Our old site design was great but we had outgrown it. You can read more about the backstory here.

Instead of letting our old site go, we wanted to do something with it that could help build another church’s web presence and that’s where the idea for giving it away was born. After talking with Drew Goodmanson and his team at MonkDev we agreed to find a church plant that was in its final stages of being launched and bless them with the gift of a website. Park donated our old site design and MonkDev donated their time to help make the site customized to the church as well as donating a free year of service on CMS.

Over 30 different churches applied and in the end we selected 2 Pillars Church in Lincoln, Nebraska, to receive our website. They had been using WordPress very effectively, but definitely needed to get a solid web presence as they began to spread the word to their community about their church.

2 Pillars will be holding their first public service this weekend and with it have officially launched their new website!

Huge thanks to MonkDev/Ekklesia360 for making this possible! To 2 Pillars, we pray for God to continue to bless your ministry and hope this website helps you effectively communicate and spread the word about what God is doing in Lincoln.

In all of this, let me say this: sometimes it’s OK to recycle. Recycling is different than copying. Recycling maintains some original properties but recycled material can take on new forms. In this case, you can see echoes of Park’s old site, but it’s now something completely different that better suits the needs of 2 Pillars Church.

If you’ve seen something work somewhere else or are inspired by something you’ve seen… don’t copy, recycle. Reshape and reform what you see to fit the needs of your unique context.

Having great content is half the battle, but presentation is everything. We love what ApsireOne has done in creating a fantastic customized platform for sharing our audio and video content.

The player integrates with multiple formats… vimeo, FLV, 316 Networks, Lightcast, etc and is updated seamlessly with an easy-to-use web based administration panel. Simple. Easy. Seamless. Always a good way to go.

We’re still uploading our content and getting it all organized but I wanted you to be the first to see!

Huge thanks to the team at AspireOne!

And if you ask me, I think in under 4 minutes it presents a rather compelling reason why you, as a church leader, and your church MUST engage with social media.

The revolution is coming.

It’s already here.

I Tweeted about a week ago that I think September is the new January, especially in the church world… how do you all feel about that?

I don’t know about your churches, but at Park, September is when we officially kick off the ministry year. Summer is a major down time for us in the city… people are on vacation or just outside enjoying the three reasons why most people live in Chicago: June, July, and August.

So, September, rather than January has become our natural “reset” for the ministry year.

For me, it’s shaping up to be a wild month for a few reasons…

1 – I’m moving.
I’m moving from Lincoln Park to Wicker Park. From the land of the preppy “Chads” and “Trixies” to Hipsterville, I’m moving across town and I’m really excited. Wicker Park is an awesome neighborhood that has a lot of diversity and it’s literally like moving to a whole new city. So much to explore and experience, and I’m confident there’s new opportunities to minister. Catch is: I don’t move in my new place until September 15 and I have to be out of my place today… so today commences 15 days of couch surfing at some different places. Should be exciting!

2 – Park’s new website + Social Networking site launch.

It’s true.  A year after a major website overhaul we are going to launch Park 2.0 in late September. We had a winning team working on the redesign… CHANGEffect on the design and Ekklesia360 on the implementation and CMS. We’re also excited to be one of the first churches to implement the Cobblestone Community Network, a resource I really is going to help the church be the church in MASSIVE ways! More on blog entries on why the change, the process and design coming soon! (And, bonus… we’ll be launching a mobile site, too!)

3 – My first speaking gig.

I posted about this last week but my first speaking gig on the topic of church communications is right around the corner. I’ll be presenting a workshop called Do-it-Yourself Church Communications at MinistryCOM. Super excited. REGISTER! BE THERE!!!

4 – Innovate

So excited for Innovate at Granger Community Church. It’s seriously one of the best experiences for your team. Hear from some of the best and see a church that’s doing some incredible things that are making a huge impact for Christ. The thing I love about Innovate is that you don’t just hear ideas, you see them in action and get a hear the heart behind it all.
And if all that weren’t enough don’t get me started on October… Catalyst, Cultivate, and Story.

(By the way… what’s with all the cool kid conferences being one word?)

I’ll post Drew’s notes on this when I get them, they will be more accurate than mine!

Are church websites effective tools for outreach and evangelism?

• John 17:18… as you have sent them into the world so I have sent them into the world.
• Facebook is now the “5th largest nation in the world.”
• The world is online so we need to be.
• 64% of wired Americans have used the internet for spiritual or religious purposes. – Pew Research Study
• 0.17% (1 person) said they were not a Christian and influenced to go to the church as a result of visiting the church website.
• 60 million Americans say they use the Internet to make big decisions.
• 6% of churches have Gospel presentation on their websites.
• At present, church websites are ineffective tools of evangelism.
• One possible reason… if you’re not a Christian, you’re not going to go to a church website to learn about God.

How are people finding the church website?

• On average, 25% are on a search looking for it.
• 43% are direct.
• 30% are clicking on a referral.
• What does search hits mean? Non-Christians are finding your site.
• Direct traffic typically means its people in your church, who know.
• The search represents the content of your site and how well it’s laid out.
• The higher the direct traffic, the higher the community involvement
• Referral means your online presence elsewhere.

During usability studies, 88% of web users went to a search engine first to accomplish a task.

Traditional church marketing has its message and you hope it connects with the person’s situation… online searches allow us the opportunity to be a “just in time” church based on what people are searching for.

• Life change – reach people when they need the church the most. (depression, marriage, health, death, illness, transition).
• Think about your town and how you can optimize the life changes people face in your community.
• People stay on a page for about 45 seconds… what are you going to do with that time?
• What are you going to do with the traffic that comes to your web? (Wherever it comes from!)
• Church websites are an effective tool for reaching Christians.
• 16% of people say that the church website is the first time they heard about the church
• #1 area people went on websites for information for new people… how are you thinking for that population?
• Many churches are creating websites for internal purposes, but what are you doing to connect people on the outside.

There’s three populations of people who visit your church website: visitors, beginners (3-6 months), and regulars (6+ months).

• 30% of people who were new to the church said the website is where they learn about the church.
• 77% said the church website was very important in making the decision of whether they were going to visit your church or not.
• A church’s website is people’s first filter to find a church.
• Spend your homepage connecting with first-time visitors and new people to your church.

Triperspectival Design

• Normative
• Existential
• Situational

• What do you want to communicate about your vision?
• What behaviors do you want the visitors to imitate?
• 82% of beginners say the website was important in their participation in the church community.
• 45% said it was important for their spiritual growth.
• 73% said the website was helpful in their evangelism efforts.
• 76% of regulars said the web was still important in their involvement in their church community.
• 47% said it was an active part of their spiritual growth and discipleship.
• 52% of regulars said it was important in sharing their faith.
• 82% of regulars visit the church website at least once a week.

Web Development – Developing a Church Web Strategy

• Internet Presence Management – how and what is your presence online? We have to develop a strategy and lead our people that way, or people will be all over the place. Where are your people online? What are they using? Is all your info on Facebook? Google Groups, etc? Think about the principal issues and how you’re going to accomplish them.
• Website Development - what behaviors do you want from people?
• Community Development - how are you going to engage your community? How do you create space for community online and use Facebook missionally?
• Church Management - online donations, event registration, etc.

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• 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.

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Monk Development and a number of other faith-based media outlets are sponsoring a study of the Church online… looking at how churches are using and interacting with social media and the web. [Check out Drew's blog for more.]

Some results they found…

• 51% of participating churches are on Facebook
  - Churches are using Facebook as an extension of their church.
  - More informational, used more as communications vehicle, less of a community building presence.
• Limited use of MySpace, Second Life, GoogleGroups, etc.
• 21% on Twitter
• A small number are using a members portal or private community site (Unifyer, TheCommon.org, 360Hubs, etc).
• 82% of surveyed churches didn’t even know about the different products out there.
• Encourage your church to register your church name on different social media outlets so you have rights to your name.
• Church networking and community sites have made little inroads into the church.
• A problem with all of the different avenues out there is that there’s not a collected, central spot to communicate from… especially if your church is not leading the way and providing a consistent platform for people to use.

Social Media Desires
What feature/funcationality are people in our churches looking for from our church websites?

• Event Sign-up/RSVP’s.
• Post Prayer Requests.
• Connect People to Service Opportunities.
• Connect with Small Groups.
• Integration with church website.
• Resource sharing.
• Ability to access TV/phone directory.

Congregations didn’t care about:

• blogging
• ability to post classifieds
• ability to post photos in photo galleries
• ability to post jobs

Most mainstream social networking sites do no offer churches the seamless solutions they seek.

Questions to Ask on Building Community

1. Is virtual community real community?
2. What is Biblical community? How are we living out Biblical community in a real way?
3. How can technology assist in this process? It can assist, but it cannot replace. It must drive people into real relationships.

Discipleship

1. How many of you feel like you have been discipled online? Online discipleship is a dangerous thing when it’s done outside of real life relationships. It’s more than courses, training and learning… it’s about relationships.
2. How can technology assist this process? There are tools and resources we can use to communicate and enhance discipleship.

Most church online media is used for communication, contact, event and small group management, etc. Primarily focused on “us” and not focused on the individual and not contributing to building community, connecting people, etc.

Top challenges of using social media in churches.

• Amount of effort required
• Identifying appropriate goals/ROI
• Fostering real community
• Cultural resistance from congregation or church leadership.

For more information about the State of the Church Online Study, click here.

Also, check out the Cobblestone Community Network, a new tool designed to help the Church be the Church, online… designed by Drew + his team at Ekklesia360.

A Month in 10 Points…

1 – Our website was stolen. Park’s website was stolen by another church. Like for real. It was a valuable experience in learning that imitation can be the most sincerest form of flattery.

2 – I joined an amazing gym. Already said that in my previous post but for real, it’s awesome. I love it… the staff… the vibe. I don’t feel like I’m going to gym, I feel like I’m going to a club. Me and the elliptical are BFF.

3 – Story was announced. So excited to be a part of it. You need to go. I think
this is going to be an incredible opportunity for all of us to learn to tell
our Story and to re-imagine how we do ministry.

4 – Cultivate registration went live. Thrilled to be hosting it at Park and so
excited about what God is going to do through that event. If you are in
communications, ministry, social media, whatever… you need to come. It’s the
day before Story and it will be phenom… you need to check it out.

5 – MinistryCOM Workshop. I’ll be doing a workshop at MinistryCOM called DIY Church Communications. It pulls some material from my future book and will focus on how to effectively do church communications with a staff of 1… yourself.

6 – The new Whole Foods. Ok, seriously. I already loved Whole Foods. Then they went and opened the third largest one in the WORLD within walking distance from me. I think I’m going to rename it “Whole Paycheck” because I’ve been there nearly everyday. I’m taking any out of town visitor there to check it out. It’s crazy.

7 – Park website 2.0 is in the works. We’re sticking with Ekklesia360 and partnering with CHANGEffect for the design. So excited about it. It’s going to be sick.

8 - Park was in Collide magazine. Park was featured in an article in the most recent issue of Collide on an article about texting in church. Check it.

9 – Hillsong United’s new CD is phenom. So it’s still in the top 100 charts on iTunes. If you haven’t yet, get a copy of it. Seriously.

10 – Resident Ragamuffin. Jason Widney, Park’s Media Arts Director made the cut and will be a part of Carlos Whittaker’s Creative Coaching, Round 1. So stoked for him!

At the end of the day, no matter what capacity you serve in the Church or in ministry, that is why we do what we do.

The “world” as we know it has changed.

We no longer need to go to the world to reach the world.

Well, of course we still need people “going” – that’s a no-brainer. BUT, our world is getting smaller and our ability to go to the world is as easy as a click of a mouse.

All that being said I heard two things today that helped give me some perspective:

1. Facebook is bigger than all but four the countries in the world. It just passed 200 million users… (via @michaelhyatt
2. 32% of the influential churches in America are on Facebook (via @toddrhoades) …

So… here’s my take on all this.

32% isn’t a big number.

In fact, I think it’s way too small.

I recently talked with a friend whose church blocks employees from going to Facebook. I nearly wept. Seriously?

We have an unprecedented opportunity to expand our reach through the different networks that social media opens up to us.

And, social media is exploding.

I’ve talked a bit about how Park uses Twitter, but since today’s theme is Facebook, I wanted to take a second to talk about how we’re leveraging Facebook. We’re not experts and have a long way to go, but we’re getting there.

We’ve been using Facebook at Park for awhile – first through groups and more recently with Pages.

There are quite a few Park Facebook Groups, and through them, although there is some overlap, we’re connected to close to 2,000 people.

And more recently, we started our Facebook Page back in November and are just crossed over 850 “fans.”

To be honest, I was a bit hesitant about using Facebook, I wasn’t sure if people would utilize it as a means to connect with us, but the more we’re putting out there, the more people are engaging.

And the thing about Facebook that is so exciting to me is that as our people participate and RSVP to Events we post, or comment on photos or videos we post, their friends (who we may have never had the chance to connect with before) are now seeing that “Joe” is attending our Easter services, or that “Jane” commented on a video we posted. And there is a seed planted.

Bottom line: we’ve got to be out there.

We’ve got to be where people are at. We’ve got make our content more accessible to them in a platform they already use and not try and create our own.

Be it Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or whatever…we need to GO to where they are online!

While some churches have varying demographics, at the end of the day, as the world interacts and communicates more and more online, the church needs to be present online, or we’ll risk becoming irrelevant.

And churches that are making the moves and strides to be more present online are the ones that are going to become most effective at reaching people in the future.

If your church blocks Facebook or other social media, have the tough convo, say what needs to be said… there’s a whole world out there (online) that needs you there!

If your church continues to avoid being online it will run the risk of going offline.

Go into the online world… and proclaim the message of the Gospel!

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