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?

1. Challenge the status quo…it’s profitable, and fun
2. Have faith that failure won’t destroy you
3. When you fall in love with the system, you lose the ability to grow
4. 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.

These are the most viewed pages on my blog over the past three weeks. In case you missed them.

1. Behold the Power of Twitter – A case study
2. Seek the Shalom – How should we view the city as followers of Christ?
3. Clear as Mud - The battle for clarity of vision in ministry
4. Weird, or just different – a short TED video on different perspectives

I’m scared of a lot of stuff…

but things like failure, sounding silly when public speaking and not knowing the answer really aren’t that bad if I zoom out and view my “fears” from a different perspective. In fact experiencing fear almost always leads me to personal growth.

For example, failure with a project is actually applauded in my line of work, assuming I’m taking steps of faith to see our mission fulfilled. Public speaking actually sharpens my thinking and forces me to depend on the Lord (and no one really remembers more than 2 sentences I say anyway). Not knowing an answer to a question is a chance for me to demonstrate authenticity and humility in a way that will possibly open up doors for the Gospel to go forth.

It’s an upside down perspective really. Sound crazy right? Giving thanks for the opportunity to realize our fears? …sheesh!

So when I can’t see beyond the giant fear right before, the question is how can I  live upside down?

FYI: I’m also afraid of spiders. I haven’t figured out how to conquer this fear yet.

Photo: Bernat Casero

I took the liberty of taking a slide from John Chamber’s talk and tweaking it to fit the non-profit campus ministry organization I work for.  I think I changed it enough to be legal

I’ve begun to recognize that this collaboration and innovation wave of the future we keep talking about can be broken down into categories. This slide has given me structure for the discussion in a fresh way. Below are the three areas that we need to apply the principles of collaboration along with explanations of what that could look like. Study it, learn it, memorize it.

There’s a lot of info here to talk about, but what’s your first response?