Martin Spriggs

This is the fourth post in a series of articles on Social Networks and their usefulness in the church. I’ve spent a couple posts just on Facebook, not it’s Twitters turn. The two are very different, even though both can be considered "social networks" in their own right. Twitter is less about building relationships and more about building audiences. That may sound bad at face value, but the church that can leverage that effectively has a powerful communications tool.

Recently an ebook was published entitled "The Reason YOUR CHURCH Must Twitter," and on the cover of that book is the tagline "Making Your Ministry Contagious." An interesting way to think of ministry and its relationship to social networks, but I believe valid. The point of ministry is not to cloister the saints and the message of Jesus Christ, but to "infect" as many as possible — the Great Commission. It is a going out process. It is a constant proclamation, a telling, if you will, of the love and grace of God. Interestingly Twitter’s tagline is "What are you doing?" Perhaps Twitter in the hands of the church would vary that moniker to "What is Jesus doing?" Both for us and for you.
So how can a church use Twitter? Here are a few ideas:

• Set up multiple Twitter accounts to reach different segments of the church and ask that people in those groups "follow" that Twitter account.
• Create one related to spiritual topics and broadcast short follow ups on sermon concepts, Bible class questions, short devotional thoughts or Bible verses. There are tools to automate some of the content that can be "pushed" to Twitter, especially if your church regularly posts sermons or devotions on the website. A potentially powerful side benefit of this is that followers of that Twitter account can "retweet" or share that with their followers, thus "spreading the word" in a very seamless way. An organization that does this well is Time Of Grace (@ToGministry). They have a "GraceMoment" that is a quick thought or Bible verse that people can both enjoy and share. On a recent episode of the WELSTech Podcast, we interviewed their Creative Marketing Manager, Katy Klinnert-Ellison, about their use of Social Networks. She shared that social networks play an important role in their organization, both in staying connected with their followers, but also building relationships.
• Create a Twitter account for general announcements for the church/school to share schedule changes, weather-related news, special guests, event reminders, etc.
• There have been several creative uses of Twitter by churches to highlight a particular season of the church year…specifically Christmas and Easter. I’ve seen Twitter accounts set up that tweet Jesus’ words during Holy Week which try to simulate the actual time of day and sequence of events. The words from the cross are particularly powerful. I’ve seen the same done for Christmas with thoughts from Mary, or the shepherds or magi. Tweeting through Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, or a series of Proverbs would also lend itself well to 140 character sound bites.

Of course, there are many more ideas out there, but the key is to be consistent, have a plan and then promote what you are doing. Building an audience and then "going dark" with few tweets will kill the effort put in. Make sure people are aware of this new communication channel via emails, newsletter, bulletin, announcements, brochures, business cards and the like. Then set a time frame to evaluate how things are going. Don’t attempt to try anything less than a year. That gives you all seasons of the church year and chance for the word to spread.

If your church has used Twitter and has insights to share, please comment below. We are all trying to figure out how these social networks can be used by the church and their ministry endeavors.

This is the third post in a series of articles on Social Networks and how they can, and perhaps can’t, be used in the church. When I say church I mean the corporate church (i.e. the organization of believers). In my last article I talked about a few key considerations when thinking about using Facebook within the church. Today’s post continues that discussion by dealing with concerns about "virtual church" and how to take the virtual relationship to an even better place.

So how did the church survive before Facebook? Clearly the church doesn’t "need" Facebook or any other social network. It simply needs the Word and Sacrament. Right? Well sure. Nobody can debate that. But is that it? In the context of this discussion, the church could also be defined as a "social network?" The Oxford Dictionary defines a social network as "a network of social interactions and personal relationships." That sounds like what any church leadership team would like to see in their church — people interacting with each other socially and developing personal relationships. In churches where this is the case, you find descriptors like a "friendly" church or a "caring" church. When people interact with each other, God’s Word has an opportunity to build a caring spiritual relationship. Clearly one of the churches goals.

Then how does Facebook help that? Yes you can create online socialization. Facebook is actually pretty good at that. But to leave it in the digital space without some analog goal isn’t all that helpful. You can share Christian love, teach, encourage, comfort and support each other online, but to play that out in person is Acts 2 kind of stuff. "All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people." Acts 2:44-47

The challenge of course is how to take online community to the face-to-face. Here are a few suggestions:

1. Connect digital posts to physical places. As you try to determine what content to post on Facebook think of content that has it’s root or fulfillment in a physical gathering. For instance, post a question or insight based on a good discussion that happened in the previous week’s Sunday morning Bible study class. Assign a person on the social network team to attend the class and cull appropriate material to be used during the week.
2. Allow organic growth. It will be important to promote and encourage people to create relationships on their own. Allowing members to post freely, comment, and form their own affinity groups will provide opportunity for deeper relationships around topics, projects and events. The temptation many churches have is to limit member participation and make their Facebook presence not much more than their web site which is fairly one dimensional. A more open environment, of course, requires over site, but the benefits are numerous including the chance that these online groups flourish and continue "on the ground" at church.
3. Intentionally create activities that start on Facebook and end in person. Promotion is critical to the success of any church-sponsored event. You certainly want to promote the event on your Facebook page, but creating online activity before the event will allow members to get excited about it and spread the word to their other Facebook friends. If it’s "movie night" create some intriguing questions. If it’s a presentation on Internet Safety, solicit questions/answers on related topics. If it’s an upcoming Voter’s Meeting or Open Forum, ask all members to submit questions that board members can address or feed topics that can be discussed ahead of time. The whole point is to get your Facebook folks "invested" in the event.

Facebook has a lot to offer to increase the social networked quotient of your church. It does take work and thoughtfulness. But it is where a lot of your members already are. Why should the church exclude itself from this portion of its members lives? They want to engage with their church. That is why they are members.

This is the second post in a series of articles on Social Networks and how they can, and perhaps can't, be used in the church. When I say church I mean the corporate church (i.e. the organization of believers). In my last article I talked about the purpose of the church and how social networks in general can meet a need in most circumstances as long as they are aligned with the church's objectives. Now we are going to get a little more specific and start with perhaps the most popular social network that has ever been — Facebook.

Late in 2012 Facebook claimed over 1 billion active users with over half of them regularly interacting with the network via mobile devices. That last bit of info will be discussed in more detail in later articles of this series. It has significance.

With that many users it is pretty safe to assume that many of your church's members, if not a majority, use Facebook. Why? That's an important question to answer as it will in some ways determine how the church might use Facebook for ministry. A very good place to find the answer is a short book by Jesse Rice called “The Church of Facebook.” Sallie Draper, my WELSTech Podcast partner, and I interviewed Jesse last year to talk about the book we had been reviewing on the show and asked him “why Facebook?” You can listen to that episode to find out what his answer was. The brief answer is people desire to connect with other people. God created us as social beings that need interaction with other people on a regular and meaningful basis. Facebook provides faciliities to do that. Yes, it does also provide avenues for the humanist in all of us to “blow our own horns”, but at it's core Facebook makes connections.

Connections are also an objective of the church. To connect believer to believer in a meaningful way that God can use to provide encouragement, inspiration, education and correction through the Word. Some would say the church wouldn't be a church without these believer to believer connections. So in this regard Facebook acts as an “amplifier” for these connections. It can create connections where they don't exist and it can enhance connections that have already been made.

With busy schedules and increasing distances between church members, a virtual tool like Facebook can help people stay connected with each other and their church during the week. That will not happen by itself however. The church, or to be more specific, it's Facebook administrator(s) needs to intentionalize things to achieve this objective. Here are three things they can do to increase the chances for member to member connections via the church's Facebook efforts:

1. Go on a Facebook member drive. Facebook will not be a very effective ministry tool if you don't have your Facebook using members “liking” your page. This can be done through email, bulletin announcements, after service announcements, etc. Along with that the message of why they should like your page should be very clear. This is what they are going to get out of it. More on that in a future post.
2. Post to your Facebook page every day. There is plenty of content the church can repurpose or create to fill 7 slots a week. Key sermon or bible class points, pictures, prayer requests, announcements, events, etc. A tool that can assist in keeping content flowing into your account is RSS Graffiti. This will allow you to automatically push any RSS content either from your own site (blogs, sermons, etc.) or from any other RSS enabled content like WELS Daily Devotions or Bible Readings.
3. Create opportunities for members to interact with each other through posts that promote feedback, discussion type questions or even Facebook hosted Bible studies. Other options are to encourage members to submit their own “ask the pastor” questions, photos, or thoughts on a daily Bible reading.

These are just a few options to get people talking with each other and perhaps enchance the brief encounters made on Sunday morning, or find new friends which wouldn't have normally been possible. In my next article I'll focus more on how to further enable these virtual relationships and perhaps move them to face-to-face opportunities for fellowship, spritual growth, and support.

One of the most frequent questions I get is “should our church have a Facebook page?” Clearly the question could and probably should be expanded. “Should our church use social networks?” One of the biggest drivers of internet adoption and use by all ages, genders and races is its social nature. The web has gotten a lot more friendly lately…or at least a lot more social.

The question used to be “should my church have a website?” I don’t get that one anymore thank goodness. However that question was easier to answer. Yes. Period. Yesterday. Asking if your church should have a website is akin to asking if your church needs a church sign on the front lawn. The answer to the social network question isn’t as straightforward. That is why I’m going to take the next few weeks…or maybe months… to try and tackle this one.

So where to start? How about with the ministry of your church? Why does it exist? What is its purpose, goals, objectives? If you can’t answer that then forget the social network question altogether. I would imagine however that most churches at least have a pretty good idea of what they should be up to. Common answers in no particular order would be outreach with the gospel, mutual encouragement, support of those in need, fellowship, bible study, worship, administration of sacraments (Lord’s Supper and Baptism), service projects and so on. So the real question is could any of those purposes/objectives be met by the use of social networks? That answer is easier. Yes. Now the hard part. Which ones and how? Both which social network and which objective.

My approach to this series will be to examine the major social networks with an eye toward their ultimate usefulness for specific ministry purposes AND some great resources for how to implement them. We’ll look at Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Google+ and a few others you may not have even considered a social network or heard of.

To get us started I’d like to point you to a couple of excellent resources that I’ll be highlighting in more detail in future posts specifically about Facebook:

Facebook for Churches ebook (An excellent basic resource including examples of churches putting Facebook to good use.)

WELSTech Episode – All About Facebook (A podcast that deals with Technology and Ministry topics focuses a show on Facebook and interviews Josh Renner who has found a good niche for Facebook usage to spread the Gospel).

Is “tech” a part of your Thanksgiving? I’ve heard many say quite the opposite. Thanksgiving should be a time where we turn OFF our devices and tune IN to the friends and family around us. There is much wisdom in that approach as whatever we do we need to be 100% engaged with who God brings into our lives at the time. Technology can hinder that to be sure.

But that isn’t what I’m writing about. I don’t argue the point. What I would suggest however is that technology can have a place in your thanksgiving thinking. There are many with whom you will not be able to spend time this holiday. There are also probably many that you know that don’t feel they have reasons to be thankful…or don’t realize that what they have is a gift from the Lord. How do you share or model your thankfulness to them? Tech. Here are a few suggestions.

If you use Facebook…

• Share a prayer of thanksgiving with your Facebook friends.
• Create a list of the top ten things you are thankful for this year, and to whom you owe that thanks.
• Write on somebody else’s wall a brief message of thanks for something they have done for you, or how their friendship has been a blessing to you in some way.
• Post a picture of your family get together with a word of thanks to God for this wonderful blessing.

If you use Pinterest…

• Pin images of things you are thankful for…or create a “board” called “Thanksgiving” and place items there for which you can give thanks.
• Repin images that reinforce the source of your Thanksgiving. There are many examples of these types of images. See the recent Forward In Christ article about Josh Renner and the images he shares via his Facebook page. http://www.facebook.com/helovedusfirst

If you text or Tweet…

• A few words of thanks that highlight Christ’s work for us with a link to appropriate passages on Bible Gateway can brighten someones day and also witness who is at the center of your life.
• A text or direct message to a friend that simply expresses your thanks to God for your friendship.
• Text or tweet a link to an online devotion from WELS.net.

These are just a few small examples of how the tech that God has placed in your hands can make an eternal difference for those who don’t know or appreciate the source of all blessings. May God grant you a blessed and fruitful Thanksgiving both online and off.

In the ageless and beautiful hymn “A Mighty Fortress” the phrase “one little word can fell him” is particularly powerful. That phrase came to mind as Sallie Draper and I were talking with Josh Renner on our WELSTech podcast about his Facebook page “He Loved Us First.” In our chat with Josh, whose story was shared in a recent Forward In Christ article, we were amazed at the popularity of the site – over 89,000 likes – and even more amazed at the simplicity of the message and its effect. God is blessing his work.

Very simply, Josh posts a Christian image with a small amount of text that is suggestive of God’s work for us as a reminder of his graciousness. He indeed “loved us first.” He posts an image a day that, connected with the word, has the power to “fell Satan” in the life of that Facebook user. Praise God for the power of his word. To think that a small image, a quiet word, a gentle encouragement has the power to crush Satan and free the sinner. That’s big!

So the natural question for you, if you use Facebook, is does your online life afford you opportunities to “fell him?” I know mine does. I have Facebook friends who don’t know their savior. Who struggle with life…and death. Who don’t know that the love of God even exists. My prayer is that God can use my activity there to his glory and to share his grace. As you login next time, say a prayer, ask for guidance, and then through words and images and your very example witness to the power and love of God through Jesus Christ. What opportunities we have to share the comfort that comes from our Mighty Fortress!

And though this world, with devils filled, should threaten to undo us, we will not fear, for God hath willed his truth to triumph through us. The Prince of Darkness grim, we tremble not for him; his rage we can endure, for lo, his doom is sure; one little word shall fell him. (A Mighty Fortress, vs. 3)

Where were you on 9/11? That is a familiar question today as our country remembers the terrible events of 11 years ago. It’s akin to questions like “where were you when Kennedy was shot?” or “do you remember when man first set foot on the moon?” I was working in my office on the 18th floor in downtown Chicago that day. I can remember the uncertainty and then the fear that the Sears Tower, which was only 3 blocks away, might be another target. I can remember deciding we should close the office both for safety reasons and also there wasn’t a person there who could concentrate on any task. I could remember the eerie feeling driving home not seeing a single plane in the air, which was normally crowded with traffic flying in and out of Chicago’s two busy airports. I’ll never forget.

Perhaps a question that we haven’t thought of as much on this 9/11 is do you remember the morning after? As you woke up on the morning after what seemed to be an endless day, what were you thinking about? How did you feel? Did you want to go to work, or just coil up in a ball and stay in bed? Were you glued to the television to learn of more details or what the president might say next? If you were like me you had lots of questions and no answers. You were scared, but not sure of what. You were thankful for life, but saddened that there were those who cared so little about it, and even sadder for those children who woke up without a mom or dad they had the day before. The morning after… not as memorable perhaps, but important to remember.

As I think back to the day after Good Friday, I wonder what that morning after was like…for Peter, for the other disciples, for Mary? Fear? Sadness? Confusion? All of the above? A life, a cause, that had so much promise was now over. No more Jesus. They saw him die. It was very public. It was no secret. He was alive and then he was dead! Now the survivors were left by themselves…to wonder.

As the disciples gathered behind locked doors they must have been trying to decide what’s next, if they were there at all. Perhaps some decided to coil up and stay in bed that morning. After all, what hope was there? All things that mattered seemed to come to a crashing halt – much like a New Yorker might have felt about their normal bustling schedule. What’s the use. It doesn’t matter. Things were different the morning after. Never to be the same. Jesus’ followers must have been choking on the dust and debris from a collapsed ministry, or a crucifixion that lasted about as long as it took for two towers to come down.

Fast forward three days to Easter however. Or better yet, the morning after Easter. What must that have been like? For Peter, for the disciples, for Mary? Wow. A very different morning. The rubble of mere days earlier was now resurrected. What looked hopeless, causing fear, uncertainty, sadness, now was replaced by inexpressible joy. It was such a 180 that Thomas couldn’t (or wouldn’t) even believe it till he saw for himself. That was a morning after that those people remembered the rest of their lives.

Now another question. What will the morning after be like the day AFTER you die? The Bible makes this kind of simple. Only two answers are possible. Answer one: Like the day after Easter for the disciples…only a 1,000 times better. Answer two: Like the day after Good Friday (or 9/11)…only a 1,000 times worse. It’s the difference between heaven and hell, right? What a gracious God we have, who decided we were his and he wanted “answer one” for us. His son had to die to make it happen, so that is what he did. He put his son to death. So every “morning after” we have can be one of inexpressible joy as we think back to THE morning of Easter. We simply can’t coil up in our beds. We have salvation. We have an eternal future of joy with Christ.

Let me ask one last question. What will the morning be like the day AFTER your brother, your uncle, your neighbor, your friend dies? Heaven or hell? If it is the later, you have a story to tell…the story of salvation. Morning afters can be so sad. But there is one morning after that doesn’t have to be.

1 Corinthians 15:50-58

50 I declare to you, brothers, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. 51 Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed— 52 in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. 53 For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. 54 When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: “Death has been swallowed up in victory.”

55 “Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?”

56 The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. 57 But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

58 Therefore, my dear brothers, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.

After taking a summer vacation from blogging, I’m back and picking up where I left off last spring…with news about Chromebooks. Just to recap, I believe Chromebooks are probably the best option available to our schools who want to put computers in the hands of the students and still keep the tech administrator sane. They are easy to set up, manage, and learn. They are also becoming more cost effective, thus an even smarter choice for a lot of our schools. Here are the details of a recent email I received from Google:

On May 29th, we launched a new Samsung Series 5-550 Chromebook with a faster processor, more memory and a sleek new design. Additionally, we launched the Chromebox, which is designed for a traditional desktop computing environment, and solely runs the Chrome operating system.

As a Google Apps for Non-profit subscriber, you are eligible to receive special pricing – an 80% discount on the management console!

Non-profit organizations such as the First Tee of Fort Worth have purchased Google Chromebooks due to widespread use in K-12 programs across the state. They’re effortless to setup and manage, and can help your organization take it’s educational programs to the next level.

Here are details on our special Non-profit pricing:

Samsung Chromebox desktop = $329 + $30

Wifi Samsung 5-550 Chromebook = $449 + $30

3G Samsung 5-550 Chromebook = $549 + $30

These figures include management capabilities, support for the lifetime of the device, and a one year hardware warranty.

If you are interested in learning more about how Chromebooks can help your organization, or if you would like to place an order please visit our Chrome website.

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They also provided a link in the email to an interested Google Hangouts on Air demonstration of the Chromebook management console. Good stuff…

http://youtu.be/yhLUCnaUxGw

One thing I’ve observed over the past five years or so is that I’m obsessed…obsessed with…well stewardship. And that’s a bad thing. Let me explain. The stewardship I’m obsessed with is the stewardship of time — more specifically, saving time through optimizing how I use my computer. I’m always tweaking this and that. Finding a bookmarking utility. Installing an app. Implementing a new task management system. It doesn’t end.

Yes. Computers can save you time. And I know for a fact I’m more "productive" now than I was when I first started using computers. But there are times now that I feel like I take one step forward and two steps back in my never ending quest to find more time to do the work I really want to be doing. I truly do want to be a better time steward. I want to do things that matter, rather than administrative busywork. I’m sure you want the same thing.

The challenge is knowing when you’ve tweaked enough and have a system that is good enough and the appropriate applications that are suitable enough. The only way to assess where you stand is by taking inventory of what you actually got done each week. In GTD (Getting Things Done the productivity system by David Allen)…I know another system…that is called the Weekly Review. In GTD circles  the weekly review is what make or breaks the system. I agree.

Everybody needs a weekly review whether they have adopted GTD or not. That weekly review serves as a stewardship checkup. In it you spend 60 to 90 minutes taking a look at your efforts over the last week and then looking at the next 7 days in order to plan that work. It’s a time of reflection and evaluation. It’s an honest look at how you are doing. If you go through too many weekly reviews without satisfying results, you may want to ask yourself how much time you spent tweaking your productivity approach versus actually using it to get work done. This assessment has helped me periodically. I think it can help the wise steward as well. It’s worth the time to stop, reflect, react and then do it again.

Those who work in the Lord’s service should be obsessive about the time they spend. Every minute is a time of grace. Every minute is 60 seconds the Lord has provided to do His work. So a regular reflection on what you are doing with those minutes is time well spent!

This is the third part of a three part series based on a day I spent in Lincolnshire, IL at a Tech Forum sponsored by Tech & Learning Magazine. My first post of the series reviewed the excellent keynote address by Dean Shareski. The second post outlined my thoughts on a session focused on the “flipped classroom” and how technology plays a part…a big part. This third post deals with the growing trend in school districts across the country forego paper textbooks for curated digital ones.

This session was a bit different as it was more a roundtable discussion of about 25 people. That made it interesting as each shared thoughts from different circumstances and settings. Some there were in larger school districts, others smaller, while a third group were running virtual schools. All seemed to be unified in one thing however, paper textbooks are fading fast. In their place is arising a process of curating curriculum content. There was a clear distinction. It wasn’t the paper textbooks digital counterpart being produced by the textbook manufacturers, but the curation online content that is for the most part freely available.

Three key points were made:

1. The decision was made to put available school budget monies into hardware rather than content. This of course has consequences. While it aids the movement toward 1:1 computing which many schools are adopting, it puts an additional load on the teachers who must essentially “build their own textbooks.” Two things that made this more doable were the wealth of resources available to teachers trying to do this, including complete or partial curriculums and indexes by subject and grade, and also networks of teachers sharing their own findings/resources.

2. Use a Learning Management System (LMS). It is important to collect, categorize and share content through a system that is design to do that. LMS’s also enable easy content consumption by students and also quizzes, tests and assignment submissions. The usual suspects were suggested – Blackboard and Moodle (one free, the other not). But two new products that seemed to be getting a lot of buzz were Gaggle and OpenClass. The first not free, but full featured, the later slick, free, connected to Google Apps, but still in beta.

3. Do it together. The best way to begin the process is with other teachers who are working at the same grade level or subject matter. A couple of districts set aside a day a month for one year to allow the teachers to work together toward the ultimate goal of an online curriculum. Obviously that would not be enough time, but at least allowed teachers to share findings and collaborate. There were other creative ideas shared, but they all had one thing in common – work with others, not by yourself.

It was a brief roundtable, but very thought provoking. One thing seemed to be clear in the minds of these rather progressive educators – the paper textbooks days are numbered. Maybe not everywhere now, but certainly something to keep on the radar.