Thinking strategically: identity

In my last post, I reviewed what I call the “foundational principles” for developing an Internet Ministry strategy. In this post, I will begin reviewing the steps involved in developing that strategy.  This strategy framework is based in part on the one originally presented in Planning Strategies for World Evangelization by Dayton and Fraser and updated in Media In Church and Mission by Viggo Sogaard. By combining that framework with my background and experience with churches and technology, I have developed a framework for developing an Internet Ministry strategy which can be used by ministries of all sizes who are working to use the Internet as a tool in their ministry.  I have created a worksheet for this strategy, which is available on my company’s website on the page developed for my “God In the Tubes” workshop presented last week. › Continue reading

Tags: identity, mission statement, Series: Internet Ministry Strategy, sogaard, strategy

Thinking strategically about Internet ministry

In my last post, I stated that “no ministry can do everything, but you have to have a strategy in place that drives your decisions.”  This strategy will help you make decisions about your Internet presence: which software to use, which social software sites to integrate with, etc. Last week, I presented a workshop to over seventy churches in Indiana. The workshop was entitled “God in the Tubes: Developing an Internet Strategy for Your Congregation”.  The goal of my workshop was to help local churches, most of them working with very limited resources, develop a strategy for Internet use that would allow them to make the best use of those resources.

Before I had the participants work through their strategy, I presented some foundational principles for strategy that needed to be understood before they actually began working through the process: › Continue reading

Tags: center for congregations, Series: Internet Ministry Strategy, strategy

The technologies, they are a changin’

As I have stated in a previous post, I believe that some of the current social media tools we are using are really just the first successful incarnations of some future technologies.  Changes in technology, along with the competitive marketplace, force the software tools we use to evolve and change. Just as Friendster gave way to MySpace, which is giving way to Facebook, so the latest darlings such as Second Life and Twitter will most likely give way to something being created right now. › Continue reading

Tags: facebook, friendster, myspace, second life, strategy, twitter