miletwo::network

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.

The boys at CreativeMYK have done it again. They have long been a favorite go to spot of mine for free church graphics and free Christian photos but now they’ve gone crazy and jumped on the Web 2.0 bandwagon, sporting new social networking features like discussions, ratings, and critiques of artists work.

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?

Much confusion exists in online marketing circles on the value of social networking tools, sites, blogs, yada, yada, yada… which begs the question, “How do you build community?” Seriously. So, the social scientist quadrant of my brain takes over and I begin to digg into this deli.icio.us question and see what the rest of the online community has to say. I’m sure if the information is out there, by now I must have reddit.

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).