I saw this on Seth Godin’s blog a few days ago and loved it. Does your life/ministry feel like this sometimes?
A while back I connected with Russ Martin, who serves as the operations leader of Campus for Christ (the campus ministry of Campus Crusade for Christ) in Canada. I thought I’d share how it happened, because it gives some cool insight into the power of online communication.
- I wrote a post on video conferencing and somehow Russ found me and commented.
- I tracked down his blog and various insightful and witty comments ensued.
- We began following each other on twitter
- I posted a tweet wondering if anyone had some contact management software recommendation. (I know…I’m a nerd)
- Russ send me a message saying he would demo the software they’re using
- At the scheduled time I logged into a Dim Dim webinar and was added to a Skype conference call with Russ and Josh on the operations team up there.
Interesting notes: Russ and Josh live a long way from me…I would have never met them if not for my blog. The first time I talked to Russ was after a lot of online communication, and by then I felt like I knew him already. All of the communication used was free!
Side note: Skype conference calls was way better the the free conference call service we’ve been using. You can tell who’s talking because of the voice indicator on your screen.
Does anyone else have experiences similar to this using social media?
Does the sheer difficulty of a task stimulate faith and expectancy of a great and holy God in you?
I heard this old story recounted by Dale Ralph Davis recently. An American shoe company sent a salesman to a foreign country. He had hardly arrived before he cabled for money to come home. His reason: ‘No one over here wears shoes.’ The company brought him back and sent another salesman over. Soon he cabled; “Send me all the shoes you can manufacture. The market is absolutely unlimited. No one here has shoes.”
The character of our God ought to make us an optimist in the shadow of seemingly overwhelming circumstances. Perhaps we should embrace the difficult task because we get to see more of God right?
This is a no-brainer right? How come I shy away from difficult tasks and embrace comfort so easily?
Photo courtesy of reutC
So you’ve finally caught the social media bug…or at least want to test the value of it. There are so many social media applications available that the thought of learning them all will burst that bubble quickly. I believe that if you have limited time and capacity the best way you can invest your time is with a blog…if you work hard at it.
Why? Blogging gives a face to your position and ministry, it connects you to like minded staff people and helps you sharpen your thinking as you write and collaborate with people who comment. It doesn’t have to be perfect, I’ve stopped and restarted a blog at least 3 times. The crazy thing is that I have friends all over the U.S. and Canada that I’ve never met in person and only know through my blog. It’s given me opportunities that I wouldn’t have had otherwise and has even helped recruit for our new staff team in Portland, Oregon.
How? There are plenty of applications out there to set up a blog with. I recommend if you’re brand new to try Wordpress.com. It’s super easy, free to set up and has lot’s of templates to choose from. There’s a slight learning curve, but you can have the basic’s set up in a few minutes and a super tweaked template in a few hours. Other staff like blogspot.com (free), but I’ve gotten a little tired of it. By the way, you can always import posts into another blogging platform so don’t worry about the decision to much.
Best blogging tips:
- Content is king. If you have good content people will keep reading and engage with your blog.
- Make your post shorter than you think. This post is actually probably too long. The average length of visit on my blog is about 1.3 minutes. Shorten up those posts!
- Steady drip of content. Post regularly (whatever that means for you). This will help you gain regular readers.
- Write about what you know best! Find a niche and write. You’d be amazed at what people want to know about. People want to see behind the scenes of you and your ministry. Appropriate authenticity.
- Take you’re blog to the next level.
What’s keeping you from blogging? If you blog, what are you learning as you go?
Photo courtesy of Amypalko
This is the 5th post from the ‘Cowtown to Urban Hipster’ series chronicling our transition from small college town campus ministry to large metro area with multiple campuses and 100k students. Feel free to engage in the comments, your collaboration is wanted!
Recently I was listening to one of Tim Keller’s talks from the Global Cities Initiative conference. The dude is brilliant and here are his highlights about why urban ministry is so important:
- The apex of redemptive history is a city
- As the city goes, so goes the worlds culture
- Reach the city reach the world
- Missions should concentrate on cities…why? Evidence is overwhelming. Paul went to strategic urban cities….planted churches, left. Citicentric ministry.
- Cities are where culture is forged, where minorities and ethnicities come together.
- Preach the Gospel in the language of the city…they spread it back to their culture, country
- My favorite point // It’s important for Christians to live in the city to reach their own heart with the Gospel. At first you look down on the city people (despise from a distance)…but then you meet them and talk with them, you realize they’re sometimes kinder than you, more moral than you and smarter than you. Perhaps your Muslim neighbor is a far better father than you…you recognize your need for grace. Gospel moves from intellect to heart.
There’s no place in the Bible that says everyone has to live in the city or work in a city. But the important part that cities play in seeing the Great Commission fulfilled is undeniable. These are pretty strong ideas from Mr. Keller. What’s your response?
If you missed it there has been some great discussion on my last post regarding the barriers that keep people from engaging with Web 2.0 tools. Here are some of the highlights:
- Benson: “For some, I think the fear is that they don’t know enough to be “good at it” and don’t feel they have the time to learn about it.”
- Jocelyn: “It might come down to one, simple question: Do you want to be a leader or not?
- Carolyn: “I have to limit my distractions and choose the “noise” in my life. Even if the noise is good, useful, or informative.”
- Jody: “It just seems overwhelming to me to have to keep up with the new things.”
- Darren: “we are almost always against something until we are for it. Is there really anyone out there that says “I love twitter!” or “I love blogs!” that isn’t actively using/consuming them? It seems the switch flips when people understand a practical way it can help them in some defined way and begin engaging.”
- Jennifer: “until I have a clear felt need to learn to use them – like building a house for example – then I will be unmotivated to learn to use those very tools.”
This has got me thinking about how this blog and a few other key blogs might act as filters for staff in our organization to learn about key tools and examples of how they’ve been helpful. But again, I think it comes down to the question of “are we willing to learn?” I can filter cool, new applications all day and do my best to be transparent about what we’re using, but unless we all are willing to invest a little bit of time learning (according to each individuals capacity and giftings), then it’s a wash.
Thoughts?
When I look across the breadth of our organization I see a hesitancy to embrace and leverage online tools for ministry. Some co-workers think I’m crazy for keeping up a blog! Perhaps I’m wrong, but I think there is an undercurrent of fear (or at least a hesitancy) to engage in conversations with web 2.0 tools. Here’s why…
- Fear of being misunderstood
- Fear of being put on record and being wrong
- Fear of taking a risk to use a new medium to reach people for Christ
- Fear of lack of control that is possible when lot’s of people are talking to lot’s of people
- Belief that online communication/interaction isn’t helpful for personal growth
- Organizational structure doesn’t foster online collaboration very well…yet.
I want to change this.
Sure sometimes online communication isn’t the best option. Sure sometimes we have to go back and with humility correct our mistakes, but I want to be a good steward of the tools we’ve been given to expand the Kingdom of God through our ministry. What if someday all our staff across our region would engage each other with leadership thoughts at any hour of the day with a click of a button? What if hundreds of volunteers connected through an online social network, where they could encourage each other? The tools exist, why aren’t we using them?
If you work in occupational ministry in some capacity, what are the barriers that keep you from engaging in collaboration with Web 2.0 tools? What are the tools you’re using to connect your staff/ministry leaders right now?
- Challenge the status quo…it’s profitable, and fun
- Have faith that failure won’t destroy you
- When you fall in love with the system, you lose the ability to grow
- The easiest thing to do is react, the second easiest thing to do is respond. The hardest thing to do is initiate.
A big switch in my capacity for productivity took place when I switched my email folders and task list from a set of topic related folders, i.e. work, home, campus, staff, etc. to actionable items.
What I mean is that now I group things according to the action needed in my email. This is what my email folders look like now.
I also group my task list according to the action needed as follows.
Notes: A “Waiting for Response” folder has helped me immensely. Also, I’m way more productive if I do all my email’s at once and then all my phone calls for example. It’s not a perfect system but it’s helping my stay on task and it works for me. I still have projects that I work on seperately, because they involve multiple levels of action and communication.
Getting Things Done was trademarked by David Allen
What sort of Getting Things Done system do you use?
To harness the full power of social media you must make it conversational right? It’s not about tooting your own horn and telling everyone how magnificent you are. It’s not about getting the most followers and blasting everyone with tweets about yourself. To make social media benefical you must build trust, be generous and have a conversation. Yes this means you, rental property company that blasted me with tweets when I said I was going to Big Sky, Montana for the weekend.
I get that lesson. I’m all in with that.
So what does this teach me about evangelism? In our culture if someone trusts me then they’ll engage with just about anything I’ll say. If I want to turn someone off instantly all I have to do is turn on the bullhorn of righteousness.
Trust, relationship and authenticity is everything. But keep in mind this trust and relationship can be built in a surprisingly short amount of time.
Keith Davy and Cojourners have highly influenced my thinking on this subject of evangelism. I haven’t got my hands on Keith’s new release Backstory yet, but I’m excited to see how it’s received on college campuses.