Click here to view the embedded video.

This video will inspire you as it does a brilliant job conveying a number of statistics in a visually complimentary way to the imagery already exists in the voice over/script. You’d be missing out not to watch it.

Often content creators initially fall under the misunderstanding that everything needs to be made new and this quickly becomes overwhelming. Now enter a phrase that will save the day…

Content Re-purposing!

Sounds to easy, to just use the same content over and over right? Well, why not? I’m not advocating using the same text on every page on your website, but if you go to lengths to make content why not use it in multiple platforms and through many different delivery methods.

Re-purpose Sermons

The perfect example of this for Churches would be sermons. A pastor spends hours preparing a message to give it once (maybe more, but most are only given once). Many Churches then offer a tape or CD of the message to their members. This is re-purposed content.

Take this notion onto the Internet and you have many ways to deliver the same content. You can supply a podcast through iTunes and many other aggregators, and also stream the audio from your website. Now these same hours of work have a much wider net to cast themselves into and thus increase the impact your time has.

Re-purpose Member/Group Data

To take this notion a step further lets talk about raw data. Often this is expressed as consolidating your lists. As you move all your lists into a single system you no longer have multiple locations/versions of your church member roster, your small group lists, and so on.

Thus when one is updated you either end up with discrepancies (without re-purposed data), or with instantaneously updated lists. This is a major time saver, although not visibly so. As everything is brought into a single system all the administrative time spend maintaining multiple lists or searching for current member/group information is eliminated or reduced.

While not tangible costs, the lost time your church will recuperate will quickly become noticeable.

If your organization doesn’t have a central, accessible, robust system to do this we encourage you to pursue one.

At least one lawmaker is already crying foul over Friday’s expected Federal Communications Commission’s censure of Comcast for faking internet traffic to limit its customers’ peer-to-peer file sharing.

Republican minority leader Rep. John Boehner said the FCC would be “essentially regulating the internet.”

Read more via Wired Magazine

Will get more as the ruling comes out.

This raises the question, How do we, as the church, stay relevant in the info age?

I understand some people have strong theological opposition to the Internet and the progression of technology. If that’s you, the rest of this post will just upset you. If not, keep reading.

First we have to embrace technology, and quickly. The church has gotten into the habit of letting technological things blow past us until its obvious we need to get on board with them.

So what does this embracing look like?

• Dynamic Organization websites (with databases and interactivity)
• Fully utilization of digital delivery whenever possible (Content Re-purposing!)
• Creating digital, gospel based, content people under 30 want to experience
• Digital Transparency of leadership (through personal websites/blogs/etc.)

The list could keep going but for the sake of brevity these are the big three ways the Church is extremely lacking overall in the info age.

Lets re-cap on `the Church` for a second. The Church is the largest organization in the world (though with many fractions within its structure). The Christian faith is the most widely accepted faith in the world. OK, got that?

Now why does the Church with these incredible numbers have such a pathetic presence in the Information

Age? Priorities…

Shifting our priorities

As Christians, and even more-so as Church leaders, we have an obligation to steward our resources. So lets be smart about how we use our money and people.

The goal set for for us at the end of the gospels is to proclaim the good news to everyone. With technology this can be easier than ever with the Internet. The world is funding programs like OLPC which has delivered 725,000 laptops to children the world over (list in next paragraph). Intel also is in the market with their classmate PC and just sold 500,000 laptops to Portugal yesterday.

If we want to reach out to countries like Uruguay, Peru,  Haiti, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Cambodia, Mongolia, Afghanistan, Mexico what better way then to capture the imagination and hearts of the youth these Million+ laptops will reach. They will all have Internet access, and the laptops hope to close the technological divide.

To do this we have to invest in technologies and content (Content is King!) to reach the world.

Why can’t we do virtual discipleship with children in countries and cities we can seldom reach with physical people?

To do this

We have to do it well, this means investing some serious money, efforts in doing this. I believe that there needs to be another movement like the Wesleyan bible translators for the Information age. Their goal will be to make the Gospel accessible and appealing to Internet viewers.

Ironic thing here is that to pull this off, we’ll need those ‘weird’ creative people the Church has been so good at pushing away.

What role do you think the internet should play with the Church? Or Church with the internet?

Photo: Can’t Touch this by Foxtongue

I found his name because Sunday he broke his wrist after a sermon illustration went wrong involving a motorcycle. (sermon video here)

Many reasons propel churches into the spotlight, many not so innocent as Pastor Harlow’s. In the past year there have been multiple occasions where churches and/or pastors have made headlines (most notably Rev. Jeremiah Wright of Trinity UCC in Chicago).

Anyone looking for information on your church will visit your website.

This, along with hoping to attract visitors, should be reason enough to be proactive about the content and design of your website. It is an opportunity to expose many people outside your traditional sphere of influance to your mission and purpose.

The more exposure you get the more likely someone who resonates with your mission/purpose will discover your Church and become a champion of your cause.

The information age is here and we need to be prepare for the expectations placed upon us by those we desire to serve.

Photo Credits: Harley Davidson by ** Maurice **

While looking over some site statistics for clients this week I was reminded of a often forgotten web truth.

Most users spend under 10 seconds at your site.

This means we have only an instant to communicate our message to our end users.

Think of it this way, if you are still reading this post you’ve already invested nearly30 seconds. The first ten seconds you (if average) didn’t get through the first paragraph.

For blogs and long articles these numbers are a bit different. Jakob Nielson put together some information on the subject. This graph is from his site shows how little a user will read of the amount of content you publish.

Notice that no-one read the whole page.

Not much time is it? This is why design is so important. Graphics and Video communicate much more quickly than words do. In the hands of a skilled designer. Their whole job is to strip down your message to the bare essentials and then create a way to communicate that message clearly and graphically.

Ways to Improve your Home Page

• Take away everything that isn’t crutial to your core message
• Give clear cues as to exactly what you want the user to do. (“Come to our church!”)
• Look over your stats to see what your users truly value on your site. Make that very accessible. (google analytics does a great job with this)
• If you have content that should be top priority but isn’t, make it by putting it front and center.
• Give easy access to everything else through your menus and links. Don’t forget to see the first point.