Surviving Social Networking

Churches getting exposure with Social Media

With more than 80 percent of American adults online, churches of every size can benefit greatly from a variety of technological tools. An increase in options during the past decade has led to more advantages—yet it's also caused confusion for many churches. Pastors and staff often feel overwhelmed by the shear amounts of work involved just to keep up with changes.

Let's look at several technology-related projects, broken down by church size (although all of them should be considered by churches at all levels), that can help your church and its goals without becoming overly complex.

Small Church (less than 100 members): Tweets, Blogs, and Facebook
If your church is just getting started, or it's been around for a while but doesn't yet have a strong presence on the internet, several simple and inexpensive technology projects can help you build awareness for your church, keep in touch with people within your congregation, and achieve broader communication goals.

With more than 80 percent of American adults online, churches of every size can benefit greatly from a variety of technological tools. An increase in options during the past decade has led to more advantages—yet it's also caused confusion for many churches. Pastors and staff often feel overwhelmed by the shear amounts of work involved just to keep up with changes.
Let's look at several technology-related projects, broken down by church size (although all of them should be considered by churches at all levels), that can help your church and its goals without becoming overly complex.Small Church (less than 100 members): Tweets, Blogs, and Facebook.

If your church is just getting started, or it's been around for a while but doesn't yet have a strong presence on the internet, several simple and inexpensive technology projects can help you build awareness for your church, keep in touch with people within your congregation, and achieve broader communication goals.Start posting

One of the easiest projects that can perhaps have the most benefit to your ministry is to start a blog. Blogger by Google (www.blogger.com) is surprisingly simple to set up, create posts, and upload images and videos. Another bonus: Blogger is free. With a blog, your pastor or church leaders can write about points not mentioned in the sermon, discuss ministry aspirations, hint at goals for the future, and even bring up personal issues to begin a more authentic communication channel within your church.

Start tweeting
Twitter (twitter.com) is now the third-largest social networking website, next to MySpace and Facebook. It can't be ignored—and it can be an effective tool for ministry. Twitter, known as a micro-blogging service because it allows its users to send and read other users' updates (known as tweets), publishes text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length. Users send and receive updates for free from any device with an internet connection, making it incredibly simple to share what you're doing, what your ministry is working on, and things people can check out on your blog and website to extend the online hand of friendship. To simplify how much to keep track of, consider a free, simple service called Ping.fm (ping.fm), which allows you to connect your blogs and social networking accounts and update them simultaneously via e-mail or text message.

Start networking
Facebook (facebook.com) can be a wonderful, free tool to connect with people online. You'll quickly find that many people in your congregation are already members. After you set up an account for your church (and Facebook now offers a direct way for groups and businesses to set up a page at facebook.com/pages/create.php), you can "friend" members who also are on the site, usually by finding them by e-mail address. Next, look under the "Applications" area of your home page for "Groups." Here, you can set up a group for church members to join and interact. Another Facebook application allows you to form causes (simply type "Causes" in the Facebook search tool to get started), a great way to get people involved in specific ministries within your church.

How to Get Started In Social Media and Love It.

Social Networking is the latest crazy today called Web 2.0. There are tools such as Twitter, Ning and Stumbleupon that help people communicate with each other without physically being in the same room with the people you are talking too. So move over traditionalist and take a leap of faith with social networking and find out how much you really know your family and friends. If you don’t know what to do, watch, listen and learn.

1. Use Twitter as a search and monitoring tool.You can always watch. All you need to do is go to search.twitter.com and poke around. Search your clients, your company, competitive brand(s), relevant topics. That’s all you need to do to know what’s being said, who’s saying it and where it’s coming from. Without spending a lot of time you can at least get a sense of the conversation. You’ll be able to listen, learn and get smarter about whatever it is you want to get smarter about. Including social media.

2. Take the effortless approach to Twitter is a time suck for people who feel compelled to generate a lot of content or who determine their self worth by how many followers they have. You don’t have to take that approach. Just get on, identify and follow the people who tweet, share, and post content related to your interests or your clients’ businesses. If and when you want, you can interact. If not, you can simply be the beneficiary of their thinking and the links that they post.

3. Create a Ning site for your own personal useJust make one for your extended family. Or your colleagues at work. Or your book club. It’s free. It’s easy. And with no pressure you can take your time and learn how to re-arrange the appearance of your community site, post content, upload photos, and create links. Surprisingly, a lot of people who haven’t blogged don’t even know how to do that. Here’s a way to start, experiment, fumble around, and fail with no risk. You might even like it and end up being able to show clients how to do it.

4. Join Stumbleupon Social bookmarking is another very simple way to try out social media. You can use it to discover new content — based on easily filtered topics — that you may never have otherwise found (just press that Stumble button). You can save it and share it. And you can discover and identify other bookmarkers — some quite influential — who find, review and share sites and information that might matter to your clients or your own brand. Again, because you can proceed at your own pace, it’s risk-free. There’s no commitment on your part to create daily content or respond to the expectations of your followers.

Social media doesn’t come with instructions. You have to try it, play with it, and experiment a little in order to get it. Rather than commit a lot of time, why not just commit a little. Then see where it takes you. What are your thoughts? Any other easy ways to benefit from social media without falling victim to the time suck?

Church Security and Awareness

Acts 20:28-31

"Keep watch over yourselves and all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers. Be shepherds of the church of God, which he bought withhis own blood. I know that after I leave, savage wolves will come in among you and will not spare the flock. Even from your own number men will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them. So be onyour guard!"

Safety and security at churches and other houses of worship has become an increasingly important issue in recent years.There have been a number of examples of church security incidents and shootings in the last year that underscore the importance of security while at a house of worship.

Twittering in Church, with the Pastor's O.K.

By Bonnie Rochman

A congregant at Easter Mass in Matthews, N.C., uses Twitter during the service. John Voelz isn't trying to brag, but it's fair to say he was down with Twitter before most people knew it was a proper noun.

Last year, Voelz, a pastor, was tweeting at a conference outside Nashville about ways to make the church experience more creative — ways to "make it not suck" — when suddenly it hit him: Twitter.
Voelz and David McDonald, the other senior pastor at Westwinds Community Church in Jackson, Mich., spent two weeks educating their congregation about Twitter, the microblogging site that challenges users to communicate in 140 characters or less. They held training sessions in which congregants brought in their laptops, iPhones and BlackBerrys. They upped the bandwidth in the auditorium.

As expected, banter flourished. Tweets like "Nice shirt JVo" and "So glad they are doing Lenny Kravitz" flashed across three large video screens. But there was heartfelt stuff too.
"I have a hard time recognizing God in the middle of everything." "The more I press in to Him, the more He presses me out to be useful" "sometimes healing is painful". There's a time and place for technology, and most houses of worship still say it's not at morning Mass. But instead of reminding worshippers to silence their cell phones, a small but growing number of churches across the country are following Voelz's lead and encouraging people to integrate text-messaging into their relationship with God.

In Seattle, Mars Hill churchgoers regularly tweet throughout the service. In New York City, Trinity Church marked Good Friday by tweeting the Passion play, detailing the stages of Jesus' crucifixion in short bursts. At Next Level Church, outside Charlotte, N.C., it's not only O.K. to fuse social-networking technology with prayer; it's desirable.

On Easter Sunday, pastor Todd Hahn prefaced his sermon by saying, "I hope many of you are tweeting this morning about your experience with God." "It's a huge responsibility of a church to leverage whatever's going on in the broader culture, to connect people to God and to each other," says Hahn. If worship is about creating community, Twitter is an undeniably useful tool. The trick is to not let the chatter overshadow the need for quiet reflection that spirituality requires. At Westwinds, people can ask questions about the sermon that the pastors will answer later, or they can tweet in real time and hope another congregant offers insight. Some use Twitter as a note-taking tool. Often, it's pastor-directed, with McDonald preaching while Voelz taps out, "In what way do you feel the spirit of God moving within you?" Discuss.

There have been at least a dozen "Twitter Sundays" at Westwinds, but the 150 or so Twitterers of Westwind's 900 adult members are free to tweet at any time, at any service, whenever the spirit moves them.

The same rules apply at Next Level, where pastor Hahn headed straight to his office to log on as soon as the inaugural Twitterfest ended in April. Punching in "nextlevel" in Twitter's search function, he read:
1. "had awesome music today and yes i am twittering in church.
2. "nothing u do 4 the lord is in vain."
3. "I think my thumbs are going to be sore"
Next Level has no plans to make Twitter a formal part of each week's service, but Hahn advises parishioners that "if God leads you to continue this as a form of worship by all means do it."
Robbie McLaughlin took him up on it. The graphic designer used Twitter the Sunday after Easter and says he intends to do it again, as he was caught up by the way it transformed how he worshipped. He likes the way it helps him see what God is doing in other people's lives during the service. (And there's another benefit too: no more misplaced musings jotted down on that day's program. "With Twitter," he points out, "your notes are there forever.")

Though the Next Levels and Westwinds may be the face of the future, for now, they're just a quirky minority. But Voelz gets at least five e-mails a week from people inquiring how to launch Twitter within their church. How did you rig the screen resolution so people could read the tweets? What was members' reaction? And, not surprisingly: Got any tips to persuade church leadership this is way cool?

Non-Profits Can Establish an Effective Data Privacy Program

Non-profits must realize that as large corporations and online business better protect their information and systems, data thieves, hackers focus their attention towards institutions with weaker information security practices like non-profits. Non-profits are in possession of an abundance of financial & personal information such bank accounts, credit cards, date of births and social security numbers, which are very valuable in the wrong hands. Additionally, non-profits have the least amount of qualified professionals equipped to manage an effective Information Security program. Washington Post articled reported that data breaches increased a by 69% from 2007 to 2008. It's an alarming statistic e that shows no signs of slowing down.

Learn what Defines Personal Information
States like Arizona and Massachusetts have created laws to hold organizations more accountable with personal information. The guidance for declaring just what is personal information is goes like this in the States of MA and AZ; generally great guidance.

It begins with a natural/ human person's First name or First initial and Last name in combination with any one or more of the following data elements, when the name and data elements are not encrypted:

Social Security number,
Driver's license number or identification card number, and
Account number, credit card number or debit card number, in combination with any required security code, access code or password that would permit access to the person's financial account. Source: Non-profit Times - http://www.nptimes.com/08Nov/npt-081115-3.html

How to Start a Data Privacy Program
So where does a non-profit start? Start at the top!
The first thing that any organization must do to protect the confidentiality of the data they collect is to establish executive governance over it, which flows from the top down in their organization. Create a written data privacy policy that has sponsorship by its executive board that all staff MUST follow. The policy should give clear guidance regarding how all data is handled within that organization, from information that is shared with the general public, to data that is must be protected as required by laws and industry regulations. Group the organizations data by classifications levels, from most risky to least risky. The classification of the organizations data will help to determine the appropriate controls to apply to ensure confidentiality, Integrity & Availability of the information. More importantly it will demonstrate "Due Diligence" & "Due Care" by the organization in protecting the privacy of its clients, donors, members & staff.

According to Non-Profit Technology News, organizations can begin doing the following to lower the risks associated with collected data:
Begin with a top-to-bottom review of all sensitive or confidential information that's in-house;
Assess what data must be kept, what can be stored in (and easily accessed from) a remote location, and perhaps most important, what can be discarded; Determine who needs access to the data and why, and provide only those people with password-protected access to the data;
Make sure that the data you do have is backed up on a regular basis in a secure, remote location;
If your organization can afford it, hire an independent security expert to review your data security policies and procedures. ("It never fails to surface things that never really were an issue to anyone," says Hart.)

Don't store complete credit card information on site;
Limit physical access to servers;
Be aware of what confidential and sensitive information is on printed (paper) files, and make sure that all such files are kept secure at all times; Make certain that your Web site complies to fundamental, industry-standard encryption and security measures in the processing of personal information and donation collections.

Armunda Hancock's Gospel Tour 2009

It's Live and It's Happening May 2, 2009 at Victory Praise Fellowship, Durham, NC

Increase Donation Appeal at Your Church

Are donors cutting the cord? Is your church feeling the pain? Guess what, you're not alone. Donors are spending less and choosing more carefully how they plan to spend their hard earned dollars. Therefore, church leaders are having to adjust their spending habits. With shrinking dollar$, churches should focus on several issues, one of them being social networking sites.

Embrace Social Networking Sites
How about using Facebook as a tool to promote volunteer opportunities, worship services or online giving. One of the greatest features of Facebook is the news stories that are created within your profile. When you add someone as a friend, everytime , every time they do something in their profile, like add pictures or post a comment, a news story is created in your profile. Similarly, whenever you do something in your profile a news sotory is created in your friend's profiles. This is great because it allows people to keep up with what's happening in their friend's profiles without having to go and check every individual friend's profile one at a time. Everything is done from within your profile.

Be Transparent
Donors are more conscientious of their spending. In your communications, clearly explain how their money will be used, and how it will improve the church and community.

Build Community
Find new ways to integrate your community service events with fundraising. Attending events that involve tickets or products may not work in today's climate. Donors want to see their donated impact, so invite them to take part in a local-level event with a fundraising twist. Allow your donors to take part in your car washes, your singing events, your BBQ dinners or your basket giving.

Keep in Touch
Send monthly newsletters and updates. Donors like to read about what you are doing and who has benefitted from their sevices. Remember, the economy is forever changing. This a great time for churches to think creatively and pay attention to details in order to continue serving their communities near or far.

SO CONNECT AND BUILD RELATIONSHIPS