Twittering Bay Area Fellowship

One of the things that I have been spending my time on Sunday's at Bay Area Fellowship as we are moving towards our pre-launch phase, is twittering the notes from the messages while sitting in our Corpus Campus. Pastor Bil Cornelius is used by God in a great way...I am doing it as my way of taking notes but also it is a little experiment on some internet tools we may utilize.

Here are the twitter notes but you can check them all out at twitter.com/jasoncurlee (make sure you read them from bottom to top):

• Point 4 - Get started on meeting your expectation.
• Scripture - Proverbs 13:12 (NLT)
• We can turn our health around if we turn our attitude around.
• Point 3 - Dwell on good things
• Learn to mine yourself and pull out the best from within you.
• People must have joy to have strength....Satan always wants to rob you of your joy...
• Scripture - Nehemiah 8:10 (NIV)
• Focus on "His" promise not "your" problem!
• You must declare you're fit before you are.
• He (Abraham) plunged into the promise
• Scripture - Romans 4:19-25
• You have got to get moving....DO SOMETHING!!!!!
• Nothing will taste as good as you feel if you are in shape.
• Point 2 - Choose to increase eating healthier food and drinking water. (crowd out the bad food)
• Scripture - 1 Corinthians 10:23
• Your health is "your health"....your life is "your life"....you must take responsibility for it.
• Point 1 - Take responsibility for your health.
• Scripture 2 Corinthians 2:9
• What you focus on you get more of....
• Bay Area Fellowship - Series "The Power of a Winning Attitude" 3rd Week
  

I also tried out ustream.tv one week. I came and broadcasted it to my wife who was at home not feeling well. She watched the whole service from home except for the music.

These are just two internet tools I'm experimenting with right now that we might possible use in some way.

A Social Ministry Internet Presence

If a church or a youth ministry wants to launch a social ministry presence there are some things that you can and should do to make it more successful.

Whether it is through myspace, facebook, beebo, virb or any other social website, having a social internet ministry can enhance what you do as a church. Doing it with the right motivation and following through with it can be a way to keep people connected as well as break outside the walls of your church.

Here are a couple of principles you can put in place to make it more successful:

Assign A Leader - Having someone lead this, just as someone would lead a physical ministry within your church, is key. This is something you just can't throw up. If all you are going to do is start a myspace page or facebook page and leave it...DON'T. Do it by having someone lead it. This person could also become your internet pastor. Remember, the internet has quickly shrunk the world. Don't let your presence be just another site.

Listen - One of the purposes is creating conversations with those within and outside of the church. This means a two-way communication. Remember you are creating relationships it's not all about you.

Respond - When the tough questions come don't shy away...respond. Respond in a way that communicates care and God's grace.

Open the Dialog - It is said that America is the loneliest place to live. Many people want to belong. A social internet presence can be a great entry place for someone. Initiate the conversation. Ask a question.

Encourage - There are plenty of people that are hurting and need the encouragement that they can make it. Be that to them.

Acknowledge - Be aware of what is going on in the world of your community. When someone is hurting acknowledge and care. When someone is doing great...celebrate. Add something to their world.

Stay Transparent - Don't be more than your not. It's often easy to hide behind the anonimity of the internet. Be real as a leader and as a church.

Listen - Once again...we live in a world that is hurting. Make sure you are listening.

Pimp My Internet Bible

Great tool online for all you bible readers and studiers. It's called YouVersion and you need to check it out. It really is taking the Bible and combining it with web 2.0. It is still in much of it's beta form and here are just a few of the things you can do with it:

• Search for scripture, jump to a book/chapter/verse, or scroll through our Bible Reader
• Star verses and content
• Tag verses and content
• Contribute and/or associate images, videos, links, and text to verses or series of verses
• Start journaling in the “My Journal” feature
  See what others are sharing
• Email items to your friends and family
• Rate content
• Dashboard- quickly view new contributions and new users.
• Flickr support- now contribute your images located in your Flickr account.
• Content rankings- user contributions are now weighted based on ratings, etc.
• 1 year Bible reading plan- the first of many Bible reading plans.
  

Currently they have integrated the following Bible translations:

• New King James Version (NKJV) - Thomas Nelson
• New Century Version (NCV) - Thomas Nelson
• English Standard Version (ESV) - Good News Publishers/Crossway
• King James Version (KJV)
• World English Bible
• American Standard Version (ASV)
• Reina-Valera Antigua (Spanish)
• The Message (MSG) - Navpress

It's backed by Lifechurch and I really see it being a catalyst for how the internet will intersect with the Bible in the future. It is a great resource in ministry.

5 Free Ministry Tools From Google

One of the challenges of small churches is the ability to collaborate due to budget. In the small stages, most church staff are composed of volunteer leaders whose daily time is consumed with work and family. Google has some great tools that can be utilized to creatively help a small staff become more productive and united. These are great internet resources any church can use at any stage of development. Also ministries that may be challenged budgetly, could effectively utilize these tools as well.

Gmail - Free email that gives you more flexibility than some others. It is a great pop3 that can I personally use through my Microsoft Office Outlook program at home...or log in on the web where ever there is web access.

Google Calendar - An online calender where all your events can be posted and shared through your staff.

Notebook - A great way to store and create notes. You can also download an app that works through your web browser to even copy items off the web as you are reading. One way I use it is to pre-write blog posts, log in message and series ideas, and copy ideas for church. And with the ability to share between users...sky's the limit.

Documents - A web based alternative for your document, spreadsheet, and presentation needs. Great thing is you can link others to it and both create together. For example, a friend of mine and I are collaborating on a book and writing it through document.

Google Business Solutions - Simply put...all your web-based needs can be interfaced and connected through this tool. From email, to shared documents, to instant messaging...all of google's tools can come together to give a church staff or volunteer staff powerful communication and collaboration tools that will help bring their productivity to the next level.

All that and a bag of chips...and that is just the tip of the iceburg. See http://www.google.com/intl/en/options/ for a list of all of google's products.

Do You...

Twitter??? As of tonight, I do. In my right column there you can keep up with what I'm doing. Also go to my twitter page, www.twitter.com/jasoncurlee

I found lots of ways to integrate it. I'm twittering through google talk, facebook. I put a widget on my myspace but it doesn't seem to work that well.

I'm a twittering away. It's an experiment...well see how it goes. Next thing you know I'll even start flocking.

P.S. If you use google talk and ever want to talk to me feel free to add me...pastorjcurl@gmail.com

Social Networking And The Church

I spent about 6 to 7 hours working on our Journey Church Myspace today. Nice for a holiday huh?

Right now, it is our main source of web presence.

To be honest I really wish more church websites had the ability to create the social type of networking like myspace. I really don't think it can happen because you aren't going to get millions or thousands of unchurched people to sign up to a "church" network.

That is why I see myspace as a great way to reach out to other people within your city and provide interaction. To be honest I see more churches using blogs and social networking to be more effective and create more interaction. There are some churches leading the way in these areas.

Writers Block

Feels like writers block tonight...or maybe it's just a lot of mental distractions. That's a better word than A.D.D.

I've spent the better half of this week focusing on our internet presence. Met a great guy today out of the blue online.

God has unique ways of connecting people that goes beyond how we think it can happen. People come from all walks of life and are made up of various personalities.

I used to have this guy as a boss who always said we needed to call to make a personal connection by calling. For some people, especially in today's world, you can make a connection in various ways and they are just as personal.

For me, send me a email or a myspace and I'm cool with that. In fact I like that so much more than a phone call. For others it may mean calling them. It all comes down to understanding that God is so much bigger and can work in so many more ways than we think (even online).

I met one of my latest friends online in a virtual world church. And to this day we have never talked verbally, only online through instant messaging.

Never under estimate how you can reach people today.

And if there are any churches out there who would like to get more into online social networking I could help you get started. (Was that a shameless plug?) Nah...just want to be a help to anyone out there.

Getting My Link

Had a buddy of mine ask how I secured or procured my new jasoncurlee.com link.

It was rather simple as well as painless to the wallet.

I went to godaddy.com and searched to see if the site was available. It was by the way. Purchased it for less than $10. And then redirected it to go to my blogspot.

Simple.

Busy At Work This Week

Whew...I have been busy today and for the last few days working on all these websites. For us this is going to be crucial over the life of Journey Church.

Setting up all of these initial blogs and web 2.0 applications will make it easy as we go down the road.

Interestingly in two days we have already had over 30 downloads of our podcast.

I even updated and gave a fresh coat to my own myspace.

Ways To Use Myspace In Ministry

Using video is not the only technology we utilize in ministry. I am a big believer in redeeming technology and utilizing it for discipleship, evangelism, spreading information and just about any other creative thing you can think up.

There has been a lot of heat about myspace in the church over the years. Should you use it, should you not? Look at the content that is on there, we need to stay away.

The reality is that we need to not run away from these forms of media and technology but redeem them. We don't need a freakin' Godspace that we can form our little God clicks. We need to be all over the current ones.

Some of the ways we have used myspace are:

• Created a ministry myspace page. From there we embed our youtube videos and graphics about who we are so teens can easily link there.
• From my personal myspace page we post comments every Monday in our teens myspace pages inviting them to come out so their friends can see what we are about. We will post our promo videos and graphics. These become little advertisements that friends of our teens can see.
• Post bulletins for upcoming events.
• Leave encouraging notes for our teens.
• Keep up with our leaders through the instant messaging feature.

The major reality is that not all of our teens have a myspace but more than half do. They had it before they came to Elevate so we have embraced it and are using it to reach out. Is there some junk in it...sure...but we can't escape all the junk in the world. But we can be a light in the darkness.

virb.com/jaycurlee

For about three months I have been letting this just set there. Did I really need another one? But then I find out some of my peeps have gotten in on it. Peep 1...Peep 2...

So what's a brother to do. Well I guess update it a little and add some friends. Now that I know some others are out there on it, I'm going to give it a test spin.

At least it doesn't have the junk that myspace has.

So if there are any other peeps out there with one...go ahead...VIRB me

Building A Church Website

Websites are always evolving. In fact you church website should not be there tomorrow. What that means is it should always be evolving. Want people to come back often then it demands change.

Here are the main things you want to focus on the front home page.

Even though you need drop down menus with these items on it, you want to make it easy entry to a new guest that is checking you out. Some of these items you may have and others you will have over time. You really need to think from an outside in point of view.

1) I’m New – This would redirect to a page that would give a new person the basics of what they need to see to get an idea of who you are as a church with the top hot points…time and directions, children’s area’s, etc…
2) Times and Directions
3) Link to current Message Series with graphic
4) Link to your Church Story
5) Podcast Link

Cory Miller at churchcommunicationspro.com has a great series called Building Rockin’ Cool Church Websites.
Go check out what he has to say.