Digital @ Leadership Network

studio tour of an internet campus

Ryan Spilhaus (Associate Director of the Internet Campus) gave me a tour of the studio at McLean Bible Church's internet campus. By the way, McLean Bible Church just recently relaunched its website too, with a new logo design that better reflects its identity as a multi-site church.

Watch the video to see how they have things setup. They're one of the few internet campuses that runs 2 video feeds during a live experience, one for the person teaching and one for the accompanying slides.

Internet campuses out there - how about a studio tour of where you produce your online experiences? Add a link in the comment section below.

DJ CHUANG, Director at Leadership Network

Church Leader Twitter Strategy: Setting Up Your Twitter Account

 

So now you want to twitter. The video below will take you step by step helping you set up your twitter account. You'll need a valid email account, your blog/website url, and a profile picture (avatar) file.

Feel free to follow me on twitter @mbstockdale (please let me know you found me on LN digital blog). I'd be happy to answer any questions on twitter or in the comment section below. Happy tweeting!

Online Church Calendar

What calendaring systems are church websites using?

A quick google search reveals some church calendar vendors like http://www.mychurchevents.com/ and Connect Daily.  I'm sure many others are opting for the free Google Calendar, which has a nice API.  (here's a tutorial on how to integrate a Google calendar to your church website)

Still others are using a custom calendaring system provided by the Content Management System from their website's provider.  And I'm sure there are also many folks who hacked together their own calendar from some open-source codes/frameworks. 

What are you using, how much are you paying (if anything), and are you happy with your online church calendar?  As always, will update the post with examples cited in the comments.

- Joe Suh from MyChurch

Church Leader Twitter Strategy: Four Ways To Twitter

There are a variety of ways to use Twitter in a ministry setting. There are probably as many distinct uses as there are people using the technology. For this post we'll focus on what I think are the four most common uses for Twitter: announcements, conversation, day in the life, and live tweets.

One of the major organizational use of Twitter is for it to serve as a channel for announcements. Members of your church, ministry, or other customers can follow your Twitter feed to receive an ongoing stream of information about what is happening. Updates about new opportunities, events, and regular activities help provide a way to maintain a steady connection. Followers are able to choose how they receive your updates, which means that some will get them via text message, in desktop applications or in the browser. Many groups are using Twittter as a cheap tool for text message updates to members.

Twitter can also help groups participate in open, ongoing discussion. Direct messages provide a hybrid between email and instant messaging for private communication between two people. Using @ replies allows a larger group to follow the flow of a conversation (@ replies are public). I've seen teams use Twitter as a tool to coordinate efforts and to share experiences. Twitter conversations also facilitate broader community development as people who share particular interests follow each other and have large group "conversations" about topics of interest. Two primary communities I've experienced are people in church communication and church IT that have built strong Twitter-based communities.

Many people who use Twitter use it as a microblogging tool to share what's happening in their daily lives. These tweets share what's on a personal agenda, lunch plans, struggles, successes and other random life events. For many people 140 character posts about daily life have replaced longer blog posts. Some people love the regular status updates of their friends, others question whether or not telling the world my dinner plans is a bit narcissistic. I've come down on the side that Twitter allows a level of transparency that can help foster a sense of "knowing" a person even if a significant personal relationship has yet to develop.

Live tweeting primarily happens in conference settings, but I've seen it used in church settings as well. The concept is that people post what is happening live at an event: a conference session, a mission project, a church service or any other live event. Oftentimes these tweets include a hashtag that helps to identify how these posts go together. At this year's Willow Creek Leadership Summit the hashtag was #tls09. Searching for a particular tag will reveal results from everybody posting from the event. Live tweets are a great way to communicate what is happening, and a great way to follow an event if you aren't able to attend. Some people do feel that live tweets can be annoying, especially if they are excessive. The thought is that if I cared what was happening at event X, I would have attended it. That's not to say you shouldn't live tweet an event, but be aware of the audience that follows you on Twitter.

Knowing your audience is the primary key for determining what type of tweets you should be posting. For individuals it might make sense to post a mixture of all types. Organizations may find it best to limit to just announcements. The more similar your followers are the easier it is to decide what's a good tweet and what isn't. The big concern, as has been mentioned, is do your tweets and value to your followers.

Matt Kerner

How do you define church technology?

In a recent conversation with Jason Powell, we talked about the various words we use to talk about technology and the church. There are all kinds of terms used, like "church technology," "church and technology," "church tech," "church IT," "church media," and "church technical arts". It sounds to me like people use these terms differently or interchangably sometimes. And if I'm getting confused by it, maybe some others might be too.

This blog post is an attempt to clear up the meaning of some terms we often hear used around church and technology.

Church technology is that big umbrella term that's become overloaded with different meanings over time. In the pre-internet days, church technology referred to audio and video technologies used at a church event. Now as the World Wide Web increasing goes mainstream and touches more areas of our lives and our churches too, church technology also can refer to web tools, social media, web & mobile apps, smartphones, personal computers, and more.

Church IT is more clearly defined -- it's church information technology. Like its secular counterpart, information technology is the hardware and software that an organization uses for its operations. This includes computers, file servers, email servers, office software, databases, tech support, etc.

Church technical arts seems to encompass the hardware used for audio, video, media, lighting, and production-related things used for weekend worship event or conference or whatever.

Church media could be used to more specifically for audio and video, with a little more emphasis on the software part, designing and developing the resulting media production.

Church communication is the discipline & practice for using various technologies to clarify a message and get it out, using church technology, church technical arts, church media, branding, design, social networking, and the like.

Granted, most of these terms do have overlap to some degree, so they're not absolutely mutually exclusive and separate categories.

What do you think? Can you help make all of this clearer? Or is all of this even more complicated?

DJ CHUANG, Director at Leadership Network

[image via Wordle.net]

Church Leader Twitter Strategy: why you should

There are many good reasons to http://twitvid.com/785C4twitter. (There are bad reasons to twitter, too. We touched on that in the previous post.) As twitter has becoming mainstream, it's not just a way to text message what you're doing, it's become a way to share and discover what's happening in the world, a way to have conversations quickly with your tribe, among other things.

Here's 6 reasons pastors should twitter from Scott Williams:  

1. Relational Community With Other Pastors
2. Relational Community With Their Congregation
3. To Fulfill The Great Commission 
4. To Unleash The Power Of Prayer 
5. To Reach Those Who Are Lost
6. WWJD.

Read the entire blog post for how Scott masterfully explains the value of Twitter. And, this tweet alerted me to a raw video with Pastor Scott Wilson (The Oaks) and Pastor Rick Warren (Saddleback) about why they twitter:

RT @justinlathrop: Listen to @rickwarren and @scottwilson7 talk about the benefits of Twitter. #gencouncil http://twitvid.com/785C4 via tweet from chris_willard

[update] The full-length 16-minute video of this interview about why Rick Warren twitters is now online at MinistryDirect: http://agtv.ag.org/#Conversation-with-Rick-Warren.

As Pastor Rick describes twitter, it's a biblical tool for discipleship. What are other great reasons for how you've found twitter valuable? 

// DJ CHUANG, Director at Leadership Network