Church IT - Supporting ministry with IT

I picked up a copy of Reaching the Unchurched: Some lessons from Willow Creek last night and had a quick read. It’s only 20 pages so only took as long as some updates to Windows.

What struck me was that even 16 years on it is still very relevant and challenging (yes I know how old the Bible is!).  It made me think about how seeker friendly our services are and I fear we could do better.

It’s always hard because many parts of church become habit.

A good example was at church on Sunday when we had a baptism, so lots of visitors compared to normal. The person doing the intercessions (first bit of jargon) finished off in the usual Anglican way ‘Merciful Father…’ and those of us in the know finished off with ‘accept these prayers, for the sake of your Son, our Saviour Jesus Christ Amen’. Now we didn’t announce where these words could be found (I do this all the time as well) so there was no way the visitors could have known what to say. For the record, I didn’t have to look the words up.

I feel bad about it now, but it didn’t cross my mind at the time, which only makes me feel worse!

The booklet hit the nail on the head with the assertion that seeker friendly services cannot be the same as ordinary church. What I’m looking for in terms of spiritual refreshment isn’t going to happen.

If you want a read, there are copies still floating around. I found five on the Amazon Marketplace.

I’m making a start on Mission Shaped Church now. Currently half price from Church House Publishing with some sample chapters available as PDF.

As it was an All Age Worship (family) service this morning, I was operating OpenSong as well as the mixer.  Generally quite straightforward as there isn’t too much to have to react to, apart from some swapping around of radio mics.

The only snag was at the end of the service when the words I had entered for ‘The Spirit Lives to set us free’ turned out to be different from those in the hands of the singers. Luckily we have a second monitor that points towards the music group so they were able to switch to that without any problems.

Being a techie I find myself casting around for a solution that involves some form of electronic wizardry. Perhaps it is time to push harder for internet access in the church.  Then we could have a central place to store information about the service.

Another solution is to run through the service in more detail (or indeed at all) before Sunday, as per the excellent advice to be found in the podcasts of Creative Synergy. As much as I agree however, it is harder for a small parish church with a limited headcount.

Perhaps this also inspires a feature request for OpenSong. A portable version would allow me to carry it around on a USB key so I would always know exactly what is on the notebook. Part of the problem was the service organiser had looked on the notebook for the words but I had copied them straight from Junior Praise that included an extra verse.

Of course, as OpenSong is opensource, there’s no reason for me not to have a go myself, perhaps it’s time to stop just lurking in the forum.

Then again, maybe I’m dwelling too much on the negative. It was only one song, and the rest of the service went without any problems.

I’ve been playing around with Ableton Live for a little while now and I’m very impressed. I’ll post some more specific comments soon but in the meantime there are some informative posts over at Thoughts on drumming, programming and church . .

Also check out some of the videos on the page, especially those of  Abraham Laboriel Jr.

There’s probably enough in that title for a whole book. Which is sort of why I
bring it up having just read this review about a book on the subject over at bnet.com

5. “Jesus CEO” by Laurie Beth Jones (Hyperion, 1995)

Publisher’s blurb: “By harnessing three categories of strength behind Jesus’ leadership techniques (the strength of self-mastery, the strength of action, and the strength of relationships), each of us can become the empowered leaders that the next millennium will require.”

Excerpt: “I believe that Jesus had to go into the wilderness to find out who he was — that a wilderness experience was as much a part of his shaping and destiny as it is yours and mine.”

Why it’s overrated: While many managers think they’re God and manage accordingly, the historical Jesus espoused a communal lifestyle in direct opposition to (Roman) capitalism.

Read this instead: “The Book of Proverbs” (in the Bible)

Why: A collection of wisdom that completely transcends religion.

Excerpt: “Better a dry crust and with it peace than a house where feast and dispute go together.”

On the subject of proverbs I would also recommend ‘Making Life Work’ by Bill Hybels . Based on Proverbs there is lots of helpful advice. Hard reading but rewarding to put into practice

Perry Noble dot com » Blog Archive » Eight Things I Think Every Worship Leader Should Know

Some good advice here. I might add some hard advice. I recognise the need for a base level of talent in worship groups but should that be a reason for excluding someone with a right heart for worship with an instrument even though they are not very good?
Either way, the calls for studying Scripture and good teamwork are something we can all learn from.

How to Promote a Sermon Series Like Fellowship Church | churchrelevance.com

Fellowship Church (Grapevine, TX) is starting a new sermon series this weekend called ineedtochange.com that will challenge people to consider how they need to change for the better. Here 7 ways they are promoting it:
Sermon website, Online Guerilla Marketing, Short films, Promotional Packets, billboards, direct mail, e-invites

Some great ideas here, especially creating a mini site with a relevant domain name. I’d love to try some of these out but I have a feeling they are a bit much for some smaller churches. Still, Aim high and all that…

Content Done Better » Blog Archive » Writing Series Part III — Site Copy

First, this kind of copy has to be interesting right from the beginning. Most people that go to a Web site don’t stick around if it doesn’t catch their attention right away. An attention-grabbing headline along with good writing on the home page is a requirement for anyone that wants to keep customers coming back.

It’s easy to read articles like this and feel complacent but web copy is just as hard as paper. Sometimes harder because there is so little time to grab attention, that of both people and search engines. I’m going to read this several times to make sure it is at the front of my mind the next time I’m writing for websites.

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Church Marketing Sucks: Simply Strategic Growth

Simply Strategic Growth: Attracting a Crowd to Your Church is comprised of 99 short chapters (2-3 pages) each focused on one simple idea. That means it’s a breeze to read through, is packed with ideas, and is very approachable for the ADD crowd (and with the proliferation of blogs and short content I think we’re all joining that club).

The book covers everything from backend administrative tasks (how to conduct a post-service what worked/what didn’t meeting and who to include) to wrangling volunteers (don’t schedule anything other than worship services and corresponding childcare on Sundays so you maximize your volunteer pool) to rationale for adding multiple services (people are more likely to invite friends when a church is not totally full and once your service has several hundred people there’s no way everybody can know everybody).

The writers of the book, Tim Stevens and Tony Morgan, even have their own podcast. And I was thinking I was running low of things to listen to on the train!

6 Ways to Slow Volunteer Turnover by Rick Lawrence

Turnover is a great thing…as long as you’re talking about a pastry. But turnover in youth ministry can be a big headache. Here’s how veteran youth workers have learned to cure the “revolving door syndrome”:

I don’t think you can read too many articles like this. They are a great reminder that people are the most valuable resource you can have, regardless of computers, servers, projectors or AV rigs. The advice is for youth ministries but I can see the relevance for the different areas I work in.

The Importance of a Central Project List - lifehack.org

I can’t escape the fact that having a real centralized project list for the things I’m doing is helping. I want to believe that I have tons of excess capacity in my brain. I want to think that I remember everything I’ve got on the go. But I don’t. And maybe you don’t, either.

I’ve found one of the bigger challenges in the last few projects I’ve been involved in is how to stay organised when there are several different people involved. It’s not like an office where I can quickly pop over to someone’s desk to ask a question. Probably not ideal but with the different service communities at our church it’s possible to go a month without meeting someone in person. We use Joomla for our parish website and there is a useful extension called Project Fork. There are no clever Gantt diagrams to confuse the uninitiated in project management. Just projects that are made up of tasks that can have dependencies. Even with only a couple of people on a project the centralisation can be a huge help.