Scott Hodge over at The Orchard is doing a very creative series called "Inked". Some day I may steal the idea and do the series at Bikers' Church … but for now, I wanted to show you one of the videos from the series. You can follow his blog or the messages on iTunes.
Inked Tattoo Story: Adam from scotthodge on Vimeo.
I use two primary social networking tools: Facebook and Twitter.
To be honest, I'm rarely on Facebook anymore. I basically go on to check email that may have been sent to my account. That's about it. My status updates on Facebook via Twitter, so it seems like I'm on Facebook a few times a day.
Still, I think a Facebook profile is good to have. You can view mine here. Once again, it gives people a little insight into who you are. It makes people feel connected to you. As a pastor, that's never a bad thing.
Twitter
My main focus these days is Twitter. What is twitter? It's micro-blogging. You are limited to 140 characters per post. It's designed as a quick way to update people on what you are doing. You share everything from what you might be doing at a particular moment, to a cool site you just checked out.
Why on earth would you want to do that? Good question.
Seth Godin, in his book, Tribes, explains Twitter this way:
The value of social networking for ministry was explained to me this way:
Jesus lived with twelve people. I mean he lived with them. He ate, slept, and lived life with these people. They watched how he did the mundane. They learned how he responded in every situation.
Tools like Twitter help us lead the same way. The people we pastor have the opportunity to "watch" us live life through our tweets. They know you spent the night watching a movie, or they laughed when you sent the quick picture of the funny thing you saw while at the park. In a very technological way, they are living life with you.
Twitter is a phenomenal tool for mentoring daily life.
But it's not just a one way street. I have found myself connecting with other ministers and people from around the world. People I've never met, and yet, in a small way, I feel like I know them a little. I laugh at some of their observations, and I pray for some of their expressed needs and struggles. And yet, if we were in the same room, we might walk right past each other without even realizing it!
How to Begin
When it comes to Facebook, you start out by signing up for an account. Once you've done that, you allow Facebook to search your address book for people who have signed up already. You'll be amazed at how many friends you already know on Facebook.
With Twitter, the easiest way to get started is to follow a few people for awhile and see what they type. Add me if you'd like! Check out who others are following and add a few to your list.
Promote your Twitter and Facebook profiles on your website. At one of the two churches that I am currently pastoring, they have a line in the bulletin inviting people to check out my blog. My blog then has a link to my Twitter account (actually, if you look at the top left corner of the blog, you'll see my most recent twitter updates).
The key is to see these tools as a way of connecting. It's an easy way for others to get to know you a little more. And trust me, your people want to know you a little more.
Comments?
When I first started blogging, I made the mistake of thinking that my blog was another chance for me to simply tell people what I thought on things. It was a written form of a lecture. I considered putting my sermon notes on the blog. For a season, I would copy the Oil Change on the blog each day. I even had "comments" turned off.
I've changed my mind on why I blog. While many of my posts are still "teaching" in nature, I have allowed my blog to simply be a window into my life. Whatever I may be thinking or feeling may eventually end up in a post. In some ways, that goes against the suggestions of successful bloggers, who argue that you need to keep a very focused purpose to your blog.
I guess my "focused purpose" is to expose a little of my own journey for those who care to read about it. Now, that can see a little self-absorbed, and maybe it is, but this is what I've discovered: people have come to feel they know me a little better because of my blog. I've had people come up to me and ask how my daughter is doing in Costa Rica – people I hardly know, except through a bike rally or two.
Some churches use blogging to keep their members up to date on church events. Others use their blog to promote specific ministries. All are good and valid, but not my purpose.
How I do it
So, how do I blog?
Well, I started out using Google's free utility, Blogger. I quickly moved on to WordPress. It's also a free program and comes in two versions. One is a web-based utility that is decent, and fairly feature-rich. The other is a program that you would load onto your server and run off your own site. The server-version is likely the best blogger program on the market. So, why am I not using it? Because when I first set up my website, I put it on a Windows server instead of a Unix server, and WordPress server requires a Unix server. It would be too much of a hassle to switch now, so I'm out of luck.
I ended up choosing Typepad. While it is a paid program, the features it provides, and the templates it offers are excellent. I certainly love the interface, and also appreciate the iPhone utility that is available.
The most important thing one must keep in mind if they are going to blog is keeping it fresh. A blog needs to be updated at least a couple of times a week. Anything less, and you're probably waisting your time.
Having said all that, I think blogging may be on the way out … and I'll explain why tomorrow.
One of the first types of technology that I embraced was podcasting. We began with an audio podcast of our services, and quickly included a video podcast. At first, both seemed to be daunting tasks. I quickly learned how easy they were to maintain.
Why Podcast
To be honest, my reason for using the podcast has changed over time. At first, I thought it was a way to connect to all kinds of people who might come to the site. And while there are some who will listen (or watch) the services for a few weeks before deciding to attend, I've found that the main purpose of the podcast is for those who connect to the church and miss a week or two. Because I primarily speak in sermon series, when someone misses a week, they miss a lot of the teaching. The podcast keeps them up to date.
How I do it
Let me share the differences with both and then the similarities.
When it came to the audio podcast, we recorded the audio directly into a computer that was receiving a feed from the sound board. Just about any computer sound card has a "line in" and you can easily push the audio from the board into the computer.
We are blessed to have a "sound expert" who happens to work for a number of radio stations in our city running our sound. As a result, we are able to record using professional recording software. However, there is a free program called Audacity that works amazing (and did I mention it's free?).
Our sound guy edits the audio and really cleans it up beautifully, however, it wouldn't be a horrible thing to simply save the audio as an MP3 and use it exactly as it is.
Once the audio is given to me, I import it into iTunes. In iTunes, I add "album artwork" and meta tag data to the file. I then take that MP3 file and upload it to our server.
When it comes to the video, we record into a basic video camera (purchased for under $500). The most important thing to do in order to have decent video is lighting. We bought some simple lights from IKEA for under $30 and set them up with a dimmer. They work fine for what we are trying to achieve.
I import the video into iMovie (Movie Maker for the PC would work also). Again, as I mentioned yesterday, Lynda.com was invaluable in helping me learn the basics of iMovie. I add a few graphics and export the movie. In all, it takes me less than an hour to get the video to the export stage.
Once it's exported, I use a program that is no longer available (Visual Hub) to convert the movie file into two versions: an mp4 and a flv file. The mp4 is used for the podcast, the flv is used on our website. Both are then uploaded to our server.
I use feedburner to host the podcast. It is a free website that helps promote your podcast. I was recently introduced to Vimeo for hosting video – great site and one that I'm utilizing more all the time.
I also installed a media player from Media College for playing the video and audio files on our website. The program is free and not too hard of a learning curve.
I am convinced that every church should have a website. And, it shouldn't suck!
And yet, I have found that most churches follow one of these paths:
Is there not another option?
Of course there is. Here's what/how I did.
I designed my first website about ten years ago. At that time, I used Microsoft Frontpage. It was my tool of choice for about five years. The first version of the Bikers' Church website was done in Frontpage. I basically learned the program on the fly.
Since then, I've moved over to using Dreamweaver. There are less expensive programs available, but I am comfortable with Dreamweaver, so that's what I use. I learned Dreamweaver by utilizing an online tutorial at Lynda.com. A cannot stress enough how great a training site Lynda.com can be. For $25/month, you can view as many tutorials as possible. I spent one day learning the program at the site, and then began putting together the church website.
I found a website that offers free templates called Open Source Web Design. They have so many great ideas and all for FREE. I took a template, played around with it, and made it my own.
I signed up for a webhost called 1 & 1. We pay $10/month for 300 GB of storage space! That's HUGE! I am able to create subdomains as well, so I can have as many websites as I want hosted at their site. When you sign up for an account with them, they will take care of registering the domain name of your choice. I registered the bikerschurch.com domain (and the bikerschurch.ca domain).
I read a number of blogs on church websites. A few really good ones are:
All of those blogs are excellent resources. Stay on top of them.
Recently (a week ago), I installed Google Analytics on the website. It is an amazing (FREE) piece of code that allows you to really monitor who visits your site – how often, what pages, etc. Use it.
I devoted a week to get everything up and running and working the way I wanted it to work. Since then, I spend approximately one hour per week keeping the site maintained. That includes the time I spend reading the blogs mentioned above.
And yet, our website is invaluable. I cannot begin to count the number of people who have told me that they began attending our church after checking out the website. The website is a place where people can learn about you from the safety of their own home. There is no pressure, no pushy people, no uncomfortable stares. Just them, a computer, and all the info you wish to share with them.
Some will suggest that your website needs to be designed for either church people or for unchurched people. Maybe they're right. I know we don't focus on either group specifically. We simply use the website to tell our story. And it works. We get all kinds of people visiting it every day.
So, fire away if you have any questions, and I'll do my best to answer them. And, feel free to offer more ideas and suggestions in the comments section.
Do you like change?
How you answer that question says a lot about the type of person you are. Not "good or bad", because there are many people in both camps who are good and bad! But, how you respond to change will say a lot about how you live life.
Change is inevitable. Biologically, if you are not changing, you're … dead. Every living organism changes. So, if you breathe, then you change.
Some change can be overwhelming. Marty, the assistant pastor, wrote on his blog recently about technology. He told the story of a conversation he had with a man who didn't understand why he couldn't still buy a television like the one he grew up with (tubes, curved front, etc.).
I'm a pastor, and so a lot of my life experiences come from within the church. One thing I have found over the years, is that the Church is not a big fan of change. Most churches are usually about five to ten years behind technology (some would argue even more behind than that!). Often, when technological change is suggested within a church environment, the "nay-sayers" turn to the "why can't we just 'preach Jesus'?" argument. Why are we trying to stay "on top of all this nonsense?"
There was a time when I believed that we should be current with culture. That if we were going to reach a culture with the message of God's amazing love, we needed to understand and relate to them. I've moved on from that somewhat. I now lean more to the idea that rather than be current with the culture around me, I am called to lead the change in culture. And not just me. The Church is called to take a leadership role within cultural change.
This brings me back to technology. Some people have observed that Bikers' Church is fairly advanced technologically for being a "small size" church. We have both a video & audio podcast of our all our sermons available online. We have a daily devotional that is sent via email to more than three times the number of people who attend our services. I blog, I tweet, I facebook. I am constantly researching the latest media trends to see if (and how) they would fit into a spiritual context.
Over the next few days, I'm going to take some time to explain why (and how) we use some of these technologies. My hope is that others who read this will take up some of these things and begin to utilize them within their church context as well. (HINT: this would be a good week to forward the link for this blog to your pastor or church leadership).
I'm no expert in this stuff. Almost everything I've learned, has been self-taught. I read other blogs about technology in hopes of gleaning a few things. I'm sure there are others who are much more educated in this area, and perhaps a few will offer their thoughts via the comments.
So, check back tomorrow for the first installment.
The final part of the Upside Down LIfe series is now available online … you can watch it below:
The Upside Down Life: 06 – Die To Live from Rob Dale on Vimeo.
I got this on another blog … sorry, can't remember which one.
The pictures say it all … first the women:
And now the men:
I started a new book yesterday (Tribes by Seth Godin), and I noticed something strange about myself when I was done reading. I didn't have a bookmark handy (usually I use a piece of paper or business card), and I didn't know what to do.
Oh, I know what you're thinking: just fold down the edge of the page! And I did think about doing that. Three times, I reached for the edge of the page, to fold it down, only to pull away. FINALLY, I forced myself to fold over the page – barely enough to notice – and set the book down.
This morning, every time I look over at the book, I feel like I've ruined it. It's just wrong to do that to a book.
Yeah, I'm a freak.
Do you have any quirks?
As many of you know, I'm a big fan of Apple, inc. I use an iPhone, work on an iMac, MacBook, and now a MacBook Pro. I have an Apple TV, an Airport Extreme & Express.
Why do I like this company? Because I like their focus.
Yesterday, Apple reported their Quarterly income, and yes, they're doing pretty well. For the first time, the iPhone is now outselling the Blackberry (not bad after only 16 months).
After the report, there was a Q&A time. Someone asked Steve Jobs if Apple would make a desktop computer to compete with the $500 PC Desktop.
This is what he said:
"There are some customers which we chose not to serve," he added. "We
don't know how to make a $500 computer that's not a piece of junk, and
our DNA will not let us ship that. But we can continue to deliver
greater and greater value to those customers that we choose to serve.
And there's a lot of them."
"We've seen great success by focusing on certain segments of the market
and not trying to be everything to everybody. So I think you can expect
us to stick with that winning strategy and continue to try to add more
and more value to those products in those customer bases we choose to
serve."
I love that line: our DNA will not let us ship that.
I want to ask that question about my life, my church, my world. What does my DNA allow me to do (and not do)? What is my focus? My church's focus?
What's in your DNA?