The Church IT Network (formerly the Church IT Roundtable) grew out of a need for a peer-learning community for church and ministry IT professionals worldwide and is designed for anyone – staff or volunteer – with responsibility for Information Technology in a ministry setting.

The three-day event kicks off with a full day of training workshops covering a broad array of topics, including network infrastructure, exchange servers and unified communications.

This is followed by two days of keynote speakers and roundtable breakout sessions designed to help IT professionals connect, share and learn from one another. Last year’s event included over 200 participants from all over the country.

This year’s gathering has expanded to include designated discussions for web developers and developers of church membership systems (ChMS). Some of the topics will include: social media, buy vs build, web and ChMS integrations, cloud vs local host, and more.

For more information about the Church IT Network, including information and registration details for the Spring 2012 Church IT Roundtable Event, visit the organization’s website at www.churchitnetwork.com.

Between the Trolls and a community of angry atheists, our YouTube video was attacked with an increasing number of negative comments and ‘dislikes’. It became so bad, I had to shut down commenting for a 24 hour period before adding it back with moderation turned on. The comments included profanity, hate speech, and sexual remarks. The Trolls found our church Facebook page and posted pornographic images on it. Fortunately, I discovered this within a few minutes over their posting and removed them. In the short time I have encountered this devious subculture, here is what I have learned:

1. ALWAYS moderate your comments on YouTube and perhaps other sites as well where possible.
2. Once trolls hit your video, turn off commenting for at least 24 hours, then turn it back on. They may come back, but more often they will have moved on.
3. Approve negative comments but only if they don’t include profanity, sexual remarks, or serious threats.
4. Post a comment explaining why you moderate comments and what criteria you use to approve them. Ban those who are repeat violators.
5. Don’t argue with them….that is what they want. You won’t win them over so don’t even try. Be respectful and loving and don’t lose your cool.
6. Let the jury of your readers/viewers determine whose comments are more hateful.
7. If you have copyrights to your media, exercise them. YouTube responds quickly to copyright complaints.

More than 2,000 people from Second Baptist Church, Houston, Texas, gathered at Discovery Green in the heart of Houston to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus. The purpose of Dance Your Shoes Off! was to proclaim the resurrection of Jesus Christ in a powerful and celebratory way. Most importantly, each participant left a new pair of shoes on the field for those in need. These shoes will be given to local mission agencies, including Star of Hope, individuals all across the world through our mission partners and mission trips.

Parenting in the Digital Age: Powerpoint | PDF

NOTE: The hyperlinks in the powerpoint files didn’t convert well into PDF. To visit the sites mentioned in the presentation, view the powerpoint file in presentation mode and then click on the links. Sorry….I researched the linking issue on Adobe’s website, but was unable to locate a fix for it.

1. Where do you want each student to be spiritually before they leave JHigh or High School? How does your programming facilitate the movement of your students from where they are now to where you want them to be? Place your programs, events, and activities along the spiritual formation time line below. Activities designed for attracting new comers would appear on the left. Activities designed to grow existing Christians deeper in their Christian walk would be placed more along the right.
2. Make a list of all of the places on the web where your ministry is represented. Include the church’s website, blogs, facebook, twitter accounts, etc. Indicate how you are using each site and its intended audience.

Each site in your web presence should fall into one of two categories (courtesy of Chris Brogan and adapted by John Dale):

Home Base: This is a digital property you own and control. It is where you direct all internet traffic. Why? Because this is the place where you can best promote your ministry and those next steps for those in your ministry.

Embassies: These are microsites on social networks where you are actively engaged. Just like a country does business in embassies located in other countries, you will fully engage in conversations in your embassies on other networks. The most obvious example of an embassy is a Facebook fan page.

3. Using the list you made above, determine which sites are part of your home base and which are embassies within your web presence.




4. What sites (if any) do you need to discontinue? What sites (if any) do you need to add to optimize your web presence for moving your students through the spiritual formation timeline?




5. What role does each of your sites play in communicating that ‘next step’ in the spiritual formation timeline?
   • How much overlap exists between each site? Is the overlap beneficial?
   • If someone is a newcomer, which of these sites do you direct a person to first?
   • What ‘action’ do you want each person to take at each site?




6. What role does of each your sites play in supporting your leadership and parents? What ‘action’ do you want each leader or parent to take?




7. Considering the differences between websites, blogs, and social networks (shown below), what changes (if any) are needed to maximize the relevance of each site?

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.

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:

1. 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 3^rd 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.
2. Protect Your Logo! Prevent your logo from unauthorized use by staff or members since it is an official and visual representation of the church.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. 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.

As you can see, websites, blogs, and social media each have their respective functions. By confusing their place in social media, we endanger our relevance and effectiveness with our intended audience. As for our church (Second Baptist Church, Houston), blogs will be used for spiritual formation by providing ministry resources, Biblical perspectives, encouragement, leadership development and/or ministry best practices. Each blog will have a defined audience whether it is for SBC members and visitors, SBC leaders, or Christians and church leaders worldwide.

We also have used blogs for special events such as our annual Beach Retreat (read more). We limit event based blogs to mission trips, Beach Retreat, etc. where the event occurs out-of-town and over the span of several days.

On a technical note, we are using WordPress MU and hosting them internally on our servers. Thanks to Clifton Griffin, we also integrated the WordPress MU  login with Active Directory to give our staff a single sign-on experience.

Comparatively speaking, the total number of users on Twitter is slightly less than the population of New York City. So, I certainly wouldn’t consider it mainstream, but its growth rate is impressive.

What is even more interesting is who is using twitter. Nielsen’s study corrects some common misconceptions. Twitterers (a.k.a. Tweeters) are not primarily teens or college students as you might expect. In fact, in 2009 the largest age group on Twitter was 35-49 (42 percent of the site’s audience). Majority of people (62%) visit Twitter.com while at work, while 35 percent accessed it from home only.

The assumption that social media is a youth movement is not true. Facebook stats prove this true as well.

The big question is, “Is there a strategic opportunity to use Twitter in my ministry?” In the end, each of us have to answer that question ourselves, but here are some rough ideas of where Twitter could be used within the church:

1. Greeting & Parking Ministry: Each of the parking and greeting volunteers could use twitter to facilitate quick communications regarding real-time updates on parking lot capacities, special needs of visitors, security concerns, and advanced notices to check-in volunteers.
2. Marketing & Brand Monitoring: Twitter is one of the most viral social networks, allowing individuals to ‘pass the word’ with a single click of a button. Using this as a medium to participate in social conversations and to listen to what people are saying about our church can help the church identify its strengths and weaknesses.
3. Spiritual Formation: Develop a curriculum comprised of daily 140 character statements, thoughts, and action items. The progression of tweets would lead individuals through a specific doctrine or life application.
4. Mission Trips, Retreats, Camps: Twitter is often called micro-blogging. Twitter is a great tool to send updates, pictures and short commentaries on what is happening at church events that are occurring out of town.
5. Singles Events: Recruit 2-3 volunteers to tweet updates during your ministry event. Not only does this get the word out, but it also creates a ‘buzz’ about your ministry, especially with Twitter’s new Local Trends feature. See a map of local trends to learn more about the power of this feature.

See Atkinson’s ebook called Twitter for Churches for a more thorough look at Twitter’s use in the church.

Consider its use for the church:

1. Create and share Bible Timelines…showing God’s Redemptive Timeline
2. Create a History of Your Church and How God has Blessed Your Church
3. Build a Timeline of Your Own Testimony and How God has Changed Your Life
4. Create a Visual Timeline of a Building Campaign…Showing Images of Your Church’s Construction.