State of the Church Online – Research Findings

Cynthia Ware and Drew Goodmanson hosted a Webinar today reviewing findings from an exploratory survey we did on Church and Christian Social Networks. The slides from the presentation can be found here. Some key findings:

Facebook was the most used Church Web Media strategy. Of the Christian Social Networking sites reviewed 82% of respondents had no awareness that they existed.

Number 1 is interesting given that Twitter has surpassed Facebook as the top social networking tool for business marketers. Especially because Twitter posted 76 percent growth (in unique visitors) last month compared to Facebook’s 23...

Facebook’s popularity and your church’s social media strategy

Facebook is popular.

Seems rather inane to state it like that, but a lot of people don’t know what to make of Facebook. Some don’t even know what Facebook is. Facebook’s incredible growth over the past year has far reaching implications not only for how people spend time online, but also how people interact in their daily lives. And this, in turn, affects the way we as the church operate. So the question is: how does a church make heads or tails of this bellwether of social media?

Since this article is long (1860 words, at last count), let me tell you where I’m going to go with this.

First, we’ll try to understand the magnitude of growth that Facebook is experiencing. Then we’ll look at the factors that have contributed to this growth. I’ll present an interpretation of why Facebook is popular that should change the way churches approach...

National Church Goer Conference ‘09

Hey Where’s My Conference?!?!

This is a good guest post over at ChurchCrunch.com by Eric Jones of Jonese.us.

Why aren’t there conferences for Joe the Churchgoer? Not a very easy question to answer. There’s good discussion in the comments of the original post. My response is too long to include there so I’m dedicating a post to it. Here I go:

First, there is a trend in business to move away from a centralized working environment, allowing workers to have flexibility in how and where they do their jobs. As the Church, I think there is also a need for decentralization particularly because all Christians are called to be...

Have you ever seen a broken heart?

In life, in missions, in business it’s important to be reminded why it is that you do what you do. I’ve been blessed with the opportunity to work out of my house and it’s a wonderful motivator to be able to spend time during the day with my amazing family. When I was leading strategic research projects for Fortune 500 companies, the highlight of the engagement was always to see the client face to face and to provide new insight into their business challenges. As an Elder of my church it is an honor to sit and tearfully bring praise and pleading before the Lord with the men and women I worship with.

As the body of Christ we are Christ’s envoys to the world today. His rescue mission is our rescue mission. Tonight I got a first hand look at a broken, shriveled, and hardened heart. The kind of heart that only the pure and perfect love of...