Author Archive
People vs Policies
Posted by: |Several years ago, I posted about the tension between policies and people. Two years later, the balancing act remains. Policies and standards are set to control costs and to maximize efficiency in the technical support of an organization. However, in reality there are always exceptions and one size doesn’t fit all. Some IT professionals I know are bent towards policies and as a result they rule with a heavy hand. They are rules driven, black and white, and often misunderstand the consequences of their own rules on the mission of the organization. There is often a disconnect between senior leadership and IT staff. However, as IT professionals, we want to empower our pastors and staff. We exist to support them in being efficient and effective in the ministry of the church. So how do we maintain the balance? Here are a few principles to keep in mind:
- Rules without a Relationship Leads to Rebellion- If you have rules or policies, but little relational investment in the people you support, you are headed for trouble. Develop relationships with the people you serve. Befriend them. In those relationships, you will have a better understanding of their needs and goals. This helps you be proactive and find solutions for problems before they are even communicated to you or your team. Once you have built up a few ‘wins’, you can then afford to take a relational hit when you have to stand by your rules.
- No is Never the First Response- Buy time and find alternative solutions if you are unable to accommodate one’s request or need.
- Error on the Side of Empowerment- Wow! The corporate world would say just the opposite. But this is the difference between a corporation and a church. When you are confronted with an issue that poses equal amount of liabilities with the benefits of empowerment. Go with empowerment. God will bless it. If you discover later that you made a bad decision, then look at it as an opportunity to establish and educate the need for boundaries and policies.
- Accept Exceptions – It in inevitable, but make sure you can explain why. Here are some of the reasons for exceptions that I have used: staff position (executive staff, etc.), training (has a person been trained), job descriptions, employment status (full time, part time, contract, etc).
- In Person not InBox – If policies and people are at odds, deal with it in person. Don’t use email! Remember, you’re about relationships not rules.
Social Media Policy for Church Staff
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After looking at several social media policies of other organizations, we finally drafted a social media policy for our church staff. The purpose of this policy is to give our staff some best practices in their personal use of social media during their employment at Second Baptist Church, Houston. For the reasons I referenced in my earlier blog post, this policy will not only empower our staff to use social media well, but also protect the church.
Second Baptist’s Social Media Policy – DOC | PDF
If you are developing a social media policy for your church or organization, be sure and check out SocialMediaGovernance.com which has an online library of 100+ social media policies from various companies and non-profits. Of all of the policies I reviewed, Kodak’s policy was extremely helpful…the best one I have found to date.
Dangers of Social Media for Churches & Non-Profits
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Social Media certainly poses its share of gotchas. For individuals, it’s identity theft. For corporations, it’s managing public relations nightmares (such as those experienced by Domino’s and Comcast). For churches and non-profits, we share these risks and more.
Three risks that churches and non-profits should plan for are:
Misrepresentation: There is a legal term called ‘Agency‘. Agency implies that an individual is authorized to act or to make statements on behalf of the church. While that may be true for spiritual and pastoral matters, there is probably very few who are authorized to operate as agents of the church or act on behalf of the church in issues pertaining to public/media relations, position statements, contractual agreements, legal engagements or any other agreements on which third parties rely. Therefore, staff will want to protect themselves and their church by making a distinction between what they say in their personal conversations online and statements made by the church.
Noise: Your church will have a presence in social media whether you like it or not. For most churches, the youth ministry staff is likely the first to have created pages/groups on Facebook or channels on YouTube in your church’s name. However, what happens when each ministry wants their own blog, Facebook page/group, YouTube channel, or Twitter feed? How easy is it to distinguish between those setup by the church versus those setup by members or even those setup by staff for personal use. What happens if you have a disgruntled employee leave? Does someone else have access to those accounts? If your church doesn’t have a clear and coordinated web strategy where your website, social media, and/or blogs are working together to send a unified message, then your church will lose its singular ‘voice’. It will succumb to the noise of a disjointed web presence leaving your audience confused as to where they should get the latest news and events of your church.
Taxation: The church, which falls under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, cannot participate or intervene in any political activity or campaign (i.e. give any hint of favoring one candidate over another). According to Revenue Ruling 2007-41, 2007-25 I.R.B. 1421 (June 18,2007) (page 10-11), participation or intervention may include but is not limited to linking to other websites containing political content that you may or may not have any control over. As churches expand their web presence to include third party social networking sites, they should take caution in how they handle 3rd party content for which they have no control. Examples of uncontrolled content include ads and similarly related content, like what you may see on Facebook (related groups) or YouTube (related videos).
Here are some best practices to minimize the risks to your church or organization:
- Make a Distinction Between Official and Unofficial When Defining Your Web Presence. Ask your staff to include a disclaimer where needed on their personal blogs or social network accounts. Similarly, the church should include a disclaimer on any 3rd party sites (such as Facebook, YouTube, etc) that disclaims any association with uncontrolled content (i.e. ads and related content). Include the church logo or at least the mark within your logo in all of the profile pictures on social networking sites to let your audience know who represents the church and who does not.
- Protect Your Logo! Prevent your logo from unauthorized use by staff or members since it is an official and visual representation of the church.
- Coordinate your Social Media Initiatives. Get organized and develop a process for each ministry to coordinate their social media goals with the overall church. I recommend using Jeremiah Owyang’s “Hub and Spoke” model for getting organized and designating the Communications and/or IT Team as the ‘hub’ (but not gatekeepers) for coordinating the social media initiatives.
- Monitor Your Web Presence Daily. Google Alerts and HootSuite are great tools to keep an ear out for chatter about your church. Mashable.com also has a great list of recommended tools. These will not only help you react to any problems, but more importantly they will equip you to proactively engage visitors or individuals who are talking about your church.
- Develop Social Media Policies for Church Staff. Include it with the required paperwork for new employees. Post it on your church intranet for existing employees.
- Remove Related Content Where Possible. By default, Facebook includes a list of related groups on your Groups page. This can be removed. Likewise, you can also remove related video from YouTube’s video embed code.
ChMS of the Top 10 Largest Churches
Posted by: |Last October, Joel Lingenfelter had an interesting post titled, “ChMS,- What do the big guys use?” He listed the church management software used by each of the top 10 largest churches are reported by Outreach magazine.
For convenience, I will reprint his list below:
3 Churches use FellowshipOne (Lakewood Church, Lifechurch.tv, and Fellowship Church)
3 Churches use Arena (Willow Creek, North Point Community Church, and Southeast Christian Church)
1 Church uses iMIS from Advanced Solutions International (Second Baptist Houston)
1 Church uses ACS (Woodlands Church)
1 Church wrote their own database. (Saddleback)
1 Church still uses Shelby V5 with a lot of custom code on top, but is evaluating other solutions (Calvary Chapel Ft. Lauderdale)
As a disclaimer, this list was compiled in early fall, 2009 so I am not sure if this list is still current. Nevertheless, Joel makes this comment, “you should think twice before writing your own system, no matter how much better you think it will be. The work involved and the money that you will spend is huge.” While I agree that building your own ChMS is a daunting and costly task, there is a third option here that is worth consideration….buy and build! It is not until recently that some of the ChMS providers have begin releasing APIs which gives churches the ability to extend the software for their own specific needs. Fellowship One released their API in June, 2009. I think buy and build is the best way to go. This is the approach Second Baptist Church took after writing their own ChMS (and not just once, but twice). Their latest ChMS (iMIS by Advanced Solutions Internation) includes a very mature API that has allowed SBC to develop several modules specific to their ministry processes.
Larger churches should definitely give priority to those solutions that offer APIs when choosing a ChMS.
