WHERE I AM

If you'll allow me, I'd like to continue where I left off with the last "Where I Am" post. I talked a bit about the worship and tech side of Bethel - the strides we're making, challenges we're facing, lessons we're learning.

But the other aspect of my job relates to communication. Here are a couple of things we've done so far that seem to be helping communication.

1. ANNOUNCEMENTS ON SCREEN
When I got here, Bethel didn't run any sort of welcome or informational slides as folks come into church. While you certainly can't trust this as your only means of communication, I believe it helps...often a slide will provide just enough info and interest to prompt someone to find a staff member to get more info about plugging into ministry. In the near future, Bethel will be installing some screens in the foyer so that the announcements can run all morning as our services are going.

2. BETHEL BLOG/FACEBOOK
By now, most of you know about the Bethel Blog. (You're subscribed, right?) We did this for a a few reasons. First off, we wanted to give our folks the chance to stay connected to the church during the week. Right now, we're doing 'staff posts' each day where a staff members can share a devotional or video or update. Eventually, these posts will also offer informational updates - sort of a "blog-announcement." This allows each staff member to get a weekly shot at getting information dispensed.

We believe that Facebook will do this for us, too. Eventually, we'd like for ministries within in the church to let us know events that they need promoted. We would then use both the blog and Facebook to do that as well.

The third aspect of the whole blog-culture that we're working on is the underground-video concept. So far, many of our videos have been only on Facebook and the blog and NOT shown in church. This may seem weird - folks may think, "That's a good idea...share it everywhere!"

We understand that point, but we would prefer that these videos have 'treasure quality.' For me, 'treasure quality' describes how viewers/readers feel when the see a new post - this is the experience of feeling that you've discovered something. For Bethel folks, it's also a cool culture to create - that folks on the blog or on Facebook are connected to something cool and surprising.

At some point, we might seperate the blog and the Facebook page to where one is more relational and another is more informational, but right now we're trying to experiment to see what works and what doesn't.

* But communication is not without it's challenges. Our next two projects will involve a revamp of the church website and some reformatting of our weekly church bulletin. The website project will definitely be a big team effort as I know very little about building sites.

And that's...where I am!