Social Media for Ministry

Below is an article about Social Media from Vanderbloemen Search Group.  For more resources from them visit http://www.vanderbloemen.com

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By Holly Hall



Whether you like it or not, social media is not a fad. It's here to stay. Social media has rapidly changed the way we communicate with each other, consume knowledge, and make decisions. One of the easiest and cost effective ways for your church to remain relevant and expand its reach is to establish its social media presence.



Our friend Nils Smith is the Web Pastor at Community Bible Church in San Antonio, TX. He has become an expert in how ministries can use social media to engage their community. What I appreciate most about Nils is that his knowledge comes from his hard work building Community Bible Church's online community, which William and Nils discussed in this interview. He's able to guide ministry leaders in building their own online presence because he's built one from the ground up.



Nils' first book Social Media Guide for Ministry will be released to the public soon, but Nils was kind enough to send me a pre-release edition of the book a couple weeks ago to review. It's the most thorough, practical, and insightful guides to social media for churches that I know of, and I wanted to share some of it with you.

Here are 5 of my favorite insights from the book:


◦                     Social media allows the messages we communicate to go farther faster.

◦                     A church or ministry's Facebook page is just as important if not more important than their website.

◦                     One of the biggest mistakes churches make on their websites is not making it clear what time they meet/gather. This is true also for your Facebook page.

◦                     When you post something on a social network, you are initiating a conversation. Use inspiration, information, and conversation to guide your posts to social media.

When planning a strategy, set aside 15 minutes a week to review social insights from the past week and one hour a month to analyze the past month and restructure your strategy and goals for the coming month.

Service Transitions

Below is a good read on service transitions from our friends at Church Juice.  For more articles like this visit www.churchjuice.com.

Weekly church services require plenty of planning. We spend time picking music, writing sermons and lining up all the different elements that go into building a meaningful service. But there’s one thing most churches don’t spend nearly enough time planning: transitions; the moments that happen between all the individual elements.

Nothing kills the flow of a service like a bad transition. If you disrupt the flow, you’re jarring your congregation out of a worshipful state. You see, poor transitions give people time to think about something other than worship. Whether it’s a major letdown after a powerful song or lag time as someone walks up to the platform, poorly planned transitions get peoples’ minds wandering. They’ll start to wonder, “Why aren’t we still singing,” or “What’s going on?”

While most worship services are made up of little pieces carried out by various people, they should always feel like one cohesive presentation. Flow doesn’t just happen on it’s own. It takes planning and practice, and it also means knowing exactly what you’re going to say. Even if the timing of a transition is smooth, flow can get chopped by a bunch of ums, uhs or ramblings.

Whether you’re a pastor, worship leader or volunteer, you’re in the business of communicating God’s story. You miss opportunities to help people become more enriched in that story if you’re doing things to take them out of the moment. Transitions are one of those things you can easily clean up with a little extra effort. I heard Whitney George, the Arts Director at Church On The Move, explain it this way: The difference between good and great is the last 5 percent, which means you have to sweat the small stuff.

And for me, that means as church communicators, we should never disrupt the flow of worship.

Facebook for Churches

Check out the link below for a cool read on "Facebook for Churches". This Ebook is from churchjuice.com.

http://churchjuice.com/media/files/pdf/Facebook_Best_Practices_2012.pdf

Easy Design...

Below is an article by Scott McClellan of ECHO HUB. Thought this was a great read about creativity and design. Enjoy...

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:MAKING SOMETHING IS EASY, BUT IT'S NOT ENOUGH:

One of the points Chris Anderson makes in his book The Long Tail is that the tools of production have been democratized. What that means is that tools for creating and sharing content have officially made their way into our hands, the hands of the people.

While we may take this for granted now, when the book was published in 2006, GarageBand was still a novel concept. Suddenly, anyone with $100 and a little patience could produce decent recordings and export those recordings as .mp3s files or burn them to CDs.

Today, if you fancy yourself a filmmaker, you can get a Canon T2i, a versatile starter lens, and a Final Cut Pro X license for about $1,000. As with GarageBand and the music world, finding one’s voice is no longer a privilege exclusive to studios, the classically trained, or the idle rich.
So, it’s easier than ever to make something.

But it’s as difficult as it ever was to make someone feel something.

Our job as communicators is found in the difference between those two pursuits.

I realized this the other day as I was daydreaming about going to the art supply store, loading up on paints and canvases, and creating some great artwork for our home. Painting, by its most basic definition, is easy. But to paint something beautiful/moving/nostalgic/provocative remains a special skill, an honorable craft, and a noble calling.

I have a legit copy of Photoshop CS 5, but I’m no designer. I have access to the same Instagram filters you do, but I’m no photographer. I know all the rock/folk/country/worship chords, but I’m no musician. I know how to trim clips and shuffle them around on a timeline, but I’m no filmmaker.

The object of our work is not to simply make things. We don’t sit at an Etch A Sketch all day making pictures, turning the knobs for our own benefit, only to shake it up and start all over again. The object of our work is to make people feel something — to stir their hearts, to change their minds, to pique their interests, to challenge their assumptions, to disturb their routines, to move their feet.

In other words, if I really want to be a filmmaker, I need to invest in more than just a camera. It’s easier than ever to make a video and publish it on the Internet, but it’s as difficult as ever to make a video that makes a difference.

Scott McClellan is the Editor of Echo Hub and the Director of Echo Conference. You can follow him on Twitter: @scottmcclellan.

Resource for Designing

I came across this website that provides various fonts to use in publication and design.  To download for free simply put zero (0) in the amount box and download the desired font.  You can do this as much as you like.  Follow the link below to check it out. 

LINK: LOST TYPE CO-OP

Good Design

The following is an article by Echohub.com.



Frank Chimero is a talented designer and writer who recently spoke at AIGA National Conference in Phoenix.

"What is good design? I’d say as an internal pursuit, it means saying things that you believe to people that you care about. My best work always springs from that situation. From an external vantage, I think it looks a lot like life-enhancement. Good design is meant to help other people live well, and if it doesn’t do that for the audience, there’s no point in it existing. And the funny thing about that is both of these successful outcomes spring from the same thing: caring more about what we do."

If you design communications or experiences at a church or non-profit, your definition of the desire to “help other people live well” might vary from someone who works in the corporate world, but there’s a definitely a common thread there.

Namely, the idea is that good design serves the audience, not just the client. That’s what you do if you’re “saying things that you believe to people that you care about.” It’s a simple formula, but I think it’s a good one.


- Jason Housley
Worship and Media Associate
Salem Baptist Church

IPhone Wallpapers

Here are some iPhone wallpapers I have either made or found online, I'm not going to tell which ones I made...























- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone