From the video section of USA Today, Church uses technology to reach members highlights the ways that Christ Fellowship Church (McKinney, Texas) uses an online Bible study guide, QR codes, Facebook, video streaming and podcasts to provide spiritual services to their church members.
Appreciated the conversations from the 2nd workshop I facilitated at #nwlc10, Top Online Tools to connect your community. (My other workshop was Technology Steward 101, which was an extended discussion of the pre-conference topic.) Here’s the slides:
Links to resources mentioned during workshop discussions:
Moodle.org – course management system for online learning (free open-source)
http://namechk.com – check username availability at 149 websites/ social networks
Anything else I forgot? Any other great resources for using social media beyond broadcasting announcements and sharing content? The opportunity is to coordinate user-generated content to build up a church community, its relationships, and its witness in the world. In a world where everyone can publish and produce fresh expressions of faith and creativity, tech stewards play a vital role to orchestrate individuals into a unified corporate voice.
And now, the discussion is opened up to the world! TechSteward.net is the place where you can ask your questions with church leaders in a similar role, your peers, and share your learnings as worship leaders and church leaders on how to select social media apps that fit a specific church context, how you evaluate what’s working, how you train up key leaders, defining roles, responsibilities, and policies or guidelines.
On the Tech Steward Tuesday webinar series a few days ago, these are the rest of the questions that were answered, and here’s a re-cap of my answers.
Q: “How often should you update in order to make this technology useful?”
I personally suggest making a twitter update at least once a day, when considering whether to start a twitter account or not. Alternatively, if the primary use of twitter is to be responsive as a “customer service” responder, then a twitter update at least once a month would suffice. One report shows that about 20% of registered twitter accounts have sent an update at least once a month.
Q: “Should a church link their Facebook pages to their Twitter posts?”
There are various opinions on whether a Facebook page updates should be linked to their Twitter updates. It’s a strategic question– if the function is to make announcements to all, then linking Twitter and Facebook together makes sense. If the intention is to have focused discussions on the Facebook fan page, while using Twitter for announcements, then linking would not make sense.
Q: “Can you put an audio file on Twitter?”
There are several ways to post a twitter update with a link to an audio. 3 ways to make audio tweets are audioboo.fm, twaud.io, and tweetmic.com.
Thanks to all who joined our webinar today! The topic was about whether your church should Twitter, and it was goal to provide practical questions and considerations for your church and its leaders to discuss and discern if Twitter’ing would strengthen your church’s life in community.
I mentioned a Time magazine article from May 2009, Twittering in Church, with the Pastor’s O.K., has great examples of how 4 churches are using Twitter as a part of their worship services. Read the article there and then add a comment here with your thoughts and comments.
Stay tuned to the TechSteward.net blog, and over the rest of this week, you’ll see a recap of answers to the questions that were submitted during the webinar, including:
Is there a way, like facebook has, to find others that might be your followers?
Is there a place to “register” hash tags?
How often should you update in order to make this technology useful?
How can twitter be most beneficial to reaching lost people?
Should a church link their Facebook pages to their Twitter posts?
Can you put an audio file on Twitter?
How does one receive a notice of a Twitter update?
For those who attended and/or registered for this webinar, you should be receiving an email in the next day with a link to the slides presented and a recording to the webinar.
The Tech Steward Tuesday webinar series will explore how your church can be stewarding technology in the service of worship. The webinar series is presented as a 30-minute weekly chat-in talk show format, so you can participate in this conversation. DJ Chuang, Network Developer at Worship Leader Magazine, will answer your questions about church and technology.
These tech steward conversations will accelerate on-site and face-to-face at the National Worship Leader Conference 2010 Pre-Conference — this will be a one-day pre-conference event at all 3 NWLC’s: Albuquerque on June 15-17, Kansas City on July 19-22, and Lancaster PA on October 5-7. Register now >>
Look forward to connecting with you on-line and on-site!
I mentioned a Time magazine article from May 2009, 
