—

• Just for fun: John’s full name is John Charles Dickey Dyer
• One of the worst things you can do is imagine that technology is neutral.
• There’s to camps… tech lovers and tech haters.
• Both sides use the word “change”
• Tech lovers say it will “change” for good.
• Tech haters say it will “change” for the worse.
• It’s hard to balance our use of technology.
• Humans make tools…. our tools make us.
• What we create has influence back on us.
• We become the things that we behold.
• Psalm 1 … if we sit with those who are righteous we become righteous.
• We tend to believe that about many things, but not about our use of technology.
• Technology is an extension of humanity.
• Technology can be an amputation of humanity.

Evolution of New Technology

• Excitement – “YES! I got a shovel!”
• Difficulty – After you use it, you get blisters
• Transformation – You get stronger as a result of using it.

What kind of tool do you want to become?

Technology often has unintended effects. Most of us don’t think a lot about those effects. We just use what we’re told to use… whatever comes along and what’s new. Do we really need it?

Ages of Technology

• Oral – community memorizes common information.
• Print – logical individuals. (aka… The Bible is true. The Bible says God exists. Therefore, God exists). Many of our beliefs rest on rationale before faith.
• Image – emotional story tellers. We are surrounded by images… we tend to think of how to emotionally convey things with story, instead of logic. That’s the technology we use today.
• Machine – tireless producers. We became what we beheld… machines worked hard, we should work hard.
• Computer – data gatherers.
• Interwebs – loosely re-connected community?

There’s a world of disconnection and reconnection that happens with technology. If someone bothers us, we can block or unfriend them. We have switches.

What the Scripture says about Technology

• The story moves from the garden to the city.
• Who made the stuff in the city?
• Our human creativity is written into the story.
• What we create plays into the story.
• The First Technology in the Bible: clothing (Genesis, Adam & Eve).
• Rebels against God – expresses Imago Dei
• God’s Imago Dei is reflected in our creativty.
• Redeems the effects of the Fall – Foreshadows His return.
• Cain and the City – Cain builds a city, a place that’s alternate from the garden. (Gen 4)
• All the people who made tools and art came from Cain’s city.
• Jesus and the Cross – Jesus was a carpenter. From his job we get the word “technology.” The very tool He worked with was the tool He died on.
• God and the new City – God recreates everything and redeems it.
• God redeems human works.
• We offer redemption through what we create but it can’t compare to what God will give us.

New Testament

• Paul constantly expressed his desire to be with people.  (2 Tim 1:4)
• John didn’t want to use technology, but he did! (2 John 1:12)
• They used technology when they couldn’t be present with people.

Technology should help us stay connected when we can’t be face-to-face with people. Being face-to-face matters. Community sometimes sucks. Being face to face means you have to have a commitment to people you don’t decide to be with. Online community is a different kind of community.

Using Technology without Technology Using You

1. Deny the premise. You can’t use technology without it affecting you.
2. Experiment with Technology. Do something different. (Ill: Don’t take a Bible to church, just sit and listen… experience it differently.)
3. What do I want to cultivate? What do you want to get? What does it require for me to be “good” at it? Is that something you want?
4. Work both through and against technology. Jesus came as a Jew… he fully absorbed the culture to be with them. At the same time, He worked against them, He condemned things they do. We have to be incarnate like Jesus was… meaning we work through and against our technological culture.
5. Use technology as a means, not an end. We use a car as a means to get to an end. Or, we get a crazy awesome car… and use it so owning it is the end, the goal.
6. Create for a new world. All we create, all we do should be for eternity… for something that’s lasting.
7. Become a tool. Influence others for the glory of God. Be a tool He can use.

Phil Cooke is the Founder and Creative Director of Cooke Pictures in Burbank, California. Many of the largest and most effective Christian organizations in the world ask for his advice, and his ideas are changing the way people of faith use media to communicate with the culture. Christianity Today magazine called him a “media guru” and you’ve seen him on CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, and numerous national magazines. His blog at philcooke.com is a highly respected resource on media, faith, and culture and Phil’s workshops are a rare glimpse into the future of media and entertainment. His new book is “The Last TV Evangelist: Why The Next Generation Couldn’t Care Less About Christian Media… and why it matters.” Phil is also a founding partner in TWC Films, an award winning TV commercial company in Los Angeles that produced two spots that appeared during the 2008 Super Bowl.

—

• The open Media Revolution will dramatically shift everything we do.
• We used to have media that we turned “on and off”
• Media is always on.
• Media has become culture in the world we live in today.
• Communication does not begin with words; it begins with connection. – Jedd Medefind & Erik Lokkesmoe, The Revolutionary Communicator
• A brand is a compelling story that surrounds a product, person or organization.
• The big question we need to ask is: What do people think of when they think of you?
• What does our community  think of when they think of our church?
• That’s the key to getting your message heard.
• You don’t see most company’s brand statements.
• Nike’s brand statement is all about the spirit of the athlete.
• Difference between Nike and other shoes is the story that they tell.
• Starbucks brand statement is a “great coffee experience.”
• Everything they do comes out of their brand story.
• It matters because of choice… and we live in a world filled with choices.
• How do you stand out? What makes the difference?
• Is Jesus a brand manager?
• Jesus controlled His perception in every stage of His life.
• Came to earth in a different way. Preached a different message. Did things differently. He left big crowds. He let Himself be arrested. He decided which questions to answer.
• Who controls our perceptions?
• Will you control your story or let other people do it?
• What’s your Story?

The Branding Big Four

• What’s the point? What do you do this? Why do you get up in the morning? What drives you?
• What makes you, you? Who you are matters, it makes up the perspective you have.
• What are your skills and talents? What are you good at right now? Not what you want to do, what you hope to be better at… what are you good at right now?
• What makes you different? The world is looking for unique and different.

We are in the middle of the greatest shift in our culture since the inventing of the printing press.

• We need to pop the bubble… too many of us live in a Christian media bubble.
• We discovered the Christian audience is a buying audience and stopped speaking to the world and started speaking to each other.
• We’re not impacting culture anymore, we need to pop the bubble.
• We don’t need “Christian media” we need Christians who make media.
• We live in one of the most cluttered times in the world of history.
• We receive 3,000-5,000 media messages per day.
• Average TV is on 8 hours and 18 minutes per day.
• How do we get our voice heard in a world filled with different voices?
• First public buildings to open in Afghanistan after the war were movie theaters. That’s the power of media.
• Old media was a one-way conversation; today’s media world has created a two-way conversation.
• We have a voice in the media.
• This generation wants a voice.
• The audience needs a way to talk back.
• This generation picked the next American Idol by texting in their votes… they want a choice.
• Today’s audience wants to be a part of the story.
• Generation after generation of pastors and Christian leaders get it wrong. They believe our only responsibilty is sharing the message.
• “When you find yourself in a hole stop digging.” – Will Rogers

10 Things to Remember…

1. In a media driven culture, visibility is just as important as ability. Get noticed, get seen.
2. You can’t brand a lie. Be who you say you are. In a media-driven culture, what you took up a lifetime to build up can be taken down in an instant. Google is not a search… it’s reputation management. Manage your online presence. If you Google yourself and nothing comes up, you need to get into the digital age. The future is about findability, if you can’t be found, you don’t exist.
3. Being different is everything. Be different. Be unique. People who are unique get noticed.
4. Stop thinking “mass” and start thinking “niche.” We can’t be everything but you could be something unique. Be the best you can be in an incredibly narrow word.
5. Understand the Power of a Name. Names matter because they are the first thing people see, and in a media-driven world, that’s how they will judge you. Be careful where you put your name. In one year enrollment doubled at Grand Rapids Baptist Bible College… now known as Cornerstone University.
6. Speak the language of design. Does your style and media choices reflect the audience you are trying to reach? If you have a flag, a dove, a globe or a flame as images in your church, GET RID OF THEM! Be careful about how you use the cross. The early church never used the cross as a symbol of who they are until after the last person who had seen a crucifixion had died. Images have power. This generation doesn’t get the cross.
7. Lose the Lingo. We’ve created a language no one understands but us. (See my post on Christianese.)
8. Culture is more important than vision. Create a culture where vision can happen.
9. Find the over-arching theme for your life and work. What are you all about? If you cut yourself… what would you bleed?
10. What drives you nuts? The problem that drives you crazy is usually what God is calling you to fix.

It’s not just who you are, it’s how you are perceived that counts.

Influence your own perception, or you will spend your life at the mercy of other people who will.

Dawn Nicole Baldwin is a strategist with a passion to help churches reach people more effectively. She lives this out as founder and lead strategist of AspireOne and as a senior partner with Jarbyco, a mobile communications firm specializing in live events that works with organizations such as Park Community Church, Lifechurch.tv and Youth Specialties.

A former staff member of Big Idea Productions [creators of VeggieTales] and Willow Creek, Dawn Nicole frequently contributes to today’s leading-edge thinking of integrating Christianity and culture but is best known as a change agent who is intent on stretching imaginations, connecting people and making a difference.

About Cynthia Ware
Cynthia Ware is a consultant with an in depth expertise in two areas: online technologies and strategic church development.

Equipped with two decades of pastoral ministry and a Master’s Degree in New Media, Cynthia helps Christian leaders develop online communication strategies to compliment their ministry goals. She consults pastors, churches, ministries and non-profits in how to use their online presence to enrich and expand their ministry reach.

Besides consulting, she is an active public speaker & writer. This year she has presented at Biola University, the Internet Ministry Conference, Willow Creek’s Group Life Conference, the Dynamic Church Conference, Innovation3 and The Idea Camp.

Her personal blog, The Digital Sanctuary, encourages Christian leaders to explore, embrace and employ participatory media technologies to serve the Kingdom of God. Additionally, she is a co-contributor to several other online sites including Digital, the Leadership Network’stechnology blog. She is also an officer for many online Christian networks, websites and internet resources.

Since 2001, Cynthia and her husband Bob, an associate pastor, have lived in the greater Los Angeles area with their two teenage children and a lot of computers.

—

Social Media – a fusion of sociology and technology, transforming monologues (one to many) into dialogues (many to many).

• The church has existed as a monologue.
• We don’t want to be talked at, we want to be talked with.
• We don’t want to be talked to, we want to be talked with.
• We cannot project what our trajectories will be like through social media.
• Christianity is spread virally.
• Technology is opening a new door and opportunity for the church.
• Check out a new book called SimChurch… not released yet, about the number of people Christians are reaching online.
• Social media allows us to connect hubs and connect people with like-mindedness and passions and connect them.
• People now drive and author content.
• We need to shift our mindset in how we think how we should communicate.
• Facebook, Twitter, Web, YouVersion have changed the way we communicate.
• 250 million people are on Facebook.
• 4.6 million people are on Twitter.

What does that mean for us?

1. We can avoid it.
2. We can realize it’s already there, already happened, it’s free, and figure out what can we do with it.

Facebook

• The connections that happen online become far more tightly connected and woven than it used to through social media (e.g. when you post something to Facebook and people respond to it.).
• It’s not about publishing your sermon, it’s about finding places for people to connect in real and authentic ways (even though it’s virtual).
• Websites should not be static, they should be dynamic and link to social media.
• Use social media to start conversations.
• Key to Facebook is the number of people that are on it… the most vital dimensions of ministry are often on the edges.
• Courageous Church was pioneered via Facebook.
• Found an ad blast on Saturday is more effective than an ad a day.

Free & Paid Services

• File sharing is critical to new media.
• Flickr and YouTube are free, most people have accounts there.
• If your website is connected to YouTube or Facebook, there’s a high likelihood your website will be used as a “place” not just a “space.”
• Free spaces created interconnectivity.
• Ning is a great social media tool to use.
• Most churches pay per user for services like Unifyer, Cobblestone, etc which give churches a level of control and moderation. And they give a “safe zone” for members.
• Where you put your money is where your investment will be.
• Most churches see the web as being a vital part of their ministry, but don’t fund to staff and manage it.
• First-time visitors will come from your webpage first.
• If you opt for a private online community, connect it to Facebook, don’t abandon it.

Interactive Tools & Services

• Tokbox – video calls.
• Jarbyco – text messaging.
• Cover it Live & UStream – interactive chats.
• Usually the church is being seen as “slow” when it comes to these things. But, the Church seems to be blazing the way in thinking through how we can leverage these new social media platforms.

Churches to watch: LifeChurch.tv, Park Community Church (right on!)

• Each church has an opporutnity to innovate in their own way in accordnace with their own calling.
• That’s different than jumping in on other people’s  ideas.
• Salt loses its seasoning… it becomes like another instead of being it’s own unique flavor.
• Who do we want to reach? What do we want to accomplish? And how can technology help us get there?
• We need real life touch and connection but not miss the free connection points technology allows us.
• Go to where people are already at.

iCampuses

• Many churches are launching internet campuses.
• There’s not a “one size fits all” approach.
• Community is key.
• iCampuses to watch: LifeChurch.tv, New Hope, North Point, Flamingo Road

7 Deadly Sins of Social Media

• Lust – loving your audience is great, but take it slow. Don’t stalk or overwhelm your audience.  No one wants to be spammed by their church.
• Gluttony – don’t bite off more than you can chew.  Start slow with a few things instead of trying to do it all at once.
• Greed – it’s hard to shake hands while you’re reaching for someone’s wallet. Don’t pressure people to volunteer… don’t stalk people to do things they haven’t asked. Texting is permission based. Treat those relationships like gold.
• Sloth – avoid the temptation to “set it and forget it.” We need to be intentional!
• Wrath – there are a lot of people out there itching fora punch in the nose, but don’t be the one to give it to them. Be careful what gets posted in any social media channel.
• Envy – don’t be dissuaded by other people “doing it better than you.” Stay focused on the mission God has set before you.
• Pride – stay humble, rock star.

Questions to Consider When Diving into Social Media:

• What’s the goal?
• What is the best tool?
• How much does it cost?
• How will we create buy-in?
• When will we evaluate?
• How will we measure success?

It is worth it to experiment. The goal is to use the technology, not the technology using you. It’s a tool for enhanced communication. What works best for you might not work for someone else.

Key things to watch are GLOBAL and MOBILE.

Your congregation should be moving to paperless.

Churches should not have “turn your phone off” signs, they should have turn your phone on signs.”