At Church by the Bridge we’ve started planning the calendar of events for next year (yep, in August!).

And as with most churches, there are a lot of events – all of them worth going to! For example:

• Prayer meetings,
• Carols under the Bridge,
• Annual Vestry Meeting,
• Women’s events,
• Anglicare Winter Appeal,
• Weekend Away,
• Connect Groups,
• PowerPoint training,
• Worship leader training,
• and many more!

As we prepare the calendar, three considerations come to mind:

1. We want to promote the events, without making church members feel overwhelmed by all that’s happening or obligated to come to everything,
2. There are some events that we’d really like people to prioritise, while others are good, but less essential, and
3. Some events are relevant to everyone (e.g. church weekend away), while other events are relevant to smaller groups (e.g. women’s event, or newcomers dinners).

I’ve been thinking about how to communicate these events most effectively, keeping the above considerations in mind, throughout the course of the year.

Here are four steps to a communications strategy for promoting events – I’d love your feedback on what your church does, and how this process could work better.

Step 1. I think the first step is to identify available communication channels. We’ve got quite a number of communications channels at Church by the Bridge:

• church news during services
• printed newsletter distributed at services
• printed quarterly calendar (example)
• weekly e-news
• website news
• website calendar
• Facebook page
• Facebook events
• Facebook advertising
• Event-based minisites (e.g. www.iheartkirribilli.com)
• Twitter account
• phone
• face-to-face
• Connect Groups
• meetings (i.e. communicating to people to a select group of people face-to-face)
• emails to all of church/groups within the church
• A6 postcards (mainly to promote events to people outside the church, e.g. I Heart Kirribilli)
• letterbox drops
• noticeboard (housing A3 posters)
• A1 posters (positioned in frame against the wall outside the church)
• community newsletter (example – though we haven’t printed a second edition!)
• community noticeboards

There are other communications channels available too – for example text messaging isn’t something we’ve explored, but I know of churches using FrontlineSMS for group messaging. Other channels that come to mind are online platforms like On The City, and video messaging (e.g. facilitated by TokBox).

Can you think of any other useful communication channels?

Step 2. Identify which audiences these communication channels engage most effectively with. For example, announcing an event in church will communicate with everyone who is in the service (and listening!), but miss anyone who wasn’t at church that week. Similarly, the church noticeboard, community newsletter, A1 posters, A6 posters are all primarily targeted at people who don’t currently attend the church.

Step 3. Categorise the events. The events can be categorised in (at least) six ways:

1. by type (e.g. training, church service, outreach),
2. by primary audience (i.e. church members, church members and local community)
3. by broad audience (e.g. men, women, everyone at church, local community, parents, Connect Leaders, etc), and
4. by importance – this category is to help members of the church if they need to decide between two events. For example, church services and the weekend away fit into the ‘essential’ category, whereas everyone doesn’t need to come to every outreach event that’s run throughout the year.
5. by regularity (e.g. weekly – church, quarterly, annually, one-off – weddings!)
6. by necessity (e.g. child protection training is essential for anyone working with kids)

By this stage, you’ve got a list of all events, communications channels, the audiences for each channel, and the six categorisations of each event. It’s sounding complex, but I think the clearer the planning, the better the communication to the people who need to hear about the events.

Step 4. At this point, I think a matrix would come in handy. I played around with several formats for this, and decided on a form. It’s rough and there’s information missing, but it should give you an idea what I’m thinking of. Check out the Calendar Communication Matrix. I’m thinking that events could then be entered into the form, one at a time, with each of the fields completed along the way. One of the many advantages of creating this form in Wufoo is that all the information can easily be exported out into other formats.

Once events had been entered, you could look at the spreadsheet and plan how each event will be communicated throughout the year, based on all the elements supplied in the form.

What do you think about this strategy? Would it be helpful? Is it far too complicated? How could it be improved?

Copyright 2010 Steven Kryger.
Post from: Communicate Jesus. Follow Communicate Jesus on Twitter.
Avoiding church calendar overload

Wufoo is my favourite tool for creating forms and surveys.

Earlier this week I wrote about Wufoo on Communicate Jesus, and on Sydney Anglicans. I explained that churches get a 50% discount.

One of the questions posted on Sydney Anglicans was this:

“Any reason why go Wufoo over the (free) Google forms?”

Earlier this year I decided to abandon Wufoo for Google Forms (a part of Google Docs). I did this because I thought I’d save some money. I persevered and created 14 forms, but the functionality that I lost wasn’t worth the cost saving. I returned to Wufoo.

To be sure, Wufoo (even with a 50% discount) is more expensive than the free Google Docs. Sometimes a free product is on par with a paid product. Rarely is a free product better than a paid product. Wufoo wipes the floor with Google Docs, and even though it costs money, is the better solution for churches and ministries.

Here are 10 reasons why Wufoo is better than Google Docs (in no particular order).

1. The service is excellent. Whenever I’ve had a question, I’ve received an answer in less than 24 hours. With Google Forms, if you’ve got a question, you’ll need to trawl the internet and post on forums to (hopefully) get an answer. You don’t realise how important good service is until you need help.

2. Payment integration. Wufoo forms allow you to collect payments in the forms. This means if you’d like to collect payments (e.g. church camp, celebration dinner, etc) you can accept these on the same form that people use to sign-up to the event.

3. Great reporting tools. Google Forms will export to an Excel spreadsheet. Wufoo does that, and also provides tools to very easily create stunning reports. Wufoo will turn the data from your forms into graphs, charts, datagrids and more, so the information you’ve collected can be represented graphically, with very little effort on your behalf. You can see examples here.

4. Conditional logic and branching. Wufoo’s rule builder allows you to create conditions – e.g. if a user selects answer X to question A, then question B is hidden, and they jump straight to question C. You can see a good explanatory video here.

5. Notifications. For example, I set-up a form for registrations for the church’s upcoming parenting course. When someone signs up for the course, an email with all the details is sent to the course organiser. Google Forms only allows notifications to be sent to the creator of the form.

6. Custom themes. You can add a logo, change a colour scheme, or if you (or someone in your church) knows what they’re doing, add CSS (to make the form look like your church’s website).

7. Field options. Google offers these options for creating fields in your form:

Wufoo offers these options:

Wufoo also provides a theme gallery, with a range of forms that you can customise for your own use (e.g. mailing lists, contact forms, church visitors forms, and many more).

8. Multiple users. Wufoo allows you to set-up multiple users, so that one person doesn’t need to be responsible for creating each of the forms. This means (for example), the person overseeing women’s ministry could have their own log-in and access their own forms, without seeing or being able to edit any other forms.

9. Easy to share. Wufoo provides simple links to share your forms and surveys with others – in 6 different ways:

10. Regular additions of new features. The team at Wufoo listens to feedback from their users, and improves their product based on this feedback. The blog provides updates, and whenever new features are added, a notification appears when you log-in to Wufoo. They’re not sitting back basking in their success – the improvements are constant!

Not convinced? Try it for free, and get 3 forms to play with.

Copyright 2010 Steven Kryger.
Post from: Communicate Jesus. Follow Communicate Jesus on Twitter.
10 reasons why Wufoo is better than Google Docs

For my money, Wufoo is an essential tool for ministry. It’s not in the same category of ‘essential’ as the Bible, but I find it useful in one hundred and one different situations.

Basically, Wufoo is a tool that allows you to very easily create online forms. It’s so easy, intuitive and, dare I say it, fun, and you don’t need a degree in computer science to use it.

Wufoo is useful for ministry because forms are useful for ministry. For example, you can use forms to:

• seek feedback after the church weekend away,
• collect registrations for a training course,
• facilitate sign-ups for Bible study groups,
• encourage people to serve at church (generally, or for specific events),
• run quick polls,
• collect information for a church member directory,
• and the list goes on!

If you’d like to see examples of Wufoo forms in action, here’s a few I’ve created for my church:

• Registration form for parenting course
• 5 questions (a community survey)
• Serve at Carols under the Bridge
• My Story (to collect testimonies from church members)

I recently discovered that Wufoo offers a discount (50% no less) for non-profits. I’ve checked with Wufoo, and this discount is available for churches outside the United States too – thanks Wufoo!

To receive the discount, you’ll need to sign-up for an account, and then fill out the Wufoo Non-Profit Discount Form. The discount will be applied to the plan you select.

An important note – the form asks you for ‘A copy of your organization’s form 990′. Because churches outside the U.S. can’t provide that form, simply type up a brief Word document explaining at you are a church (with details of your website and contact details for verification), and that you would like to receive the discount. Upload this form where you are asked to upload the form 990. If you have any questions, send them an email. Their support is excellent.

If you’re interested in reading more about how Wufoo can be used in ministry, check out:

• Examples of Wufoo forms in action
• Use Wufoo to encourage church members to share
• Simplifying Bible study sign-up
• Good, bad and ugly customer service (they’re one of the good ones!)

Copyright 2010 Steven Kryger.
Post from: Communicate Jesus. Follow Communicate Jesus on Twitter.
Wufoo offers churches a 50% discount

This Saturday I’ll be presenting two seminars at the Create conference and I’d like to ask for your help. One of the seminars I’m presenting is entitled “I’m not cheap, I’m entrepreneurial”. At it, I’ll be sharing free or cheap tools to assist with ministry. I’ve got lots of ideas for apps that fit into this category (and I’ll be sharing 2-3 per category, plus some surprises!), but I’d like to hear your ideas. Below are some categories and examples – what tools do you use and recommend?

• Surveys, polls and sign-up forms (e.g. Wufoo)
• Organising meetings (e.g. TimeBridge)
• Reputation management (e.g. Google Alerts)
• Website analytics (e.g. Google Analytics)
• Collaboration (e.g. Huddle)
• Password management (e.g. Pastor)
• Email newsletters (e.g. Campaign Monitor)
• Task management (e.g. Remember the Milk)
• Note taking (e.g. Evernote)
• Time tracking (e.g. Freckle)
• Asset management (e.g. Dropbox)

Copyright 2010 Steven Kryger.
Post from: Communicate Jesus. Follow Communicate Jesus on Twitter.
Web apps for ministry – what do you use?

Yesterday I outlined some of the ways my church has been using Wufoo to encourage church members to share how God has been at work in their lives. There are lots of other ways to apply Wufoo for ministry – here’s some forms I’ve found around the internet:

• Acts 29 Seattle Boot Camp Registration Form
• Westwood Annual Church Survey
• Kaleo Mission Survey
• Autumn Creek Baptist Church Contact Form
• Ekklesia 360 Interest Form

The Gate to Create website also uses Wufoo to create forms to support ministries. For example:

• Website Event Submission Form (for ministries that want to add an event to the church website)
• Encourager Request Form (what appears to be a form to request adding an article to the church newsletter)

If you’re stuck and need help learning how to use Wufoo, here’s a video explaining how to create a form (and more tutorial videos from Wufoo can be found here):

Copyright 2010 Steven Kryger.
Post from: Communicate Jesus. Follow Communicate Jesus on Twitter.
Examples of Wufoo forms in action (plus video resources)

God is at work in the lives of his people, and technology makes it easier than ever for us to share with others, how God is challenging, changing, teaching, and encouraging us.

I have been a long-term fan of a web application that makes creating forms very easy. It’s called Wufoo [link: http://www.wufoo.com], and it’s both a wonderfully designed application, and a great tool for enabling members of church to share how God has been at work their lives. For example, here are some forms I have created for my church:

• How has God answered your prayers?
• What have you learnt as a Christian?
• What comes to mind when you think about God?
• What I learnt at Equip
• How I’m loving God and my neighbour
• A favourite Christian book
• Encouragements and challenges from Getaway (our church weekend away)

These forms are super easy to create (yes, even for the tech novices!), and you can have an account with up to three forms for free (check out a nifty tour of Wufoo’s features). It’s easy then to email the link to the form, or embed it in a website, or share the link on Twitter.

What happens with the responses church members share?

With their permission, we publish them in our monthly (now weekly) church newsletter, and also place them in the ‘resources’ section of the church website. In this way, many more people are able to share in the encouragement, and learn from the experiences of their brothers and sisters.

There are lots of other ways to use Wufoo for ministry (check out ‘Simplifying Bible study sign-up’ – but I’ll share more of these another day!

Copyright 2010 Steven Kryger.
Post from: Communicate Jesus. Follow Communicate Jesus on Twitter.
Use Wufoo to encourage church members to share