Resources Page
One of my goals in having this web site is to provide high-quality, research-based resources for those doing ministry online. While you can read the blog to get up to the minute reports on my research and links to interesting resources, this page is dedicated to providing a permanent home to those resources which I feel are of high value to anyone doing Internet ministry. Below are the blog posts in which I have described and made available information regarding these resources.CLA 2010 Presentation
Last week, I gave a presentation at the Christian Leadership Conference’s annual conference in San Diego, CA. My session was entitled “Online Ministry Opportunities, Challenges, and Lessons”, which I presented with Kevin Ring. The talk was well received and encompassed several areas that I have been researching and writing on recently. I was asked by several people to make the presentation available, which I have done below.
For those of you who were not at the presentation, you may also want to get a copy of the audio of the presentation, which CLA is making available for $9.00. That link is also below.
Link to PDF of presentation
Purchase MP3 audio from CLA
Are you following “best practices” for online ministry?
Since many of you may be new to my blog and research, I wanted to make you aware of the “resources” section and some of the online ministry tools I have put there. The “resources” section is available both at my main site and my Facebook page.
One of my first projects in the area of online ministry was to seek an answer to the question: what makes online ministry successful? This led to the development of a research project to determine the “best practices” in online ministry. From November 2007 to April 2008, over 300 ministries took a survey and reported on how they were doing Internet ministry. From the data collected, a series of “best practices” were developed matching ministries who reported success with their Internet presence with answers to the survey questions. I presented the results of this research at the Internet Ministry Conference in October 2008. › Continue reading
Lessons From Babel now on Facebook
As many of you know, I will be on a “half-sabbatical” the next two semesters at Biola. My focus during this time will be to create a book on the strategic use of the Internet and social media for ministry (see my first blog post of the year for more details on what I am up to). As I create this book, I want to collaborate with the best minds in Internet ministry: those who are doing it! To get the best feedback possible, then, I need a lot of people reading what I post and giving me feedback! To make this easier for people, I have created a Facebook page for this blog. In fact, you may be reading this via Facebook right now!
I encourage you, if you haven’t already, to become a fan of this blog on Facebook and to share it with others who are doing ministry online as well. I also encourage you to interact with my posts and let me know what you think. Thanks for your support and I look forward to good discussions on online ministry.
Some resources for new media ministry
If you attended my session today at the CWC on “Developing a Philosophy of New Media Ministry”, I made note of several resources that I have available “on my web site”. For ease of finding these resources, I am putting links to all of them right here. I hope you find them useful!
- Shane Hipps interview – we watched a short snippet of this 30-minute interview I did with Shane via Skype. In this interview, Shane describes his book and his thoughts on online community.
- Best Practices in Internet Ministry – this is the research writeup of my two-year research project on the technology, people, and processes that make ministries successful.
- Strategy Worksheet – this worksheet walks you through the steps needed to create a strategy based on the principles discussed in the session.
For those of you who came to my session, thank you! And if you did not, you can still feel free to use these resources.
Interview with Shane Hipps
In January of 2009, I interviewed Shane Hipps about his book The Hidden Power of Electronic Culture. I did this as a way to gain insight into the book for the students in my Internet Ministry course at Biola University. I have also shown this video as part of my “God in the Tubes” workshops that I held in Indiana in March 2009. I have been receiving quite a bit of positive feedback about this video (a recorded Skype phone call, actually) and so I recently asked Shane if he would have a problem with me making it available for others to see. He has given his permission, so I am making it available, at least temporarily, on my genesys11 web site. › Continue reading
SEO for ministry
In my survey on Internet ministry, I asked the participants if they had optimized their site for search engines. Forty-two percent of the respondents said that they had indeed done some form of SEO. And thirty-two percent stated that they counted on search engine results as the primary means for people to find their sites.
I also left a spot for comments on just how these ministries were doing “search engine optimization” (SEO) on their sites:
“The more we are integrated with other sites (Facebook, blogs, etc.) the better.”
“Ask the congregation to search for the site.”
“Create web pages for other churches in the area.”
“I believe that doing SEO is just part of doing good site design. If you have a web site, you want people to find it. If you want people to find it, you must show up in search results.” › Continue reading
Pew Internet Project: a great resource
As I am working on planning my course in Internet ministry, I am spending quite a bit of time reviewing possible books and other supporting materials. One invaluable resource that I use quite a bit for my own research that I will be using extensively in the course is the work of the Pew Internet and American Life project. As I stated in my last post, it is extremely important for us to understand the users of our Internet ministry resources. If you are interested in understanding how the Internet is being used by Americans (sorry, this resource is US-specific), then you will find the reports issued by this organization extremely useful. Below is a link to their home page, along with links to a few of the most recent reports that relate to Internet ministry. If you find these interesting, I highly recommend subscribing to their RSS feed so you will know when new reports are released. Unfortunately, the last report they did on the use of the Internet for faith-related purposes is now getting quite old (2004) – I hope they will be releasing an update soon!
- Pew Internet and American Life Project home page
- Report on use of podcasting (2008)
- Report on use of video sites (2008)
- Report on “networked families” (2008)
- Report on “faith online” (2004)
Full research write-up posted
For those of you who have been asking me for documentation related to my presentation at the Internet Ministry Conference, I have now posted a six-page report on my web site that details my findings. In conjunction with this, I also wrote a short summary of these findings for the Church Marketing Sucks blog.
Link to Church Marketing Sucks blog entry
Link to research page on genesys11
Know your users
Wow – it’s been a long time since I’ve posted. Sorry about that! We were on vacation for most of July and I’m just getting back into the swing of things…
As a corollary to my research, I have been leading a team at my church to develop a “Web presence” strategy. Our current web site is primarily a static page maintained by one staff member and a volunteer and desperately needs updating. My team is working to develop a strategic plan for the development of an updated or new web site and will be presenting it to the Elder board later this year. As part of this process, I feel that it is critical to understand how those who are the primary users of the web site, the church body, use the Internet and to get their input into possible features. Now, an argument can be made that a church web site is NOT primarily for those who already go to the church, but I will leave that argument for a different post. › Continue reading
