This week I met with our Student Ministry staff to layout next steps for our website including the roll out of WordPress MU. We will be using WordPress MU as the foundation of our social media strategy. I gave them the following planning  exercise to help facilitate a strategic social media framework for their ministry.

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?

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.

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.

Recently, we have been discussing the role of blogs in our web strategy. We have several staff who already blog (view list). We encourage that, but we also wanted to begin incorporating blogs into our church’s web presence. These blogs are different from our staff’s personal blogs. They are more refined in scope and will add another layer of rich content for our church family that our website does not offer. In preparation for that roll-out, it was important for us to understand the differences in these mediums so we know best how to utilize them. I created a helpful chart to guide our staff.

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.

Twitter is the fastest growing social network on the web today.

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.

Being a teacher myself, I love visual teaching aids. Today, I came across a phenomenal tool….one that I have dreamed about but did not know existed. It is a timeline creation tool for the web 2.0 generation. Head on over to Dipity.com and checkout some of the example timelines…all of which can be embedded in your blog or website. It supports the inclusion of images and videos in the timeline. I have included below a sample timeline of Apple’s release of new technologies. What’s the downside of Dipity? It gets somewhat pricey to get rid of the ads, though they do offer non-profit discounts.

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.

Over the last year or so, Multisite Church Revolution, DJ Chuang at Digital Leadership, Cynthia Ware at the Digital Sanctuary, and Greg Atkinson have all posted lists of known internet campuses. I compiled their lists (and comments by their readers) and did some additional research to document the technologies used by many of these churches to create their online campus. The results are listed below and may be updated directly online using the link below. A login is not required to make updates.

ADD OR UPDATE YOUR CHURCH INFORMATION

The newest Did You Know (version 4) video was recently released. The latest version was produced for the Economist’s Third Annual Media Convergence Conference in New York City next month (10/20-21).

The video moves fast. If you want a transcript of its contents, you can read them at Michael Hyatt’s blog.

Bill Reichart passed along a great resource via twitter today. It is an online database of social media governance (i.e. guidelines and best practices) from several different organizations. This would be a great place to start for those writing one for your church.

Why does a church need this? For several reasons:

1. It helps church staff realize that whether they like it or not, they represent the church. Their blogs or use of social media (even with disclaimers) can both positively and negatively affect the church.

2. To help distinguish between official (church sponsored) and unofficial (non-church sponsored) use of social media.

3. Educate church staff on how they should respond to negative posts or conversations regarding the church and how to alert the appropriate church staff so appropriate action can be taken (if any).

4. Provide church staff a clear understanding of what is confidential vs public knowledge as it pertains to official church business.

Does your church have a social media plan?

When I hear the term ‘social network’, I immediately think about Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. In reality, these websites are just modern day expressions of real life networks of interconnected relationships between individuals. These networks of relationships are usually centered around a common interest, belief, or activity. Social networks go as far back as the first family—Adam, Eve, Cain and Abel. However, I believe the most sanctified example of a social network, this side of Heaven, is clearly described in Acts 2:42-46.

⁴² And ?they devoted themselves to the apostles’ ?teaching and the ?fellowship, to ?the breaking of bread and the prayers. ⁴³ And awe? came upon every soul, and ?many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. ⁴⁴ And all who believed were together and ?had all things in common. ⁴⁵ And ?they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need. ⁴⁶ And day by day, ?attending the temple ?together and ?breaking bread in their homes, they received their food ?with glad and generous hearts, ⁴⁷ praising God and ?having favor with all the people. And the Lord ?added to their number ?day by day those who ?were being saved.^[1]

Luke describes the first church as, “all who believed were together and had all things in common.” Wow! I don’t know about you, but this sounds like the perfect social network. Can you imagine the deep interconnected community of this first church…to the extent of voluntarily selling their possessions to ensure that everyone was without need? Do you think the 21^st century church could once again experience this type of interconnectedness? I do and I think technology will be a key accelerant in making this a reality.

Acts 2 is a product road map for social media and technology in the church. As we seek to extend the functions of the church online, I believe a holistic approach would encompass the following:

• Spiritual Formation (Learning God’s Word) (v. 42)
• Community (v. 42, 46)
• Prayer and Care (v. 43, 45)]
• Worship (v. 46)
• Evangelism (v. 47)

Though many internet campuses incorporate one or more of these elements, most only do one of them really well. I agree with Greg Atkinson’s assessment, that if you are going online with these functions of your church, don’t do it unless the technology fits within the vision, mission, and church growth model of your church. Don’t do it for the sake of doing something really cool.

Several churches and organizations are already making great strides using technology to extend and facilitate these ecclesiastical functions online. Here are a few that I believe are doing it well:

Learning God’s Word (Spiritual Formation)

Movee

Shadetree

YouVersion

Worship

Church Online at LifeChurch.tv

Northland, A Church Distributed

Community

The City at Mars Hill

I know there are others, so feel free to add comments below to add the list of those who are using technology and social media to fulfill these ecclesiastical functions with excellence.

As for sharing and evangelism, these are indeed the fruits of many of the technologies listed above (in addition to others), but I have not seen any applications designed with these specific functions for the use in the local church. If you do, please educate me!

If your church is pursuing a holistic approach, drop a comment below. I would love to hear both your strategy and the technologies you are using.