Digital @ Leadership Network

IBM Embraces Social Media

A slightly dated but Interesting Business Week article reporting how IBM has been encouraging social networking among its employees with their own versions of Facebook and Twitter.

The biggest success is the nine-month-old social network, Beehive, which is based on the premise of Facebook. It has already attracted 30,000 users, including top executives...

These social tools, IBM hopes, will provide a substitute for personal connections that flew away with globalization—and help to build and strengthen far-flung teams. "People are putting up pictures of their family, the same way they'd put them up in the cubicle," says Joan DiMicco, one of the research scientists.

Adapting these tools, according to IBM, is also important for recruiting. Hotshots coming out of universities are accustomed to working across these new networks—and are likely to look at a company that still relies on the standard '90s fare of e-mail and the phone as slow and backward.

Will we see churches rolling out their own private social networks for their congregations?  Some churches have already done it... examples: The City for Mars Hill Church in Seattle, The River Church in San Jose, Damascus Road Church in Washington (disclosure: the latter 2 are private-labeled versions of mychurch.org)

Other churches have private Twitter-like networks using Yammer.  I hear LifeChurch.tv has had success with this.

Of course, the social networking goals of a global corporation differ from that of a local church.  The former seeks to build rapport between cross-site teams who work together but don't see each other face2face.  It puts faces and personal stories to names.  A social network for a church seeks to extend the loose relationships between congregants who do see each other face2face.  It puts names and personal stories to faces.

Which other churches have successfully created their own private social networks?  Any good examples of churches using Ning, Unifyer, 360 Hubs, Church Community Builder, MemberHub, or others?  I'd like to mention/link to examples and providers in a future post.

- Joe from MyChurch.org

Fast Carbon for Lent

I have been looking for something to "give up" for Lent. I settled on carbon fasting which is a campaign sponsored by Tearfund. 

Climate change can mean our neighbours go hungry because of drought, or lose their homes because of floods. Faced with that reality, there are many things we can do, acting as part of the global church's response, to change the way our lives impact poor communities.

Fast and pray with Tearfund this Lent to cut your carbon use and help protect poor people from climate change.

To participate in the Carbon Fast for Lent

• Downlaod daily actions here via PDF
• Subscribe to the daily action RSS feed 

Or at the risk of self-promotion, I will be sending out daily Twitter messages to remind us of daily actions at around noon each day.

• Follow me at @timbednar on Twitter
• Or you can find all my Tweets by searching Twitter for #Lent timbednar
• Or you can do a general search on Twitter for #Lent to see what others are doing

By Tim Bednar, founder of Turtle Interactive
Are you a web worker? Download the Ashford WordPress theme

Church Geek Squad

One topic of discussion that came up at last week's Church 2.0 Local Forum in Phoenix was the ever-increasing new role for Church leaders and staff to be equippers and trainers of new media and technologies to those in their ministry, volunteers, other staff, etc.

One IT staff member of a mega-church remarked that he's found himself training more and more staff on how to use tools like Facebook, Twitter and TokBox. Another staff remember remarked that she has been personally going over to volunteers in her ministry houses to teach them hands-on on how to use these tools. She's personally set them up with email, Facebook and Twitter accounts (even if only to follow her she said). 

I think this is a new reality we find ourselves in and will probably make it's way into the Church 2.0 book (or whatever it ends up being called). We as leaders have always been charged to teach, train, encourage, equip, educate and inform. For the many in your church and even on your staff team that don't "get it" - you may find yourself acting in a role like a Best Buy Geek Squad or an Apple Store Genius Bar.

Have you thought of this before? Do you think this is valid? I'm not talking about forcing anything on anyone. I'm talking about helping those that have interests and are sincerely open to harnessing these new technologies. My hope is that if you are ready and willing to learn that you will seek out those to learn from. And if you "get it" and have knowledge that you could share, I encourage you to see it as an act of furthuring the Kingdom and the Gospel. So, are you willing to serve on the Geek Squad?

Greg Atkinson - www.GregAtkinson.com

How Technology Drives Generation Gap

The Barna Group posted its survey-based findings today, "New Research Explores How Technology Drives Generation Gap." This is an excerpt:

Technology is fast becoming the latest driving force behind what is often called the "generation gap." While Americans of every age have become quite comfortable with and dependent on technology, a new study by The Barna Group explores how technology is shaping different experiences and expectations among generations.

Although all Americans - both young and old - benefit from technology, the generational divide brought on by digital tools is significant. The key findings of the research include the fact that each successive generation is adopting and using technology at a significantly greater pace than their predecessors. Yet, the study also shows the exponential reliance on digital tools among Americans under the age of 25.

... The Barna study categorized "mainstream" technology as those weekly activities relied upon by 50% or more of computer users. For example, the use of email and Internet search are mainstream because they are used by more than half of all computer users each week, regardless of generation.

... "Emerging" technologies were classified by Barna research as those used by at least 20% but not more than half of computer users. These are technologies that have gone beyond fringe activities but have failed to become a weekly digital ritual of the majority. One example of an emerging technology is online purchasing.

Read the full report for more findings and what they make of the survey results.

This research does use generational categories like Mosaics, Busters, Boomers, and Elders, to sort through its results. While there are some overall generational differences, this generalization may be painting with too broad of a paintbrush.  I'd be more interested to see an analysis along profession, gender, and educational level. I do find the categories of "mainstream" vs. "emerging" technologies to be helpful, and maybe this will "stick."

What do you think?

// DJ Chuang is a Director at Leadership Network, launching digital initiatives, and connecting multi-site churches and Asian American pastors.

Bible Teaching and Wordclouds

(Confessions of a mom's group Bible Study teacher)

So it's Wednesday night. The night before I am to deliver a lecture in my series, The Names of Jesus... it's late, my brain hurts and I've been praying my heart out for inspiration. I'm talking on "Son of David" and have searched all the New Testament references for this phrase "Son of David." I do all my homiletics and word study tricks and still I got nothing. I've got general ideas of where to go with this, but I need a little inspiration.

Then I remember a cool website called Wordle where you can paste any amount of text and it generates a "wordcloud." ("Oh, visuals. I like visuals.") I'm not super technical, but a wordcloud is just a picture made of words where the size of each of the words is determined by how many times it shows up in your chunk of text. So, big words = show up most often. I can get that. My tired brain nods appreciatively at the generated results of my study.

So, how I did this nifty thing:

1. Go to a Bible website like BibleGateway or YouVersion and search for texts of interest
2. Copy and paste your findings into a text editor or Word, removing references. You just want the juicy text.
3. Copy the whole shebang onto your clipboard.
4. Go to Wordle and click on "Create Your Own"
5. That's it!
6. Once it is created you can monkey with the styles and colors
7. Save the little sucker (as a jpeg or png). I used Jing to screen capture mine. I'm sure there are other, more capable sorts who can suggest other tools to do this.

Fast forward to Thursday morning...

During my talk to the Moms with A Purpose I got to share this wordcloud with my ladies and it was so awesome. We're a small group (about 50 in the room) so I was able to ask "what jumps out at you?" and get audience involvement. It was great to hear the answers.

From a heart perspective, after analyzing the words, I was so convicted about the desperation in the people's voices. I was struck by how unloving and stern the onlookers were. And I was grateful again for Jesus graciously bringing his Kingdom into the broken lives of those willing to cry out in desperation for his help. Lots of applications that I could apply to my own self-sufficient soul.

So there you have it. Confessions of a Bible teacher who likes to have fun with wordclouds. What do you think?

Try this in one of your talks / sermons / lectures...  leave a comment and let us all know how it goes!

YouVersion 2.0

I had the opportunity this afternoon to jump on an audio conference and screen sharing session hosted by Terry Storch, Digerati Pastor at LifeChurch.tv. Many of you are at least familiar with Terry's name or at least his boss, Bobby Gruenewald. These guys were the brain child behind YouVersion which launched about 18 months ago.

The purpose of today's impromptu, if-you-responded-in-time-on-twitter session, was to give about 40 or so interested folks a sneak peek at YouVersion 2.0, the first major overall of YouVersion since it's launch. While we aren't allowed to show you any of the preliminary screen shots used in today's presentation, we were encouraged to get the word out and let you know what is coming.  So here are the highlights I found interesting.

• YouVersion API - This will enable many other third party services to access YouVersion and present its content in various forms and ways.  If you are familiar with Twitter and the many applications that exist for it, you have some idea of how cool this is and how it opens the door of possibilities to God's Word in ways never achieved before!

Regarding the YouVersion.com website itself:

• Home Page - Much cleaner, easier to read and navigate around. You will also be able to customize it so you have the sections you want visible.
  
• Parallel Versions - This handy feature will allow you to put two different versions of the same passage next to each other, side-by-side, in the same window. As you scroll through the chapter, both windows scroll in unison!
  
• My Journal - A very nice improvement here which will be more blog-like and have both expanded and list views. I believe the cleaner design makes this much more likely to be used.
  
• Favorites & Tags - This will allow you to find the content you like much more easily and quickly.
  
• Followers / Following - One of my favorite updates is in the way they are making this more "Twitter-like". You will be able to easily see in list form who you follow or who is following you and have the ability to follow or un-follow right from that dashboard view. Very slick.
  
• Community - This area was overhauled and I believe will help it to really explode in use going forward. If you are familiar with Facebook, then you will appreciate the new community "feed". Much like your Facebook "New Feed", you'll see a summary of what your friends have shared or contributed recently on YouVersion.  There is also a tag cloud for all of YouVersion so you can see easily how others are engaging with the scripture and what the most popular tags are.

Mobility Enhancements - along with these web site upgrades, the iPhone, Blackberry and mobile web versions are also going to see improvements.  There is very strong mobile use of YouVersion and rumor is the Digerati Team maybe partnering with outside developers to help get mobile versions for other platforms in the future!

All this is going to be going into private beta testing in the coming weeks with a target of April 1 for being in the hands of the general public. Stay tuned, we may see certain components released before others, such as the API.

Now it's your turn. Have you heard of YouVersion before? If so, do you use it? Why or why not?  How do you see an updated YouVersion helping you engage with God's Word more?

New at Sticky Church Conference

Does it matter how many people are coming through YOUR front door if YOUR back door is wide open?

There are plenty of ways to get people to come to church.  Keeping them there is another matter.  Many of our churches seem more like Teflon than Velcro.  So what will it take to make your church Sticky???

Find out at the One-Day Special Sticky Church Conference hosted by Suncrest Christian Church!!

Sticky Church is a “can’t miss” event with main speakers Larry Osborne, Dave Ferguson and Scott Chapman! The reasonable cost also includes 12 practical workshops! Check it out and register now - just click on the picture.

New this year, Sticky Church will offer a workshop on Leveraging Social Media for church stickiness! I'll interview Tony Steward (Online Community Pastor at LifeChurch.tv), and our very own DJ Chuang and Cynthia Ware from Digital@Leadership Network via the web! Pastor blogging, facebook, and twitter are a few things we'll cover.    

Need your help...We are still deciding which application to use for the interview to have the best quality. Would love your input suggestions. You can just add them as comments below.  Thanks!

Mary Beth Stockdale @ breaking point

welcome our new Digital contributors

You may have noticed a few changes here at the DIGITAL blog as 2009 has gotten under way. The blog's catch phrase was re-adjusted to = church tech blog for non-techies. This more clearly captures our intent in the first place, and I hope you find it more inviting too.

Plus, we've invited new contributors to this blog! You may have already noticed some new names and new voices chiming in. Here's an intro to each of the new contributors. (You'll also want to view the list of all the contributors.)

Greg Atkinson lives in Dallas, where he served previously as the Director of WorshipHouse Media, after having served as a worship pastor for 11 years. Greg is now on staff at Bent Tree Bible Fellowship and continues to consult, teach and write about innovation, technology and social justice. You can connect with him through his daily blog at GregAtkinson.com.

Dawn Carter is the Teaching Leader for the Moms with A Purpose Bible Study at Sandals Church in Riverside, CA. She heads up Marketing and social media initiatives for Riverside-based 360Hubs, a software firm specializing in Internet Campus and secure social networks for churches. She blogs from her personal website about the high calling of being a mom and more. She has a passion for connecting things: broken people with recovery, technophobes with technology, our hearts to our doctrine-filled heads, God’s love with the unlovely.

Greg Davis has been working as an SAP consultant for the past 10 years and applying his passion for technology, communication and media in the local church for the past 4+ years. He is resides in Wilmington, DE with his wife and 2 kids. He can keep up with Greg at his Technically Speaking blog.

Matt Kerner is the pastor of creative arts and college ministry at Schweitzer UMC and focuses on using technology to connect the Gospel to new generations. He's worked in technology environments both in ministry and the marketplace. He lives in Springfield, MO with his wife Sarah and their dachshund Lucy. His personal blog is at kerner.net

Mary Beth Stockdale is the Connect Director at Suncrest Christian Church, where she oversees the Small Group Ministry and works to engage newcomers into the church family. She has recently begun to explore social media and technology as tools for keeping the Church relevant in today's culture. She is passionate about church leaders sharing their wins and working united as a true Body, and expresses this in her blog, breaking point. She lives in Schererville, IN.

Jim Walton has been involved in church technology for 5+ years in a variety of ways, both volunteering and consulting. He created and wrote at ChurchTechMatters.com for 4 years, writing about all aspects of tech in the church, both his own experiences and what he saw others doing. He can be found writing at blog.jimwalton.org .

A big thank you to each of them in advance!

You can show your appreciation for these contributors by adding your comments as they blog about practical ways to use digital technologies. Technology is an ever-developing fast-changing arena, and I confess it's hard to keep up with it all. Our hope is that the DIGITAL blog will help you keep up and understand how these tools can be used to multiply your ministry impact.

// DJ Chuang is a Director at Leadership Network, launching digital initiatives, and connecting multi-site churches and Asian American pastors.

2009 Church 2.0 Local Forums

After going to 9 cities throughout the US in 2008, the Church 2.0 Local Forum tour continues in 2009 with new cities beginning this Tuesday in Phoenix. Church 2.0 Local Forums are led by Greg Atkinson and various guests (depending on the city/host church) and are gatherings for Church leaders of all kinds to get together, meet/network and discuss issues such as innovation, technology and social justice. Here is the schedule so far:

1. Phoenix - Host Church: Christ's Church of the Valley (Feb. 17)
2. Nashville - Host Church: The People's Church (Mar. 20)
3. Washington DC - Host Church: National Community Church (Mar. 27)
4. Oklahoma City - Host Church: LifeChurch.tv (April)
5. Denver - Host Church: LifeBridge Christian Church (May)
6. Miami - Host Church: Flamingo Road (May)
7. Dallas/Fort Worth - Host Church: Bent Tree (Summer)
8. Baton Rouge - Host Church: Healing Place Church (Summer)
9. New York - Host Church: Journey Church (Summer or Fall)
10. Charleston, SC - Host Church: Seacoast Chuch (Fall)
11. San Diego - Host Church: North Coast Church (Nov.)

There may be another (secret) city added in later in the year. More details on that after the host church has been confirmed. If you're anywhere near one of these cities, I hope you'll join the discussion. If you have friends and peers in ministry that you know are near one of these cities, please encourage them to come. 

Church 2.0 (the book) is being written by Greg Atkinson, David Russell, Rhett Smith, Tony Steward and Cynthia Ware. The book should be finished this Spring and out this Fall.  To join the Church 2.0 Facebook group go HERE. To join the Church 2.0 Unifyer group go HERE.

Greg Atkinson - www.GregAtkinson.com

Facebook group or Facebook page for your church?

Jeff Wilson is Pastor of Communication/Innovation at Henderson Hills, and recently gave a talk on using Facebook for ministry.

Jeff and I have been brainstorming some of the pros and cons of Facebook groups versus fan pages.  And what a killer Facebook app might look like for a church - taking the best benefits of both groups and pages, and filling the feature gaps that a custom app can deliver.

Benefits of a Page:

-    Can be accessed outside of Facebook; and thus a good outreach tool

-    Can promote it with targeted Facebook Social Ads and measure traffic stats

-    Can add 3^rd party apps (like a blog RSS reader)

-    Can set access controls to let members post to the page (ex. videos, photos) or to only let the admin post

 

Limitations of a Page:

-    Can’t message everyone – can only send out an update which doesn’t alert users by email (and rarely gets seen)

-    Can’t remove members from a page or limit who can join

-    Conversations and content cannot be made private

 

Benefits of a Group:

-    Can send an email message out to everyone

-    Native apps (photos, links, videos, message board, events) are sufficient for broadcasting content/info

-    Can remove and limit members from joining the group

-    Can set access controls to let members post to the group (ex. events, discussions, photos) or to only let the admin post

 

Limitations of a Group:

-    Native apps good for broadcasting, but not good for many-to-many communication (ie very little participation from members)

-    Can’t add additional functionality with 3^rd party apps

-    Members don’t get updated when there’s new content (either through email or news feed)

-    Groups are more hidden (than Pages) on a user’s Profile info tab and are less likely to be noticed by a church member’s friends

 

 

Limitations of both (opportunities for an app?):

-    Allow sub-groups for ministries and community groups within the larger church body

-    Announcements via SMS text messaging to all church members

-    Email notifications for other communications (ex. new church member)

-    Other apps that make sense for a church (ex. classifieds board)

-    Feed updates to all church members for posts, regardless of whether you’re friends with the person who posted

So is your church using a group, fan page, both, or neither?  What do you think is the best fit for a church community?

If there are other benefits/limitations of groups and pages for a church, feel free to comment and I'll update the post.

- Joe Suh from MyChurch