Last time, I shared a video of the digital nativity story.

It has garnered a lot of press around the world because of its timely and smart execution.

Kudos to the Portual-based team that produced it.

Now, others are jumping on the bandwagon after all the buzz that’s been going around (that’s the power of social media, right?).

I present to you this time . . . A Facebook Christmas story. . .

While there are critics who’s knee-jerk reactions will be to shout out how shallow and trendy these versions are — I wonder if you really quizzed people, especially younger ones, about the actual storyline — would they be able to tell the story better before they saw these videos or afterwards?

I would be willing to bet that since this video is so contextualized to the Facebook generation, a good portion of the group would be able to reconstruct the basics of the storyline in much better fashion than through the accumulated exposure to all the Christmas plays at church over the year as they were growing up.

Take a look for yourself at this video:

QUESTION: Does this video tell the story well enough?

Well, the other posts in this series touched upon how your ministry should view the social web as an extension of your social community and also seeing that social media is not just a passing fad at this point.

Today, I’ll share three factors of the social web that makes it compelling to use for church communications, especially for outreach into the communities around you.

At the foundation of today’s discussion is basically whether you want to remain nameless without any familiarity or trust. Do you want to be some anonymous entity stuck in a corner of your community or do you want to be a dynamic community participant that befriends people so you can invite them into relationships — with you and / or your ministry?

Here we go:

1) Better visibility – Managing your online presence across the social web gives you a position of infinitely better visibility to those that are in your community.  These days, the Googlopoly has invaded our life, not just our computers.  People don’t let their fingers to the walking anymore, they  travel the world of mouth.   In fact, with any serious effort, you’ll personally gain a lot more “friends” that can now know you exist than ever before.

2) Increased familiarity – This benefit does not require exteme lifestreaming, but it can be found from intentional utilization of the social media networks out there. If you are wiling to take on some simple proactive strategies, the social web allows you to converse with a much wider range of people about a much diverse range of topics than you probably would in your normal offline routine around town.  As people begin to regularly have a view into your daily activities (regular as well as those seat of the pants last minute activities), thoughts /reactions to various happenings around town, and your overall posture regarding both -  things that excite you and things that really really really matter to you, your local online social network becomes increasingly familiar with you, your personality / humor as well as your general willingness to engage.

3) Trust - This can only be achieved over time with authentic exchanges pointing the way to a God-honoring relationship built on trust. If you are consistent, outward facing, and responsive to people’s questions, needs, and just plain ol’ calls for social engagement, it is a start to quickly establishing trust with other individuals in your social networks. This last factor category cannot be overstated enough in terms of effects.

Visibility, Familiarity, and Trust. These are the ingredients of any evangelistic outreach efforts whether you are online or offline.

Do you see how utilizing the social web successfully is not that different?  You really should leave a comment below.

Recently, I’ve been getting into more discussions with people regarding the question – should churches be using social media? If so, why and how?

There are plenty of reasons why we should look at the social web and see ways that the church should be evaluating and embracing it as just another extension of the offline social web that is the basis for our church communities.  I posted a video here of a recent talk that walked through the super high level basics of why the church should be social media positive.

Further in the conversation, the question arises whether social media is here to stay or just another fad.  I ask, was faxing or texting a fad?  Because they both were viewed the same way at the very beginning, but both in their own contexts are heavily relied upon for communicating these days.

Social media seems to be everywhere. There’s an important distinction here. Talking about social media might be a fad. But social media itself as a communications medium or approach, is probably something different. . .

Here’s a video from the Socialnomics author Erik Qualman that has made the rounds (based off an original version of socialnomics that went viral a long time ago in internet time) that presents that case regarding social media and diagnosing it as a fad. . .

AFTER WATCHING THE VIDEO ABOVE, WHAT DO YOU THINK?  ANYTHING SURPRISE YOU? Please leave a comment here to encourage or challenge others about churches embracing the social web!

Christmas and Easter are the two big weekends each year where congregations make an all out push to invite people to come visit the worship community.

Some churches have used the occasion of Christmas to make a big splash and catch the attention of seekers and non-believers. One tactic is to take a look at what’s happening in secular culture and integrate it into the media mix for church communications and worship.

Here’s one church that has appropriated the 3-D technology which the masses have been increasingly seeing on the big screen and small screen.

Check out how Church By The Glades in Florida is using 3D in their pass along marketing collateral — to whet people’s appetites for the Christmas service this year. . . (more…)

If you’re in the midst of planting a church you’re probably:

A) in need of sleep

B) in need of funds

C) in need of a website to tell the world

Sorry pastors, I can’t do anything about your dreams for being able to actually find time to have dream aren’t real just yet! haha!

But here’s a generous offer to help you with the the last item on this list above — a free website to spread the word about your new ministry in town. . .

One of the better known church website companies is Site Organic, which offers a very dynamic content management system for church websites.  They ain’t super cheap if you are looking at absolute dollar figures, so most church plants can’t benefit from services from companies like SiteOrganic.  For example, their pricing ranges from $1,200 — $3,000 per year on a recurring basis.  That’s A BIG CHECK to write for most new church plants.

But what you do get is a very rich content management system that is capable of all the bells and whistles you see on the largest church and ministry websites on the web today.  Even their most affordable packages provide aesthetically pleasing designs — ones where you certainly won’t be embarrassed about in representing your church to the community you are investing in.

The GOOD NEWS here is that Site Oragnic is giving away their services for free to church planters.

As long as you have less than 300 people adults attending your church to date, and it’s been less than a year (or even before you launch your official first worship gathering), you’re all set to benefit from the free offer.

The fine print is that it’s technically not completely free.  You do have to pay a $99 start-up fee, which is basically aimed to weed out the freewheelers and anyone that isn’t seriously planting a church right now.  But the rest is really free.  You’ll get over $2,500 in free services with no obligation to continue at that package rate, nor at all period after the first year.

If you’re planting a church, this gives you some breathing room to establish your core community.

Assumably, if you’re church plant is even semi-successful, you will have gotten some sort of financial stability after another year of existence — at least enough to to have the beginnings of financial options so that you can decide what to do about your web presence.  If you’re church plant’s time is not meant to be in the here and now, you’ll know that too after another year from now and you won’t be in need of web services much longer at that point.

Having personally seen SiteOrganic being used live in the church website setting, I can say that you won’t be disappointed by this offer.  It’s one less thing to think about so you can focus on the more important tasks at hand in launching your ministry.  Enjoy!

QUESTION: Does your church currently use a 3rd party website service like Site Organic, or do an internally owned and managed website?

Please share your experience with other ministry leaders and leave a comment below!

As many of the readers here at Godvertiser.com know, a big part of my background over the past decade has been in the strategic marketing / e-marketing arena.

I am currently in the midst of refining a new offering within Big Click Syndicate LLC, my consulting and coaching business — aimed at pastors, churches, ministries and non-profit organizations.

While I tinker with how the specific offering will be structured, I have decided to offer some free professional website audits to this target audience.

The twist with the website audit is that I would record it via a video screencast (which is a fancy term for a video recording of my narration while the computer activity on the monitor is recorded for the video) and publish it here on Godvertiser.com for others to benefit from some of the things I choose to highlight.  If will offer specific critique and a wide range of suggestions regarding user experience, branding, online marketing and website search engine optimization.

So here’s where I need your help: Would you be willing to let your ministry/organization website be a quick video case study for online church marketing?

Just fill out this free professional website audit request form.

QUESTION: ARE YOU HAPPY WITH YOUR ORGANIZATION’S CURRENT WEBSITE?  Yes or No?

As of now, there are 48 fully online churches that exist in the world like www.liquidchurch.com and www.lifechurch.tv.

Full-fledged online communities complete with pastoral leadership and ministry leaders specifically attending to the online participants around the world.  “Online Church Pastor” is new title for many people to find out about.

CNN apparently has recently discovered that thousands of people are gathering online in community via the Internet.

Like many CNN segments, this one is cursory in nature, but at least it helps introduce the masses to this new, but fully-here-to-stay permutation of doing church:

What do you think was the takeaway which the public got from this TV segment? Is it an accurate portrayal of doing church online? Leave your thoughts in a comment below please!

Perhaps the Protestants *do* have something learn from the Vatican even after breaking away a long time ago.

First Pope Benedict XVI said to his troops, go ahead and blog away!

Next he launched his own YouTube channel – called Pope2You (gotta love that!)

If you’re a Pope that’s hip with YouTube, you’re obviously already on Facebook.

And what ultra-hip clergy would be without his own Pope Iphone App?

If these were not evidence that the Catholic Church has embraced the digital sanctuary and church online, here’s another dose of example of how the Vatican sees technology’s usefulness and validity in the expression of faith:

Every year, over 1 million of the 5 million people in Costa Rica make a yearly pilgrimage to the Nuestra Señora de los Angeles Basilica in Cartago.  But with H1N1 making the rounds, the country’s top health official banned the pilgrimage last year.  What did the Catholic Church do?

Nope, they didn’t protest (well, of course they did a little).

But instead, they embraced technology and launched www.romeriavirtual.com to that hundreds of thousands could still participate in the 288 year old religious ritual — and still do it in community.

Participants log in, upload a photo, choose their own walking feet/shoes and make the pilgrimage online amidst thousands of others doing it at the same time, sharing all the while to the destination, Basílica de Nuestra Señora de los Ángeles (Our Lady of the Angels Basilica):

The H1N1 threat has subsided enough that the offline pilgrimage is back on this year, but what’s happened is that a virtual version has been birthed and will continue as this new tradition evolves and becomes part of the annual rite now involving participants from around the world.

You might say that, faith really does have no boundaries — at least in this case!

There’s tons of stuff that you should be doing with your church website.

But at the base of it all, one of the most important things that matter are the 3 C’s for church websites:

1. CONTENT
2. CONTENT
3. CONTENT

Pastors and church webmasters are always struggling on how to churn out relevant content that will pull current church members back to the site more than the first week after announcing the website was revamped, relaunched, etc.

Surveys and polls are a great way, but most implementations to date have been awkward and non-optimal.  Here’s one that someone how gets people to answer multiple questions – it strangely works to get people to answer even looooooonnnnnng surveys with over 100+ questions.

What is the first survey you are going to set-up on your site after reading this post? Please feel free to link to the page on your website that includes a survey or poll to we can see examples in action.

Do you pray?