Church Tech Matters

Google Wave: Cheat Sheet

Stuart — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 02:05:04 PST

I’m taking no credit for this – I was allowing myself to be sucked in by a public wave search and it literally felt like I was drowning – but I discovered this wave in the process.

If you haven’t tried viewing the live public wave feed then I dare you.

Anyway, the info below is the stuff I keep referring back to so thought where better to stick it than on one of the blogs I write on.

More after the jump:

Search Cheat Sheet

This is a quick guide to the operators and restricts supported by wave search.

Keywords

about:[keyword] — finds waves which have [keyword] occurring anywhere. Same as [keyword].
title:[keyword] — finds waves which have [keyword] in the title.
caption:[keyword] — finds waves which have an attachment where [keyword] occurs in the caption.
————————————————

Status

is:read — finds all read waves.
is:unread — finds all unread waves.
Note: you cannot currently do a search like “-is:read” by itself and get reliable results due to an outstanding restriction on megastore queries

is:mute — finds all muted waves.
is:unmute — finds all waves not muted
is:active — currently the same as is:unread.
is:note — finds all waves which have you as the only participant and contributor
————————————————

Participants

from:[address] — finds waves from the participant identified by the address. Special case of from:me identifying waves from yourself.
by:[address] — same as from:[address].
to:[address] — find waves which are a dialogue between you and the participant identified by the address.
with:[address] — find waves that have the participant identified by the given address explicitly listed.
owner:[address] — find waves by person, that they created.
only:[address] — finds waves to which only the participant specified by the given address contributed.
————————————————

Date Search

Currently, there are a few restricts:

past:[date term] — finds all waves in the last period.
previous:[date term] — finds all waves in the period before the last period.
before:[date term] — finds all waves before a certain period.
after:[date term] — finds all waves after a certain period.
which can be combined with date terms:

day
week
month
year
So you can have past:week, past:year. There is also support for

past:N[date term] where N > 0. So you can have past:3days (today, yesterday, the day before yesterday).
Also you can have

past:Ndays
past:Nweeks
past:Nmonths
past:Nyears
Finally, you can abbreviate days, weeks, months and years to a single letter (d, w, m, y). Thus you can write

past:3d
past:2w
————————————————

Folders

in:[folder name] — find waves in the folder with the given name. For example, in:inbox.
in:[search name] — find waves in the saved search with the given name.
is:unfiled — find waves which have not been moved to a user folder.
is:filed — find waves which belong to some user folder.
————————————————

Attachments

has:attachment — finds waves with an attachment. This changed from “is:image”.
has:document — finds waves with an attachment which is a document. (coming soon)
has:image — finds waves with an attachments which is an image. (coming soon)
caption:[keyword] — finds waves with an attachment with caption containing [keyword].
filename:[keyword] — finds waves with an attachment with filename containing [keyword]. (coming soon)
mimetype:[keyword] — finds waves with an attachment with mimetype containing [keyword]. (coming soon)
————————————————

Tags

tag:[tag name] — finds waves with the tag [tag name].
————————————————

Gadgets

has:gadget — finds waves which contain a gadget.
gadget:[keyword] — finds waves which contain a gadget with name containing keywords. e.g. chess, fridge, map, risk, sokoban.
gadgeturl:[keyword] — finds waves which contain a gadget with urls containing keyword.
gadgettitle:[keyword] — finds waves which contain a gadget with a title containing keywords.
————————————————

Expressions

foo & bar — match waves with foo and bar.
You can use AND, or skip the operator altogether, as the logical and is the default.
foo | bar — match waves with foo or bar (or both).
foo OR bar — match waves with foo or bar (or both).
-foo — match waves that do not contain foo. (There is an outstanding bug that causes searches with only negative terms to fail. To get around it, use to:me -foo)
“foo … bar” — matches waves that contain the exact phrase “foo … bar” (There is an outstanding bug for live search not working with phrases)
foo & (bar | -baz) — matches waves that contain foo and either bar or do not contain baz.
————————————————

Phrases

“[multiple terms]” — match waves with one or more terms in sequence:
“hot dog” catches waves with the terms hot and dog in sequence. This is also required for other operators such as in:”new inbox” where say “new inbox” is a saved search.
————————————————

XML Search

tags:subtag — find all waves which have this combination.
tag:[tag] — find all waves which have this .
attribute:[value keyword] — finds all waves which have < …. attribute=value …> where keyword is a token in value.
————————————————

Wave ID

id:”” — find a wave with a specific wave id.
————————————————

Zero Inbox

If you want to zero inbox, you can hack this temporarily by saving a search “my inbox” with the query:

in:inbox is:unread this:week. You can then use the menu option “Mark as read” in the wave panel.
Alternative zero inbox: in:inbox is:unread past:7days -is:mail
————————————————

Saved Searches

A search can be saved using one of two methods:

Create a search in the search box and then press the Save search button at the bottom of the Digest panel.
Add a search using the searches Add button on the Navigation panel. Then add the search query and name of the search in the Saved Search popup panel.
Saved searches can be edited and managed using the pop-up menu which shows when hovering over the saved search in the searches section of the Navigation panel.
————————————————

Filters

Filters are saved searches which also have an action to apply to all waves which match the saved search. The actions supported are

skip inbox – removes the wave from inbox. Whilst this wave continues to match the search, it will continue to stay out of the inbox. Skip inbox will shortly be renamed archive.
mark as read – Whilst the wave continues to match the search, it will be marked as read.
————————————————

Folders

You can add a folder by using the Add button on the folders section of the Navigation panel. A folder is added by typing the folder name in the text box given and hitting enter.

Folders can be managed using the pop-up menu that shows when hovering over the folder on the Navigation panel.

Add folder – A subfolder can be added under the current folder.
Rename – rename the current folder.
Delete – delete the current folder.
————————————————

Language Filter

Much thanks to Geoffrey Spear for the help and insight:

The problem is that these tags aren’t exclusive; if a Wave has any English in it at all it will show up under “lang:en” even if it’s mostly in another language. This is particularly a problem since the search terms themselves are all English so a Wave in, say, Portuguese about using Wave will tell people they need to use “with:whatever” and the system will see “with”, an English word and suddenly the Wave is in both lang:en and lang:pt.
“group:public@a.gwave.com lang:en -lang:es -lang:fi -lang:hu -lang:pt -lang:nl -lang:ja -lang:he -lang:fr -lang:ru -lang:sv -lang:zh -lang:de -lang:no -lang:da”
… is fairly effective, although you basically need to keep adding more as you find Waves not in one of these languages. Not a really good solution

Digg This Post

My Catalyst Experience

Chase Livingston — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 10:36:04 PDT

I was so happy to be able to attend Catalyst this year. I had heard about the conference several times, and always wanted to go, but never really had the money. Thanks to Jim’s prompting and Wayne and Elaine’s generosity, I was able to go. It was great being able to stay in a house with 14 other people, because you got to know everyone else really well. Fortunately, we all had a comfortable place to sleep, although I doubt anyone got much sleep, because we were too busy talking, or laughing, or just hanging out.The conference itself was very exciting. I’m obviously very interested in the technical side of things, and Catalyst definitely didn’t disappoint. The entire stage was a screen that usually had some type of motion background running on it. They also had eight other projection screens which were used for live video, lyrics, etc. The sound was very well done, not overpowering, but loud enough to hear well.

The real power of this conference is not the A/V/L, though. The purpose of this conference is to develop current and future church leaders. The speakers were very motivational, yet challenging. I was stretched both as a leader, but also as a Christian. Something Dave Ramsey said struck me very hard. He said “We don’t need any more half-butt Christians.” I began to think if maybe that’s what my walk with Jesus amounted to. I definitely don’t intend it to be that way, but I think we can all agree that sometimes, that’s what our walks look like. We’re halfway committed to serving Jesus, but also halfway committed to the world.

I am so thankful to have been given the opportunity to attend Catalyst, and I’m already looking forward to next year!

Digg This Post

The “Why” of Live Video – Part 1

Kirk Longhofer — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 16:04:15 PDT

Over the past several years, the use of video in a church setting has exploded. The use of video projection was common in the church by the early part of this decade. Most of that use was limited to outlines of sermons and the occasional movie clip or still illustration. Today, even the smallest of churches haul out a portable projector to project song lyrics and announcements on a screen, or in some cases, on a wall.

In the past few years, congregations in larger churches have suddenly been treated to (or assaulted with) the giant smiling face of the teaching pastor, and videos produced specifically to support that teaching. Other churches jumped to use video to extend the reach of their church, on broadcast or cable television, or on the Internet. They have installed broadcast quality cameras, state-of-the-art equipment in full video control rooms, and post production suites, investing hundreds of thousands of dollars in technology.

Over time, the use of live video has pushed down to even relatively small fellowships, both as a teaching aid, and as a way to take their brand and message beyond the walls of the church. For the church considering taking video beyond simple lyrics and Powerpoint, or making a leap into the world of live video, it can be a confusing world.

But for most, the first step toward the use of live video in a worship context has nothing to do with technology. It starts with a conversation, and a question: “Why do we want to use live video?”

It sounds like a simple question, but it’s not as straightforward was it might seem. There are lots of reasons for using live video. Some are likely valid for your congregation. Some are not. Answering this “why” question first will make decisions about equipment and technology much easier down the road.

There are many reasons that congregations are drawn to live video. For those with large facilities, the use of Image Magnification, or IMAG helps to connect worship participants more directly to worship leaders. It allows them to see things that might otherwise be obscured due to sight lines, or simply distance.

IMAG is not for everyone. In a room where the distance from preacher to the most distant seat is 50 feet or less, there may not be any need for IMAG.

Further, doing IMAG well requires skill and effort, both from your technical team, and from the teaching pastor. It is used most effectively in conjunction with supporting images and video. Take a look at a television newscast. You don’t see the anchor simply reading for very long. Simply placing the image of the speaker on the screen for an entire sermon may not be the best use of your video system.

Another valid reason for the use of live video in worship is to leverage existing teaching and worship leadership resources. Video allows a teaching pastor to be in more than one venue, and to teach at multiple services over the course of a weekend without killing the teacher!

For those pushing video beyond the walls of the church via the Internet, cable or broadcast television, there is no denying it’s potential power in extending the church’s reach. It can be a powerful tool for evangelism, and for growing a church. It is important to remember, however, that that power can cut both ways. Done poorly, a broadcast can do great damage to what might be a great church.

The church contemplating a broadcast ministry must also remember to count all the costs. A broadcast outreach can quickly become a tail that wags the worship dog. Ego issues can surface. It’s also important to think through how, or if, you will provide pastoral services to people who connect with your church via a broadcast. What happens when they call from the hospital, or request a pastor for counseling, or a funeral?

One huge benefit of having a broadcast or Internet outreach via video is the preservation of connection with older members of your congregation. There comes a time for many folks where they simply are physically unable to attend their church. A service delivered via television or the Internet can be a huge comfort to those members, allowing them to continue worshipping with their existing church family.

Perhaps the most powerful use of video in worship, however, has nothing to do with broadcasting, or with IMAG. It is simply the use of the video medium in telling stories. More on that next time!

Digg This Post

Why a Mac in Church?

Chase Livingston — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 09:44:36 PDT

Well, I’m glad you asked. Up until about a year and a half ago when I bought my first Mac, I was very against the whole idea. I thought Macs were just overpriced, hard to use, and incompatible with the rest of the world. But then, after playing with a few of my friend’s Macs, I decided I was going to get one, and I’ve loved every minute of it.

But I digress, the reason we’re here is to find out why someone would want to use a Mac in church rather than a PC. First of all, I believe that Macs are much better suited for multimedia. They come with many programs that out of the box are great for the average user when it comes to photo, video, and even sound. And if you’re someone who needs more than those programs offer, you can always try something from Adobe.

The second reason is ProPresenter. ProPresenter is the leading presentation software for the Mac. While programs such as MediaShout and EasyWorship are great for the PC, I believe ProPresenter does a much better job. Like everything else about a Mac, ProPresenter is very user friendly, and easy to pick up even for someone who has never even seen it before. It does a great job handling lyrics, backgrounds, videos, etc. Version 4 will be coming out soon, and it looks like it’s going to include many new and useful features. I can’t wait to check it out. One of the most interesting features I’ve seen is the apparent ease of importing PowerPoint presentations. Now, having not been able to test this firsthand, I can’t vouch for how easy it is, but they claim it’s pretty seamless. Stage Display is another very useful looking feature, which allows you to format a display specifically suited for those on stage.

Right now, the church I attend is using SongShow Plus, but I’m planning on upgrading to EasyWorship 2009 in the near future. SongShow is very outdated and hard to use, compared to all of the other products available. As much as I like EasyWorship, I would switch to ProPresenter in a heartbeat if we could afford the extra expense of purchasing a Mac. The main reason for that is I trust a Mac much more than a PC. I know this is going to stir up some debate, but that’s ok, I’m ready for it. I’ve had many more problems out of PC’s I’ve owned in the past than I’ve had from my MacBook Pro.

Those are just a couple of the reasons I would choose a Mac over a PC in a worship environment. The church I volunteer in actually uses a PC, but again, if it were up to me we would have a Mac. Disagree? You can find me on Twitter, @chaselivingston, I’d love to discuss the topic further. Also, for further discussion, please check out the forum, here.

Digg This Post

New CTM Writer – Chase Livingston

Jim Walton — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 21:04:38 PDT

I am really excited to introduce to you someone I have followed on Twitter for a few months. He is a tech volunteer at his church and has been for quite some time and he struck me as someone who has a story to tell. To begin this story, I thought I would interview him, so here goes!

What is your name?

Chase Livingston, aka @chaselivingston

I realize you are a tech volunteer at your church, as many of us are, what do you do fulltime?

I’m a college student at Clemson University, studying Electrical Engineering. That basically means I study all the time, and tweet about how boring or hard my classes are.

What is the name of your church?

Mountain Creek Baptist Church

What is Mountain Creek’s average attendance each weekend?

I don’t know the exact number, and I’m glad I’m not the guy who has to count, but I think it’s between 200 and 300.

How long have you been involved with sound and media with your church?

I’ve been doing it at Mountain Creek pretty much since I started going there about 4 or 5 years ago.

So, you started when you were how old?

I really started with church media when I was about 13. There was a wedding at my grandparents church, and they didn’t have anyone to run sound. My grandfather knew I was into computers, and technical stuff, so he asked if I would be willing to help out. Being a true techie, I of course agreed. That was my first experience behind a sound board, and what really sparked my interest in everything I’m into now.

Describe a typical Sunday morning (What time do you arrive, routines you have, number of people that are involved etc)

I normally arrive about 8:30am for the service that starts at 10:30am. First things first, I get everything powered up and ready to go for the worship team to have a run through/sound check. They normally arrive about 9:00am to do that, then by the time they’re finished, the other guy who runs the projection PC is ready to pull up the song lyrics we’ll need, announcement slides, sermon slides, etc. We normally do some editing to the announcement slides and sermon slides to make them look as good as possible. By the time all that is done it’s about time for the service to start, and from then on, I’m pretty much behind the sound board.

How closely do you work with your worship pastor and what is his role in the sound/media/tech side of things?

Well, first of all my worship pastor is a she. Just thought we should clear that up. I work pretty closely with her, she is the person on staff who is responsible for the tech side of things. Basically that means she’s in charge of letting me and the other guys know what needs to be done, and we do our best to make it happen. She’s also very helpful in giving us the lyrics for the songs we’ll be doing in worship to make sure we have the right lyrics in our database, and also the right order. She’s also responsible for the basic programming of the service, which is the order of service, where each service element goes, etc.

In all that you are involved in, is there a single thing that just really gets you going?

I get really annoyed when someone brings me a video or something at the last minute and wants to show it in the service. I haven’t had time to preview it or sound check it. Really just not having enough preparation time in general really gets on my nerves. Many of my friends make fun of me because I’m usually super early everywhere I go, but to me, it gives me plenty of time to prepare for anything that could go wrong, or at least prevent the preventable things from going wrong.

What are you passionate about?

I am passionate about using technology in church to enhance the worship experience of everyone there. I know that my generation is especially drawn to anything to do with technology, so if they see a church that uses tech in cool and innovative ways, they are drawn to it. I also believe that if done wrong, it can be a detriment to the worship experience. There is a very fine line and I am constantly reading and trying to learn from other people who are definitely better than me about how they utilize technology in their church.

I have heard rumors that you are moonlighting at a little church called New Spring. What’s that about?

Well, I think New Spring is a great church, and I have been visiting there recently since I’m back at school and it’s pretty close. I have followed a lot of their staff on Twitter for a while, so I’m constantly trying to learn from them, because they’re really good at what they do. Who knows, maybe I’ll end up working with them someday.

What is something about New Spring’s A/V/L and production that surprises you?

Well, the obvious is that there’s so much of it. I feel they use technology very well in their services. Everything works together well, and like I talked about in one of the previous questions, it enhances the worship experience. But beyond the cool factor of all the technology, they work really hard to get it to the level that it’s at. I had the opportunity to sit in the control room with some of the volunteers a couple weeks back, and their preparation and execution of the service is amazing. You can tell they work hard to minimize mistakes, but when they do happen (and they are going to in any church), they do the best they can to minimize the impact on the service. I believe their attitude of “we can always make it better,” is something all churches and tech guys could learn from, including myself.

Are there any production similarities between New Spring and Mountain Creek?

No, there really aren’t too many. Mountain Creek is a very traditional church, while NewSpring is obviously very contemporary. Many of the people at Mountain Creek aren’t as receptive to technology in the service as they are at NewSpring. We have a lot of older members, so we try to respect them as much as we can, while not compromising our goal of reaching the lost.

When you are not in school or serving at church, what other things occupy your time?

I am a self professed computer nerd. I love learning about the newest thing, or reading about the newest releases when it comes to technology. I always want to try out the latest and greatest things before anyone else. Also, along these lines, I’m always trying to get ideas from other people in the church tech/media field. I read a lot of blogs and watch some podcasts, always trying to sharpen my skills. I also really love cars. I’ve been fascinated by them ever since I was a kid, so whenever I get the chance to go to a car show, or work on a car, I always take it.

What church leaders do you read and/or follow?

This is quite a long list. It would probably be easier for anyone who wants to know to look through my Twitter followers or find me on Google Reader. But to name a few, I read pretty much everyone from NewSpring, Ed Stetzer, Alvin Reid, Thom Rainer, Steven Furtick, Pete Wilson, Tim Stevens, etc. I’m sure I’m leaving a lot of really cool people out, so if you have any recommendations, please let me know.

Any thoughts on how to build community among church tech volunteers?

Well, to build community anywhere, the first thing I would recommend is just spending time with the people you are trying to build community with. Get to know them, and their stories. Everyone likes to eat, so get everyone together and go out to eat, or find something that everyone likes to do, and go do that. Invest in each other.

Any conferences in your future?

Well, by the grace of God I’m going to Catalyst in October. I’m so excited, I can’t even explain it. Everyone keeps telling me what an awesome experience it is, so I’m really looking forward to it. I’m going to try and blog as much as I can about it, so stay tuned for that, maybe Jim will post some of it on CTM. Also in January I’m going to Passion 2010. It’s basically a huge conference for young adults, started by Louie Giglio. I’ve also heard many great things about it, including the face that Hillsong United will be playing, so I am super excited about that. Again, hopefully I will be able to blog a little about my experiences.

Do you ever get burned out on serving in the church? What have you done to deal with that?

Yeah, I definitely do, I think everyone does at some point. I’m sure everyone involved with church tech loves what they do, but sometimes it just gets tiring. I try and take a step back, maybe take a week or two off from it, and just be a regular church member for a while. By regular church member, I mean just sit and enjoy the service, rather than working during it.

So, join me in welcoming Chase! I think he will definitely add an interesting perspective and there’s even a good chance we can all learn a thing or two from him.

Digg This Post

EasyWorship 2009: Display Foldback Overview

Daniel Meyer — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 20:40:55 PDT

If you’re an EasyWorship user, there’s a new version available for you. EasyWorship 2009 was released recently, and it has several new features. One of the features that is causing some interest and even confusion is Display Foldback.

I’ve been using EasyWorship 2009 at our church for a few months now in its beta form, and it has been rock-solid. Our worship team really likes the Display Foldback capabilities, and has made it clear that this feature alone is worth the upgrade fee.

So, what is Display Foldback? Basically, it’s support for a third output from the computer that is intended specifically for the people on stage. It supports different settings for backgrounds and font size and style. In addition, you can display a clock for the worship team and preacher to use. Perhaps my favorite part of the system is that you can display the first line of the next slide in case your slide operator falls asleep at the wheel.

Display Foldback requires an additional level of hardware that you may not already have. You’ll need a third display output, which for many churches, means purchasing an extra video card. Our setup is unconventional, but it works all the same. We use the integrated video on the motherboard for our control screen. Then, a single PCI-E video card sends VGA to the congregation and Foldback to the stage via composite video. You could do any combination of video cards and monitors from something like what we use all the way to three independent cards.

Once your hardware is in place, setup is simple. First, configure Windows so that all three outputs are active. Hit the “Identify” button to be sure you’re not duplicating a certain output across two screens. You’ll want to see a “1” on the control screen, a “2” on the congregation screen, and a “3” on the foldback monitor. Then, start up EasyWorship. In the Live > Options pane, set the main (congregation) output to “Secondary Monitor”. Click Ok. Now, in the Live > Display Foldback Options pane and under the “Display Foldback” heading, change the dropdown menu selection to “Monitor 3” or whatever yours may be called.

That’s it! Change the Display Foldback settings as you see fit. Most of the foldback pane is similar to what you’ll see in the main Display Options pane, so you should be familiar with what you’re looking at. A plain background with the clock and next line preview turned on seems to work well for us.

There are two more features related to Display Foldback I’d like to mention. First is the “Foldback Alert”, found at Live > Alerts > Foldback Alert, or the Alerts button just to the left of the Logo, Black and Clear buttons. There, you can send a message only to the stage. Operation is identical to the “Message Alert”.

The other feature is enhanced PowerPoint slide operation. In the Live > Display Foldback Options pane and in the PowerPoint Options tab, there are some options to add thumbnails of the next few upcoming slides. You can change the size of the previews as a percentage of screen height. However, if your foldback monitor is not very large or it is positioned far away, sharing that screen with thumbnails makes the primary slide small and hard to read very quickly.

All in all, EasyWorship 2009 is a good upgrade, and there are many more features besides Display Foldback. Another feature that I like is webpage integration, especially for YouTube.

Prices are $399 for a new license, $99 for an upgrade and free if you have purchased since the beginning of 2009. More information can be found at http://www.easyworship.com

Digg This Post

Build a Website – Part Three

Stuart — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 16:10:36 PDT

Part 3 is all about Content Creation. Parts 1 and 2 can be found here and here.

As project lead I was quite happy that this burden wasn’t on me. However it was down to me to drive the provision of it and to keep advising, suggesting, etc. Of course the type of site and target audience really drives the content. In our case the site I documented this process for was (another story for another time) our main church website.

The boss man wanted to effectively transplant our monthly newsletter; notices; calendar and his monthly message to the web. He also wanted it to be a place to publicly place our Church history along with items about why we believe what we believe and other associated, relevant to our Church information. The trouble with most of the documents produced is that they were full of what I’d call “Christianeese” and to a non-Church person they were dry and very boring.

So with some trepidation I set out, along with a contact, to de-mystify the documents. Along with this was a need to categorise the data so that it could be placed on the website. When first we started the project I spoke at some length with my pastor about the need to ‘categorise’ the data he wanted on the site and to have an idea of what headings it should come under. I pointed him at resources such as menu layout study and Layout Cookbook so that he could see what was normal and what was acceptable. Little did I realise my error at the time but it was fortunately easily fixed. Within a few weeks I had been provided with raw data and no less than 14 main menu headings, along with many more sub headings – a potential nightmare for any designer, let alone the visual impact.

Thankfully we whittled this down to 6 major headings that we now have. We did this by a process of categorising the data and identifying where it could be placed.

Along with creating the content, you have to consider at whom it is aimed. This was a lot easier to argue the case that any (and yes I believe this should hold true for all) church site should target three distinct demographics. These are:

The church membership / attendees
Other Christians visiting or moving into the area
Seekers

How one does this is not easy but a lot of it has to be driven by talk. In our case it was easy to persuade the pastor that just doing a website for the church would make it a relatively static site and would defeat the main object of the web (as I see it) to be interactive. And here, interactivity doesn’t mean lots of buttons to press or things to do – simply that it draws in the attention of the reader and persuades them to return. Add to this the fact that we’ve had visitors over the years that told the pastor by email / chat / etc that they had found it really difficult to know when / where our services were and that our website was dreadful (I confess, this last was my fault) but I did it so that we had something and to show the pastor how bad a static content site can be.

Anyway, this talk from outsiders finally persuaded the pastor that we needed to do something about our online presence.

Now that this hurdle was over I hammered home the need to ensure the site was not static. Now you may have an easier time of this than I, but whilst my pastor is a happy user of the internet (surfing and emails) and despite being a few years younger than I; he has publically stated on more than one occasion that you’ll “never find him on facebook, myspace or similar locales”.

Thankfully a few web searches produced lots of articles and ideas that I was able to forward to him to get his thought processes running. Little things like telling him the stuffy (they’re not, but it served a purpose) old CofE use twitter to run their annual ‘Love Life Live Lent‘ event and suddenly he’s thinking perhaps I should involve my self more.

For our part, interactive is going to come down to regular and changing content especially on the homepage. So transplanting his monthly magazine article to the web is one; persuading him to write more often is another; remembering to get any flyers designed for events into a web based graphic to go on our front page; to ensure that (as an example) the children’s page has regular updates and with content suitable to all ages; add pictures and graphics where appropriate and change them oin a regular basis. In fact anything that makes me, you or someone else keep returning.

I’m going to stop now as I could keep driving the nail home but want to leave you still breathing. In the final part of this series I intend to cover dealing with leadership issues; employing third parties and find some form of conclusion.

In the meantime – should you have any questions or wnat to continue discussing this then do pop over to the CTM Forum and have your say.

Digg This Post