Creative Arts, Media & Communications Team

What a great event! It was great to see new talent, people performing that we haven’t seen perform before. Myranda did a great job as the emcee and structuring the flow of the day. It was a great blend of video, comedy and performing arts. We had a great crowd and a handful of visitors, most of which were first time visitors. I heard many times afterwards that it was the best Gift Day. I’ve posted the videos I produced prior to the event on youtube. I am currently reviewing and editing the videos of the live performances. Hopefully, I’ll have ready by this Sunday in DVD format.

Here are the ones currently on our youtube channel…

Continuing the series titled “A Visitor’s Perspective” from churchmarketingsucks.com.
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This is part 4 of a 9-part series on attending church from a visitor’s perspective. You can read the original post to get a better understanding of David’s experience visiting churches for the first time.

A Visitor’s Perspective: Watch your Language!

Within a week or so of moving to the South, I had a flat tire. My roommate, who was from India, took me to a local garage to get the tire patched. Out of the shop walks a character right out of your strongest stereotype. In order to get at the screw piercing my tire the mechanic proceeded to bark some directions at me in a language I couldn’t understand. By the contorted expression on my face he concluded that I didn’t understand him, so he added some confusing gestures to his drawl. Only after my Indian roommate translated (English being his sixth language, not counting Southern Drawl) could I follow his directions. At that point I realized I was an outsider.

Few things make people feel like an outsider more than the language used around them. If this is true, how does the language we use in church make our visitors feel? To avoid excluding people we have to pay attention to verbose nomenclature that we use in our worship service–since this is the way most people are introduced to our church.

There are two basic categories of obscure words we use–ancient and Christian-ese. Ancient words are the most obvious examples but are difficult because we think we know what they mean, but have a hard time coming up with a clear definition. For instance, a song might sing to “Jehovah”–which we know as a name for God. It’s beside the fact that this is a mistransliteration of “Yahweh” that comes to us via the German language–what do you think this word makes your first time visitors think of when they visit? Probably the people who woke them up on Saturday morning in order to hand them a tract.

The King James Bible has had an immense influence in our culture, and it continues to influence even the most contemporary church service. If you’ve ever been in a church that has tried to sing, “As the Deer,” you know what I mean–half the church “pants” for water while the other half “panteth.” Not only is this awkward for a visitor, but it is confusing too. This goes for the “thees” and “thous” as well. You might consider King James English more poetic or pious than the common vernacular but, since none of us speak in this way any longer, it excludes our visitors.

David Zimmerman

Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University Classes are coming to Cornerstone City Church! Classes start Wednesday November 7th, 2007. This is also a great opportunity to invite family and friends to C3. FPU classes will be 13 weeks and the total cost per family is $69 and can be broken down to $5 payed weekly. Please keep in mind, all who sign up and choose to pay weekly will have to pay the $5 per week whether or not they attend the class every week.

Invite family and friends to watch this promotional video at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KT0S2Dx0DA.
I suggest emailing this link to family and friends, and/or posting the following video on your myspace, facebook pages or personal blogs.

Copy and paste the embed code into your social networking pages like myspace and facebook as well as your personal blogs. Go to the church’s youtube account to see all FPU promotional videos. Pick the one you like and send it to your family and friends. You’ll see the embed code to the right of the video.

The following is a great post over at InnovatingTomorrow.net titled “The Challenge”. Innovating Tomorrow was recently redesigned and repurposed as “A blog to help the people of the church become better at using technology for the mission of the church” and is owned by Matt Farina. Matt along side Bob Christenson of Mustard Seed Media produce the Geeks and God Podcast. I have been a long time fan of the Geeks and God Podcast and suggest you check them out. Their current series is on church podcasting which is providing some much needed how to information.
Allen
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The Challenge

A couple months ago I was trying to tie in a web service my church was using into our new church website. The service advertised tying in their service to church websites as flexible and easy to do. Not finding it so flexible, I contacted their technical support for answers. What I found was that the amount of customization and tie into church websites was lacking. It was methods and technology that were available at the turn of the millennium. When I asked why their service was out of date they, honestly, said that churches and ministries didn’t expect more. This is what my friend, Bob, likes to call ‘Good Enough For Church’.

Good Enough For Church

‘Good Enough For Church’ is where churches settle for just having something rather than doing it well. Maybe the church has a website so they can say they have one rather than having one that makes a difference. Maybe the church has a podcast to say they have one rather than having one people actually listen to. There are a million places this can and does happen. Technology is often a place where ‘Good Enough For Church’ shows itself.

It’s Understandable

This makes sense. Churches and churches leaders have a lot going on. Why should a podcast take a priority over something else? Why should they time to support and be involved in one?

Technology people are busy in churches. The time and skill to do things well takes time and energy. Something that is often not there.

Then there is the elusive dollar issue. Technoloy costs money. Is a CD/DVD duplicator worth the $1000 cost? How about the church sound system? How about the difference between a great church website and one that passes as having one?

Time For A Change

It’s time for a change. Churches should expect more from their service providers. Church service providers should be doing more for the mission. ‘Good Enough For Church’ doesn’t cut it. Good use of technology in ministry can make a difference. It can reach people. It provides other ways to reach people with the message. It can aid in connecting people with people to help each other out. Taking advantage of what’s out there helps us in the church take the message to people where they are at.

The Challenge

The challenge is for every church technology person to go for more. Take it beyond ‘Good Enough For Churches’. Learn how to do it well. Learn what to expect. Learn how to take full advantage of what’s out there. Learn how to use technology to take the message to the people where they are at. Learn to use technology to serve others.

That’s what this blog is about. Stepping up to the challenge. The Geeks and God podcast has been one avenue to seek doing it well. This blog is another.

If you’re a church technology person, or even just someone interested in how and why it matters, subscribe to the blog and check out the podcast. technology is now about people and where they are at.

Matt Farina

Another great article from churchmarketingsucks.com titled, “A Visitor’s Perspective, The Welcoming Paradox“. You can view part 2 of 9 here.
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A Visitor’s Perspective: The Welcoming Paradox

There’s a paradox when it comes to welcoming a visitor: on one hand, they want to anonymously investigate the church without pressure; on the other hand they don’t want to be ignored.

My wife and I were enjoying a church we had been visiting for a couple of weeks. Over that time the church allowed us to visit freely without making us standout as visitors. However, the only time anyone said “Hello” to us was when the whole church stood up to “pass the peace.” When we eventually tried to find a Sunday School class (or something) to connect with some other people, we couldn’t find anyone to ask. We eventually found a table in the lobby with a sign declaring it to be the “Welcome Table” but no one ever showed up. Even though we liked the church, we never returned.

Some churches have resolved the paradox between embarrassing their visitors and making them feel welcome. They’ve done this by empowering the church members to welcome guests on an individual level. For example, one time my wife and I attended the main campus of a multi-location mega-church. From the beginning we were lost in their maze of a parking lot. We decided just to follow the crowd until they led us somewhere. When we finally made it to the main building I rhetorically asked my wife, “Where do we go now?” An astute regular (passing us in the hallway) excused herself and asked us if we needed any help and then simply pointed us in the right direction. She didn’t have a nametag or was serving in any official capacity that we could tell–she was just paying attention and being a welcoming host. Not only were we saved the embarrassment of wandering aimlessly throughout the humungous facility, but we were grateful and immediately felt welcome.

If people know they can take it upon themselves to make visitors feel welcome, even a very large church can make someone feel right at home.

by David Zimmerman

Here is a snapshot of the dvd menu for the Myth Busters Series. We’ll probably use different menu themes with different message series. I just learned that I can place files and folders onto the dvd-rom section of the dvd. What does that mean? Anything that I place in this section will be accessible on any computer with a dvd player. Study notes, slideshows, photos, downloadable audio and video versions of the message, pdf’s, church address book, pretty much anything. I want to make our dvd’s an extreme bargain at only $5 each.

unChristian is a new book on how young non-christians view christianity. I am not promoting this book as I have not read it yet, but I thought others might find it interesting. I’ll post my thoughts after reading.

You can view their website at unchristian.com. At the end of this post you can click the link for a summary of the Barna study research that inspired this book. The following video is a promotion video for the book.

The following video talks about the perceptions of christianity.

Here is the Barna research summary that inspired this book.

This is the video we showed after the Sunday morning message titled “MythBusters 101.5 myth: The devil still has a chance”