1. Optimize your ministry’s website for the mobile screen. Many of us find ourselves connecting to the web via cell phones to consult a navigational system, check email at a stoplight, or order food en route to a destination. “Analysts at market intelligence firm IDC claim that more than a billion mobile devices will be connected to the Web by the end of 2010.” If members and casual viewers of your ministry can search your website as easily as they can navigate a social networking site like Facebook, you can organically develop your site into a thriving community portal.

2. If you’re looking for something more practical that could possibly commence as early as tomorrow, simply start a devotional text ministry. In order to opt in, members text a message to a five-digit number provided by you and every week a leader sends a brief (and I do stress brief) scripture-based text that is both thought-provoking and edifying. Prophetess Kimberly Daniels, founder of Spoken Word Ministries in Jacksonville, Fla., and spiritual mother to Super Bowl history maker, David Tyree enables her site’s visitors to type their numbers into a platform from her home page. It’s a convenient way to consistently disciple and evangelize to large groups that you previously had very little access to outside of Sunday service.

3. Organize a mobile Bible study group. Olivetree.com is an excellent site to purchase Bible software for your iPhone, Blackberry, or Android. Imagine how useful this could be to a campus pastor during midterms. Challenged with the daunting task of getting his preoccupied congregants to crack open a Bible or attend a midday prayer meeting, traditionally he’d be forced to reschedule his meetings and privately pray his studious believers through another stress-crazed season of exams and research papers. But, with this feature he could minister and encourage his members remotely. Students could read, meditate, and study the assigned scriptures on their respective cell phones as their schedules permit, which could be during a few stolen minutes on a long lunch line or during a stroll from dorm to library. And, via Skype the group could meet “face-to-face” to hear the leader expound upon the timely Word purposed for rebuking fear, invoking strength, and building faith without anyone having to leave the comfort of their studying holes.

4. Lastly, there’s “the call.” A church with a strong prayer team and the finances to furnish key people with cell phones could offer an emergency prayer hot-line. Members can be on call 24/7. This is an excellent way to serve the pariahs of your community that may never step foot into your church building. Many of these people are in desperate need of prayer, counseling and support but are isolated because they don’t have access to intercessors or ministers after five o’clock. A 24/7 cell phone ministry would enable volunteers to be on call for extended periods and reduce the need for increased staffing. For the street-dweller, preteen runaway, depressed closet alcoholic, or local suicidal pastor–this could be their only life line!

Our strategy at Broadcast faith is twofold; inreach and outreach. We believe that all external innovations within a ministry should be employed with the sole goal of affecting internal change. Let this be a year of innovation for your ministry, but more importantly, may God bless your house by bringing your congregation to deeper depths and higher heights in Him!

It’s been said that you can’t judge a book by its cover, but research from leading publisher’s suggest that the cover is critical to successful sales for a project. So sure you can’t judge a church by its building or better yet by its website… But just like people do judge a book by its cover, ministries are judged by their website.

In a growing age of critics, businesses and churches alike must be aware of the fact that everything that represents them to an eye that is unfamiliar with them provides perhaps the only opportunity for those who will quickly move on to next thing. I can attest to this, that my I observed my current church for months through their weekly live stream, read information about the pastor, and familiarized myself with their beliefs. I felt fairly confident before moving into the area and at the suggestion of a friend, that this would be the church that I joined. I tend to think that in the age where people now say ‘Google me’ that most people are using the internet in ways that far surpass our expectations. I interviewed someone the other day who knew everything about me other than my social security number.

The only church that shouldn’t be serious about the online world as an extension of its ministry is the one that is not prepared to grow. I could provide a bunch of data to support what may seem like an isolated point of view. Rather than do that, let me give you what I regard to be the qualities of a good church website.

1. Update Regularly – Most churches have events regularly; once a month, once a week etc. More often than not, you would be hard pressed to find info specific to the event. Churches that do are only in the top 10%.

2. What You Believe – Some people don’t care, but there are a whole lot of people who do. It’s important to have some sort of identity that allows potential visitors to become familiar with the teachings of your ministry.

3. Contact information and reachability – Untouchable, and your website suggests it. There are few successful companies who don’t have a customer support number or regularly manned phones. Even if your church does not have a full time staff, shouldn’t someone be in charge of getting back with people who might desire more information.

4. A Picture is Worth A Thousand Words – Warm inviting pictures help people visualize being inside of your church. A bunch of text and blocks are as welcoming as an empty warehouse with no windows.

Oftentimes in Christendom iconoclastic media ministries are deemed secularistic. Yet, these same Christians “are as immersed in digital technologies and social networks”¹ as their non-Christian counterparts. Consequently, the spiritual potential of tech tools have expanded beyond mere mass outreach and now serves to effectively engage and disciple end users 24 hrs a day, seven days a week. Whether a church is a store front ministry with less than 200 members or an international gathering via varied media outlets, both members and non-members can benefit from an ongoing stream of edifying communication.

    Companies like youversion.com, mosio.com , and eztexting.com enable congregants to use their mobile devices to text questions and offer feedback to a speaker in real time. A missionary in dire need can Skype into her home church for corporate prayer. Youth leaders can hourly IM teen members with scriptural nuggets to help them “keep their way pure” (Psalm 119:9 NIV). Preteens can now inform their youth leaders in real time about lifestyles choices made outside of the church on Gospelr , a Christian-themed Twitter analogue. While the more technically savvy congregants can memorialize snippets from

A poignant message or spiritual experience on Tangle.com, a Christian alternative to YouTube, or simply podcast the entire sermon on broadcastfaith.com.

    Evangelists and Biblical teachers no longer have to wait for an invitation to minister to a crowd, they can blog about spiritual revelations to an international audience from the comfort of their home. And, televangelists and conference leaders can use coveritlive.com, a web based Live Blogging tool, to broadcast live commentary to their readers.

If the management of it all overwhelms you, seesmic.com has created a web application that allows users to “aggregate content from other social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook,”²  making ones digital footprint look more like a proverbial walk in the park.

As a result,  the application and presentation may vary across denominations and will continue to do so as technology advances, but the church is at a point where cross-congregational digital outreach can no longer be an experimental ministry for progressive churches, but rather, an integral part of every church’s culture.

In fact, according to a recent Barna technology study: “podcasting….found a more eager audience among Christians than non-Christians…38% of evangelicals and 31% of other born again Christians had listened to a sermon or church teaching via digital recordings…, compared with 17% of other adults. In macro-terms, an enormous audience of roughly 45 million Americans reports going digital to acquire church sermon and teaching content. In all, one out of every four adults – 23% – said they downloaded a church podcast in the past week.”

      Thus, proving that the marriage of technology and ministry is the call of the future!

  ¹ http://www.barna.org/barna-update/article/14-media/36-barna-technology-study-social-networking-online-entertainment-and-church-podcasts

² ^ http://www.centernetworks.com/seesmic-relaunches-website-video-service-bottom