Nobody cares about your website…

…but your content matters more than ever. I came to that realization a few months ago while I was sifting through our stats on Google Analytics.

via Nobody cares about your website… « MEDIA SALT.

So, this was an article I’d been intending to write but Eric over at Media Salt beat me to it. He covered everything and said it all very well. Rather than try to do it better myself, I’m going to point you to his article at his site. Give it a read. If you’re a church or non-profit you definitely need to take five minutes and peruse the content. If you’re a small or medium business, this applies to you as well.

If you have questions about how to develop and implement a web presence strategy give us a call (see the big button to the right –>) or send us an email. Or, click on the Twitter over there in the sidebar and follow us and tweet us your questions or thoughts.

I decided to take each of the sections (pages 110-117) I was responsible for, use the header and write my thoughts on what I read. I know most folks participating here are doing so from and with a church perspective. I take that angle, too, being very much interested in how this relates to the Church today, but also relate to it from a business perspective as well. We work with small/medium business, churches and non-profits, but we really have a passion for helping churches and non-profits learn the benefits and power of all the amazing tools now at their disposal to connect with members of their tribes.

Thanks for reading and, please, join in the conversation.

Possibility of Risk

One take-away for this section is what many of us already know: the biggest risk is playing it safe, not taking the risk. This idea has been communicated many times, many ways:

“It is better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all.”

“No risk, no reward.”

“No pain, no gain.”

“Every man dies. Not every man really lives.”

The simple truth in all this is that life is risk. There’s equal risk in doing something as there is in doing nothing. Doing nothing allows you to continue dealing with issues and problems that you are comfortable with while doing something different opens you up to new issues and problems. But it also provides opportunity for growth and change. Opportunity for something extraordinary to happen.

What is something you, your church, or your organization is continuing to do the same for fear of the perceived risk of changing it? What are you going to do about it?

When Tribes Replace What You’re Used To

Business as we know it has changed. Church as we know it has changed. They are continually changing and evolving. At least the ones that are thriving are changing and evolving. Those that aren’t are dead or dying. The Internet has played and continues to play perhaps the most significant role in this evolution that we are in. Evolution? Or is it revolution? Thomas Friedman, in his book The World Is Flat 3.0: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century, details the reality of our interconnected world and paints the picture of a world with no boundaries. Real-time collaboration – audio, video, data-sharing – between a team in the US and a team in India, or multiple teams from the UK, Japan, and Russia take place daily because of the Internet. LifeChurch.tv has real-time online worship services with attendees from over 100 countries around the world. These aren’t your Dad’s companies and churches.

When “new tribes” replace what you’re used to, how do you react? What do you think is the key to leading and being a part of the replacement tribe

Initiative

The Barbara Barry anecdote that Seth gives is an awesome example of taking initiative. Her initiative seems to me like a cross between confidence and faith. A belief in her vision and confidence in it’s execution led to an amazing success. Is there a direct application for churches or nonprofits that can model her approach? Why is it that the organizations or churches “that need innovation the most are the ones that do the most to stop if from happening”? Does it take a heretic to lead with a little bit of initiative? Does it take confidence, maybe “healthy” arrogance, and faith to take initiative.

Stuck on Stupid

My wife loves Dr. Phil. I think he’s got a good common sense approach to many things, but one thing I like, that I’ve heard my wife repeat, is the question “How’s that working for you?” It’s usually asked of someone who apparently is “stuck on stupid”. Someone who continues, as Seth says, “playing today’s games by yesterday’s rules”. Doing the same thing over and over expecting different results. Isn’t that a definition for insanity?

Where is your church or organization “stuck on stupid”? How can you move forward?

Mark Rovner, Nonprofit Heritic

Do you have to abandon the old ways today? Of course not. But responsible stewardship requires that you find and empower heretics and give them the flexibility to build something new, instead of trying to force the Internet to act like direct mail with free stamps.

Seth Godin – Tribes: We Need You To Lead Us – page 117

That is in response to the story Seth tells of Mark Rovner and his insight that the Internet, and even technology itself, isn’t the end-all-be-all for connecting with your tribe. It also isn’t just the next method of distribution that allows you to continue doing things in the same way, just modified for the Internet. The real nugget of truth here is this: without empowering your tribe members to become the next tribe leaders the movement will eventually fail. In the church we call that discipleship. In business it’s called selling the corporate culture and training your replacement. Either way, we must engage and encourage our members to lay claim to the vision and take up the cause. Even if that means mutiny at some point. Just this week I listened to an Andy Stanley Leadership podcast that talked about this. Look for the one titled Becoming A Student.

The Posture of a Leader

What’s your posture as a leader? Is it a posture that blames others for not getting the vision? Do you believe that your “followers” aren’t trying as hard at following as you are at trying to lead? These are great questions for us to consider. I like what I remember from Steven Covey in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. I’m paraphrasing, but the concept is simple. Seek first to understand, then to be understood. I’ve tried to apply that in my life, both personal and professional. Rather than get frustrated or angry with someone to whom I’m trying to communicate something, and it seems they aren’t getting it, I try not to blame them. I try to take a look at how I’m communicating my message. Am I understanding where they are and am I presenting the message to them in the way in which they need to hear it? Maybe an oversimplified analogy, but if I’m talking English and my subject only understands Spanish I’m not going to get my message across clearly, if at all. It’s not their fault I’m delivering my message in a language they don’t understand.

What’s your posture as a leader? What’s the posture of your church or organization when it comes to leadership? How do we change poor posture?

Welcome to Day 9 of ChurchCrunch’s Group Blog Project. I am the lucky recipient to cover pages 40-45 of Seth Godin’s wonderful gem called Tribes. Picking up from where  Dawn Nicole Baldwin’s very excellent post yesterday left off, we get to examine what Seth calls “the F word…. fear.”

Let’s start first with one of the sweetest quotes (found on p.42) about heretics:

In a battle between two ideas, the best one doesn’t necessarily win. No, the idea that wins is the one with the most fearless heretic behind it.

via Heretics and Fear:Tribes Group Blog Project « Chronicles of Dawnia.

Dawn Carter leads the conversation on Tribes today over at Chronicles of Dawnia as part of the group-blogging project we’re participating in. Head over and check out her post and join the conversation.

We’ll be leading the conversation here at The DDS Blog on May 8. We’ll also post each day with a link to where the conversation is happening that day. Hope you’ll join in.

Forging A Successful Blog

An Interview with Phil Cooke

Phil Cooke has been involved in advocating house of worship blogging and online networking for many years. He has developed incredibly effective blogs of his own and has been a valued consultant for many individuals and facilities who wish to reach out with this potentially potent communication method. We asked him a few questions about what the best ways are to build and promote a worship blog.

via Technologies For Worship Magazine- Church Technology Resources.

Jarrod and I, both, are fans and admirers of Phil Cooke. He has wisdom and insight from years of valuable experience that he freely shares on his blog and in his podcast. This is a great interview with him published over at Technologies for Worship Magazine. Check it out. Especially if you’re interested in blogging or improving your existing blog.

Twitter in Plain English by Common Craft

So, yesterday, at the request of my mother, we (myself, my wife, and my two young boys) went to her church for worship and the subsequent family cookout. Before continuing, let me just state that we absolutely love our home church. We’ve never found a place that we felt to be as real and genuine and relevant for us and we always feel like we’re reminded of how special Grace Fellowship is when we visit somewhere else. I know most people probably feel that way, or should, about their own church, which is probably why they go there. I know my mom feels that way. Needless to say, my mother’s church, tends much more to the traditional Southern Baptist ways of doing things, where Grace is very “hip” and inviting, but still provides fundamental Bible teaching in a way that is relevant and approachable. Now that’s not to say that my mother’s church doesn’t provide that, but there’s certainly a definite demographic difference between our chosen churches, which most definitely contributes to the way in which the services are presented. This leads to the specific topic for which I decided to post a blog entry, which is, the way in which services are presented and how that affects the worship participants.

I have a pro-sound background, inclusive of recording, touring, and even being on staff as the “Church Sound Guy”. I can tend toward being overly critical as it relates to the quality of production during a service, I also know and believe that God doesn’t need perfect production to change lives. Of course, we as performers, directors, producers and artists like to think, sometimes, that our perfect presentation of this song, or our excellent lighting choice (blue gels instead of green, and, how cool, a cross gobo), or my selecting that chamber reverb over the slap echo made all the difference in the mood and that’s what caused that person to feel that particular way and make that decision at that moment to give their life to God. But we all have to remind ourselves that the Holy Spirit doesn’t need perfect production.

Now, all that to say this…while God doesn’t need perfect production to change lives, for the people attempting to participate in the worship experience, the closer to perfect the production comes, the less distracted they are and the more likely to remain focused and experience a truly meaningful moment or even a moment that does bring life-change. I think it also reflects positively or negatively on the church’s brand. Brand, as Phil Cooke points out in his book (see side bar) Branding Faith, is nothing more than the perception that someone has of your church or organization. I think this also tends to be even more important in churches that are in transition. Churches that may not have fully embraced technology but are moving in that direction. My visit yesterday was a good example.

Without spending too much more time on unnecessary detail, here’s what happened and what I noticed. During one of the congregational praise songs, which happened to be a new song for me as well as the congregation, there was a disconnect between what the leader was singing and the words that were being displayed on the dual projection screens. The choir seemed unsure suddenly. This disconnect extended to the people in the pews as they stopped singing and began to look around toward the “tech booth” to see if, in fact, the “power point guy” had fallen asleep. There was obviously a sense of something going wrong that was now a distraction to many people.

I’ve heard it said and agree that the best productions are the ones where the tech crew goes unnoticed. (Not unappreciated, mind you, just unnoticed.) In a church like my mother’s, where the demographic is older and often more resistant to change, any new technology or new idea that isn’t well executed provides more reason for keeping the status quo. Now, I know many of the folks my mother knows and they are all very sweet and wonderful people and quite forgiving of the “power point guy”, but the point is this, we, as technicians and performers are to help facilitate an environment of worship. The less distraction we provide, the better. However, we also must never forget that our audience, the audience that every single one of us, technicians, performers, worship leaders, worship participants (note I specifically refer to worship participants, not audience members) seeks to delight with our performance is God. We all should seek to give our best in worship, not for each other, but for God. He is the object of our worship.

I really just wanted to remind technicians and performers, and even participants, that the focus in what we’re doing should be God. He’ll take care of the rest. His Spirit will move and work. We simply need to seek His face. As we push faders, be it lighting or sound, or as we click through to the next slide, whatever we are doing, we should do as if Jesus himself were the only one in the room and He were the one we were trying to impress with our worship, because He is.

Einstein was a scientific genius. What set him apart from many other scientific geniuses was that he was a creative scientific genius. He understood that science, essentially the art of problem solving, required that problems be solved through creative thinking. Few churches grasp this concept today. But many will during the next few years out of necessity.

I just read a story about a church that is growing in membership at the exponentially high annual rate of 20%. Using the rule of 72, this means that they will double in size every three and a half years or so. To make a long story short, they need a larger facility to accommodate their rapid growth. Unfortunately, the city in which the church is located is not permitting them to move to a larger facility. The city would rather see a business move into the available facilities and generate tax revenue. Read the full story if you have time. It is absurd and quite disturbing.

In light of this, I wonder if this church has explored all options available to them. I wonder if they have determined that their “problems cannot be resolved by the same level of thinking that created them.” I’d say it is no coincidence that this story was also published today. In case you don’t have time to click through and read it, the story talks about churches that have Internet Campuses. Church growth is probably the best problem a church can have. I’d be willing to bet that many of the churches referenced in this list created an Internet Campus at least partially out of the need to expand. I know face-to-face relationships will never be replaced by online communities, but they will forever be enhanced by them. Imagine what a trump card an Internet Campus could be for the church that is dealing with these selfish city officials.

Here are just a few benefits of an Internet Campus for any church:

1. Unlimited seating
2. No boundaries
3. Staying connected with members
4. Fulfilling the Great Commission
5. No brick and mortar expense
6. No dust, dirt, and construction debris when its time to remodel, renovate, and expand
7. No need to battle selfish city officials, they are completely out of play here

I’ll close with this. I think the act of church, as we know it, is on the verge of a dramatic change. I think church membership, as we know it, is on the verge of a dramatic change. Churches that offer many different connecting points and options will gain huge ground and those that stay with an exclusively brick and mortar connecting point will struggle. The church of the future has multiple connecting points and is willing to invest whatever it takes to stay connected with its members and accommodate its rapid growth.

What do you think?

One of the many blogs I follow is Church Video Ideas, published by Greg Atkinson, Technical Arts Director for Bent Tree Bible Fellowship in Carrollton, TX. As an “Extra” in today’s blog entry, Greg mentioned that Bent Tree recently released a new Worship CD. Being that I’m a musician and enjoy writing, collaborating, and playing music both in and outside of church I knew I wanted to check it out.

Here are a few observations I made that I think will really help them get traction on this:

1. Once you land on the CD page a song starts playing almost immediately. As I clicked to listen to some of the other songs, they started playing even faster. This means that they have probably allocated plenty of bandwidth to streaming these songs. As well, they have formatted their songs in a manner that balances quality with web friendliness. Many churches want to promote their music in similar fashion but don’t allocate enough bandwidth to get the songs to load and play fast enough. Or,they don’t format the music for playback via the internet. Most listeners judge new music within the first few seconds and if they have to wait more than a few seconds to start that judgement they just move on to other music. Bent Tree did a really good job in this aspect.

2. There are several original songs on this project. It is very refreshing to see that they are offering, at no cost, copies of the lead sheets including lyrics and chords. There are links to three or four I think. WORSHIP LEADERS AND DIRECTORS NOW HEAR THIS: If you write and record original music, copyright it, get a CCLI account, and then follow the lead of Bent Tree and post the lead sheets for others to download for free. You want other churches to play your songs, right? Make it easy for them to do so. If you don’t know how to do this, ping us, and let us teach you how.

3. Clicking a link on the page opens up a new browser window. This is smart, in that, if you have one of the songs playing and click, say, the “Purchase CD” link that song doesn’t stop playing. Many websites, whether church or non-church related make this mistake. To me, this shows that Bent Tree has a good frame of reference on the importance of a quality user experience. Think about it, how many times have you been listening to audio on a website, clicked on a link you wanted to check out and then lost connection with the audio? The bottom line is they didn’t just quickly throw together a web page to try and sell some CD’s, they approached the creation from a user’s perspective and thus ensured a quality user experience.

The new CD from Bent Tree is $10. I don’t know if it will be available on iTunes but we highly recommend that every music producer, including churches, get their music on iTunes. Again, if you need help with this aspect, ping us, and let us teach you how.

Great job Bent Tree. (You too, Greg).

Whether your church falls into the “Average” category or not, nearly every church experiences a summer slow-down in areas like attendance, giving, and getting enough volunteer help. Given that we just completed the first official holiday weekend of this summer, I thought it appropriate to publish a few ideas that will help any church beat the summer slow-down.

1. Start Podcasting – Many church members will miss multiple church services during the summer months. Most of those members would benefit greatly by being able to subscribe to a sermon podcast published by the church. This is a great way for church members to stay in the loop and not miss Part (#) of (##) in the latest sermon series. Let’s face it too, if your church isn’t podcasting you are already way behind the curve. The sermon podcast is almost “old hat” at this point in time. If your church is already podcasting the sermon then you should think about getting creative and doing something out of the ordinary in the form of a podcast. How about a “Weekly Announcements” podcast? Or what about a “1 minute devotional” or “Word of encouragement” from the Pastor as a podcast? These types of podcasts are very easily created and published with today’s technology. Podcasting is really about two things. First, its about delivering a message to people in a manner that is very easy for them to get. Second, its about staying in front of your audience with regularly published content. Which leads me to idea number 2…

2. Set up Online Giving – If your church hasn’t enabled some form of online giving at this point, now is the time. Here’s the deal, statistically, most church members don’t give at all. Those that do, many times, need a nudge, poke, or memory jog to do so. I agree, this shouldn’t be the case but let’s face it, it is. Online giving is very easy to set up, its secure, and many church members like the idea of being able to pay their tithe online. Consider doing the following things after you set up online giving. First, make sure to announce this in your Sunday morning announcement video roll. Make it big, bold, and simple. Second, make sure that you include a link to your church’s online giving portal on every page of your church website and in every podcast that you publish. (If you don’t know how to embed a link to your online giving portal into a podcast, ask us for help). If you utilize a message-on-hold system at your church, include an announcement about online giving there as well. In each of these instances you have a captive audience. Take advantage of that.

3. Set up Online Community and Groups – Many churches are scared of setting up an online community but this is a great way for folks to stay in touch and stay connected with one another during the summer slow down. Whether you use something free like FaceBook, or have your Web Presence firm create something that is customized for your church, relationships and community will flourish when online community is implemented effectively. Consider this too; more and more people are embracing mobile computing and technology. The reason for this is because it makes it easier for them to stay connected to the people and things that are important to them. This includes church and the relationships that started there. To steal a line from one of my favorite movies…”If you build it, they will come.” I’ll clarify that by saying this; it must be supported from the top down and your Pastor can’t be a control freak.

4. Reward your volunteers – I know, I know, giving is already down. I’ve suggested that you implement podcasting, online giving, and online community and now I want you to reward your volunteers. Am I crazy? Absolutely. Reward them, they deserve it. Here are a couple of ideas that I have seen work really well. First, how about a “Volunteer of the Month” award. Sounds kooky I know, but put together a thank you package for each department in the church. Include things like an American Express gift card, a nice devotional book, and maybe some formal public recognition. Choose one volunteer from each church department and show them how much you appreciate their hard work with a care package like this. Second, solicit some prizes from local sponsors or business people in the church. Our church has given away an iPod on several occasions and you’d be amazed at how competitive people will get over a $150 item. In fact, you could make it a competition. Set some parameters for qualification and observe how people behave. You just might implement this strategy year round. Most importantly, express your sincere appreciation to every volunteer. Without them, most churches would whiter up and die.

Anyone else have any ideas for beating the summer slow-down?

UPDATE: 2008.05.17 – 10:00 AM – Please note that the website we referenced here was hacked and apparently vandalized overnight on May 16, 2008. This is very disappointing. In an effort to prevent any negative feelings or connotations to this site we have removed the link to it in this blog post. Once the site is restored and its security beefed up we will restore the link.

Microblogging seems to be all the rage. For those who may not yet know, microblogging is the near real-time, short message bursts that alert you to exactly what those you’ve decided to follow are doing at any given moment. The service maintains a timeline so that you can look back over a period of time to get a feel for someone’s day, or night, as the case may be for some, in the event that you missed some of the dozens to hundreds of entries that might accumulate for an individual in a given day. There are quite a few services dedicated to this new-found real-time digital voyeurism. Several are Twitter, Jaiku (recently purchased by Google), and Pownce, to name a few. While they all provide essentially the same service, allowing you to “follow”, and be “followed” by, anyone, Twitter seems to be gaining momentum as the preferred microblogging service of those in the know.

I know, you may be wondering already about the title of this entry and where it comes into play. What’s the connection between microblogging and WeTheChurch.org?

First, I’d like to credit Bobby Gruenwald of LifeChurch.tv for the heads-up on this one. In a post on the Swerve Blog today, Bobby told about this new site, WeTheChurch.org. The premise is that much like a microblog, except without having to establish an account, people can submit prayer requests and praises through the website and they get placed on the timeline, for anyone to see, but mostly for others to pray for. So far, not much more than a prayer and praise bulletin board. Very Web 1.0-ish. The power, and I mean power comes in the attachment of the site to the WeTheChurch.org Twitter feed. For those that choose to follow the feed, they will receive real-time notifications of real prayer requests and real praises. Very Web 2.0-ish!

Think for a moment about Matthew 18:19. It says:

When two of you get together on anything at all on earth and make a prayer of it, my Father in heaven goes into action. – The Message

Wow! I get goosebumps thinking of countless stories of people being awakened in the middle of the night, for no other reason than they felt that God was calling them to pray for someone right then at that moment. God certainly can, and will continue to, stir our hearts to pray at specific times, for specific people, in specific situations. That is still very much part of the wonder and mystery of God and how He works. How cool to now also have an endless source of praises and petitions to join together with others in bringing before him. In Matthew 26:41 Jesus commanded His disciples to:

Stay alert; be in prayer so you don’t wander into temptation without even knowing you’re in danger. There is a part of you that is eager, ready for anything in God. But there’s another part that’s as lazy as an old dog sleeping by the fire. – The Message

I think this may be, for many, a great way to be reminded to “Stay alert; be in prayer…”

What do you think?