Digital Evangelism Issues

When you hear the word ‘church’, what is the first thing that comes to your mind? If you are like me, then you may think of your church building or some mega-church that stands out in your mind. If this was the case, and the church was just a building, there would be no place for social media as part of the church.

Thankfully, the true meaning of ‘church’ is the body of Christ and its goal should always be to reach the lost and care for those less fortunate. When the average American spends 23% of online time on social networks, a vital part of the church outreach should be interacting with the community through social media. What does a church interacting through social media look like?

1. Use social media to promote your church – By promote your church, I don’t mean post about how much better your church is than the one down the road. Promote your church by letting the community get involved through mission works, youth events, or sharing snippets of sermon podcasts.

2. Grow new relationships – If a first time visitor comes to your church, do you reach out to them and try to build a relationship? Treat your church’s social media the same way! Reach out to new fans or followers, invite them to visit, or perhaps just ask if you can pray for them.

3. Share the Gospel – At the end of the day the church should be fulfilling the Great Commission. If you believe God is truly in control of everything, then why not have faith that He can use social media to bring people to Him? While social media can be used as a starting point, I do want to emphasize that I believe it is important to become a member of a local church where you can grow your faith.

4. Find new community needs – Remember that your church can use social media to proactively-not just reactively. Ask your fans or followers for prayer requests and other needs within the community. By reaching out to your fans you will not only find new needs, but will also be able to show the love of Christ through the church.

Conclusion: If your church is part of the 40% of churches that don’t use any social media, I encourage you to start today! Not only can social media help to grow your church body, but it can help grow the body of Christ. Be personal when posting, grow new relationships, and be an integral part of your community on a daily basis, not just on Sunday!

This is a guest post from Michael Cornett, the founder of Church Website Design.Co, a Christian web design company that helps churches share the Gospel through websites and free social media training. Michael can be reached at support@churchwebsitedesign.co or on Twitter @website4church

• More resources on social networking
• Churches and social networking
• Please share your church’s story of using social media on our Comments section below

We are honored to release the 2012 version by Mobile Advance of their 5-minute video explaining the opportunities for mobile ministry in the Majority World.

Please also check our range of FREE ebooks, normally pay-for, that you can download now, on our ebook page.

Download video for use in meetings and seminars: WMV 15.5MB

Check our other news about mobile phones and digital opportunities for cross-cultural missions.

John Cleese, creative writer, actor and comedian, has produced much memorable comedy. The classic TV series Fawlty Towers (1975-9) is widely regarded as one of the best television comedies of all time. It has dated little in nearly 40 years, and is available as a remastered DVD set.

So you might think Cleese could teach us something about creativity – and you’d be right.

Below is his 36-minute talk on how to bring out your creative side. Set aside some time to watch it!

Eric Dye, of the excellent ChurchMag, writes,

“A few nights ago, my wife and I watched this video of John Cleese speaking about creativity.

It. Was. Amazing!

There were so many different things I got from this video. From how business are run, to education, to my own creative process.”

Creatives have not always been given freedom to use their gifts in evangelism and discipleship. Or even humor.

Does this talk resonate with you? Please add your comments.

Check our free books about humor and other related blog posts.

Photo credit: FlandersDC/Flickr | Creative Commons

Catch up with digital ministry news. The recent issues of Web Evangelism Bulletin are online here. You can subscribe to the summary Feedburner version here.

Below is the latest version of Digital Evangelism Resources, our Paper.li syndicated publication. Paper.li automatically syndicates news from Twitter into a daily newspaper-style online publication. You can subscribe to Paper.li newspapers by email, or embed them in your own blog or website. Some other Paper.li newspapers I follow: Storytelling for Nonprofits | ChurchTechToday | Media Monitor | eDOT Geek Daily.

They are a great way of skimming current news and resources in one place.

I also recommend Internet Toolbox for Churches newsletter and podcast.

And hey, this weekend, treat yourself to the excellent BBC Radio 4 audiobook Ship of Dreams about Titanic. Listen here. Only available for a few days.

Bad grammar and spelling are key factors that rob a website or blog* of credibility (see infographic below). So says Professor Fogg, author of Persuasive Technology: Using Computers to Change What We Think and Do in the Stanford Credibility Project where you can read chapters 6-7 of his book.

Web writing must also:

• be shorter and easier to read than print. Edit repeatedly to cut word-count, shorten sentences, improve clarity and remove jargon or words that may not be understood by second-language English readers.
• be proofread by someone else.
• have enticing headlines and subheads, short paragraphs and lots of white space.
• use bullet points to display lists of options or ideas.
• follow a consistent house-style.

Web writing needs the gifts of a journalist, not a preacher.

* OK, people will cut a bit of slack to blog writing, which is not always totally polished and checked. But church, ministry, or outreach sites really deserve no serious mistakes at all!

Test yourself?

See these principles applied to the same article:
before | after

Spot how many differences you can see between the the two versions? Hint: there are at least 11! List those you can see, with your own thoughts, in our comments section.

Recommended books, including free ebooks

• Writing for the Web by Crawford Killian.

• Free ebooks from the Plain English Campaign on clear writing.

• Other recommended writing books.

Like this infographic? Get more copywriting tips from Copyblogger.

Here’s Google’s newly-released video presentation of their Project Glass project.

It’s nothing less than a fully-functional smartphone built into glasses with head-up display on the lenses.

Will it fly? Will people really want it? Will users be forever falling down holes or bumping into lamp-posts or people? Surely it must never be used when driving a car?

It’s hard to see any of the evangelism/discipleship opportunities of a normal smartphone (eg. video-clip sharing) working with these glasses. But could it generate others?

Would you like to use a set of these? Add your comments.

Although Internet Evangelism Day is now over, of course any church can create a focus spot about the opportunities.

If you are on Facebook, please share with this one-click link.
and here’s a ready-to-use tweet.

Above all, we’d love to see churches devoting a few minutes to share the practical opportunities that are now available. Here are 14 things your church can do on IE Day.

A changed world
The digital world has changed remarkably in the last year or two. Although a part of Internet Evangelism Day’s emphasis has always been to mobilize individual Christians into digital evangelism, until recently the options we could suggest were quite limited. Writers might be drawn to blogging, or create a website if they felt technically competent. Those good at thinking on their feet could share in chat rooms and bulletin boards. But most of these suggestions were time-intensive and intentional initiatives only suitable for a small minority.

What has changed? The emergence of the ‘three-fold cord’ of social networking allied to video shorts and mobile phones. At last it has become remarkably easy for any Jesus-follower to build relationships and discuss truth appropriately, especially within social networking platforms. Our digital communication culture has become highly visual and dialogue-based, and the sharing of conversation-starting video shorts on Facebook and Twitter is as easy as a mouse-click, though only if we know where to find them:
http://ieday.net/video

Phone apps
There are few smartphone apps that are genuinely aimed at outsiders, that can be shared one-to-one, or in a small discussion group. UK team Damaris has just released a strategic iPhone app called Talking About Jesus (Android version coming soon.)

Informal blog-like article about this app for re-use | News release.

A second new evangelism-related web app is called God’s GPS. Its purpose is to equip Christians to share faith appropriately and conversationally. It is not intended for non-yet-followers to download or look at:
http://ieday.net/blog/archives/7677

Curation
Pinterest.com allows anyone to create a very visual set of curated recommendations, within their own chosen areas of interest, with no tech knowledge needed.
http://ieday.net/blog/archives/6977

These useful infographics reveal the context in which we minister online. Although these are based on US statistics, doubtless other western countries are broadly similar.

Credit: Nielsen.com. View full graphic with footnotes in PDF | other Neilsen reports.

Check our other recent posts on social networking and the enormous opportunities there are to share faith appropriately.

In this short slideshow, Alvaro González-Alorda suggests that college teaching methods must change, in our new digital communication culture. Does this also apply to the way the church teaches stuff – at local church or college level? Add your thoughts using the Comments link below.