Mobile Ministry Magazine

Monday, I had a meeting with one of the pastors of my church and we talked a bit about getting more out of our church website. Essentially, he wants to use the website bettter to cut some of the administration costs and time to do things. I just wanted to be notified of things in a more upfront, and user-engageable manner. But because both of us are techies, we tended to take things a bit further than some people are willing to go right now with their use of web and technology. So what we did was scale back our thoughts a bit, and then hit on some areas where we could be a good stweard of the web resources we have, but also make those invitiing options for our community.

Here are some of the things we talked about that might prove helpsful to some of you who wish to add some web or mobile-friendly aspects to your ministry efforts:

• Instead of printing announcements and having left overs that just get thrown away, print 1/2 to 2/3 of what you would normally print and then have cards that just list your website address on them to give out when you run out. This drives traffic to your website, and allows your ministry's brand to stand out some more.


• If you have a blog, post a small blurb every week that is just a bulleted listing of the announcements. If there is something that is special or requires more details (such as a teen outing, or study outline), break that out in an occasional single post. Then, when doing announcements, use a screenshot of that posting so that people associate announcements with your website. Here, you can mention using RSS in order to keep up with these items.


• Be innovative in what you post online. I recommended that we post a small outline of our Monday night Bible study on our blog a day or two after the study. This way people who are searching (Google, Yahoo, etc.) will be able to see that we have a study going on, and those who were there would have an additional resource when they want to refer to something said later in the week. Again, emphasize the use of RSS here so that you can empahsize purposeful Internet time.


• Encourage leadership to use web applications for generic things such as teh church calendar (Google Calendar, Upcoming, etc.) and then web-based services such as Evite for special services and events. For example, we talked about using a custom Evite invitation for Easter Sunday services.


• Remind people that their cell phone number is also an email address. For some carriers, you can check these emails online instead of on the device. But, you will receive a text message about them all the time. Using this address for time-sensitive information will help people to keep in the front of their head what the ministry wants to do with them.

These are just a few things, but ways in which technology can be used in a manner that addresses a need to inform, and also a need to trim the fat in terms of administration time. I encourage you to ask those techies in your communities who are project managers and team leads on how to implement these types of things into your ministry efforts. Stwearding this resource well is just as important as any other.

Labels: community, education, email, family, mobile, software, tech, usablity