Facebook Community Pages and Church Social Media Strategy, part 1

In April, Facebook quietly introduced “Community Pages“, a new feature that creates common pages for interests, activities, and entities. According to the Facebook blog:

Community Pages are a new type of Facebook Page dedicated to a topic or experience that is owned collectively by the community connected to it. Just like official Pages for businesses, organizations and public figures, Community Pages let you connect with others who share similar interests and experiences.

Amid the outcries against Facebook’s aggressive push to allow public access to all profile data (including personal private information), the introduction of Community Pages has not...

Kingdom Conversations – Keith Duff, Shepherding Pastor, Village Bible Church

I just got off the phone with Keith Duff who is the Shepherding Pastor at Village Bible Church (http://www.villagebible.org/) in Sugar Grove, IL. I asked Keith what his top priority for the church is this year.

He said that the main thing they are trying to figure out is “How do we mover our people to be passionate about the kingdom of God?” Not just who they are as individuals in Christ but about getting involved in what the church is doing as a whole.

Within that Keith sees a number of things they as church leaders could be doing better: helping people to understand their own gifts and how they could be used; communicating about existing ministry...

Business as Mission Adresses the Big Issues Facing the Church

In Tim Keller’s latest blog post, he points out five big issues facing the Western Church. They are:

The opportunity for extensive culture-making in the U.S. The rise of Islam. The new non-western Global Christianity. The growing cultural remoteness of the gospel. The end of prosperity?

I recommend you head over to the Redeemer City to City website and read what Keller has to say about these issues. It helps to focus on these shifts in the evangelistic landscape of the West. Doing so will help us to anticipate new opportunities and threats to our efforts to achieving our goals as Kingdom...

Clarifying Business as Mission Objectives

The following is another excerpt from the BAM Survey 2007 Report. The BAM Survey 2007 Report is an in-depth assessment of the state of the Business as Mission movement based on survey responses from 497 people in 38 countries. You can purchase an electronic copy of the BAM Survey 2007 Report for $14.99 here.

Business as Mission Companies Create Eternal Value Through Strategic Management

Whereas evangelism, profit, and (to a lesser...

Who are the Business as Mission leaders? (part 3)

The following is another excerpt from the BAM Survey 2007 Report. The BAM Survey 2007 Report is an in-depth assessment of the state of the Business as Mission movement based on survey responses from 497 people in 38 countries. You can purchase an electronic copy of the BAM Survey 2007 Report for $14.99 here.

Who are the Business as Mission leaders? (part 3)

Business as Ministry

It is clear from the survey results that the belief that missions/ministry work can be done in the business context is widely accepted (Exhibit 4). In fact, as many survey...

Who are the Business as Mission leaders? (part 2)

This is the third installment sharing highlights from the BAM Survey 2007 Report. Today we take a closer look at the global leaders of the Business as Mission movement and the beliefs that drive their efforts in spreading the Gospel through global business entrepreneurship.

The BAM Survey 2007 Report is an in-depth assessment of the state of the Business as Mission movement based on survey responses from 497 people in 38 countries. You can purchase an electronic copy of the BAM Survey 2007 Report for $14.99 here.

Who are the Business as Mission leaders? ...

Who are the Business as Mission leaders? (part 1)

We’re continuing with sharing excerpts from my BAM Survey 2007 Report, an in-depth assessment of the state of the Business as Mission movement based on survey responses from 497 people in 38 countries. You can purchase an electronic copy of the BAM Survey 2007 Report for $14.99 here.

Today we look at the demographics of the survey respondents in order to get an better idea of who makes up the global Business as Mission movement.

Who are the Business as Mission leaders? (part 1)

For the first time, the survey results enable us to describe the community of BAM leaders that has formed around the core elements that define Business as Mission (Exhibit 2). Of...

Can Missions Organizations Be Excellent in Today’s Environment?

Yesterday, I received an email from leader in the mission field with some feedback about the value of trying to define a standard of excellence for ministries’ online activities. What he described was a reluctance among mission (and probably all non-profit) organizations to embrace standards because doing so would mean committing to doing what it takes to live up to those standards. As he put it:

We have not had much traction in finding groups looking to set more standards that they would then have to adopt/invest effort to measure up to.  It is a particularly challenging time for mission organizations trying to do as much as they can, as well as they can with shrinking resources.