1) Be careful not to communicate too much – If you are trying to say everything, you’ll end up saying nothing. Consider the typical parish bulletin. Over time they’ve accumulated so much information in them each week that people don’t bother to even try to sort through it all. So you end up communicating nothing. The same goes for emails or letters you send out. If they contain so much information nobody bothers to read them, they aren’t doing any good. Say less and you’ll communicate more.

2) Respect parishioner time - Whether they are listening to announcements at Mass, reading your bulletin or surfing your website, don’t waste their time. Make sure that what you are bothering to say is important to your parishioners (not just to you). And try not to broadcast to everyone the things that only a small group of people need or want to hear. Eventually, they will just tune you out completely.

Read the rest of his advice here.

Historically, Catholics have been at the forefront of scientific, educational, medical, and technological innovation. Ironically however, the Catholic Church is sometimes one of the slower adopters of this same innovation. This has proven true of the adoption and effective use of both websites and social media by most parishes.

Why have our Catholic parishes been so slow to embrace the evangelical, catechetical, and discipleship opportunities that lie at the heart of the internet? I believe it is for the same reason that any of us fail to do something well – a lack of vision and thus motivation. In other words, without understanding the potential and importance of an idea, it is unlikely that we will be empowered to implement that same idea.

Below are what I believe to be the top 7 reasons that our Catholic parishes desperately need a dynamic website. Feel free to leave comments to add your own reasons or feedback!

Read the rest of the article to discover the 7 reasons why your parish needs a dynamic website.

Besides running the popular “Deacons Bench” at Patheos.com, Deacon Greg serves as a deacon in the Diocese of Brooklyn, New York. He also worked for 26 years as a writer and producer for CBS news and has been honored with many awards including two George Foster Peabody Awards, two Emmy Awards, and four awards from the Writers Guild of America.
 

1. The first question is the simplest: why do you blog?

I began blogging for several reasons. First, there weren’t really any blogging deacons out there. When I was searching the Internet for resources for, by, or about deacons, the pickings were pretty slim. So I decided to strike out on my own and see if I could contribute something.

Secondly, I didn’t feel as if there were many blogs out there speaking to the Catholics I knew: ordinary, faithful people going to church every Sunday and doing their best to pay the bills, put the kids through college and try to avoid, in the process, eternal damnation. Too many blogs were skewed to people who were either very progressive, or very conservative. They also tended to be strident and, often, angry. I wanted to capture the middle ground, and offer a Catholic perspective that was accessible and entertaining.

Finally, I thought it would be interesting to post my homilies on a weekly basis and see if there was a wider audience for them.
 
 

2. Why should other Catholic clergy engage New Media tools like Facebook, blogging, and Twitter?

Blogs and social media are a great way for clergy to connect with people – not just around the block, but around the world. I’ve been amazed at the readers and commenters that I’ve been able to collect over the years, from places as far away as New Zealand and the Philippines.

From my experience, people are hungry for information, for inspiration, for encouragement, for connection – and the blogosphere helps create community and spark dialogue among a wide range of people. It can also be a useful tool for evangelization, drawing the curious and the questioning into discussion. I’ve heard from so many people over the years who say “The Deacon’s Bench” has been a welcome gathering place for like-minded people, and a useful clearing house for ideas. This is especially true among men who are discerning the diaconate. The Bench has become for me a kind of ministry, and a way of teaching people about this vocation.
 
 

3. What’s one interesting story from your new media activity?

Probably the most meaningful episode from my blogging experience is one I wrote about a couple years ago in America Magazine:

One night in August, on the eve of the Feast of the Assumption, I decided to check my e-mails before going to bed. I wasn’t startled: there was one item in my in-box with a subject line that read, “I lost one of my students today.”

I sat down and took a deep breath.

It was from a Catholic teacher in Newark, New Jersey. One of his pupils, a 15-year-old boy, had been shot and killed that morning while sleeping in his own bedroom. News reports said a neighbor downstairs had been handling a rifle, and it had gone off accidentally.

The teacher was devastated. He said that he wrote to me because he just needed to get it off his chest.

His e-mail said, in part: “I am stricken with grief at a time when my heart would otherwise be elated — but I know my young student, my child, celebrates this feast in the arms of the Blessed Mother.” He asked for prayers — for himself, his students, and the boy who had been killed.

I didn’t know what to say. I wrote back to him, offering a few words of consolation. I told him I’d pray for him.

But something, I felt, had changed.

The flickering words on a computer screen spoke of something greater, and deeper, and sadder than anything else I’d encountered in my months of blogging. In the middle of all the bickering that I’d found in the blogosphere, I’d clicked open my in-box and encountered a moment of unexpected grief, and profound grace – beautiful, heartbreaking, soul-wrenching grace.

If you are interested, you can read more from that essay about blogging.
 

For more great stuff from Deacon Greg, check out his blog, “The Deacons Bench” over at Patheos and follow him on Facebook and Twitter.

(HT: Craig Berry)

Devin is a Catholic author, blogger, and lay apologist who has been using new media for some time in his pursuit of Christian unity.

He has a wonderful blog, an informative podcast, and he just released his first book, If Protestantism Is True. The book has received rave reviews and will soon be re-published by Catholic Answers.
 

1. Why, in particular, do you use new media–blogging, podcastings, YouTube videos, etc?

I use new media because it provides an easy means of sharing our Catholic Faith with thousands or even millions of people. If you have a computer and can write, you can start a blog, and you never know who might find it. If you have a microphone, you can record a podcast, tag it with some search terms, and it will be found by people online.

With the advent of YouTube, regular Joes like me can make videos and broadcast them to a worldwide audience. Even just twenty years ago, creating content for print, radio, and television was only accessible to the relative few who had enough wealth or connections, but with new media, the playing field has been leveled. Now, anyone with a desire to share their faith as part of the New Evangelization can do so.
 

2. Why should other Catholics engage new media tools?

Jesus said that the harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few, and this applies to Catholics in new media quite aptly. New media is where people are going today to get their information, to learn about their Faith, and to engage in open discussions. We as Catholics need to be there in droves!

But though our numbers are growing, we are still a small minority, especially proportional to the size of the worldwide Catholic population. You might think, “well, I see that another Catholic is already creating content in the area that I am interested in, so I don’t need to get involved.” Wrong! First, that other person’s work, tone, and style might not appeal to all people. Your gifts and unique presentation of the Faith might be just what someone needs. Second, the online world is vast, and more Catholics are needed to cover every part of it.
 

3. What’s one interesting story from your new media activity?

A few years ago I was contacted by an man from Albania, who had found my podcasts offering reasons for the Catholic Faith. He was a Protestant Christian but had grown interested in the Church and wanted to learn more. The problem was that his employment and entire social circle were intimately connected with his particular church. Becoming Catholic would mean for him a loss of income and friends.

Nonetheless, he began translating my podcasts into his native tongue and sharing his discoveries with others. We’ve had an ongoing email correspondence, and he is now certain that the Catholic Church is what she claims to be. Here is someone on the other side of the world–Blessed Mother Teresa’s homeland–with whom I never could have had contact without new media.
 

4. Why is it important for Catholics to dominate Google search results?

People find information through the search engines, and Google is currently the most popular one. If Catholics are not in the top search results for important phrases pertaining to the Faith, we lose out on a critically important means of evangelization.

Instead, other groups and people will draw those searchers to their own sites, and they will miss out on hearing the fullness of the truth of Christ. My friend and I both did searches for common Catholic phrases and were surprised to find that oftentimes the majority of the results were from non-Catholics seeking to discredit the Catholic Church.

This unfortunate situation became the impetus for the creation of my video podcasts. I created a video that targeted one of those key phrases and was amazed to discover that just days later, when I searched for that phrase, my video appeared in the top ten results! That demonstrates to me two things: first that there is a great need for more Catholics to create such content and second that there is an easy opportunity to dominate search results of key phrases.
 

5. How does new media fit into the ‘new apologetic’ and the ‘new evangelization’?

I am a Catholic apologist, and in decades past, a wide gulf existed between Catholics and Protestants. This was caused in large part by rampant misconceptions that each had for the other. New media is changing the apologetic landscape drastically, though, because now Protestants, many of whom had no Catholics friends and no easy way to learn the truth of the Catholic Church, are meeting Catholics and reading Catholic articles on the Internet.

They are usually surprised to find that Catholics are warm, friendly, and faithful people who love Christ like they do. They are even more surprised when they discover that the arguments for the Catholic Church are so strong. New media has bridged that chasm and now many are finding their way into the Catholic Church because of it. The “new evangelization” and new media go hand-in-hand. New media is the means by which the new evangelization is taking place.

Lay Catholics in particular are being encouraged to share their faith in new ways and in the particular places and fields they move about in. Even priests and religious are using the New Media to attract vocations and to communicate with their flocks. We can well imagine that if St. Paul lived in today’s world, he would be one of the bishops with a blog and a podcast.
 

6. How does new media allow you to defend and promote the Faith in innovative ways?

I received a comment on my blog by a man who told me he had created a video arguing against the Catholic Church’s doctrine of Apostolic Succession. I watched his video and created a video in response. He in turn created another video that responded to mine. This was all done in a charitable way, and the dialogue we had was helpful for many people to understand the arguments on both sides of the issue.

Another memorable situation occurred when a Protestant scholar in my town heard about my podcasts and a class I teach at my parish. It turns out he had given a talk at his church about Catholicism and had published it as a podcast on the web. I listened to it and created a podcast in response, and then that week he sat in on the class I was teaching. During the class, I invited him to come up to the front and have an informal debate with me, and he accepted! We had a friendly discussion and got to the root of some important differences between our beliefs. Later I published that discussion on my blog, and it became quite popular.

One more example is a ‘meme’. A meme is some idea or video or phrase that hits the Internet and “goes viral.” One such meme was based on a German-language movie of Hitler and his demise. Someone came up with the brilliant idea to create a spoof by giving the movie funny subtitles, putting words into Hitler’s mouth about some topic completely unrelated to the historical events.

I had the idea one night to make my own version where Hitler blows his top when he hears how popular Pope Benedict is, in spite of his efforts to stop him. I thought it was fairly humorous, but the response to it was overwhelming. Within a few weeks over thirty thousand people had watched the video and were delighted by it. Most didn’t even realize that while they were watching it and reading the subtitles, they were actually learning about the key events and successes of Pope Benedict’s pontificate.
 

While preparing some talks I’m giving on New Media, I was struck with a realization: the two fastest growing religious groups in our country are also the two with the strongest online presence–Mormonism and Atheism. I’ll save Atheism and its aggressive new media evangelism for another day, but right now I’ll focus on Mormonism.

A recent article in Mail Online highlights the digital success of the Mormon community (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints):

“LDS.org is the most-visited website of any faith group, and LDS conferences often rank at the top of Twitter when they are underway. But perhaps most surprising is how the religion now dominates search terms on Google.

When searching ‘Old Testament’, the LDS website ranks second on the search engine giant – listed under a Wikipedia entry and linking to books in the Bible. The church also ranks third in the search for ‘friend’, below a Wikipedia entry and a dictionary.com explanation of its meaning; ‘church’ ranks fourth on the list after a list of churches in your local community.”

What’s the secret to their incredible success? The answer is something we touch on in the Church and New Media book. In the sidebar dedicated to Devin Rose, Devin explains how important it is for faithful Catholic websites to be high up in the Google results for search terms relevant to our faith. For example, if someone searches for “Catholic Church” we don’t want the first five articles to be written by anti-Catholic polemicists. Likewise if they search for “priests” we don’t want the first ten articles to be about the sexual abuse crisis.

The art of influencing these search result rankings is know as “SEO”–search engine optimization. There are plenty of guides and tips on how to improve your SEO around the Internet, and in fact it’s pretty big business in the online world. Corporations pay thousands of dollars to ensure their businesses will be near the top of search results.

In the religious world, however, SEO is often considered an unglamorous pursuit. But the Mormon community is single-handedly proving its power.

“LDS officials declined to comment on the church’s specific SEO plan. However, outside experts agree that the Mormons’ success is ‘a combination of investment, focus and an unusually tight faith community’, according to the Post.”

A major reason the Mormon community has attracted so many people through the Internet is simply because of its proximity and prevalence (the same holds true, by the way, for the atheist community.)

This should rattle us Catholics. The Catholic Church, the world’s largest and most influential offline religion, should not be satisfied with appearing low in search results. When someone searches digitally for “Jesus”, the Church should ideally be the first response, not the tenth or twentieth, just as she aims to be offline.

It’s clear that the Mormon community has devoted time, money, and–maybe most importantly–technological expertise to their online missionary efforts. It’s time we Catholics do the same. We need to take seriously the online mission field and equally invest in entrepreneurial evangelization.

Today we talk to Laura Durington. Laura is the Online Community Manager for Catholic Relief Services which means she is the new media expert for one of the world’s largest charities. She also manages the online fundraising, e-mail marketing and social networking outreach programs for CRS.

Before working for CRS, Laura lived in South Africa and helped develop training manuals for the treatment of HIV as part of a Harvard-AIDS Institute funded project.
 

1. Why, in particular, does CRS see it important to use New Media–blogs, Facebook, YouTube, etc?

Catholic Relief Services has been using social media for the past four years. We have found it to be an invaluable asset that gives us the opportunity to engage with and educate our supporters on global issues. We can listen to what they have to say, and often facilitate a dialog among our supporters.

Additionally, the viral nature of social media affords us a way to further our reach to audiences we may not have traditionally had access to, ultimately increasing awareness of CRS and the work we do.
 

2. In what ways does New Media both aid and inhibit Catholic activism?

Social media is an exemplary platform where we can offer our supporters small actions they can take every day, and that ultimately helps support the work we do. These actions might be to call their congressional representatives, or to take a pledge to pray, and sometimes to donate to an emergency. Even if the action is simply to read a story on our website about our work or on a particular issue, we value the idea that the more informed our constituents are about the plight of the world’s poor, the better for everyone.

The downside is that because the online nature of social media affords a sense of anonymity, sadly we’ve found on a few occasions having to remove comments that were needlessly aggressive, insulting or offensive to our other supporters while doing nothing to advance the conversation. We welcome all points of view but we’ve had to institute a comments policy that we reserve the right to delete these types of comments.

An additional, possible downside, is that only time will tell if the most engaged supporters will eventually make the best donors, or if all of these small actions will leave supporters feeling as if they have already acted on our behalf and feel as if they have given their support without making a donation. It will be interesting to look back in five years.
 

3. How can New Media be used in service of Catholic social teaching?

Pope Benedict XVI has noted that New Media furthers the values of Catholic Social Teaching, including creating bonds of solidarity, serving the common good, empowering the poor and vulnerable and offering access to powerful communication tools that encourage subsidiarity.

Pope Benedict, in his message for last year’s World Communications Day, spoke about the “extraordinary potential of the new [digital] technologies, if they are used to promote human understanding and solidarity.” This is something we strive for with our social media efforts – by informing our supporters about issues adversely affecting the poor, we foster a deeper level of understanding of why these issues are so important, and why we must care for the neediest. Through our social media interactions, we invite our online community to live their faith in solidarity with the poor and marginalized as we bond together to pray, learn, act and give for our brothers and sisters overseas.

Additionally, we are often able to enlist our overseas communications officers to interview and post stories of the people we serve through our programming, giving a voice to the voiceless and shining a light in places where the mainstream media has overlooked.
 

4. How does New Media encourage more people to participate in the work of CRS?

By giving people small doses of information we find that it is an easy way for supporters to keep up with our work overseas. We nearly always try to make our posts timely, relevant, and interesting, with an opportunity to do something further (pray, read a story on our website, take an advocacy action, donate, take survey, watch a video.)

One interesting phenomenon we witnessed in the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake was that people came to our Facebook page in droves looking for the latest information coming out of Port-au-Prince. Our number of Facebook “Fans” (as they were called then) went from just barely 6,000 to over 15,000 in just a few weeks. Our Facebook page has continued to flourish with the help of our very dedicated and passionate supporters who have given us thoughtful comments, great suggestions, and glowing testimonials.
 
Be sure to follow Catholic Relief Services on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

“Last week, shortly after the release of The Church and the New Media, I e-mailed the library staff at my local Catholic university here in Minnesota, of which I am an alumnus, and strongly suggested that they add a copy to their collection. I am pleased to report that after checking their online catalog earlier today, my alma mater’s library ordered a copy of The Church and the New Media.

It will probably be a couple months before it hits the shelves there, but at least one Catholic college library system will have a copy of the book. I also suggested the book for purchase at a couple public library systems in the state where I have borrowing privileges. I’ve done this in the past with other Catholic books, such as Pope Benedict’s encyclicals, using the “suggest an item for purchase” form that almost all public library systems have.

You do need to have borrowing privileges at the library you suggest in order to recommend it. The form will ask for information, such as the title, author, publisher, ISBN, and retail price, which you can easily find on a website like Amazon.com. Once the form is submitted, if the library orders the item they will usually place it on hold for you, and so, not only will you be getting quality Catholic books such as The Church and the New Media into your college or public library’s collection, you will also likely be among the first people to read those books!

If it can be done in Minnesota, then it can be done across the country, and so I highly recommend that my fellow Catholics utilize a similar strategy to get quality Catholic books such as The Church and the New Media into your college and local library systems. The libraries probably won’t order everything you suggest, but I’ve gotten a fair amount of the books I’ve suggested into the public libraries in my area.”