September 2008

Here’s the link to a brand new Fellowship Technologies tool called Retun on Ministry.

As always, Fellowship Tech turns out valuable and beautiful products to help your church facilitate ministry.   How can you improve what you can’t measure?

More on measuring ministry over the next 10 days but for now type in the name of any church - and check out what happens next on your whiteboard!

HT - Curtis Simmons

There’s so much exciting news in the world of the socially networked church right now, it’s hard to keep it all straight.  One of the most important pieces of information I got this week is the one above.

Check out the wording “not a ROOV Facebook app”.  Sounds more significant than just another app, huh?  Maybe like a marriage proposal.  Or at least an engagement…

Pay attention to ROOV; this is the beginning of something big as social media allow the global Church to network itself in new ways based on connections between individuals with shared passions…..

EepyBird’s Sticky Note experiment from Eepybird on Vimeo.

How about considering doing things differently.  Non-traditional thinking can be quite liberating.

Do you suffer from what seems like a loss of vision?  Are you feeling uninspired, apathetic or dull?

Do you feel like your ministry is black and white instead of technicolor?

Sometimes we need a change of thinking to see change in ourselves.  And sometimes we need permission or inspiration to change our thinking.

As a pastor, for example, maybe you’ve kept your staff off Facebook & MySpace during working hours.  Instead, how about sending them on to social networking sites for a portion of each day.  Inspire them with simple goals during their online communication, like inviting 1 person to attend a home group this week, etc.  Tell you staff they’re also free to take a half hour to write posts about what God is doing in their lives for their personal blogs.

Do you keep all your church office hours on site at your church building?  Try moving some of your “on duty” staff time to a coffee shop, book store or local park.  You’d be surprised how much gets accomplished when people have fresh wind in their sails from just the slightest variation in routine.  And bring your laptop.  You can always get wifi access and then you’ll fit right in with the digital natives (their work space, their marketplace, etc.).

Some people fear things changing, but one of the worst experiences people can have at church is that things never change.  It’s particularly deadly because it miscommunicates the creativity of God.  It also miscommunicates that He’s not on the move (pillar/cloud).  And instead of creating a movement we accidentally create a monument.

What helps you see things differently?  What inspires you, challenges you to think or do differently in ministry?

HT - COLLIDE Magazine blog - EepyBird’s Sticky Note experiment

When I got an invitation from Online Community Pastor, Tony Steward, and Internet Campus Pastor, Brandon Donaldson, to participate in LifeShare as a prayer host, of course I said yes.  When?  In the morning.  You mean like tomorrow morning?

Oh, yes, believe me, if I had known what was coming, I would have certainly gotten a haircut.  Not to mention re-scotch taped my iSight camera to my cinema display.  Gotta be ready in season and out.

Here’s screen capture of the prayer portion of my LifeShare guest spot from Saturday’s LifeChurch.tv’s LifeShare Challenge.

If you scroll down far enough on the LifeShare tab home page, you’ll see all the trackbacks & links to the blogs currently covering the event.

Did I mention that we’re also on Read/Write Web?

LifeShare Challenge from Cynthia Ware on Vimeo.

Be there.  To find out how you can “Share your Space” participate in LifeShare by visiting the LifeChurch.tv Internet Campus Blog and RagamuffinSoul.com for more information.

(Click here to see the permalink video version.)

Unprecedented.

That’s the only way to describe the collaboration happening this week between 2 of the largest online Christian communities.  The LifeChurch.tv internet community and the RagamuffinSoul.com community are joining forces for a pioneer, collaborative, week long challenge celebration bringing both believers and seekers online like never before.

Welcome to LifeShare, a seven day challenge for Christians who want to extend the love and compassion of Jesus to their friends via the relationships they have in online communities.

Both LifeChurch.tv and RagamuffinSoul.com will be live streaming through the LifeChurch.tv Mogulus Player beginning today at 8pm CST.  Their schedule continues throughout the week.  If you want to jump in and be a part you can read below and make sure to sign up HERE!

There are 5 different opportunities for you to participate and they’re graduated level of involvement from easy to more elaborate.  Check it out:

1. Share the Experience

This is where you can invite your friends to come and share an online experience at LifeChurch.tv, at your church’s internet campus, or to the church you normally attend.  Click Here for virtual invites to the LifeChurch.tv Internet Campus.

2. Share your Space

All of us have a space online, whether our social networking profiles (MySpace, Facebook, Bebo, etc.), our blogs or even micro-blogging sites like Twitter.  To “Share your Space” all you need to do is to post an update about the LifeShare event, link to it and encourage other people to get involved.

• Experience Evite
• YouVersion Widgets
• Facebook Church App

3. Share His Message

To participate in “Sharing His Message” access some of the LifeChurch.tv weekend series into their blip.tv account for embedding them on your blog, your MySpace or point to them for people in your online communities to come and interact with.  To find these embeddable videos you can Click Here and Share His Message.

4. Share your Story

All of us have our stories about of how the Lord is intersecting our lives.  So, just make a video yourself and share your story.  Actually you could also use any form of new media, Twitter, for example, just post a “tweet”.  The point is you can Share the Story of how God is moving in your live and encourage and influence those in community with you.

5. Share your Life

Up until this point all the sharing we’ve suggested can be done on our own time schedule, whenever we want.  “Sharing your Life” is about looking for opportunity to be available to someone else at their point of need, in their timing and in their “Space”.  This could be anything from praying for a hurting friend through IM, posting an encouragement for a Facebook friend on their wall, leaving a comment on the blog post of a searching friend, or even looking for opportunity to invest in the people who are physically around us every day. This is what Jesus spent his time doing, loving people right in their point of need, on their turf, in their situations, on their timetable.

Again LifeShare is a week-long online experiment/ experience starting TODAY you don’t want to miss it.

Here’s a couple of additional videos from friends:

Brandon Donaldson (devotional and LifeShare challenge) &

Carlos Whittaker (LifeShare invitation video).

By the way, what are your thoughts about people sharing their faith online and what do you see as the next evolution as online communities develop into churches and churches migrate online?

I just got word from Abraham Piper, author of 22 Words, that there’s an Open House for bloggers at this year’s Desiring God National Conference.  Let me pass the good news on to you.

Here’s Abraham’s invitation:

“If you’re a blogger or just like reading blogs, join us for a blogger meet-up after the Saturday evening session of the upcoming Desiring God Conference.

Besides Abraham, Justin Taylor will be there; and hopefully there’ll be a couple dozen others from this small niche of the blogosphere. So if you’ll be at the conference, and you blog or simply enjoy perusing blogs, come on by.

It might also help us connect better to know in advance what sites will be represented, so respond to this post below with your name and website if you intend to be there and I’ll keep a list going here.

You don’t have to sign up to come, but at the event, Crossway will be giving a copy of The New Media Frontier to the first 20 of you who let us know you’re coming.”

What a great chance to meet Abraham and others in meatspace and add intimacy to a large conference setting.

(If you haven’t already, you can click on the permalink to see the video.)

Oakbrook Church used Coldplay’s Viva La Vida for a worship set song this weekend.  Then, they put their beautiful videos up on YouTube.  If you’re one of the people who’s saying “can they do that?” you’re not alone.  Or maybe you’re in the group who’s saying “whose gonna stop ‘em?”  Or maybe you’re informed about PRO accounts.  Or maybe you’re just picturing Chris Martin with a mohawk?

Is it or is it not “religious” music?

Anyway, Anthony Coppedge what sayest thou?  What would Copyright Queen say?

Is this what a $700.00 PRO account (annual facility or special events licenses from ASCAP, BMI and SESAC, the U.S. Performance Rights Organizations a.k.a. PROs) will get you?