This year’s conference consists of 13 sessions. In keeping with past years, there are two tracks. The Foundations track is for church planters who are just getting started. They may still be in the planning stages, or in the first year or two of planting. The “Essentials” track is for planters who are a little bit further along (3-5 years) and is designed to help them determine the next steps in the development on their churches.
I’ll be blogging my way through the “Foundations” track. Because of the density of the material and the pace at which we’re moving through it, there’s just no way for me to cover everything. So I’ll only be sharing one module with you today. I’ll try to cover two on both Wednesday and Thursday.
Technology and Social Media
This session was presented by the duo of Tim Brister and Drew Goodmanson. It’s actually not part of the “Foundations” track proper. But it seemed like such a unique module that I couldn’t resist sharing it with you. (And, of course, as a blogger I’m probably a little biased!)
Technology is changing. It’s more immersive. It’s all around us. And if we want to reach the culture around us, we will have to learn to speak in their technological language. In other words, the Church needs to be using all avenues of communication to share the gospel. In America today, this means websites, Facebook, Twitter, and blogs just to name a few.
This doesn’t mean we should accept technology uncritically. What it does mean is that we shouldn’t react against it per se. We know that technology – and social media in particular – impacts the amount of time we spend directly interacting with one another. So what we need is to have a theology of presence such that we can understand the positives and negatives of technology and its affect on relational intimacy. Where this hasn’t been done, we have yet to fully comprehend our relationship with the gadgets that surround us.
With regard to social media, church planters need to understand that they have four audiences that they are trying to reach: non-Christians, new Christians, regular church-goers, and church leaders. In some sense, it’s unrealistic to expect a one-size-fits-all approach to reach and inform all four of these groups. So a good approach to a church’s online presence is going to be multi-faceted. It just has to be.
The project of managing any organization’s online presence is called Internet Presence Management. T
his involves first figuring out which online services are being used by the people you want to reach (be they an un-reached group that you want to evangelize, or the average attendee at your church). There’s no doubt that there are a lot of options here: Facebook ads, clever domain names, and private member portals (e.g. the “unifyer” service) only scratch the surface. It’s easy to get exhausted trying to consider all of the options. I could feel a collective sigh of relief as Drew stressed that the goal isn’t to keep up with everything going on here. Just find out where the people are that you want to reach online and do those things well.
If you’re willing to put in some time (or hire an expert), search engines make it possible to speak to people who you otherwise wouldn’t. Instead of finding them, they might come into contact with your message on Google. Doing this well entails presenting your material in such a way that it will rank high in search engine results. For example, a church in Orlando would do well to tailer their website such that it ranks highly (i.e. within the top five results) for someone searching “Orlando church.” This process is called search engine optimization (SEO), and it’s a process best left to the experts.
Here are some interesting tidbits that Tim and Drew had to share. Traditionally, web site design has convinced almost no non-Christians to attend a particular church. For Christians new to an area, on the other hand, the website has replaced an ad in the phone book as the first filter in determining what church to attend. 43 seconds is the average length of time that a visitor spends on a website. That means that, if all of the important information on your website can’t be reached quickly, then visitors will simply move on. Aside from the homepage, the most popular page visits tend to be “I’m new” pages. Visitors will not come if your website is outdated (77% say this is somewhat to very important).
Talking with Tim and Drew after the session, it was clear that they do not support the use of all of this technology for its own sake. Rather, they recognize that these are the media that people are using today to gain and share information. As church planters, leaders and evangelists, who naturally want to seek the lost, we need to go where they are. As it turns out, they’re online. That being the case, the gospel needs to get online. And it needs to “go viral.”
Tags: Acts 29, Church Planter Training, Church Planting, Conferences, Drew Goodmanson, GCA, Global Church Advancement, Planters, Planting Conference, Planting Seminar, Tim Brister