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
CLA 2010 next week
I will be speaking next week at CLA 2010 on the topic of the Opportunities, Challenges, and Lessons of being online. This session is part of the twelve-session “Ministry Internet & Technology Summit” within the overall conference. I am looking forward to meeting a lot of new people who share my vision for using the Internet to share Christ’s love to the world!
If you are going to be there next week, look me up! The session is at 8:00 AM Wednesday morning. And don’t attend just my session! The MITS has a lot of great speakers and sessions!
Follow this link for more information on my part in CLA 2010.
Interviews with leaders in the online ministry field
Have you ever wanted to pick the brain of some of the top names in online ministry? Have you ever wondered what they thought it meant to be “excellent”? As part of the preparation for our study on excellence and presentations for the CLA 2010 Ministry Internet and Technology Summit, StateOfMinistryOnline has conducted several interviews with top ministry leaders, asking the question: what does it mean to be excellent online?
Interviewees include:
- Cynthia Ware, Executive Director of the Center for Church Communications
- Eric Célérier, founder of TopChrétien.com
- Matt Perman, Senior Director of Strategy for Desiring God
- DJ Turner, Executive Director Communications Denver Seminary
- Dr. Richard Krejcir, Director of Into Thy Word
Here are some highlight quotes from the interviews, see if you can figure out who said them:
Sometimes online excellence is seen when someone has taken the initiative and laid the foundation for others to follow.
Great content must be wedded with high usability. If you have excellent content but it’s hard to use the content is obscured. Not focusing on usability creates distortion that gets in the way of the content. Even if you have financial resources and a competent staff, poor usability will lead to an ineffective website.
When you go to a restaurant, you don’t go just for the food or for the look of the dining room, you go for the experience. This is how Facebook draws so many people: not just the content, not just the design, but the experience of it. The experience of a web site is created by how you navigate through the content. When you are designing your site, foremost consideration must be given for how the users will experience it!
Go read the interviews at StateOfMinistryOnline to figure out who said these and to get much, much more insight!
Of course, it couldn’t let this finish without reminding you of the CLA 2010 conference coming up in San Diego in April. And encouraging you to come! I am part of the team putting together a special 12-session summit on the Internet and technology, where we will be taking the principles learned from these interviews and other research and presenting them.
Also, if you are interested in coming (or even if you’re not!), please consider taking the online survey we have developed to help us further our research. For your time (about 20 minutes), you will receive a $50 discount to the conference.
Help us help you: excellence in online ministry
I told you earlier this week about the Ministry Internet & Technology Summit at CLA 2010. One of the themes of this summit is going to be “excellence in online ministry”. I am part of a research team that is putting this project together – and if you are part of an online ministry effort, I need your help!
The cornerstone of this research project is an online survey that will help us understand just what online ministries are doing, why they are doing it, and how effective they are. The results of this survey, combined with interviews and in-depth conversations, will provide our team with the resources needed to develop materials that can make your online ministry excellent.
So will you help us? The survey should take under 30 minutes. I know, this is still a lot of time, but we ask your patience in completing the entire survey to give us the full picture of your ministry. Those who complete the survey will receive a discount code good for $50 off of the conference registration.
Start the survey by clicking here.
If you would like more background on the conference or the team that is working on the project, see our website: State of Ministry Online. And if you are not part of an online ministry team, but you know someone who is, please forward them a link to this post or to the survey and ask them to help us out!
Internet & Technology Summit – CLA 2010
Do you want to network with those who working on the same technology projects as you? Need to know what the latest technology trends are? Do you want to know how to be “excellent” in online ministry? Or maybe you just need an excuse to go to San Diego in April? Come to the Ministry Internet & Technology Summit from April 19 to 21 in San Diego, CA. This summit is part of the larger Christian Leadership Alliance’s annual conference.
Presenters include:
- Cynthia Ware, Executive Director Center for Church Communications
- Nick Nicholau, President Ministry Business Services and Co-founder Ministry Technology Institute
- Drew Goodmanson, CEO Monk Development
- Steve Hewitt, editor-in-chief Christian Computing Magazine
- Kevin Ring, President Unconventional Method
- Steve Hewitt, Editor-in-Chief, Christian Computing magazine
- Ron Weber, COO Trinet Internet Solutions
- …and me!
For more detail on the sessions, take a look at this PDF of page 8 of the conference brochure. For full details of the conference, take a look at the full brochure.
Watch this blog for more info on how you can make these sessions even more effective by participating in research and giving us feedback on what is important to you (and get a discount on the conference as well!).
Kicking off 2010
A belated “Happy New Year!” to everyone. I wanted to start off the new year by dusting off this old blog and making it what it was always meant to be: a resource for those who are doing ministry online. In particular, my focus is in the area of research and education for online ministry, though any topic regarding online ministry may show up here. So take a look around, you may notice that I have cleaned some things up and added some new information here and there.
So what is in store for 2010? Glad you asked:
- I will be on a “half-sabbatical” this entire year at Biola, which means that I will only be teaching a half-load of classes and the rest of the time can focus on a research project. In my case, that research project will be a book on online ministry. This book will be based on the research that I have been doing, along with my experiences teaching a course in the topic and working with various ministries. As I am writing, I will be sharing ideas and questions on my blog and asking for your feedback.
- I will be teaching a course in Internet Ministry this summer at Biola. This will be similar to the course I taught last spring, but with one big difference: it will be online. If you are student at Biola or another university (grad or undergrad) and would like to participate in this course, let me know! I will be writing about my ideas for this course on this blog as well.
- I will be going to Turkey in March as part of TIEN 2010 where I will meet with church leaders and others interested in using the Internet to reach that part of the world for Christ.
- I am part of a team putting together some sessions around the idea of online ministry at the CLA 2010 conference in April. Most of the ideas and writings for that are being done over at State of Ministry Online, but you will hear about it from time to time on this blog as well.
- As any good researcher should do, I am actively seeking out others who write, teach, and research in this area. The goal of this is to stay informed and to be sure I am not duplicating the work of anyone else. I am now actively using Google reader to track what those people have to say. As I find articles or information that I find very valuable, I will share them on Google reader, which allows others (such as you, dear reader) to subscribe to these shared items and interact on them. I will be highlighting the best of what I am reading and sharing on this blog approximately once a week.
A lot of work on Internet ministry is going to happen in 2010 – stay tuned to this site for the latest. I would love to know what you are doing in the field of Internet ministry this year, or if you have a recommendation for someone I should be keeping up with. Let me know in the comments.
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Welcome to Lessons From Babel
This blog is where I share the latest thoughts on my research in the world of Internet ministry. Feel free to join the conversation by leaving a comment. For more information on what I am doing in 2010, see my first post of the year. To find out more about me, my company, and this web site, or to see what resources are available on this site, click on the images right below this.
- Dave Bourgeois
