Share Your Church

Google Analytics

Rodney — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 04:14:40 +0000

We’re going to spend the next few weeks looking at google products that can help you share your church better. I know, I know Google is one of those companies that you either love or hate, and I’ll be honest with you. I love them. There’s lots of other products, companies, and services out there that may do a better job than google at certain tasks, but over all Google does a wonderful job at bringing it all together. That being said I would like to take a look at a less popular google service called google analytics.

I use google analytics on every site that I make, design, or consult on. This tool is amazing. Here’s what it gives you for free

visitor/hit/page count
unique visitor count (based on browser/IP)
browser info for all visitors
location of all visitors
keywords which brought visitors to site
avg time spent on each page

Did I mention that all of this was FREE? If you’ve read any of my other articles you know how I feel about free. Google really has put together a wonderful tool in their analytics service. Does this mean that google has access to your site? Yes, not like the google crawler wasn’t all over your site before or anything. Google also makes it very easy to implement analytics. Simply sign up for their service and copy a small piece of code into your .html or .php and voila you’re done. So, now for the big question. How does this help you Share Your Church? The information that you can gather from this tool is indispensable. Do you need multi-language support on your site? What is bringing people to your site? Maybe you need to highlight that information. Maybe add more info to the home page, or maybe just make simpler navigation. I’ve made numerous modifications to sites simply based on the information found in google analytics. Is analytics the best tool out there? Probably not, but you’d be hard pressed to find one simpler.

Drive By Chalking

Rodney — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 04:10:17 +0000

It seems that outreach and seeker sensitive are two of the most popular buzzwords in our churches today. What happened to servanthood? Having a church full of servants is a great way to reach out to the community because the community then sees a church that truly loves people the way Christ loves people. We normally equate servant outreach with serving people outside our church, what about showing love to people inside our church out in public?

The other night I took some of our youth group and we paid a visit to the pastor’s house. We just made sure to do it when we knew he was at the church and we chalked his driveway. Armed with a small bucket of sidewalk chalk we proceeded to write down our favorite verses, words of encouragement, personal notes, and a 12 foot diameter smiley face on his driveway and front walk. We didn’t get a chance to talk to any of the neighbors (none came out) or share the Gospel with anyone, but we did share the love of Christ with our pastor. Was it a little odd? Yep. But it gave the student to be that Barnabas type servant and share their love with the pastor. Maybe part of outreach is sharing love with each other and encouraging your brothers and sisters in Christ to allow them to share Christ’s love with others. Just a thought. If you’d like to see pictures feel free to visit our youth group site and see how we’re trying to Share Our Church.

week one, mega church

Rodney — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 00:34:26 +0000

I’m not quite sure I would call the first church we visited a mega church but I would call it honking huge. When we pulled into the parking lot I needed help fron someone to simply point out what door I needed to be heading for. I didn’t want to walk in the wrong door and end up getting lost in the church somewhere (it really was that big). I had parked in the visitors lot, and was finally able to get someone’s attention to point out where I needed to be going. Visiting a church as a parent is drastically different than visiting without a child. First you have to decide if you want to keep your child with you, and then you have to decide if you trust the nursery workers to keep your child safe. Well, I was the with my wife and my very young (6 month old) son. We decided to put him into the nursery during the service since we knew some friends that went there and they seemed to like it all. We left the children’s wing and made our way to one of two sanctuary’s. We waited for our friends outside the door of one of them, and apparently 400 people had the same idea. So giving up on finding anyone, we made our way into the sancuary. We looked for a seat for a few minutes and were then guided by ushers into first available seats. (In fact the ushers made an entire row of people scoot down so we could sit.) The service was nice. We learned later on that the other sanctuary in the building had a closed circuit projector view of the pulpit area, not a live person. The service seemed very much like a production. I’ve always enjoyed listening to this particular preacher and enjoyed his serrmon this Sunday, something about Jesus and the stock market. After service it took a while to pick up our son and get back to our car. Leaving the parking lot was a nightmare. We saw two car accidents, and almost got caught in one ourselves. There were a good number of off duty police officers direcring traffic, so nobody had to wait very long. We finally got back home and had time to reflect on our morning.

Good

great use of music, drama, environment
a visitor parking lot (that’s just awesome)

Bad

not able to talk with pastor after service
had to get greeter’s attention for assistance

Are you kidding me?

no signs from visitor lot to children’s wing
no way to distinguish visitors with that many people there, no way to follow up with them

Lessons learned

visitors are important and need to be treated that way
signage is very important
make sure staff is available after service
make sure greeters are excited about their ministry, much more likely to greet people right off the bat

Your church’s story

Rodney — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 21:40:49 +0000

Part two of our Web Ministry transformation series on Share Your Church looks at the story of your church. This is a much more encompassing view of your church’s story that is traditionally thought. On a church’s web brochure the church story would consist of the history of the church. When you look at a web ministry the church’s story is much, much more. On a ShareYourChurch site the church story consists of

staff blogs - one for each staff member

member testimonies - can be written or video testimonies (not necessarily just salvation testimonies, but also how God is moving in their lives right now)

member articles - articles that members write to share their feelings, thought, opinions

This way your site is updated on an extrememly regular basis and new content is constantly being added. This keeps the front page fresh and allows visitors to your site to always have something new to read.

Incorporating member aticles allows your church to share it’s faith in new and exciting ways all the time. From economics to politics to a brand new gadget, the article area allows people to relate modern events, activities, and items to their faith and Christian worldview.

The member testimony area allows people to share spiritual insights, Biblical interpretations, experiences that have drawn them closer to Christ. This area will be the hardest to get going, but once it has begun should be the fastest growing area of your ministry site.

Staff blogs should be the easiest to omplement and to steadily grow. Simply have each of your staff write an article each week for your church’s e-newsletter (or print newsletter) and incorporate this article into the website.

Looking at your church-story in a ministry focused perspective automatically increases the ministry that your web site becomes, not only to other members of your church, but also to the greater community at large. Sharing your church-story is truly one of the biggest ways to ShareYourChurch.

Phonevite

Rodney — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 20:58:56 +0000

I heard about this website shortly after bringing up the idea of a phonetree system at our church council. The phonetree system seemed a bit expensive for us at the time, so I went and explored my options. I saw lots of web services that seemed to do the trick, but all of them required a credit card or the purchase of minutes. Finally I came across Phonvite.com. This web service was awesome. For those of you who don’t know I like FREE. Phonevite knows how to do FREE very well. Phonevite allows you to make calls to 25 people completely free of charge. For small churches or youth groups this may be all that is needed. Phonevite does add very brief advertisement to the end of each recording that currently just advertises for phonevite, the paid service does not contain these ads. Phone also gives you real time reporting of who does and doesn’t answer and how long the person listens to the recording. This is all included in the free version. The paid version allows you to request RSVP and messages back to the phonevite system. This truly is a phenominal system. You simply have to see it for yourself. Quite possibly the best phone recording system out there. Try it out and let me know what you think.

More than looks.

Rodney — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 03:00:46 +0000

Part one of our Web Ministry transformation series on Share Your Church looks at how your web site looks. I know, I know, we all teach our kids that looks aren’t important. If this is completely true, then why do we worry about what they wear? Your websites design is a very important aspect to your web ministry. You have about 2 seconds after someone arrives at your site to convince them to stay. This is less about the looks of your site and more about the presentation of the information on your site. A web brochure will give you all the information you need, a web ministry will give you current relevant information on the front page (or easily accessible) while keeping older information archived, search-able and ready for easy referencing. A plain web site will probabyly turn away some guests, but a poorly organized site will send them away frustrated. Feel free to take a look at our portfolio to see what I’m talking about. Let us help you Share Your Church.

EasiSlides

Rodney — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 04:23:28 +0000

Part of Sharing Your Church is making sure that when people come to your church building that you are reaching them where they are. Many churches today use digital projectors to show announcements, lyrics to songs and sermon outlines. Most of these churches use Microsoft PowerPoint to display these items on the screen. There are a few big reasons why they do this.
#1. PowerPoint comes installed on most laptops and desktop computers as part of Microsoft Office
#2. Even if they do not have Microsoft Office they could still use the same idea through Open Office or Google Docs.
#3. Most business people have the know how to run Powerpoint already. Little to no learning curve is necessary.
#4. They can’t afford the more costly presentation programs which are geared to churches and worship.

Media Shout, Easy Worship, and Live Worship are all great programs. Unfortunately with prices tags around $200+, they would take a huge chunk out of most small to medium sized churches budgets. Here’s where EasiSlides comes in. EasiSlides comes to the rescue with a free (yes I said FREE) presentation software package. It has some of the same features that the bigger presentation packages have, but with no cost.
Here’s a list taken straight from their web site of features you can find in their latest version.

Dual-Lingual Lyrics
Project lyrics in two different languages at the same time, should you have such lyrics in your database, for multi-lingual services .

Multimedia Support
Play Audio File or Video Background and Live Feed from an attached Camcorder along with the lyrics. Alternatively you can use our slide backgrounds, gradients or your own images.

Praisebook Generator
Print your own Praise and Worship Books.

Three Monitors Output
Output for Operator, Congregation and Choir/Musicians .

Html Generator
Produce all the necessary files to publish the lyrics on your church website.

Notations
Add notations, such as guitar chords to the lyrics.

Auto Rotate
Let the slides rotate automatically using timers, in step with a media file.

Alerts
Run Alerts during a live praise session, for example Nursery Alerts.

Bible
Search, Integrate and Run bible verses from the bible database. Add and Remove your own Bible Translations and Versions.

Formatting
Format your text and position your lyrics

This is quite possibly one of the best presentation programs out there. It is extremely easy to use and did I mention it was free? I know that my church has definitely found it’s new presentation software. Give it a shot and let me know what you think.

Web Brochure or Web Ministry?

Rodney — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 03:20:58 +0000

What is a web ministry? How does it apply to your church’s web site? Many church web sites are simply a brochure placed on the internet. Many of these “brochure-sites” are very well put together and look great. Some of them do a great job at presenting information about the church. Unfortunately, if a visitor wants to find out information beyond church location, service times, and a few pictures, these sites reach the end of their usefulness. How can you turn your church’s place on the web from a web brochure into a web ministry? This series of articles will seek to help you Share your church with the world, not just your church’s information. Here’s a few items to include in a web ministry site. (we’ll be going over these one by one in the coming weeks)

1. More than looks.
2. Your church’s story.
3. Pastor’s blogs.
4. Constantly updated calendars.
5. Your church at work.
6. Always provide the Gospel.

I look forward to sharing with you and having you share back. It’s time to Share Your Church.

Your Church on Google Maps

Rodney — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 01:27:15 +0000

The internet has offered us unprecedented ways of finding and distributing information. We have gone past the information age straight to the information overload age. Google has set out to bring all of this information together into one place. You can ignore that fact, bemoan that fact, or use it to share your church with the world. There are lots of ways to use Google to help your church, but for now we’re going to focus on placing your church on Google Maps under the local business search.

Church Communications Pro lays out these four features you can look forward to by using Google Maps.
1. Enhance Your Listing with Photos
You can add up to 10 photos to your church’s listing. Now potential visitors searching for churches in their area on Google maps can see not only your location, but pictures of your church as well.

The other pictures will appear on a tab labeled “Photo” when the visitor clicks on the “more info” link. I’m sure you’re already thinking of all the photos that you would add to present a sneak preview of your church and ministries.

2. Custom Attributes
You now have the ability to add custom attributes to your listing. The description section of the listing is set at a maximum of 200 characters, just about enough for a couple of sentences. Now with custom attributes, you can add informations such as ministries, affiliations, or other locations.

3. Map Editing
The business owner now can change the location of the push pin on the map. Think about that, Google is letting you edit their maps. Actually, they are asking you to make their maps more accurate. Now you can drag and drop the pin to more accurately show your church’s location. Here’s a hint for this little feature. When you move the pin, switch from the default map mode to the satellite view, it’s much easier to see the exact location of the building.

4. Visitor Statistics
A very simple count of how many times the listing has been viewed in the last 30 days. You’ll need to log in to Google’s Local Business Center to see this stat.

It’s all about sharing your church and Google is here to help.
Go here to sign your church up (http://www.google.com/local/add/businessCenter).
Stay tuned for other ways Google can help you to Share Your Church

Visitor’s Perspective

Rodney — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 19:00:45 +0000

When you Share Your Church with the world you have to be prepared to welcome them into your church. A few years ago my wife and I moved to Atlanta, Ga. I had a few friends up here and they recommended numerous churches for us to go visit. In the course of the first 5-6 weeks we had visited some of he biggest and smallest churches in the area (not to mention, some of the strangest). We finally settled into one church and began to start the fitting in process. No matter which way we looked and who we asked we seemed to get the same answer “the church is doing great, we’ll call you when we need you”. As someone who had just got out of a really bad ministry situation, I thought I would enjoy the opportunity to be a participant (read, spectator) for once instead of being the leader/organizer. A month later we still were not involved and I was realizing (again) that I was not called to be a spectator. So, one Sunday morning my wife and I woke up, got ready for church, and left for Service. Only today was different, instead of turning right out of the neighborhood to get to church, we turned left. We decided to go exploring and stop at the first little red brick church we came across. 15 minutes later we walked into a little red brick baptist church and were not only welcomed with open arms, but I actually caught them arguing over who would get (not get stuck with) to take us to lunch. We were home. Not that everything was perfect, but we fit in. Not only were we needed, we were wanted. Over the course of the next few weeks I want to recap the 6 weeks I spent visiting churches, and why we didn’t stay at the “nice” church. We’ll be exploring the good, the bad, and the “you just scared that visitor away”. We’ll also be looking at ways to fix some of the wide open back/side doors at some of these churches that allow people to come visit and then disappear forever. I look forward to remniscing with you as we look at typical American churches through the eyes of an enthusiastic visitor. Check back over the next few weeks and come learn some new ways to Share Your Church.