miletwo::network

Church Marketing Sucks made an excellent point today that just because you’re a small church and light on cash doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be able to use technology to your advantage.  There are a ton of free tools out there to help you run your web site and online marketing campaigns.  I think though, that the question should also be asked; do big churches use expensive technology just because they have the money, or do the pay-for software tools actually work better than their open source counterparts?  I’m not convinced.

Continuing our series on applying the principles learned from Andy Stanley’s book titled Communicating for a Change to church web development projects, we come to this section titled Internalize the Message. What do you think it means to internalize the message? To borrow from the underlying theme of this site, which is church marketing, you have to first believe the message before you can communicate the message and you pretty much have to know what you’re going to say before you start to speak.

I’m a little late in getting this out, but this installment in the series is probably one of the most important. Think for a moment with me if you will; if you plan to take a trip somewhere you’ve never been before and it’s far away… I mean FAR AWAY. How do you go about finding your way? Obviously a map comes in handy in these cases. Now after plotting your path and figuring out how you’re going to get there do you just jump in the car and go? Umm… hello, how about a change of clothes and a toothbrush?

A while back I read through Andy Stanley’s book Communicating for a Change and found it to be a profound look at the process of communicating truth from the pulpit. As a teaching pastor at miletwo::church I met regularly with the rest of the pastoral board discussing the thought processes presented in this book and how we could apply it in our messages; the goal being more effective communication of truth in a world where competition for the minds and thoughts of church members is so fierce. This has caused me to realize that there are many truths from Communicating for a Change to be applied to a church web project. After all, communicating online and communicating from a pulpit are both still communicating (forgive the gross oversimplification for a bit).