Here at Pequea Church we are really just beginning to understand the power of our website. We have gone through two different website designs since I started here on staff. We are currently in the process of designing an entirely new design and I came across this post:

“Does your church website serve two masters?”

Here was my response:

Thanks for this post. This has been something that I have been trying to create a stance on for a long time. I agree with most everything that you said but when we have sat down and talked with new people to the church and have talked with the church body as a whole the visitors need the information like service times, core beliefs, and directions to the church but they also don’t want to feel like an outsider. They also don’t like to be labeled guest or first timer. They will most likely never park in the guest spot etc. Most visitors that we run into want to blend in.

Even though guests/visitors come to church and try and sneak in and sneak out…my research says that they still have a desire to know what is going on around the church. They want to know that Pastor Bob is going to be available for them and they want to know about schedules, they want to know about the church wide news so that they are not completely out of touch the moment they walk in the door and see the poster for the latest fundraising idea or the latest message series.

Often times a guest or first time visitor website is so static. I have found people are more likely to come and check something out if they see an alive and active community which is something that is often difficult to display on a static visitor only website.

The line of “members” and “visitors” are blurred on our website. Sure we use google docs to collaborate but that is on a team by team basis. Usually this is something that even all the church members aren’t interested in anyway. For example our worship ministry really doesn’t have time to be checking in on how the young adult team ministry is collaborating on the next big event or vice versa.

I am continuing to be challenged on this topic…lets keep the discussion going and my challenge would be for each of us to get to know our church people and get to know the visitors that are walking in the door. Every community in the world and United States is different…don’t get on the ban wagon of “well it works for them”. Innovate a new idea, find out what works for your church and your community!

What do you think? Let me know!

The last few days I have been in Canada for the Brethren In Christ gathering of church leaders. We call it General Conference. The theme for this years General Conference is “Jesus Worshipped in the Nations”. For the first time ever we are broadcasting live over the internet our evening sessions. Yesterday afternoon we had nearly 160 computers tuned into our broadcast of our afternoon dialog with Shabir Ally and BIC missionary Jay Smith. For the first time ever I am using Mogulus as the service to broadcast live. We are converting the video locally using Adobe Flash Media Encoder and then sending the feed to Mogulus for distribution. I have been pleasantly impressed with this free service! I would highly recommend this service to anyone looking to broadcast online! Check out our broadcasts here.

The apple store I rumored about in a previous post has been confirmed. Apple is finally coming to my backyard!!! Here is the story in the local newspaper. http://articles.lancasteronline.com/local/4/222225

Just got done watching Episode 14 from Churchmediadesign.tv. Brad had a cool idea on camera stabilization when a tripod is just not convenient. Now I need to take a trip to Lowes and get the supplies! Check out the video podcast at www.churchmediadesign.tv. Brad Zimmerman continues to do an amazing job at each weeks video podcast! It’s Free!

So I haven’t posted in a while but I wanted to let everyone know how excited I am to find out that an Apple Store is coming to my home town in Lancaster PA. Rumor has it that the store will arrive in October of this year! I am so excited! No longer will I have to drive hours to get a look at the next great Apple product!

Yesterday I started an account with twitter. Why? Well I think it is interesting to know what other people are up to and I think that maybe some people might be interested in knowing what I am up to. If you have never heard of twitter basically it is a service that allows users to update your “followers” (which could be family, friends, or co-workers) how ever often you want with whatever is on your mind. The great part is that it must be under 140 characters. Short simple and sweet. You can check out twitter by clicking here or check out my twitter page by clicking here!

It seems as though if you don’t know what Facebook is your out of the loop. I have been pondering recently how we can use the technology and concept of a social networking site like Facebook. The fact of the matter is that hundreds of thousands of people are using Facebook daily and its not just the 20 something generation. More and more Facebook is being used by older generations because people just genuinely have a desire to connect with friends, family, co-workers and just keep in touch with the latest photos, videos, and life’s stories. I have had a Facebook account for a couple of years now, at first I was resistant to using the technology but recently I have been thinking of the ministry potential. Internet evangelism day is this Sunday. Today I completed setting up a Facebook group for our Church. Yesterday I started reading this e-book. Check it out here! What do you think? Is Facebook a ministry tool or just a secular networking site?

Starting this past Sunday here at Pequea Church we launched a new series called “Most Embarrassing Moments.” For each message series that we do I create a graphic that represents or enforces the theme. This is a great way to have your church family identify and remember a topic or idea. When they visit our website, see our bulletin cover, look at the projector screen, or LCD TV in the welcome center, the same graphic is portrayed as a reminder of this theme. One of our preaching pastors is currently evaluating some of the most embarrassing moments in church history and how today we can avoid similar moments. As a metaphor to this concept we used, what many can identify as an embarrassing moment: “school photos”. We collected a few school photos from people in our church and used them in our graphic. I am convinced that the more you can create participation they better a project will be. It is not always possible to do this mind you, but I try and incorporate our people, as much as possible in our graphics. One way that we created interaction was to allow the congregation to guess who the school photo was a picture of. Our church is at a size where this is still feasible to do. They could check out our website after church to see if the guess was correct, and see a modern day photo of the featured person. Not only was it a buzz during yesterday’s church service with people trying to guess the photo but it drove people to our website to find out who it was in the photo! People assimilated the theme and metaphor, that’s what we strive to do and I love it when it is successful! I have attached the series graphic so you can see how we used it!

Well it has been a while since my last post. Mainly I have just been overwhelmed with work. Most recently was Easter weekend. Here at Pequea Church we had a Good Friday service and three Easter morning services. Just wanted to take some time to tell you about some cool things happening in the worship arts world. Number one is that I am a supporter of MediaShout. Our technical team has been using MediaShout for many years now, and most of the time I love it. One cool thing that the guys over at MediaShout just announced was a player for MS presentations so that a presentation created in MS can be played on any windows based machine without having the entire MS program installed. Check it out online at mediashout.com. Two other cool resources. Number one is Adobe Photoshop Express! What a cool new online photoshop utility. For those of you who can’t afford to purchase the full version of Photoshop this is a tremendous resource. The web app is really well designed and seems to be working really well. The program is from Adobe and right now it is only in beta…this is the future of applications folks! Get involved with this sweet project! Click here to check it out! Secondly if you are in the church media world you must check out churchmediadesign.tv. This is a really valuable resource. About once a week Brad takes about 20 min or less to walk through a topic related to church media whether it be his current series on series graphics or previous episodes on podcasting this guy is spending some serious time creating this FREE resource! Subscribe to his podcast, watch his recent episodes online, and leave him some feedback…Brad rocks!

Being a fan of Apple I must post about the recent Macworld Keynote address from Steve Jobs. Apple computer’s are a technical arts director’s best friend (in my opinion). If you are in ministry looking to buy a new computer do not rule out a mac because they are unfamiliar to you. Apple computers come preloaded with the ability to edit and manage photos, video, and even design websites, or make your own songs or podcasts. Before I get to far off track back to the keynote. I was most interested in movie rentals and the Apple TV software refresh after the keynote. I feel as though this is a look into a new idea. Now with the ability to rent HD movies via the iTunes store and directly to an Apple TV this brings a new player into the format wars of HD-DVD and Blu-ray. Even though it appears as though Blu-ray has won the format battle for now, I can see how the concept of the Apple TV can be a major player in the format lineup. The Apple TV is competitively priced at $229 and is a multimedia center that can easily be added to your family room. Not only can it play rented movies from iTunes it can connect to iTunes account on computers within your local network to play back video, and music. The Apple TV can now also navigate flickr and youtube. Watch out for Apple TV, it will soon find it’s place in the active format war.