One of the biggest concepts we’ve covered already is that social media is here to stay.  The Church cannot ignore this growing part of any given individual’s daily routine.  Your people are using social networks to manage and grow their relationships right now.

The question then becomes, how do you integrate social media technologies and frameworks into the social fabric of the church or ministry?  Is it too early to try and adapt or integrate the social web into how we do church?

The answer is a clear no, it’s not too early.  In fact, the time is ripe to seriously embrace social media into the relationship and communications flow of your community.  And there are a bunch of options available that are ministry specific so that you don’t have to cobble together your own solution if you don’t want to.

Here’s one example: the Table Project. It’s a non-profit ministry group that is producing a robust, customizable social networking platform specific to churches. Take a look at this overview that covers the philosophy/approach to TableProject:

This video above leaves you wanting for a peek at the actual nitty gritty of the TableProject experience for users, right?

Here’s just one example of how the TableProject is utilizing mainstream social web assets so that users don’t have to adopt another entirely new social networking platform.  Your community members already know how to use these features, they’re comfortable with them, and by taking this approach, TableProject aims squarely at the problem of  adoption and usage uptake for any new system.

One of the strengths of this entry into the social networking platforms for churches market is how it integrates 3rd party sites and content. For example, you’ll find fluid use of Facebook, Twitter, blog RSS feeds, and other web apps.

Here’s another video covering some of the basic features inside the platform:

It’s not open source, but it’s free (for now). It’s certainly an interesting platform to consider for most ministries.

The question to ask would be just how customizable is it — especially for larger 1000+ person communities that usually need more tailoring to their communities’ needs in managing groups, sub-groups, etc.

QUESTION: Are you encouraged or discouraged after seeing potential solutions like TableProject?

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?

Contextualization.

Mobilization.

Social Media Nation.

Nativity.

Creativity.

Levity.

Merry Christmas.

HT: Jason Locy of FiveStone

Peering into the future is something that TED talks often do.

Somehow Religion doesn’t usually make it as a regular topic for the think tank conference phenomenon.

And while Billy Graham has spoken in over 100 countries in his lifetime, somehow, the TED audience is not something he’s used to.  But when Rev. Graham shows up, everyone in the crowd welcomed him with raucous applause — pleasantly surprising to me, personally.

It is interesting to see his reflections on technology + faith and the future.

Rev. Graham talks about three aspects of humanity and the application of technology. . . (more…)

Sometimes we forget that the Bible is an amazing story with tons of smaller transformational stories within that can capture the heart and mind of those listening.

This little girl reminds us of this with her Story of Jonah. What do you see or hear in this video clip below? What strikes you?

With over 3 Million views, one thing this girls shows us is that understanding story is important. Imagine if we had such captivating stories told each week from the pulpit.

“Yeah for God!” she says. Yeah for God indeed.

I recently cobbled together a post about getting people come BACK to church a second time.

But of course you have to get them there the first time in order to invite them back, right?

Pastor Michael Lukaszewski of Oak Leaf Church has been on my radar recently for some of the ideas he’s been sharing in the blogsphere with such straight-forward clarity.   This and some of his other ideas have been inspiring me to cut straight to point and share more “meat and bones” when it comes to church marketing vision, strategy and tactics here on Godvertiser.com. . .

One of his recent posts listed 40 unique ways to invite someone to church.  Yup, we always talk about getting our people to invite others to church, but it sounds easier than said and done.  People get paralyzed because they feel like they don’t have the right opportunities to invite someone.  There are tons of ways to create the right environment to simply ask.

First, here are some of the interesting ideas for inviting someone to church that immediately stood out from Pastor Lukaszewki’s original list: (more…)

Sometimes, pastors are pressured to pump out sermons that detail the Scriptures and it ends up becoming a sit and soak extravaganza that only the pastor is paying attention to.

Although the average sermon length is now at about 15 minutes these days, sometimes, even that is too much.

Once in awhile you come across a way of doing things that is just refreshing, inspiring and attention-grabbing. And you don’t need more than 90 seconds to do it apparently!

This is what Tamara Lowe, an international motivational speaker, who happens to be a Christ follower displayed when sharing her version of the Gospel.

Check out how she tells the story and I’m sure you’ll crack a smile along they way.  It has been dubbed the “one minute sermon” . . . (more…)

Last summer, an almost unnoticeable essay was published on the web. It was a simple and straight-forward essay trying to reframe an issue that has been complexified (is that a word?) beyond comprehension to some. Over the last year, that essay by Frank Viola and Leonard Sweet has taken on a life of its own — and in its latest iteration has been released today in book form: Jesus Manifesto.  I was excited to get an advance copy to read and more so when I had a chance to interview both Frank and Len about the Manifesto and what they claim in the book regarding the state of the Church.  Enjoy!

Q) The essay you both wrote last year – A Jesus Manifesto for the 21st Century, which was the precursor to your new book Jesus Manifesto (Thomas Nelson) – seems to be a holistic critique against how Christianity is “being done” today, at least in North America. Can you share a little about how this project should be received with respect to this and is your book about the same thing?

A) Frank: I think it was more of a clarion call pointing out that Jesus Christ has been dethroned and devalued in many quarters of the Christian faith, being replaced by so many other things. Jesus has often been boiled down to a footnote or a stamp of approval to some other issue or topic. Our book expands what was in the original essay and seeks to re-present Christ in a fresh and powerful way, showing why He is worthy of having the preeminence in all things. Its aim is to wipe everything else off the table and glorify Jesus beyond the stratosphere. One of the endorsers of the book wrote the following, which I think answers your question pretty well:

“Gandhi once said, ‘Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.’ Maybe if we actually knew Christ, we would reflect Him more. Sweet and Viola’s Jesus Manifesto is the quintessential re-introduction.”

Len: One of the most important developmental tasks of every human being is to find their voice, and to speak out of their unique voice. One of the worst things that can happen to each of us is to lose our voice, or to speak out of other voices than our own. Frank and I are saying that the true voice of the church is Christ, and when other voices take over, the church is rendered voiceless.

I am a big fan of Wendell Berry’s writings. I think this farmer/poet/essayist is USAmerica’s greatest living poet. What makes Wendell Berry so special is that his writings are simply the land given voice. The Bible is the Spirit given voice, but the Spirit’s voice is a unique, one-of-a-kind, once-for-all-time voice. It’s not a propositional voice, but a story-telling, poetic voice that carries a unique register and timber and tone: it is the voice of Jesus the Christ. It’s time the church spoke again in its original, true voice.

Q) The subtitle of your book is “Restoring the Supremacy and Sovereignty of Jesus Christ” – pointing to an assumption that Christ’s sovereignty has been “lost” or “misplaced.” For me, there seems to be a bit of a difference between seeing the problem as Christ’s Supremacy and Sovereignty being “lost” and one where the is not being acknowledged. Is there difference between the two positions from your point of view?

Over 300 years ago a German pastor wrote a hymn that built around the Name above all names. I love to sing this song, although it’s seldom sung anymore, because the lyrics are posed in question and answer format. It’s an antiphonal song that comes across as a confession of faith:

Ask ye what great thing I know, that delights and stirs me so? What the high reward I win? Whose the name I glory in?

Jesus Christ, the crucified.

This is that great thing I know; this delights and stirs me so: faith in him who died to save, Him who triumphed o’er the grave:

Jesus Christ, the crucified.

*Gabriel Josipovici, The Book of God, 74

Frank: I think this is merely semantics. We are saying that the supremacy and headship of Christ has been “lost sight of” hence it must be “restored” or “brought back into view,” and more accurately, “restored as a living experience.”
There is a principle in God that He never gives anything, but that He first allows it to be lost. The Lord Jesus said that until you lose something, you can’t really have it. This appears to be a divine principle. God gives something first, then allows it to be taken away, that it may be given again. It’s the principle of death and resurrection, and it’s a recurring truth throughout the Scriptures. Ever notice all of those re- terms in the Bible: Restoration (Acts 1:6; 15:17), regeneration, restitution, recreation, rebirth, renewal, resurrection, revive, etc.

Our Lord is a God of restoration.

For this reason, church historians have used the “restoration” motif for a long time. It’s been said that God used the Reformers to restore justification by faith when it was lost sight of. God used the Holiness movement to restore personal holiness when it was lost sight of. God used the Moravians to restore missionary outreach when it was lost sight of. He used the Pentecostals to restore the power of the Spirit when it was lost sight of. Right or wrong, we feel that we are living in a day when the supremacy and headship of Jesus Christ needs to be restored in the life of the church.

Q) A central part of the argument for how we are to re-center our faith is found in the statements, “Knowing Christ is Eternal Life. And knowing him profoundly, deeply, and in reality, as well as experiencing his unsearchable riches, is the chief pursuit of our lives, as it was for the first Christians. God is not so much about fixing things that have gone wrong in our lives as finding us in our brokenness and giving us Christ.” I agree that the Christian religion has dangerously become more about things that really should be subordinate to Christ or on the periphery as a result of knowing Christ. But I wonder if defining the “chief pursuit of our lives” in the way that is being presented and/or seeing God’s purpose as restoring our fallenness still keeps us – humanity – erroneously at the center of the story, and not God. North American Christianity has surely become consumeristic, but your article individually-focused emphasis on Christ seems vulnerable to similar outcomes. Would you be willing to put these claims in the proper context according to the lens you are seeing the issues at hand?

A) Frank: My books Reimagining Church and From Eternity to Here take dead aim at the individualism, independence, and consumerism that seem to be in the drinking water of Christianity today. This is not just a Western problem; it’s quite universal as Western Christianity has spread just about everywhere.

I don’t know what version of the manifesto essay you’ve read, but there’s an entire section on how that the pursuit of Jesus Christ is not an individualistic pursuit. But rather, it’s a corporate journey (see below). We dedicate an entire chapter to this point in our book, Jesus Manifesto. Here is point 9 of the essay:

“Jesus Christ cannot be separated from his church. While Jesus is distinct from his Bride, he is not separate from her. She is in fact his very own Body in the earth. God has chosen to vest all of power, authority, and life in the living Christ. And God in Christ is only known fully in and through his church. (As Paul said, “The manifold wisdom of God – which is Christ – is known through the ekklesia.”) The Christian life, therefore, is not an individual pursuit. It’s a corporate journey. Knowing Christ and making him known is not an individual prospect. Those who insist on flying life solo will be brought to earth, with a crash. Thus Christ and his church are intimately joined and connected. What God has joined together, let no person put asunder.”

Len: The relationship of the WE and the ME is one of the most important subjects we can talk about. Like Frank, I have addressed this in a couple of books before: The Three Hardest Words to Get Right, 11 Indispensable Relationships You Can’t Live Without, and Jesus Drives Me Crazy. Part of that unique “voice” of Jesus I referenced earlier is that Jesus always is heard in surround sound (I used to say “stereo”). If you only hear one thing, it’s likely not to be Jesus (Alpha/Omega, Lamb/Lion, Prince of Peace/Sword of Truth, etc.). It’s like the body of Christ has two lungs, and two brains (left/right), and . . . The Gutenberg world majored in the ME, the I, the left-brain, partly because the book is the most anti-social technology ever invented by the human imagination. The Google word is WE or right-brain dominant. We need both brains. God gave us two brains for a reason.

Q) Separate from the actual content of your essay, it is curious that both of you as authors who embrace technology and the Internet, chose to pursue a printed book which is a commercially sold medium opposed to releasing a free, viral-friendly electronic document such as an Seth Godin idea virus. If this Manifesto is a prophetic wake up call for the Christian community at large, doesn’t this go against the movement’s objectives or potential toward mass exposure and adoption to require the purchase of a book?

A) Len: Media is not a zero sum game. How’s your “paperless office” doing? Almost every website seems to be selling books, a bookstore (even churches are bookstores through their websites, thanks partly to Amazon.com’s franchise program as well). Books will flourish even in this iPad, Kindle future, but our experiences of books and the books we keep will change. When my original publisher refused to break up the text with inserted quotes and use background images on some pages, I pulled one of my first books, Quantum Spirituality, and set up my own publishing company (Whaleprints). I also do a weekly podcast called Napkin Scribbles, am one of the “Twitter Elite,” have a top-ranked Facebook site, post a sermon a week on sermons.com—there’s always a Sunday coming for me—and am writing more books than ever before. By the way, Frank and I “posted” the Jesus Manifesto first on the web—partly inspired by the German word that is used to describe what Luther did with his 95 Theses: not “nailed” or “mailed” but “posted” on the door of Wittenberg’s Castle Church in 1517.

Frank: Many years ago I started self-publishing my books. For the first two years, I gave them away free of charge. When the time came that I could no longer afford to pay for them (it costs a pretty penny to print a book), we started to sell them to cover our expenses. Believe it or not, once we began to sell the books, a lot more people were interested in reading them.

Right now on my website, most of my writings are available free of charge. This includes two free eBooks at the moment. One would think that an electronic book that’s free of charge would disseminate more widely than a book sold by a publisher. The truth is, it doesn’t. Not even close. For whatever reasons, published books are read by far more people than free eBooks or give away copies. (That’s been my experience anyway, and we’ve been tracking it for years.) I don’t understand why, but it just is. I wrote about this recently on my blog in fact. And that’s why I’ve agreed to have my books published.

Thomas Nelson is the largest Christian publisher in the world right now. And they are getting behind the book in a huge way. So right or wrong, we felt it was best to go with them to get the full message of the Jesus Manifesto to as many people as possible. They have allowed us to make available free sample chapters and I suspect the same will be true for the audio version.

Q) Finally, what is the best case scenario if this call is heard properly by the Christian community? What does the hope that the both of you have after writing this book actually look like?

A) Frank: Calvin Miller (author of The Singer and many other works) wrote this just after he read the book:
Jesus Manifesto is the most powerful work on Christ I have read in recent years. The Christ of the Empty Tomb is back among us. Sweet and Viola have beckoned us to return back to Olivet and renew our souls. I was hushed by its welcome authority. I found a lump in my throat as I read through page after page of Biblical witness to the one and only, incomparable Christ in whom alone is our Salvation. You must read this book. All of us must, and then we must believe in this book, rise and advance on our culture with the truth we have lately backed away from in our faulty attempt to play fair at the cost of our God-given mission.

My hope is that this same sort of response will become so widespread that we will all drop the religious “stuff” we are chasing and fall down on our faces in the presence of the greatness of Jesus Christ, making Him central and supreme in our lives, our ministries, and our churches. In a word, my hope is that Paul’s statement in Colossians 1 will become a living, breathing reality instead of black letters on a page – “that He might have the first place in everything.” It’s one thing to parrot that sentence; it’s another to be so captured by Jesus that it becomes our biography. But this will never happen unless our eyes are opened to see His greatness. And with the Holy Spirit as our help, that’s what we are seeking to do with our book.

Len: What can I say but “Amen” to Frank.

Kenny: Thank you both for taking the time out to share some of your thoughts behind Jesus Manifesto.  I’m looking forward to seeing the conversations that will undoubtedly emerge from the book release!

–
Jesus Manifesto: Restoring the Supremacy and Sovereignty of Jesus Christ (Thomas Nelson) releases Tuesday, June 1st and will be available on discount from Amazon.com that day.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from Thomas Nelson Publishers as a review copy. I was not required to write a positive review. Some of the links in the post above may be “affiliate links.” This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will add value to my readers. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.

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!

I changed my Twitter profile background graphic the other day again.

I have two dozen or so Christian themed Twitter backgrounds that I’m preparing to release via the Tweeteratti Tuesday Free Christian Background Series here on Godvertiser.com.

It got me thinking about how more Xtians are starting to witness their faith to the Twitterverse and beyond with the simple effort of putting up Christ’s name out there for everyone to see via Twitter backgrounds.

King of Kings.

The One & Only.

Peacemaker.

Prince of Peace.

There are so many names for Jesus Christ.

What is the proper way to introduce Him to the world?

Here’s one suggestion that I have fallen in love with since Leonard Sweet put me onto it a couple of years ago.  Hope you are inspired too by it (and the response of the crowd is equally inspiring) – turn up the volume, play the video full screen . . . sit back and enjoy, unless you want to stand up and cheer:

QUESTION: THUMBS UP or THUMBS DOWN?