If you’ve heard me speak at any conference or read any of my recently published articles, you know I often underscore the idea of using technology to foster collaborative ministry efforts. The internet facilitates collaboration (and crowdsourcing) and allows us to network our ministry efforts, linking together in new, often innovative ways. Using online technologies to spread the word, we can pool our talents, resources and vision and start grassroots movements that can eventually have huge results (i.e. TWLOHA).
Here’s a simple upstart example, Art for Huruma is a an artistic collaboration between Barton Damer and Promise Tangeman Wurzell designed to raise money for a childrens home in Kenya.
Bart is a Dallas based designer whose work you are likely very familiar with if you’re a regular reader since I’ve blogged him extensively and Promise is a ‘jill of all arts’ who I met briefly in the green room at Catalyst West Coast a few months back.
During the month of July, the two artists will pass artwork back and forth to come up with one artistic collaboration of the minds (hearts). Barton will begin the artwork (likely brightly colored gangsta style) and post the first phase on Monday, July 6th. Within a couple days, Promise will update the artwork with her touches (hopefully vintage glory) and post the results on her blog. The cycle continues back and forth until each artist has developed the artwork 3 times each with a final consultation to complete it.
Follow the progress of the Art for Huruma project throughout July by checking back at either artist’s blog.
Tees and poster prints of the final artwork will be printed to raise money for Huruma Children’s Home in Nairobi Kenya.
Please help spread the word about this project since both artists are really excited about the opportunity to change the world with their God-given talents!
There’s a seriously substantial piece of “Church Online” news this week.
Buckhead Church, home of master communicator, Andy Stanley, (who founded North Point Ministries) is launching an online church experience site on August 16th. The advantage of knowing about it now is that you can participate in all the beta testing and insider info as the development team puts the finishing touches on what will likely be one of the most clicked on online church experience sites around.
Beautifully designed by project leader John Saddington (aka @human3rror) and a team of ninja coders, there’s no doubt that the church who “exists for the unchurched” will pioneer new inroads in online community building.
I got special love for the Buckhead Church team due in part to their revolutionary use of high definition video in the place of a live speaker (circa ‘06).
The SXSW Music and Media Conference (aka SXSW) is a set of interactive, film, and music festivals and conferences that take place every spring in Austin, Texas. It was a SXSW that I first began to track the news of a little tiny newbie microblogging service called Twitter. Well, after Austin began to tweet, the rest is history. Now what would we ever do at large events without “tweet ups“?
SWSX first began in 1987 and is centered in downtown at the Austin Convention Center and in surrounding areas. SWSX showcases hundreds of musical acts from around the globe on over eighty stages, but it certainly doesn’t stop with music. Conference registrants do business in the SXSW Trade Show in the Convention Center and partake of a full agenda of informative, provocative panel discussions featuring hundreds of speakers of international stature.
What does this have to do with The Digital Sanctuary? Well, three different sources have now contacted me inviting me to participate in putting together a panel called Church & Technology for SXSW 2010. We’re brainstorming topics, trends, speakers and panel participants. If you’re interested in access to the google doc where it all happens - comment @cynthiaware me on Twitter or gmail me.
Having just been in Austin for this year’s Q Conference, I can highly recommend it as a diverse, interesting and inspiring town with a ton of personality.
The blogosphere will be missing a couple of faithful bloggers over the next season. Heather Whittaker (aka Whittakerwoman) and Crystal Renaud (aka PinkHairedGirl) both long-term bloggers are on blogging sabbaticals of indefinite length.
Heather, one of the sweetest gals ever and wife of well-known North Point - Buckhead Campus worship leader Carlos Whittaker, is going to focus on her family and take a break from the fishbowl she lives in. Her public blog will likely resume in the fall following a summer break. (If you’re a personal friend of Heather’s you can email her and she’ll give you access to a “private” site she’ll use for keeping those of us updated who will miss her public blog.)
Crystal Renaud, a Kansas City based gal who’s on staff at Westside Family Church, is taking a refreshment break and will devote any writing she does to the book she is working on. I first learned of Crystal and her unique ministry through Anne Jackson and look forward to the many ways God will use her in the future. Her departure from the blogosphere might seem abrupt but actually she’s been contemplating for awhile….
If you follow either of these ladies blogs, would you consider praying for them while they use their time off for rest, motivation and fresh inspiration.
I, too, am planning a blogging sabbatical and will take at least a month off during the summer for our relocation from SoCal to NorCal - more on that later.
Of course, none of us will stop tweeting (women have daily word quotas to meet ya know) so it’s easy enough to follow our lifestreams via microblogging on Twitter:
Well there’s a first time for everything. Kem Meyer just posted on Guy Kawasaki’sAlltop and since I’m such a fan of the site (and Guy for that matter), I am reposting her post in it’s entirety.
For the first time in my 5 years of blogging, I’m copying. It’s worth it because she nails it when it comes to understanding Alltop - which is a dynamic topical resource that allows you avoid search stress by aggregating all the best material on any given topic in one spot. Kem does a great job of reminding us all why we should all be using the customizable, power-feature of Alltop to do our work for us.
Here’s her post is all it’s communication glory:
All Time Alltop Questions and Answers …
I like and respect Guy Kawasaki. He has personally and professionally helped me several times over the past few years. He has visited Granger and even endorsed my book. Not long ago, we were exchanging emails and I asked him if there was anything I could do to help his causes like he had helped mine. He only asked one thing… spread the word about Alltop. Ok! Love to!
And, then I stalled out.
I didn’t understand what Alltop could do for me. That makes it pretty hard to talk about. So, then, I stalled longer because I was determined to figure it out on my own. And, then I stalled longer because I was embarrassed to admit I couldn’t figure it out on my own. I finally broke down and told him. Why didn’t I do that in the first place? I annoy myself.
And, now that I understand it, I’m pleased to report it has become a new tool in my arsenal of information search weapons. So, here’s my Q&A with Guy about Alltop. Hope it helps you.
In plain English, what is Alltop? Alltop is a collection of over 600 “magazine racks” covering topics from adoption to zoology with food, politics, sports, and health in between. MyAlltop is the customizable, power-user feature of Alltop. It enables you to create a personal collection from over 32,000 information sources–if you’re interested in something, we probably have it covered.
How is Alltop different than Digg?They’re two totally different animals. The purpose of Digg is highlight specific articles that interest, honestly, male techies. It helps them know that there’s a new version of Rails or Halo. The purpose Alltop is not to highlight specific articles or even sites/blogs but to enable people to scan “all” the news about a broad base of topics. For example, it will be long time before something from http://adoption.alltop.com/would appear on Digg. Here’s a good way to think of it:** How many people are in China? Go to Google.
** Shanghai company clones Mac ROMs and ships “Mac” netbook for $200. Go to Digg.
** What’s happening in China? Go to http://china.alltop.com/
I don’t see Alltop replacing my normal RSS reader, but it’s not supposed to, is it? For some people, MyAlltop could, but first, most people cannot use a RSS reader. It requires they understand what RSS is, then they need to find the RSS feeds (which is non-trivial, believe me, we have had to find 33,000 feeds), and find a reader and use it. That’s the market for us. For people who have a RSS reader, then we offer something different because most RSS readers turn into another email inbox with hundreds of unread messages. And they are not good for scanning—that is, you only get what you subscribe to. An Alltop topic provides you a broader overview quickly.
I just noticed that one of my colleagues, Dallas local, Rhett Smith, just posted on something that’s been percolating behind the scenes for awhile now - the Cultivate Conference.
In fact, Dawn Nicole Baldwin of Aspire One and Jarbyco, just alerted me that registration has just opened up. There’s no doubt this is going to be a stellar one-day-only event. Hosted in Chicago at Park Community Church, it will precede the Story Conference - also a first time event.
Cultivate is for advanced communication pros who serve the Body of Christ and will develop into a network of church communication experts.
There are several reasons why many of us are excited about this gathering:
This simple video is an invitation to the Gurus User Group event to be hosted by The Rock in Louisville, KY on July 13 - 15, 2009.
The video, which I really like (a la Common Craft), says that whether your role is stage design, bulletin graphics, podcasting, video editing, etc. the idea behind this free meet up is to develop a network/community to share information & develop relationships, and the like.
But there’s one problem. I’ve been aware of this video invite for quite awhile but haven’t posted on it because I was researching the host site, The Rock. I always like to include a URL. After several attempts, I’m giving up. If you can’t find a church with a click or two, it’s a fail for me.
Maybe the site is easy to find and it’s just me….. anyone else? Would you go to a tech meetup at a church that’s hard to find online?
Sermon Connect is an online media and communication center enabling pastors and ministry leaders with a wide array of easy to use applications and features to better manage their media anytime, anywhere with excellence. Sermon Connect provides churches and ministries with the tools, the tutorials, unlimited options, and the professional services to present their media in a customizable user interface and with personalized features.
If your church is a newcomer to the world of online media resources, there’s good news about Sermon Connect brought to you by my friends at Faith Highway. One thing that identifies an excellent product or company is it’s retention rate. Fortunately, Faith Highway’s products have one of the highest retention rates in the industry. They offer graduated packages and levels of support. And they offer stand alone prices that are super affordable with no set up fees so all churches can afford to get their content online.
If you need any advice about how to get started providing content online, I encouage you to check out Faith Highway.
As far as I know, the Foursquare Church is the first denomination to use Twitter, the micro-blogging platform, to support it’s annual National Convention. You can follow @WeAreFoursquare & @FoursquareEvent for ongoing status updates from Connection ‘09. We’ll be here until Friday.
Also, the Vimeo channel started above will archive the video clips shot from the event.
If you Twitter, you can use the tag “#connect09″ and all your tweets will appear in the in primary stream. Although there are many people in the denomination who use Twitter, here’s a handful I thought of who are present this week who are experimenting with the usability/value of the platform. You can add your name to the Foursquare Twitter’s list by commenting here whether or not you are tweeting Connection ‘09:
Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to mourn the passing of Anne Jackson’s FB page. After a season of contemplation, Anne, known to the blogsphere as FlowerDust.net, has pulled the plug on her facebook page - well actually deleted her account completely. You can read her entry here.
Fortunately for Anne’s community of followers, it doesn’t really matter. She’s present in so many ways online that she will still be connected and reachable. You can find her on twitter (@flowerdust) and at her blogsite FlowerDust.net.
In fact, Anne, whose blog has 2 key features - a large readership and an engaged, connected community - will still be considered a leader in online community ministry. As you may know, she’s an experienced wired fundraiser who’s been known to ask for support and raise $1800 in 18 hours, $800 in 15 minutes for Compassion International’s Global Food Crisis, etc. Oh, no wait, …that’s her online community. Anne just acts as a conduit for the generosity of her readers.
I was just in Nashville a couple of days ago and got to visit Anne’s church, CrossPointe. She mentioned nothing to me of her impending demise! I got to spend quite a bit of time with Anne’s Pastor, Pete Wilson who is equally involved in mobilizing his online community. Ironically, he told me how amazingly useful his Facebook profile has been for helping him accomplish some of his goals. More on that later as it will be part of a larger article to be published over the summer…..
Goodbye Anne Jackson’s FB page, may you Rest In Peace.
