Yesterday the display arrived for YMX.This is the backdrop for our booth at the NYWC in Atlanta.
This thing is sweet, it’s 8 feet tall and 9 feet wide and (so far) looks good. The only problem is that I ordered it from a printer in California and the shipment arrived from Beijing, China. You’ve got to love outsourcing sometimes.
Yesterday I posted about all that I liked about the new website, gospel.com. Well, the love is obviously two-way as YMX was very well-featured on the debut day of Gospel.com. We appeared as a "featured ministry" on the main page and here on the ministries page.
I get a lot of blank stares when I talk about the importance of the internet when it comes to a local church ministry. Even some people at our church will openly wonder, "Why are we using the internet so much? Why is it so important?"
Well, USA Today has an excellent article about the connection between people checking out the church and them checking it out online.
Instead, observers say, they’re visiting
church websites and evaluating congregations often without having
actually met anyone at the church. And that has some church people
worried that the practice of faith is getting ever more impersonal
and consequently less powerful in an age driven by efficiency and
impatience.Church shoppers "used to have to go to the service,
sit in the back row and watch," says Tom Bandy, president of EasumBandy
& Associates, a church consultancy. "The website has just replaced
that. The color schemes, the formatting, the language, the music those things powerfully reveal who they (in the church) want to come
there and who’s going to be accepted there." Story
HT to Church Marketing Sucks
Gospel.com launches later this afternoon. It’s so new that I can’t even find a logo for it indexed on Google yet. But this afternoon Brian Tol and his team are promising that one of the coolest Christian websites on the planet will launch.
OK, so it’s not Google
Let’s get that clear. It’s not one of the coolest websites on the planet. But it is going to be a very valuable resource for believers as they will finally have a place where they can easily find trusted content. See, one major problem with the internet for believers is that there is almost no way to gauge good content from good search engine rankings. When you search the internet… you have to sort through a bunch of junk to get a few good things and that’s a waste of time.
So let’s say I want to find an article about "financial planning for Christians." Like 75% of all web searches I head over to Google. When you do that search, as you know, you’ll get 1,670,000 responses. The problem? How do I know the difference between good advice and crap advice? With the way that Google currently works there is no way to determine the difference between some "Christian financial planner" and his advertising and a legitimately good article with advice. (ala Dave Ramsey) Unless you are looking for Dave Ramsey you are just as likely to read bad advice as you are good advice. This is a problem Gospel.com addresses.
Here’s what I like about Gospel.com. When you search a topic there it isn’t a level playing field.
When you search for the topic "financial planning" at Gospel.com you’ll find articles from solid biblically-based resources. How can I say that? How can you know that? Well, the only content you’ll find on Gospel.com is content from Gospel Communication Alliance members. This means that the content that is available on Gospel.com is content that is from a ministry/alliance member who has agreed to be held accountable for content and only publishes content that fits within the evangelical doctrinal statement of the Alliance.
In other words, Gospel.com will make it easier for you to sort the good content from the blog posts and advertising content. And as a side benefit… the good content will get better indexed on Google… thus raising the good contents search ranking on Google, Yahoo, MSN, and the others.
Let’s be clear though: Gospel.com is not some cheesy "alternative" internet world. That simply isn’t the intention of the site at all. It’s not a copy of something else like GodTube is a blatant rip-off of YouTube. This is, pretty much, a brand new brainchild. In other words… instead of copying this idea and making it "Christian" a bunch of creative and forward thinking Christians invented something that is very cool and useful. It’s actually a valuable resource that I am looking forward to using. And with something like 6 million people already going to the site every month (with it not even open) I think Gospel.com is going to make a significant impact quickly.
So, this is my ringing endorsement for Gospel.com. Go there, bookmark it, make it your homepage, love it, use it, tell your friends about it, comment about it, bookmark articles on Digg… on and on.
Did I mention the best part of all? No ads. (Plenty of links though, but no advertising so far.)
One thing I love about having Patti as a business partner is her willingness to run with crazy ideas. So, over the last few weeks we’ve kicked around ideas.
When news of Facebook’s new ad utility broke, we jumped on it. We searched out a few dozen terms that we thought could be useful sites to go with Social Ads. We were pleasantly surprised how many domains were available, but they are going fast.
Here are 3 domains (so far) that we’re hoping to see site developers create awesome sites on in the next few weeks:
socialadswidget.com
socialadsmanager.com
socialadswork.com (link soon)
So, if you know a developer looking to create some utilities that work with Facebook’s new ad features, let us know! We’re not interested in turning these sites into "ad farms" but we’d love to see someone with an entrepreneurial spirit present a compelling idea and help connect advertisers to members.
Here’s the big announcement the blogging community has been groaning for. My interest is peaked.
About 3 years ago on a long road trip Jon and I came up with the idea of a rolling LAN party. So as the church vans worked their way from state to state we could set up tournaments for the latest first person shooter or Madden game. Forget showing movies. Forget each van having an XBOX 360 or PS3, let’s really pimp this out and have van teams compete against one another! We thought, "it’s probably possible but not easy." Just the kind of challenge Jon liked.
Well, we never did set-up the routers to try to make it happen but I always thought it was a fun idea.
Now it’s closer to a reality. Check out the AirBox CM3 from WAAV.
This mobile broadband cellular router can maintain a broadband speed connection on the go and allows multiple devices such as PDA’s, laptops and gaming consoles to be connected simultaneously. It weighs the same as a paperback book small enough to be placed under a car seat.
At just $500 (not including your cellular data plan) this fits nicely into any youth ministry budget, right?
The biggest in-every-ministry dip that is obvious to me is the time period after the “honeymoon” is over. There are a couple of different ways to approach this:
First – work hard at extending the honeymoon! Don’t take advantage of the good will that people usually grant the newbie and you can extend your honeymoon by months (or even years). Be authentic in your relationships and your work from the very beginning (from the first inquiry into a position on.) Being real is one of the primary keys to a longer (or indefinite) honeymoon period. During this time when people think you are AWESOME – go for it. Make sure you are actually doing the ministry to which you’ve been called. Don’t mess around or waste time in this wonderful segment of time that has tremendous growth potential for both you, your relationships and your ministry.
Second – recognize that when the honeymoon is over – well, it’s over. Don’t mourn it – embrace this time of readjustment by powering through the higher expectations. Often something to do with relationships is the point at which one begins to walk into the “dip” and how a person handles that is huge. Stepping back to get some perspective on the web of relationships you’ve developed in this new place will help you evaluate how those relationships are impacting the ministry you do. Are they healthy relationships? Do the people you spend the most time with encourage you or do they criticize you? When you receive criticism, is it with a humble heart or are you angry? All of these questions will point you toward your strengths and weaknesses in relating to those with and for whom you do ministry.
Finally – realize that you are not always right! No one is. So when people sense that they know you well enough to make suggestions or to offer appropriate criticism – do your very best to take it in from the perspective of one who WANTS to do better (be more effective, etc.) When a person brings an opinion to you – positive or negative – they are risking something in your relationship. Make it worth their risk by considering what part of what they suggest might have merit (maybe all of their suggestion has merit!) When people are actually heard and their ideas responded to, well, what a difference in the big picture buy-in to your ministry.
Climbing up out of the dip is a whole lot easier if there are people with you and in front of you to point you to the steps or to lend a hand.
Mary Beth McCandless is Coordinator for Family Ministries at First Presbyterian Church, Elizabethtown, KY.
Sponsored by: Raising Lazarus: A Fund for Hurting Youth Workers.
Over the last several months I’ve become a frequent lurker and sometimes participant at the Center for Church Communication Labs. You see, when it comes to serious graphic design I’m a total hack. I’m just learning how to do stuff and occasionally I like to take one of my ideas and throw it into the Lion’s Den to see if anything I do meets their criteria.
This hack gets a lot of great ideas and inspiration from the labs, it’s great!
The problem? Some designers are total jerks!
There is a reason why God made some people to sit behind their desks and play on PhotoShop and Illustrator all day. It’s because they have zero people skills.
Just the other day I posted something I’ve been working on for church. I stated right up front… my idea stunk but then I saw something I really liked here in the labs… I copied it. I gave credit for it then I went to great lengths to say that I harvested the idea from the labs and used it for my own uses. Trust me, I’ve gotten the "copyright" lecture more than one time at the labs and I’ve read the rant a bunch of times from people who must have sat on their Macbooks or something. (Flat out grumps!) My point in putting stuff on the labs is to take something in development and ask for feedback and allow it to genesis to something that is more unique. (Collaboration!)
Know this, when I put this image on the labs I knew full-well it would get attacked. In a way, I just wanted to bring the debate to new light… see more below.
Well, within an hour some professional designer posts this long lecture about how what I did was wrong and I didn’t follow his rule and that I should be ashamed of myself. "Jesus doesn’t like thieves." (REally said that) Yada yada yada. I mean really… art is really the process of taking someone else’s ideas to the next level. I’ve been around the block enough times to see that there is a difference between taking someone’s idea to a different level and just copying it for your own benefit. And clearly I took that persons idea and played with it. What I posted was almost exactly like the original and I got ripped big time! No mercy, no grace, no teaching me a better way. Just flat out blasted!
What’s this got to do with online communities?
One of the things I like to do is be a newbie in online communities. It actually teaches me what it must feel like to be a newbie at YMX. Each time I’m treated like a child or written off like the village idiot at some online community… it makes me never want to go back there again. Further, it pains me to see stuff like that happen on Youth Ministry Exchange. People come to YMX to get encouraged or to blow off steam or to just seek some advice and when someone treats them like crap (even just telling them to search the forums instead of searching the forums for them and linking to it) I wonder if that person will ever come back. This is also the exact reason I have a zero tolerance policy for existing members bullying people with just 1-20 posts… it irks me to know end because I know how it feels to honestly make a mistake but still need help!
I’m a self-declared hack when it comes to creativity. Very rarely can I come up with something from scratch and actually make it work. But generally I’m taking an idea I got from somewhere else and tweaking it. And I think that as the world changes… every job is going to have to deal with a matrix that looks like this.
Job 1.0 = I own the work. My expertise makes me valuable and I have to protect it.
Job 2.0 = No one owns my work. My expertise is made valuable when I let it go and help people make it better.
For as forward thinking and trendy as artists are… there are clearly some who don’t get this idea. Collaboration isn’t a threat to creativity. Collaboration is what takes creativity from an individual and unleashes it. This makes business better. This makes education better. This simple idea is the driving force
Yesterday I saw on CNN that US soldier fatalities are down 60% since June. In looking at the raw data you don’t have to get out a calculator to see that there are fewer soldiers being killed today than there were 3 months ago. This is good news! And yet the political spin doctors continue to say nothing good is happening in Iraq and we should leave immediately.
Another sign of progress was reported on by the Associate Press this week. The headline reads, “Thousands Returning to a Safer Baghdad.” See, fleeing Iraq would be a lack of progress. Being safe enough to return to your homes is a sign of progress.
Need proof that negativity is just bad press and political games? (Countdown to 2008, 365 days until we vote!)
It’s all about perspective, isn’t it? It’s said that “if it bleeds it leads” in our press. Clearly, in our country hundreds are dying every day and the press doesn’t care. To the contrary, our soldiers are doing their best to stabilize a region, bring democracy somewhere that doesn’t want it, are defending a government elected by the people, and the press questions their every move and decision.
Perspective matters in an election year. With 365 days until November 4th, 2008 we all need to be reminded that every news story has a political purpose. As we saw leading up to the 2004 election, the liberal media will stop at nothing to make their candidate look good and the people they don’t like look like idiots. They’ll talk about smaller issues for 8 hours per day in order to continue to avoid the big issue.
What do you think? Is it all politics or is there really no progress in Iraq with no good news ever going to come?
