outgrow a Facebook fan page or a Myspace group, and want something more custom to their communication needs. 

What do you think?

As a disclosure, MyChurch.org provides white-labeled private social networking for churches.  (ex Seed Church and the River Church).  We let the members of these churches individually opt-in to join the larger MyChurch community, and we also integrate parts of their network into their church application on Facebook.  (2 approaches we take to expand network effects outside of a single church)

-- Joe Suh

The Social Web - Waste of Time or Killer Faith App?

   

First Monday, an online, peer-reviewed journal, published the article - The Augmented Social Network: building identity and trust into the next-generation Internet by Ken Jordan, Jan Hauser, and Steven Foster.

The authors describe the future of the internet as an evolution from online experimentation and fads to stabilizing trends creating reliability, trust, even dependence.  They view social linkages as far more than a passing phenomenon.  They predict the ability of citizens to form relationships and self-organize around shared interests in communities of practice in order to better engage in online citizenship.

They propose an Augmented Social Network (ASN) model that facilitates connections between online communities and even builds into Internet architecture the role identity brokers could play. The authors note several elements of an ASN including:

Persistent Identity. Enabling individuals online to maintain a persistent identity as they move between different Internet communities, and to have personal control over that identity. This identity should be capable of reflecting an endless variety of interests, needs, desires, and relationships.

Interoperability Between Online Communities. People should be able to cross easily between online communities under narrowly defined circumstances, just as in life we can move from one social network to another. 

Brokered Relationships. Using databased information, online brokers (both automated and "live") should be able to facilitate the introduction between people who share affinities and/or complementary capabilities and are seeking to make connections. Such a system of brokered relationships should also enable people to find other individuals, information or media that is of interest to them, through the recommendations of trusted third parties.

The surprising thing is that this abstract was published back in July, 2003.  Only 5 years later, and here we are. 

My Facebook tells me I should add you as a friend.  Why?  It knows who we share in common.  Let me search you and verify your established online presence.  Now I can add you to my Plaxo, LinkedIn and twitter contacts.  This means I get to find out who you're connected to, see your work history, and probably hear what you ate for breakfast today via tweet.

Because building community is essential for the Church, we can capitalize on social networking.  In fact, isn't one of our primary goals to seek out those in need of spiritual hope and initiate relationship with them? Since we know the Good News is most commonly transmitted person-to-person, it's not hard to see how the social web provides a unique new forum for sharing our faith. 

The relational trust individuals share paves the way for those with spiritual hope, healing and health to link with those they find in their circle of trusted others.  Equally importantly, it allows buildable bridges & connections with those a degree or more away. Quite obviously, we can not try to impose our beliefs on a whole society, but individually we can be witnesses of Jesus Christ, communicating with people of other faiths (or no faith) via the linkages we have online.

While some criticize the masks people wear online (persistent pseuds), view online communications as "not real" or reflect on the fragilty of social networking (all important considerations by the way) many Christians are engaging in conversations, networking and even collaborating with individuals they might never get a chance to communicate with face-to-face.   I say it's an opportunity.  What's your take on online social networking?

-- Cynthia Ware - The Digital Sanctuary

Church Website Design a la Nathan Smith

Information architect and interface designer Nathan Smith has been working for years to dispel "the myth that publishing on the web must be difficult and expensive." His latest contribution is an article for .Net Magazine for which he created "a hypothetical home page for a real or fictitious place of worship"—in his case, a new home page for his home church Spring Valley UMC in Dallas, Texas. (View the actual Spring Valley site.)

The Spring Valley mock-up (see below) is based on the 12-column example of Smith's 960 Grid System, which is an excellent free resource.

Smith writes in the article, "If a newcomer were to visit the site, they would immediately be able to find out what time the church services are, where the church is located, and what events are happening that month. Another thing that would-be visitors tend to wonder is what the unspoken dress code is like." That's good advice for anyone attempting a church website redesign in the future.

Here is Smith's design with explanations (click to view at full size):

—Steve Knight, International Communication Coordinator for SIM (Serving In Mission) and Kingdom Journalist

Dell "off lease" Computers

Ever wonder what becomes of the computers that companies lease and then return?  If it's a Dell it ends up at Dell's DFS Direct Sales arm.  The equipment is given a once over and then sold on the DFS site for a deal ... typically with about 6 months warranty still left.

I purchased about 30 of these off lease units for a school system to put together a small lab on shoe-string budget several years ago. I've also purchased a number of these off lease units for GCC as well.  The great thing is that we could buy optiplex units that fit our standardization model...but get them for a song.

So if you need some good business class hardware, but have a limited budget check out Dell's off lease equipment.  And no, this is NOT the same as Dell's Outlet site.

Jason Powell ... jasonpowell.net

Ever wonder what becomes of the computers that companies lease and then return?  If it's a Dell it ends up at Dell's DFS Direct Sales arm.  The equipment is given a once over and then sold on the DFS site for a deal ... typically with about 6 months warranty still left.

I purchased about 30 of these off lease units for a school system to put together a small lab on shoe-string budget several years ago. I've also purchased a number of these off lease units for GCC as well.  The great thing is that we could buy optiplex units that fit our standardization model...but get them for a song.

So if you need some good business class hardware, but have a limited budget check out Dell's off lease equipment.  And no, this is NOT the same as Dell's Outlet site.

Jason Powell ... jasonpowell.net

statistics on technology use in Protestant churches

Barna Group has 2008 statistics based on its recent survey of 600+ Senior Pastors of Protestant churches, via MondayMorningInsight.com ::

• Two-thirds of Protestant churches (65%) now have a large screen projection system in their church that they use for services and other events (62% in 2005, 39% in 2000)
• 68% of "theologically conservative" churches have big screen capabilities, while 43% of churches described as “liberal theology” have big screens
• 57% of churches show movie clips or other video segments during their services and events
• 88% of the churches that have a big screen in place (76% in 2000)
• 56% send email blasts to large groups of people or to the entire church body
• 62% of Protestant churches have a website (57% in 2005, 34% in 2000)
• 26% of Protestant churches have some presence on one or more social networking sites (such as MySpace). Charismatic churches were notably more likely (38%) than either mainline or evangelical congregations to use such pages
• 16% use podcasting; 47% of churches with over 250 adults are utilizing podcast technology
• 13% have "blog sites or pages" [easier to say 13% are blogging]
• 8% use satellite broadcasting for receiving programming and training

George Barna commented, "The Internet has become one of the pivotal communications and community-building tools of our lifetime. Churches are well-advised to have an intelligent and foresighted Internet strategy in order to facilitate meaningful ministry..."

Read the full Barna Update for more survey results and their commentary.

-- DJ Chuang, 1 Director among equals @ Leadership Network

New Media: Interactive Metafiction

One of the best examples of things that are distinctly "new media" is interactive metafiction. Traditionally, metafiction would be a story that is aware of itself being a story; self-referential, if you would. Interactive metafiction takes that a few steps further where the reader/viewer/engager can interact with the characters and influence the actual story.

It's hard to apply this concept to ministry, because we seem to often take a very serious tone to our evangelism and seek truth more so than crafting a story. Perhaps there are opportunities for the church to develop new parables and ways to engage a more creative mind instead of always focusing on the establishing our spiritual truths as entirely literal.

- Aaron, LifeWay Digital Media Publishing

Is Online Tithing Popular Yet?

Google Checkout and Paypal make it easy for church websites to accept online donations.  Google checkout is especially nice for churches since there are no credit card gateway fees until 2009 for 501c3's.  Paypal charges about 2.9%.  And there's a bunch of online donation management services with their own credit card gateways.

I've seen church websites with donation buttons.  And I always wonder if their members are actually using them.  One (very tech-savvy) church I talked to says 1/3rd of its tithes now come online.

What has your experience been?  Do you think tithing will mostly be an online experience in the future?

- Joe Suh from MyChurch.org

Considering the Microsoft Surface

I recently had the opportunity to play with the Microsoft Surface.  The unit was just running all the basic tech demos that have been show here and there, but even still just touching the unit made me see what all the hype is about and let me know that I was touching what will someday be as common as the television set.

Yes, I think it's going to be that the device (or at least the concept) will be that successful - and possibly within our lifetimes.  The first color television broadcast was only 70 years ago in 1938; with today's current rate of adoption and reduction in costs, the common middle-class family could easily own a table, Surface-like device.  The only thing between here and there is cost (the device is currently rumored to cost $10,000).

The device not only responds to human touch, but also can read barcodes that are in its database (which makes Microsoft's patent on next-generation barcodes seem a lot more important).  Camera can be placed on the Surface to allow the computer to access the camera's memory card, physical pieces can be placed on the table to have an effect, etc etc.  So what does this have to do with ministry and the church?

One of the things John showed us was a map tool built in to the tech demo.  Expect to see the first Surface units showing up in hotels acting as a virtual conceirge, giving directions to the local area and a map of the hotel.  And then, when the price comes down, expect the mega-churches to have the Surface display the maps of their building.

Imagine a visitor coming to the guest table and simply being able to put a finger on their age range and have a list of classes to go to come right up, followed by a map.  Imagine being able to sort through the mounds of information on schedules and activities for youth groups.  When the price comes down, we will see the Surface in the high-tech churches.

The software is running on the normal Windows OS, so developers should be able to easily develop customer applications for it.  What are the softwares you'd want to see created?

- Aaron Linne, LifeWay Digital Media Publishing