Archive - February, 2010

Pornography = Despair. Jesus = Hope.

February 28, 2010 in Christian Living, for Churches, Pastors

Pornography has enslaved many. Perhaps you are one of its slaves.

Throughout March, Outreach Media is embarking on a bold poster campaign to show the freedom and hope that Jesus offers. The poster will be displayed outside churches across Australia – here it is (click to enlarge):

I hesitate in describing this as a ‘bold campaign’. On one level it’s bold, because churches don’t often speak about pornography. I don’t think pastors avoid this topic – I’ve heard it preached against in sermons, and pastors regularly counsel people who struggle with this issue. But for a church to speak out about pornography, to display a poster emblazoned with the word ‘pornography’ is unusual. Have you seen this before?

However, on another level, it’s not that bold, it’s just refreshing and exciting to see churches talking about something that’s so now so big and awkward for our community. For a church to publicly make mention of the issue shows that not only are Christians aware of the current issues and struggles of our society, but we also know the source of hope in the despair these struggles bring. We shouldn’t be ashamed to speak truth and offer hope to our communities, in the form of our Lord Jesus Christ.

The campaign will have several elements:

  • the poster, displayed outside over 100 churches across Australia,
  • a website (pornequalsdespair.org – soon to be launched) that is promoted on the poster,
  • a DVD, and
  • a seminar (in Sydney, Australia)

Malcolm Williams is the Director of Outreach Media, and so I’ll let him explain the background to the campaign and what will take place during March:

Why are we doing this? Because Internet pornography is dramatically changing community behaviour and standards. What’s different about Internet pornography is the triple ‘A’ threat. More and more people are slipping into watching pornography and struggling because online pornography lacks accountability, it’s anonymous and it’s so accessible.

The sex industry is now a $100 + billion industry. But what about internet pornography? Well, there are all sorts of statistics on its scope and scale. But who really knows? Certainly its income is in the billions. However, the telling statistic comes from Google. Currently one quarter of all Google searches are now for pornography. These days Google doesn’t readily reveal total search figures. But last year a research group called comScore estimated that Google handled 235 million searches a day in July.

The latest statistics on gender usage may surprise. Internet Pornography is not an exclusively male thing. In fact, usage splits 70% male and 30% female.

And the effects of Internet pornography are being felt in churches.

The March campaign

Our March poster provides your church with a platform to raise this issue not only with your congregation but with the whole community. And this is honouring to the Lord Jesus Christ. We, of all people, should be the ones who deal truthfully and frankly with difficult topics, showing leadership in our communities.

Almost certainly there are people in your church who are struggling. And you can’t be sure who they are. It may be retirees, it may be children as young as six or seven. Remember the triple ‘A’ threat.

The DVD

We initially planned to resource the poster with a kit that had a script, some handouts and an accompanying PowerPoint? to help churches run an information night for the whole community. However the more we thought about the project it became clear that this subject demands a proper DVD presentation from relevant experts.

As we spoke to therapists and those who’ve run information nights in local schools for parents, we discovered something important. People simply don’t come to information nights on the issue. The reason is the enormous shame attached. Many people feel compromised because they’ve looked at even a little Internet pornography. Because sexuality is so core to our being, the shame is all the greater. Many people no doubt think that by attending they’re owning up to having a ‘problem’.

So, those who we’ve spoken with suggest that those churches organising a presentation strongly encourage the whole congregation to attend. This helps all those attending to feel safe and not embarrassed. The DVD we’re producing will work with all members of the community. It will include a diagnostic tool to help people determine where they’re at with their current behaviour as well as other resources that can be downloaded and printed.

How do I get the DVD?
Because of the importance of the issue, we are relying on donations to fund the production costs. We will send it to you for $10 (which covers our postage and handling). Please just reply to this email and indicate that you’d like to have the DVD sent to you. Make sure to include your postage details.

Please let friends in other churches know about this DVD. The DVD offer and price is also available to non Outreach Poster churches.

When will it be available?
 We’re still finishing off the DVD and expect it to be ready for shipping on March 20. Please order the DVD now to help us know how many copies to print. Email Outreach Media with the number of copies required and your postal address.

Seminar

Finally, if you’re church is in striking distance of Ryde in Sydney you may prefer to come along on Wednesday 31st March to hear Derek Higgo (Psychotherapist and counsellor) and others speak about pornography. The event will be held at the Ryde Anglican Centre at 7:30pm.

Again, for the reasons mentioned above, we suggest that you strongly encourage the whole congregation to come. Please book your church in early as there are limited places. To book, please email Outreach Media and provide the numbers for your church. If you have any questions about the event, call Judith on (02) 8898 9320.

What content management system does your church website use?

February 26, 2010 in for Churches

A content management system (as the name suggests) is a tool for managing the content on a website. If your church has a website, chances are, it has a content management system. For those of us who aren’t website developers, the content management system is the interface we use to edit our church websites. This can be easy or painful, depending on the content management system you use.

I’ve used more than a few content management systems in recent years:

There are lots of other content management systems out there including (I’ve updated the list following the comments below):

What does your church or ministry use? Are you happy with it? Why or why not?

5 ideas from the College Park Church website

February 25, 2010 in Websites

In ‘There are other ways to do things‘, I argued that it’s easy to do things the way we’ve always done them, and that there’s lots we can learn by just taking a look at what other people are doing. And this principle can be easily applied to the realm of church websites.

There is so much to learn and ideas to be generated for our own church websites, just by perusing others. So to save you the hard work, I’ve done some research and will be sharing with you ’5 ideas from…’ a collection of church websites.

First up, College Park Church in Indianapolis, USA. It’s a beautifully designed site, with lots we can learn from. Here’s just five ideas:

Idea #1 – Promote your connection channels

College Park Church (CPC) has provided clear links to connect with the church – download podcasts, subscribe to eNews, befriend on Facebook and follow on Twitter. Whatever channels your church provides, use the homepage (and commonly recognised icons) to promote them.

Idea #2 – Invite a friend to church

CPC provides a form where regular members (or anyone else for that matter) can provide the details of a friend, and an email will be sent to them, inviting them to church.

Idea #3 – Ministry guide

At the very top of each page of the site is a drop-down ‘ministry guide’. This guide provides quick links to other sections of the site, without taking up too much real estate to distract from the content of the page. If you were to list all of these in a sidebar or drop-down menu, it would be overwhelming, but tucked away up the top is a good place to locate these (important, but not essential) links.

Idea #4 – Clear links to resources for newcomers

CPC has obviously spent some time thinking about how to engage the newcomer on their site and particularly on the homepage. These two panels are directed at the newcomer and invite you to click on them to learn more about the church and get your questions answered:

Idea #5 – Service times front and centre of every page

At the top of each page (next to the ‘ministry guide’) are the service times for the church. This is probably the most sought after information on any church website, and you shouldn’t make your visitors work hard to find it. Placing it at the top of each page as CPC has done is user (and search engine) friendly.

What other good ideas can be observed from the College Park Church website?

15 more articles and tools for improving search results

February 25, 2010 in for Churches, Outreach

Last week I shared a list of beginners resources for improving search results, as well as 24 tools to assist your search engine optimisation. I’m in the process of playing around with each of these tools, to create a set of recommended tools for church and ministry websites. There are so many tools and resources available (for example check out this post with 136 SEO tools) but many of these aren’t targeted at (or even intelligible to) anyone who hasn’t been doing SEO for more than 10 years.

So, to the novice church website owner who wants to learn more about improving where your church website appears in search engine rankings, here’s 15 articles and tools to check out:

  1. 20 SEO tips for 2010 – this article touches on some more technical concepts but ones that are essential to know a little bit about. It also
  2. 10 questions to evaluate an SEO – a humorous and insightful post that will help you see what is and isn’t measurable.
  3. 9 SEO upgrades you can make right now – from the same author as above, great tips for church websites.
  4. Learn SEO in 30 minutes a day – this article is for the person who is inspired to get carried away with SEO (I don’t have 30 minutes a day to invest in SEO!) but again, lots of useful information and links.
  5. Have a new website? Try these quick and easy SEO tips – a post with very basic advice (but probably advice that many churches haven’t considered!)
  6. MazeCore Monitor – a tool to track website position, rank and uptime. The free account only gives you one website and 5 keywords, but for most churches this would be a good start.
  7. Google’s search-based keyword tool – another tool in Google’s suite of search tools, and integrated with AdWords.
  8. Advanced Web Ranking – this is software for multiple platforms that’s free for 30-days, and $99 to purchase. I’ve been playing around with this quite a bit and it’s looking very useful.
  9. Copyblogger – a series of posts on writing effective copy for search engines to find and rank your content. Just don’t forget that your primary audience is the people visiting your site!
  10. Interleado – another tool for managing SEO yourself.
  11. Web SEO Analytics – yet another online suite for analysing and tracking SE!
  12. 5 tips for better keyword research process [sic] – helpful tips for identifying the keywords you want to target.
  13. Keyword research tools showdown – once you’ve read the article above, you might want to check out these tools.
  14. Top 15 free SEO tools – in case you hadn’t seen enough tools already! (Now can you see the need for a summary post on the most useful tools?!)
  15. 5 harsh SEO truths that ministries need to know – a post with simple advice from a great church technology site, ChurchCrunch.

Update

  1. 10 SEO Tips for YouTube (ironically, they haven’t used a search-friendly URL!)

Stay tuned for a summary post of the best articles, advice and tools for search engine optimisation for church websites.

Should I put my iPhone away?

February 22, 2010 in Christian Living, for Churches, Pastors

I’ve been using my iPhone to take sermon notes in church. I just use the standard ‘Notes’ app, but there’s lot of other options for the iPhone note-taker.  In church we provide paper note-pads for people to take notes but I’ve found it preferable to use the iPhone because:

  1. I don’t have to worry about losing the piece of paper with my notes,
  2. I can easily email the note I created to (either to myself – to store in some other location, or to someone else – for their encouragement), and
  3. I don’t have to find a sharp pencil to write with!

Here’s my dilemma.

Is my use of the iPhone as a note-taking device a source of potential discouragement for others?

I’m concerned that people (the preacher and other people in the gathering) might look at me tapping away on my phone and think that I’m sending a text message or searching the web. I’m concerned that they might be encouraged to use their phone for ignoble purposes, or (in the case of the preacher) be discouraged that I’m not listening.

I can assure the preacher in advance that I really am listening and taking notes, but I speak with everyone in the church and tell them that when they see me on my phone I’m actually taking notes and not looking up the movie times.

How should I love my brothers and sisters with my use of this technology? Refrain or maintain?

How not to use social media (featuring the @9commentaryteam)

February 21, 2010 in for Churches, Outreach, Pastors

Most organisations know they need to get on board with social media. Many organisations are giving it a go. Few (especially those of the larger variety) are doing it well.

Channel Nine is a good example of a botched attempt.

This summer during cricket’s television coverage, the commentators have made mention of Channel Nine’s new Twitter account – @9commentaryteam. The commentators have encouraged viewers to follow their account on Twitter, with (Ian Healey I think it was) saying – “you might even see one or two from one of the boys!”

They have lived up to their promises and provided only a few more than ‘one or two’ tweets throughout the summer. It’s been a disappointing effort.

  • The first tweet came out on 21 January.
  • Since then, a total of 16 tweets have gone out. Two of them use ALL CAPS – a pretty standard no-no in any written communication. For example:

“HOW MANY DO YOU THINK AUSTRALIA WILL GET? QUICK POLL AROUND THE COMMENTARY BOX SEES AUSTRALIA ARE LOOKING AT 300 PLUS”

  • None of the tweets have been particularly interesting, insightful or re-tweetable. In fact, it’s hard to see why anyone would want to follow the @9commentaryteam.

This Twitter account has 781 followers without any effort or quality content. Channel Nine has a great opportunity to harness social media (obviously people want to follow them), but instead they have wasted it with poor strategy and/or implementation. So I’d like to offer two pieces of advice to Channel 9 and any other organisations (and especially churches) looking to enter the social media stage:

1. Social media is a two-way street, and this has two implications. Firstly, people will follow you because they think you’ve got something to say. To suggest that “you might even see one or two from one of the boys” reflects a complete misunderstand about the channel – if you’re not planning on tweeting, why promote the account? If I follow your account, I expect to see something from you. Secondly, you need to show an interest in your followers. The 9commentaryteam follows just two of their followers, and have replied to two tweets. Again, if you’re not producing content and you’re not interested in your followers, why are you using social media?

2. The second piece of advice is related very closely to the first. Train the people who will be tweeting. Untrained tweeting isn’t as dangerous as driving without a license, but it sure doesn’t do your reputation any favours. So show the tweeters the value and power of social media (for instance, check out ‘15+ resources to learn more about social media‘ and ‘Responding to the internet revolution‘). Show them how other organisations are using it (‘15 ways for churches to use Twitter‘). Show them how to tweet. Show them how not to tweet. Tell them that ALL CAPS are bad. Tell them that engaging with their followers is good. There aren’t any rules in social media, but following a few simple conventions will go a long way to getting the most out of it.

Let’s see how the team goes on Twitter this evening during the Twenty20 match!

Page 1 of 3123»