churches

social media

Using social media during crisis

Churches and organizations will face an opportunity where social media can greatly impact how you respond to a crisis. Whether the crisis is a natural disaster, community problem, or an internal church conflict, how a message is crafted can produce positive results if done correctly.

During the recent #chsocm chat that I moderated, our church social media group discussed the best practices for using social media during a crisis. Here are my 4 topic/questions that we discussed:

T1: Name a crisis that emerged in a ministry community and how could it have been improved by social media? Could be your church or another.
T2: What tools or strategies can churches use during a crisis to improve communication & trust?
T3: How should an external community crisis be handled differently than an internal church crisis via social media?
T4: What can be shared via social media from a crisis that reveals a greater truth about God?

Here were some good ideas and responses to the topic of using social media during crisis:

blog, social media

FREE EthicsDaily.com netcast for small churches

Tomorrow, EthicsDaily.com will host a free netcast on their website focusing on small-church expectations of pastors, avoiding burnout in the small-church pastorate, and advice for those ministers working in a small-church environment. The streaming netcast Oct. 22 begins at 11 a.m. ET.

Zach Dawes, former small-church pastor and now managing editor of EthicsDaily.com, and Chuck Warnock, pastor of Chatham Baptist Church in Chatham, Va., will join EthicsDaily.com’s media producer, Cliff Vaughn, online for the conversation. Using Google Hangouts, EthicsDaily.com will broadcast live on their site.

Anyone can watch the netcast on the main page of EthicsDaily.com, in the video hub (near the bottom-right of the page). After the netcast, the content will be available as a recorded video.

Ethics Daily now features 60 Skype interviews on their Vimeo channel. The expert discussions feature topics like prison ministry, beauty pageants, the Korean church, Thomas Jefferson, the church and technology, and much more.

blog, Facebook

How often and when should I post to Facebook?

For many who want to plunge into the world of Facebook with their brand, product, organization or business, posting frequency on Facebook can be a conundrum. People often ask:

How often and when should I post to Facebook?

Blue Truck What, a company that builds websites for small businesses, churches, and non-profits, offers the following 4 points of guidance.

5:1 Rule of Thumb – post five pieces of content of interest to your followers for every one piece of content specifically promoting your business.

9:00 a.m. & 9:00 p.m. – most business Facebook pages see traffic spikes on the 9′s. Some sites vary depending on the nature of your business and your followers. Follow your stats and then make your posts at key times when your followers are more likely to engage your content.

Post 4-7 days per week. A day you’re not visible is a day you lose ground. Consistency is the name of the game.

No more than 4 – Post no more than 4 times per day. Over sharing can create disinterest in your audience. It really does drive your reach down.

Blue Truck What offers social media marketing packages starting at $38.99 a month for business and $18 for churches. Don’t hesitate to call to ask questions or learn about how Blue Truck can benefit your business. 828-508-1586 or email info@bluetruckpublishing.com.

blog, Christianity

Real Preachers of L.A. – Yes, for real

As if we didn’t need another “Real (fill in the blank) of (fill in the blank)” reality show, the Oxygen Network premiered “Real Preachers of L.A.“. I suppose it was only a matter of time that preachers/ministers would get their own reality show since everyone from gold miners to Kevin Hart has one.

What shall I say about this show and it’s premise? Well, for one it is entertainment. No producer would bring a reality show to TV if it wasn’t controversial. I can’t imagine a show with a bunch of preachers in middle America going to air – unless they were zombie preachers!

Kate Bower at the CNN Belief blog describes it as:

a chaotic mix of prayer, “house porn,” and neatly orchestrated dust-ups between senior pastors and their “first ladies.” In some ways, the combination of the prosperity gospel with the “Real Housewives” format is a match made in Oprah-produced heaven. Men of the cloth cruise Southern California in lavish cars weighed down by their gold watches and tiny dogs.

The show centers around a group of mega church ~~well to do~~ hipster preachers with family, cars, parties, and other celebrities. The display of semi-lavish living is opening flaunted on the show. Ron Gibson, one of the show’s preachers, explains the lavish living as:

“P. Diddy, Jay Z. They’re not the only ones who should be driving Ferraris and living in large houses.”

Much of the show’s under current is a popular and controversial Christian movement known as Prosperity Gospel or Prosperity Theology. The Jimmy Swaggers and Jim Bakers of the world brought this movement to television. Basically, the thinking goes, if you are faithful and give abundantly to a church or ministry, God will bless you with wealth and happiness. In turn, preachers get to live in multiple houses and live a lifestyle fit for King Solomon.

Unfortunately, shows like this reinforce a stereotype of preachers who are greedy and profit from their ministry. These ministers exist but the vast majority of ministers don’t make anywhere need the type of money the “Real Preachers of L.A.” are making. Many pastors small churches and are bivocational.

So, there you have it. You judge if these Real Preachers of L.A. are the real deal or just all show.

Associate Pastor

Don’t forget about associate pastors

Last week I spoke to a group of associate pastors at a continuing education program with the American Baptist Churches of New Jersey. This group of associates was very diverse demographically, but they all shared the same challenges.

I started speaking on the topics of identity, calling, and role of the associate pastor. Then, several folks brought up other associates books, “Leading from the Second Chair” or “Second Chair, Not Second Best”. Though I’m pretty enamored with “The Work of the Associate Pastor“, I spoke about how those other books fail to see one thing: the power dynamic in the analogy of “second chair” is fundamentally flawed.

As I shared with this group of associate pastors that the power dynamics of #1 verse #2 pastor is not helpful. Ordering pastors with numbers frustrate associates into seeing themselves as lesser instead of seeing themselves into a different calling than their senior pastors. The relationship between the senior and associate pastor should be one of mutuality. Obviously, there is a supervisory role that the senior pastor must take, but that doesn’t mean that pastors cannot treat one another as equals.

Leadership, mainline church

It’s official: the term ‘Mainline’ Christian sucks

It is well established that mainline Christian denominations are shrinking. According to several prominent Christian practitioners and thinkers, the term “Mainline Christian” officially… well, sucks. That is my interpretation.

The indelible Carol Howard Merritt is one of the growing movement of folks who want to drop the “mainline” term. She writes in her Christian Century column that she refuses to use the term “mainline”. The term “mainline” truly reflect a society with specific racial, class, and cultural marks. Carol explains why would should ditch “mainline”:

It was not a term that denominational leaders came up with, but we have embraced it for many years. Now, it’s a good time to discard it. Why? It white-washes our influences… Even though we often look to the male European Reformers for much of our theology, even though a quick browse through the theology departments of most seminaries will reveal an overwhelming number of older, white men, we also know our thought for more than hundred years has been challenged by those working in poverty-stricken neighborhoods, with the civil rights movement, from subjugated women, and in the midst of immigrants’ struggles.

Perhaps what is the striking is that most new growth in established ~~mainline~~ denominations comes not from hipster churches, but from ethnically diverse immigrant communities. Carol rightly points out that continuing the mainline label ultimately hinders the future of churches:

social media

Church uses vandalism for social media message

What do church leaders usually do when someone vandalizes the side of a church with graffiti? Cover it up, repaint, or remove the vandalism. A church in Randolph, New York was recently vandalized with the words, “Can I still get into heaven if I kill myself?” The church responded in a remarkable and unconventional way.

Grace Episcopal Church allowed the vandalism to stay, but the church added their own reply:

The above picture circulated around Facebook and Twitter with folks generating a conversation about spirituality and community.

Elizabeth Drescher at Religion Dispatches covered the story and found out why the church responded in this way and how it relates to modern religious expression:

Rather than approaching the tagging as a criminal act, however, church leaders decided to take the graffiti seriously as an expression of something spiritually meaningful—a cry for help.. They approached it relationally, using the church building itself as a social media platform, and responding with their own message of hope.

It’s the story of a fairly traditional church actively recognizing that religious doubt, religious critique, and all manner of theological questioning that once would have been seen as belonging squarely within the clapboard walls of a village church unfold in a much wider, much more broadly networked universe.

What started as a process to respond to church vandalism turned into a broader conversation on social media. With hundreds of shares, likes, and comments on Facebook and Twitter, this church’s vandalism response sparked mostly positive reaction. Some of the replies on the church’s Facebook post tell of the conversation around suicide, religion, and young people:

“As a pastor who has lost a young adult son to suicide, let me add that the forum is 100% appropriate and the response is as well. Song lyrics or no, any indication that an individual might be contemplating suicide needs to be taken with the utmost seriousness.”

“I’m not of this faith, but I really respect and admire this response. It goes beyond religion for me. It comes down to basic, good old-fashioned human kindness, which, sometimes, is the one thing a desperate person needs.”

“This is what I got from this message (go ahead and kill yourself God loves you) should have been worded differently indeed! And so as long as I ask for forgives before I kill myself its all good right.”

“I think the response was great — people in that much pain need to know that not only does the Church love them, but that God loves them. Who knows, this might be just the turning point that this person needs to know that people and God cares”

“my experience working with suicidal people is that the thing that might encourage someone to get help is the sense that someone has heard them. We also don’t know if the person who painted the original message is suicidal or whether the are in profound grief after someone else’s suicide… or if something completely different is going on. You can’t really counsel an anonymous message written on a wall – sounds like the parish is doing the best they could have done under the circumstances”

This story is a lesson in leadership. Rather than react with, “Who would dare do this!?!” The church was proactive and asked, “Why is this person hurting so much to do this? What can we do to reach out in an equal response?” Many Christians and churches are quick to judge, but we must find creative responses to brokenness — as Jesus did.

Culture

Jesus, the original hipster?

A new ad aimed at making Jesus more culturally relevant has a major church working to re-brand the image of Jesus.

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn started a campaign that is gaining national attention. The ad has captured the attention of pop culture with picturing Jesus as the “original” hipster. Apparently Chuck Taylor All Stars are the key to making Jesus hip:

Apparently Converse’s “Chuck Taylor” sneakers are a favorite choice of footwear of both the Pope and Jesus Christ. And why shouldn’t they be? They are comfortable, colorful, and according to Seth Meyers in his SNL Weekend Update, are why more Catholics are returning to church.

Catholics yearn for a Church they can relate to. That is what Seth Meyers was jokingly referencing, and that is what the Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn’s new “All Faces, Everyday Understanding” marketing campaign is trying to achieve.

This isn’t the first time we have seen a hipster Jesus in print. In 2012, Time Magazine featured a modern looking Jesus on its front cover.

Is this ad simply a fun attention getter or a real attempt to bring young people into the pews? According to CNN, the ad has helped the Brooklyn Diocese’s website to see traffic increase by 400%. Certainly, a metric of tracking interest.

Ads like these help generate discussion and interest, but will that translate into more people in churches? Most likely not. Posting an ad on the streets will not solely translate into the masses attending church. Other changes need to be made in order to reach young people. Investment in young people in church ministry requires a coordinated effort.

As for Jesus as the original hipster, he certainly hung out with outcasts and not with popular people. That certainly made Jesus cool to the least of these. Perhaps that means he is attractive to young people today.

Discussion: Is this ad a real way to win young people back to church or is it all hype?

blog, Leadership

The Church Draft

As millions of football fans will undoubtedly will be glued to their televisions and social media, they will hunger for the latest information about NFL draft picks. The NFL draft is part pageantry and part celebration for football teams and their fans. Draft day means that a team can have hope for a better season as new athletes come on their roster.

This is also a tense time for football teams. Owners, coaches, agents and managers are all trying to work together to pick the best player. With all those high powered people trying to work together sometimes egos, tempers, and anxiety can play a major role in the team’s success. In order to get the best draft position teams will give away players, negotiate terms, trade draft spots, and participate in a number of complex agreements. The world of the NFL draft is truly a dizzying drama for teams but also there is tremendous opportunity.

In the world of the NFL, resources and money are seemingly endless as players are paid multi-million dollar contracts. For churches, the search for staff and volunteers is a frustrating process. Many churches lack the financial resources for say a full time youth minister or education minister. Often volunteers have to take on that work load without pay. Unlike the NFL, churches do not have ability to search for and pay for staff that could grow their organization.

In the church world of limited resources, what if churches joined together to have a Church Draft?

I live and minister in a small community with five mainline churches within a mile of one another. Our worship is similar and so are our ministries. We pastors get along very well. Back in 2009, we started meeting regularly and formed a clergy organization. We started to dream of the ways in which we could work together. We already had a number of connected ecumenical gatherings, but we wanted to do more.

One day, I jokingly asked if I could steal one of the other pastor’s secretary since we were in search of one. He replied that I would have to trade my choir for her. A few months later we were searching for an office manager. I went back to the same pastor and reminded him of our trade agreement but this time it was for real. I wasn’t going to give up my choir but we negotiated terms to share his staff person for our church office administrator position. BOOM! It worked. Fast forward a few years, and now all of our churches are talking about sharing a community youth minister and are supporting community based youth ministry! And, we continue to negotiate and draft ministry people to work in all of our churches.

In our community, it makes sense to work together and “draft” staff and volunteers. Each individual church may not have the resources, but together we are able to work together as one team and not five teams working against one another. Churches in the 21st century need to think about their staff and volunteers as players in the big game of ministry and not see each other as competitors.

Alan Rudnick is the author of “The Work of the Associate Pastor”, Judson Press.

mission

A garden center, a sign, and the missional church

My parents used to tell me that first impressions matter. So my mom always kept a very clean house in the chance someone came to visit or if I or my sister brought a friend home unexpectedly from school. My dad always keep the cars clean and the yard mowed. We always had clean clothes and reasonable times between haircuts. Probably not much different from your family.

Organizations also present “first impressions” with their buildings, employees who welcome, or the cleanliness of the facility. The front door might be one of the most important features of these organizations. Here are a few front doors I have come across in Midwest stores recently.

This is posted on a sliding door into a business. This store is a large chain and is located in the upper middle class section of town with low crime. Nothing about this sign says to me I am welcome to shop there. I have never seen a sign like this on any other business, that does not mean do not exist but I have never noticed one. I just found it to be a weird notice and felt it to be unnecessarily hostile.

This is a welcoming place. It has the clearly marked sign open, the door is open, and the hours are posted. There is plants that greet you from the parking lot to the door letting you know that this place holds a variety of , trees, flowers, porch/deck furniture, and other yard DYI things. But what you see outside is only a small taste of what is on the inside. The staff don’t just grow plants in a bucket. They are gardeners as well. They are capable of listening to garden ideas and advising how to proceed because they live in both places.

Churches have signs as well. Our churches often put up intentional or unintentional signs up with our actions. Perhaps they act like the fist sign. Your life will be scrutinized here. We will judge you and use a filter process to decide if you are like us. We will examine every aspect of your life until we are satisfied you look, sound, and act like we think you should. If you do not agree to these terms you are free to leave the facility.

What if our church and the way it functions looked more like this garden center? What if we were more inviting and welcoming? What would it look like if we could find the balance between being welcoming to all and strong in our Christian identity? What if we found a way to interpret and discern what God is doing in the world? A missional church needs to examine their church “signs”. What signal are they sending?

Much like the garden center, there is a a need for churches to have a welcoming presence with their building, signage, and people. The church must missionally welcome people and empower others to action. The missional church needs to have a welcoming presence of hospitality and be able to discern how God is calling us to act. God is at work cultivating our missional gardens and we need to realize what it takes to welcome and send others into his vineyard.

Culture

When religious isn’t religious

As I started my daily read of newspapers, I was shocked (well, disappointed) to learn that our region was one of the least religious regions in America. A new Gallup poll found that, “Only 26 percent of those surveyed in this area say they are very religious, which puts the Albany-Schenectady-Troy region in ninth place among the least religious of the 189 areas polled.” Is this a situation when ‘religious’ isn’t religious?

What is frustrating about this statistic is that as you ride through the Albany region is that there are four to six churches per town. In my town, Ballston Spa, New York there are six churches in a one mile radius. That is a tight area with a lot of churches. Those churches represent a range of Christian sects: Baptist, Presbyterian, non-denominational, Methodist, Episcopal, and Catholic. That doesn’t even count smaller non-Christian groups.

With so many churches in this area, you’d think that if you build it, people will come. That was true 50 years ago when returning men from War World II were looking to join a civic community were church attendance was expected.

The trouble with using a term ‘religious’ in a poll is that the word “religious” is seen as a pejorative term. As another Times Union article points out, that if the poll used the word “spiritual” the results may have been different. And, using both terms of “spiritual” and “religious” would most likely yield a higher religious or spiritual affiliations. Case in point, a Rasmussen poll found that 54% of American adults feel at least “somewhat connected” to their local church. In addition, 34% said they are “very connected.” The poll did not ask respondent’s religious affiliation. Church connection is another way to measure religious affiliation.

In 2013, ‘religious’ isn’t religious any more. More accurately, the term ‘religious’ carries many negative connotations. Even the term “religious conservatives” carries a reactive wince to many. How many times do we hear the term, “religious liberals”? Almost never. Many would see that term a contradiction but it is not. Most in the media just drop ‘religious’ .

The word religious is not inherently negative, but we Christians and religious folk alike must turn the tide of the negative sediment. In addition, news outlets and polling groups need to understand that they are using outdated and inaccurate terminology. We continue to be a “religious” nation without using the word “religious”.

Culture, Evangelism

New England mission field is not to be conquered

Having spent over four years in Upstate New York, I’ve experience my fair share of “New England” religion. Though New York is not part of New England, being so close to a New England state has naturally brought its culture over the border. I have church members who are former residents of Vermont, New Hampshire, and a few who grew up with “Chow-dah” and “Hah-vahd”.

New Englanders are hardy folk. They endure harsh winters and only one NFL team for several states. They are compassionate. Simple and respectful. They don’t wear their religion on their sleeve. They are rich and poor. Tall and short. They are Americans just like you and me.

In the last 10 years, several evangelical denominations and faith groups see New England as the last American mission field. This thinking is misguided and sees this region as a place to be conquered as if it was ancient military victory. Yes, everywhere we go is a mission field but the holier than thou attitude that some church planters exhibit smacks of arrogance.

Case in point are the tactics the Southern Baptist Convention is using to plant churches in New England. NPR reported that a church planter walked a traffic island with a very aggressive religious sign to drivers:

It’s not malicious… but they’re church-planting by stealth…On a recent February afternoon, horns honked and a middle finger flew as Cabral walked the traffic island. Drivers also kept engaging him, trying to answer the question on his cross, which he’d explain meant, “Are you ready to face God when you die?” Cabral would share how he knew that he was, then hand out a card with a gospel message and his church’s address.

Is that how New England is seen as a mission field? A place where the first exposure to an evangelism effort forces unsuspecting commuters to be confronted with judgement rather than the love of Jesus Christ? What of the existing congregations trying to reach out to their communities? Often, many of these church planting movements ignore existing churches in order that they reach number goals.

Treating the birth place of American religious freedom like it is a foreign mission field gives no regard to local culture, local needs, and local programs. Theologies of missiology explore existing culture rather than establishing a new culture and religious norm. For instance, recent statistics reflect new church plants instead of focusing on existing ones:

Since 2002, the Southern Baptists have spent roughly $5 million to plant churches around the region, and have another $800,000 committed for this year… They’ve started 133 new churches in that time, a nearly 70 percent increase that brings their regional total to 325.

What about the churches trying to reach their local community? What statistics and funding goes towards strengthening existing churches? Building new churches is a little more sexier than using existing churches. It looks good to show a mission board statistics on new churches. But, initiatives like Transformed by the Spirit seek to empower existing churches to find new life. Not considering what challenges and opportunities exist in current churches ignores the work already being done by other Christians.

Working with existing churches and their struggles is not glamorous as starting a new church. However, there are communities, people, and towns that need their congregations to be renewed and restored. Let us not see the “New England mission field” as a place to be conquered but as a place where we respect local church hopes and dreams.

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