My good friend Rhett Smith just posted an article in Collide Magazine about Twitter and why he uses it.  Rhett is a great thinker and understands how to use social media to reach people.  I recommend going and checking it out check it out.

Just saw a link to this article on Marko’s blog.  I think the writer hit some things on the head that most churches are now wrestling with.   20-somethings are clearly living in a different world.  They are connected to each other via social media in ways that most of us can’t even fathom.  This article does a great job of showing how some social media works in the church.  Remember that just because it works in New York doesn’t mean it’ll work in your particularl community but there are many concepts that probably translate.

“The question of how to connect with that generation is a primary question of the church and has been for a number of years,” said Troy Messenger, who teaches at Union Theological Seminary in Manhattan and focuses on the use of media in worship. “Biblical texts are in such another time and culture, it can be very difficult to translate to our life. A two-minute movie clip can do so much more than two minutes of sermon.”

I’ll be the first to admit I often fall back into the 3 songs and a talk youth service but this article really encourages me to break free of that.   I am a big proponent of online social media but I haven’t felt like its making much of a difference in students relationship with Jesus.

Read the article and tell me what you think.

Some of the commenters from my post yesterday got me thinking about some things that I just briefly want to comment on.

I ended my post with two thoughts:

Two things I think pastors, church leaders need to start wrestling with if they haven’t already:

1) Shift from geographical based ministry to online community/networking based. This does not mean people still won’t gather, but how, where and when they gather will change.

2) Technology is allowing the people/congregants to self-organize, collaborate and participate without having to go through traditional means and hierarchies of the church. I think this will change the role of the pastor drastically from the top-down leader, to more of a facilitator. I think that means we will see less and less traditional roles of pastors, and maybe even less full-time positions, etc.

Here is what I’m thinking. And I’m thinking these things not on any official research I have done, but more on conversations I am having, trends I am seeing, what I am reading, etc.

One of the issues about #2 is that people are concerned about a “consumer” mentality in the Church…more than we already have now. Also, what will be the role of the pastor.

Couple of thoughts. And they are simply thoughts, not completely worked out, but stuff I am hypothesizing and thinking on.

I think the “modularity” of Church that Andrew Jones talked about won’t drive more church consumerism, but will actually reduce it.

Why? Because churches used to be the resource for all information (phone numbers, emails, addresses, theology, Christian education, prayer chains, etc.) and churches controlled the market on the ability to gather and organize. Think Sunday worship, Wed. night Bible studies, etc, etc. People traditionally have relied on the Church as the resource to gather people and dispense information.

Because of this, people would drive miles and miles to attend the church that could attract, gather and dispense the information for them. Often this process has pulled people out of community…driving miles and miles to attend a church that is not rooted in their community where they live, etc.

I think that now people can easily organize, collaborate and dispense information themselves, they will no longer need to rely on the Church as needing to fulfill that role. I think there will be a desire for people to organize and gather in their own communities of locality, rather than feeling the need to drive to churches who used to have to do that for them. I am not saying there will not be church or people won’t go to them. They will, but I think church will look different than it traditionally does now.

In Short: Technology=Ability to Organize and Collaborate=Congregants Taking the Responsibility Into Their Own Hands.

What about the pastor? I think there will always be the need for a pastor, but what is a pastor is my question? Have we possibly gotten away from the Biblical role of the pastor?

In the NT we see the correlation between the shepherd and pastor. I have been told before by some pastors that we are to be ranchers…not shepherds. That has a whole other connotation in my mind.

One commenter said that it’s actually not the pastors who do the shepherding anymore, but the small group leaders, etc. I agree with him. It’s hard to find a pastor who shepherds.

I believe that with the ability to gather, organize and collaborate that technology affords us, it frees up the pastor to do the work of actually shepherding, rather than being the CEO, rancher, etc. I used the word facilitator in yesterday’s post, and what I mean by that is that the Church is beginning to have the ability to organize on their own, which frees the pastor up to facilitate the movement and truly shepherd the people.

In Short: Technology=Ability to Organize and Collaborate=Congregants Taking the Responsibility Into Their Own Hands=Pastor Can Truly Be a Shepherd.

Of course my own theology and praxis is shining through there, some of which you may agree with, and some which you may not agree with.

But for any of this to take place (which I think is a great thing for the Church), churches, pastors and ministry leaders are going to have to let go of the “power” they have traditionally held, and instead be a church and people that walk humbly amongst the people they are there to serve. Even questioning their roles as pastors in the Church.

In closing, I’m aware that some traditions/denominations already seem to embody this theology and praxis. I wonder if Wess Daniels can shed some light on these thoughts in light of the Quaker tradition that he is a part of.

If you are wondering what to read on some of these issues, here are a few suggestions. There are a lot more, but here are some that I have found helpful and challenging. Please add to this list and let me know what you are reading that has been helpful in thinking about the issues of technology in redefining the role of pastors and the Church, especially as it relates to gathering, organizing, collaborating, etc.

Check Them Out

The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations by Ori Brafman and Rod A. Beckstrom.

Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations by Clay Shirky.

Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything by Dan Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams.

Facebook for Pastors: How To Build Relationships And Connect With People Using The Most Popular Social Network On The Internet by Chris Forbes

The New Media Frontier: Blogging, Vlogging and Podcasting for Christ, edited by John Mark Reynolds and Roger Overton

Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff

There are a lot of amazing things happening in the world of ministry and technology. So much so that it’s hard to keep up with all of it. Some churches are on the leading edge of innovation, while others are still trying to get a website put together. Wherever you fall on the spectrum, below are four links that might interest you from this past week.

First:
Author, blogger, video guru and Church 2.0 leader Greg Atkinson has a great post which basically introduces the Digerati Team from LifeChurch.tv, SPOTLIGHT: LifeChurch.tv’s Digerati Team. Many of you don’t know that there exists such a team on a church staff. But I think that trend is changing, and as you read the article you will definitely see their fingerprints all over the world of ministry and tech.

Greg says:

You might be wondering: “What in the world does “digerati” mean?” To get to the bottom of something, I go to Wikipedia. Wikipedia reads:”The digerati are the elite of the computer industry and online communities.” From what I know of my friends Terry Storch and Tony Steward (and the rest of the Digerati Team) this fits them very well.

Maybe you don’t recognize the team, but you may recognize their work. Here is what the Digerati team has been up to and is responsible for:

* YouVersion (Web, Mobile, and iPhone)
* OPEN
* ChurchMetrics
* Internet Campus
* LifeGroups
* LifeShare
* OnePrayer

Second:
If you can make it to Pasadena, CA this Friday, then you need to so that you can attend Church Tech Camp. It’s the first in what I think will be a growing group of church leaders who are on the innovative edge of integrating technology and ministry, especially as it relates to social media, web 2.0 tools. If you can’t make it, then watch the live stream of the get together. Not only is the technology and its use in ministry innovative, but the organization of the camp itself is on the leading edge. Check it out and you will see.

Third:
Check out Andrew Jones’ Powerpoint presentation from his talk at GodblogCon, The Missional Church in the Internet Age. You can listen to Andrew’s podcast as well at Podcasts of Godblogcon 2008, as well as all the others from there.

Fourth:
Godbloggers Prepare to Invade ‘Sin City’

Last night I was with my small group. Our church has just rolled out a new website with all the bells and whistles. But we were not talking about the very rich content provided on the site. Instead we were bemoaning the fact that it is impossible to get an e-mail responded to. Despite the thousands of dollars I assume we spent on getting our ‘online community’ working the general feeling is that there is no one on the other end.

I will try to explain how frustrating it is to have a website with no one on it. Last month I had my credit card stolen. I wanted answers. I called up the credit card company hoping to sort it all out. Instead of getting an operator I got an automated response. It asked me to type in my account number. Then it went through a list of options that I had to press another number. The option I wanted wasn’t on the number so I had to hang up and call another number. You get it. We have all been trapped in voice mail hell before. That is the same feeling I get when I am on an ‘interactive’ church community with no one responding.

Churches sometimes assume that since they have an internet presence they are present automatically relevant to internet users. But to me what is more important than having a spiffy website is the knowledge that there is someone on the other side of the conversation. The internet needs to be used as a tool for personal communication. If you automate your online community it’s like outsourcing your church fellowship to India.

I can not stress this enough. The most important thing in building a church online community is that the church needs to be present. Answering e-mails, posting photos, writing comments on people’s blogs, this is how a church can connect to the congregation online.

For more ideas on how to be present online I recommend Rhett Smith’s ‘9 Posts for Formulating and Online Strategy for College Ministry.’

A few weeks ago I read a Twitter by social media guru Chris Brogan. His twitter was a link to the blog of Terry Starbucker. The post was titled Danger Will Robinson! The Downside of our Digital World.

And…it scared me to be honest.

Am I a slave to my technology is what I kept asking myself?

That’s a question we should all be asking ourselves. If Terry’s article was not enough, then read the article that spurred his post….you will have a lot to think about.

Connected, Yes, but Hermetically Sealed by Ben Stein

“MAN is born free, and everywhere he is in chains,” said Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

What would Rousseau have made of the modern-day balls and chains with which we shackle ourselves? They are not made of steel or iron, but of silicon and plastic and digits and electrons and waves zooming through the air. These are the chains of all kinds of devices, like the BlackBerry, the iPhone and the Voyager. These are the chains with which we have bound ourselves, losing much of our solitude and our ability to see the world around and inside us.

and

But try a day without that invasion of your privacy. Or a week. You will be shocked at what you discover. It’s called life. It’s called nature. It’s called getting to know yourself. I have a close friend who is in prison. He used to be imprisoned by his P.D.A. He has many stories, but the most haunting one is about how, without his phone, without his P.D.A., he has come to know, for the first time, who he is.

In my last post I talked about what I look for as a 20- something searching for a new church online. I explained how there are some simple but important requirements for a good church website such as photographs, detailed staff bios, and ministry outlines. But what happens when someone becomes a member of the church? What does the average 20-something expect of a church website and why?

As a member of a church there are only a few functions that I expect the church website to provide on a regular basis. The first is calendar information. Calendars can be tricky but simply posting the church bulletin is effective and not that hard. I simply want to know what time the service project starts and where. I also need contact information. When I want to ask a pastor about scholarship details for the next retreat I want to be able to find the appropriate e-mail on the website. I don’t want an interactive message board to post a question that no one may ever look at.

That’s it. All I want is calendar and contact information. One of the big errors in making a website is assuming that if a function is provided people will use it. I will never live on your website. By this I mean, the function of a church website is not the same as a social networking website like Myspace or Facebook. I will go to the church website when I need information. I will go to Facebook when I want interaction.

This is a good thing. First off, Facebook will do a better job of programming social web functions. Their whole lively hood is based on connecting people. Secondly, most 20-somethings already go to that site more regularly then they would ever plan on visiting the church website. Finally, social networking site are easier for pastors and staff to use. It allows church staff to do their jobs with out having to add the extra hassle of being a board moderator or a webmaster.

Churches who are new at the online world assume they need to have a website with everything. They get overwhelmed by the amount of work required and disillusioned by the lack of interest shown by their members. What they need to know is that they do not have to reinvent the wheel. By keeping a minimalist website it provides opportunity for the church to interact with people online. Just as in real life, ministry is about going to where the people are located. It’s not about trying to bring them all to you.

In light of much, much discussion about social media and ministry, and in light of many writing on online church community, I was wondering what you think of the post below, taken from Collide Magazine’s blog.

I Wouldn’t Hire You

If in some bizarro parallel universe I was an executive pastor (or whoever does the hiring at churches these days) and I was interviewing candidates for a ministry position that involved working with people between the ages of 12 and 30, I’d ask you about your vision and strategy for the ministry (youth ministry, college ministry, young adults ministry, whatever). I’d listen with great interest as you talked about discipleship, community, service, outreach, etc. I’d even ask you good questions about how you see those things fitting together and how you’d develop each of those initiatives. Then, when it was all said and done, and I’d heard your vision and strategy, I don’t think I’d hire you if you failed to mention your plan for leveraging social media. At the very least, I’d keep interviewing candidates in hopes of finding someone with similar passion and qualifications who was also social media-literate.

The ways in which 12-30 year-olds communicate and connect has radically changed in the last few years, and frankly, as someone who wants to minister vocationally to that demographic, I’d expect you to understand that. On top of that, there are too many free or inexpensive tools out there—ROOV, Twitter, Facebook Groups & Pages, MyChurch, Flickr, Vimeo, Ning, and on and on—for me to be enthusiastic about a job applicant who is unaware of them and their potential for ministry application.

If I’m choosing between several equally-qualified candidates, I wouldn’t hire you unless without a competent plan for leveraging social media in ministry to emerging generations.

What do you think? Am I overrating the importance of social media-literacy among would-be church staffers? If you are a would-be church staffer, have you thought through your social media strategy?

I was thinking about this issue and realized that there has always been criteria for employment in ministry. Those requirements vary depending upon church, denomination, ministry, etc., etc.

For example, when I was hired as a college pastor they were looking for someone with a Master of Divinity which I was just about to complete. Having that degree told the church hiring me that I was sufficient in areas such as Greek, Hebrew, Church History, Systematic Theology, etc.

But over the years I realized that things that weren’t required of me, nor my degree were necessary. Money management. Administrative skills. Counseling skills. Web 2.0 skills.

The questions for us are, “What is required for us to do ministry in certain contexts?” “What is required in the context of today’s ministry climate?”

Today, I think a certain proficiency in social media/web 2.0 tools is required for ministry, especially as we head into this new century. Now we can debate which skills are required for which ministries, and do all ministries require a certain minimal skill set.

But all things being equal (as Scott noted in his post), I would hire the person who had more social media/web 2.0 skill set, or who at least was willing to experiment and learn in that area. That may seem like a no brainer with all things being equal, but maybe it isn’t.

There are certain intangibles in ministry, and certain gifts that we all have that can’t easily be taught. Preaching, teaching, writing, management, conflict skills, etc. But,

Can social media/web 2.0 skills be taught?

And do you hire based on the possession of those skills or not?

As we become a people that live more of our lives online, I think the expectation will be there in ministry for pastors and leaders to be able to navigate themselves in that world. Just as pastors are to understand the context of the text and the culture of those sitting in the pew, they will be required to have as a language skill set that of social media/web 2.0. It will be like taking Greek and Hebrew, though I have a feeling Greek and Hebrew will be less and less taught due to the availability of online tools.


What skills set are looking for today if you were to hire for your ministry? And is social media/web 2.0 skills one of them?

As a 20-something church websites play a huge role in my decision when exploring new churches. But churches screw up the fundamentals so often when it comes to the introductory principals of a website. It’s unfortunate because to my generation a website says a lot about a congregation. I thought I would walk you through what I look for in a church website as a 20-something who is seeking a new fellowship.

Some churches simply do not have websites. Usually this is where my church hunt stalls. Due to the nature of the jobs I have had since college I have had to find and be in fellowship with dozens of churches. 95% of the time I will go to a church only after I have seen their website. The other 5% of the time I get involved with churches because trustworthy friends have repeatedly talked a place up. To me not having a website says that this congregation lacks computer knowledge how and it’s probably because there is no one under the age of 60. Already I can feel disconnected between me and that church.

Assuming the church site comes up. The next question is, “Is it legible?” This is picky but SO important and over looked by amateur web designers. The content doesn’t matter if I can’t read it. So keep your page uncluttered. Eliminate needless images and ‘funny’ videos. Also, I want to be able to read a website with out having to squint. This means dark text on a light background. Avoid neon and pastel colors. They simply hurt the eye. Ugly websites alienate viewers. Just ask myspace.

If there is a website and it is legible I immediately start looking for content. First I want to see pictures. Churches often over look a quality photo gallery on their websites. But the Millennial generation experiences life through the lens of the web. Our first experience with the church will not be with any one from the congregation. We want to see it online first. A good photo gallery shows the activities the church does, what the church campus looks like, and provides a good cross section of the demographics of the congregation. Include twenty to thirty of your best photos for each topic. Anything more is over kill anything less may not convey your point.

Next I want to get to know the pastors and staff. A brief bio on the leaders of the church is nice. This is something that many churches do well on their websites. But why stop there? If the pastors or directors have a blog I want to know. If they have written a book why not post a couple chapters online? Go beyond simply talking about how many kids they have and where they went to school. Instead talk about there spiritual influences and where they see the church headed. Most importantly, I would like to see some audio sermons. (Bonus points for podcasts that I can listen to it on my iPod.)

After I have looked at the pastors and staff I want to get to know the church. The question I am trying to answer is, “Where is the heart of this congregation intellectually and practically?”

Intellectually: A What We Believe section is nice. It shows me what theological points are important to them. No church is going to label itself but What We Believe sections make it pretty clear. For example, if they address abstract principals like “inclusivity” or “acceptance” I conclude that it is a liberal church. If they list out a series of nonnegotiable doctrinal points I conclude that the church is conservative. It may not be a fair assessment but it is a call people are going to make.

Practically: Where a What We Believe page allows me to see what the church values on an intellectual level I can get a feeling for what the church values in a practical level by where they are spending their time and resources. What programs do they offer? Each program in the church should have a brief bio similar to the staff bio. It should express the flavor of the ministry and outline the purpose of the program. For example, a big elementary school program means a value on families. In general most 20 some things want to know that the church has a place for them. They are looking for college and young adult groups.

Finally keep it current. A website that does not have new information and images on it says, ‘we started something that we are really not interested in.’ And if you are not interested in the website you are not interested in the people that look at your website.

After looking at some photos and getting a good feel for the staff and programs I can pretty much determine what my initial reactions are to the church. I do not think that this is where a church website should end. But as an investigator of the church it’s all I need.

DO NOT…

…Use elaborate flash introductions. Actually flash all together is a waste of time. It may look impressive but it just delays me from getting to the information I want. It is also REALLY annoying for repeat visitors.

… use a banner that says “Under Construction.” You either have a website or you don’t. There is no middle ground.

… Please, don’t post written sermons. Who has time to site and read a 40 minute sermon? To me this is another hint that the church is disconnected from my generation.

If you are thinking about having more of an online web presence for you church, but aren’t sure how to dive in…or even if you have a great web presence and are in need of some ideas, check out below.

First, Tony Steward has a great post How to Launch an Online Community. Here is the link to much of what Tony talks about in regards to the work of Jeremiah Owyang, Online Community Best Practices Final.

Second, Cynthia Ware has a post 10 Challenges Facing the Church in Cyberspace.

Third, here are My 9 Posts for Formulating an Online Strategy for College Ministry (and ministry in general).

Fourth, Chris Brogan has a fascinating post, Workflow–Social Media Pastor.

Hope you can glean something from these posts, and if you have any ideas, or other links to blogs, or your blog, please leave them in the comment section.