The State of the Church Online – Part II Church Websites & Usage

Posted by D. Goodmanson on Feb 13, 2009 in Church, Church Technology, Church Websites, Ekklesia, General Technology, Monk Dev | 1 comment

• How effective is your church website?
• Are regulars coming back frequently?
• Are you gathering new people? If not, who is visiting your website?
• Why are they visiting?
• Where are these visitors coming from?
• Church website designs have improved greatly over the last few years but are the designs created for the right online visitors?

Church website designs have improved greatly over the last few years but are the designs created for the right online visitors? You are invited to participate in ‘The State of the Church Online – Part II Church Websites & Usage ‘ survey. This survey will examine 50-100 church website analytics to find the trends, benchmarks and case studies for excellence as it relates to church website design and usage.

Would you like to submit your church to participate? We ask that you have Google Analytics set-up on your site for at least 3-months, preferably a year. We will ask participating churches to send a quick survey to their members. Make sure either you are the contact person or you can provide the person who can send church members a quick survey regarding their usage of the church website?

In addition to this survey you can also participate in The State of the Church Online – Part I Social & Community Networks survey. Our prayer is that these studies help bring clarity and guidance for churches to pursue excellence online to the glory of God.

Link: The State of the Church Online – Part II Church Websites & Usage

EDIT: Saw DJ Chuang’s better layout on the Church Website survey.

Kaleo is hiring an Operations Person

Posted by D. Goodmanson on Feb 3, 2009 in Church | 3 comments

Kaleo Church seeks a person to join our team overseeing operations and assisting the current staff. Here is the information on the operations role.

The State of the Church Online – Part I Social & Community Networks

Posted by D. Goodmanson on Jan 27, 2009 in Church, General Technology | 0 comments

Are churches using the internet to gather, disciple and build community? In the last couple years a number of new private church community networks have been launched in addition to numerous social networking sites. We are still very early on in understanding what churches are doing effectively online. You are invited to participate in this first survey of several that examine the State of the Church Online. This survey in particular begins by examining what churches are doing with social and community networks. How pervasive are the use of these web applications? Future surveys will expand to examine what Christians are doing with social networks, how churches are using their websites and other online strategies. Our prayer is that these studies help bring clarity and guidance for churches to pursue excellence online to the glory of God.

This survey is being led by Kevin Ring. Kevin brings years of experience from Bainbridge Consulting leading qualitative research projects – designing and executing customer/competitive research and analysis across multiple industries, focused on Fortune 500 companies including Google, Yahoo!, Citibank, Hewitt Associates, Gallup, Bank of America and others.

Click Here to take survey

Eldering in a Decentralized Movement

Posted by D. Goodmanson on Jan 19, 2009 in Church, Church Planting, Leadership, Ministry Design | 11 comments

Kaleo Church began with a vision of preaching the Word and gathering people to be on mission to the world. Originally our dream amounted to being the ‘Mars Hill’ of San Diego, where I had come from and the church that planted us. For a variety of reasons this vision shifted as we saw the tensions of growing one large service here in San Diego. It was through the influence of Harbor Presbyterian we felt gospel-motivated to change our vision to become a multi-site church planting movement with elders preaching the Word at each location. We felt smaller bodies of people gathering together made more sense. It allowed a more intimate community, contextualization, greater volunteering, and participation and a wider presence throughout the city as we started new sites. At this time we took a group of people and started a second site at the San Diego State University campus. Kaleo now was a multi-site church with two service locations in San Diego. In this new model we envisioned elders would primarily live out their ‘eldering’ in a specific site. As we began plans for a third site several elders were to go with the new location.

Through prayer and through a process of re-imagining what forms of church would best assist the forward progress of the gospel the vision of Kaleo shifted a second time. Kaleo, with the influence of Total Church and our friendship with Soma Communities began to examine how believers could ‘live out the gospel’ centered on the Word in community on mission to the world. It was at this time we disbanded the few Bible Studies meeting mid-week throughout the city and began forming ‘Missional Communities’. As this process has taken place we now have Missional Communities throughout the county of San Diego some have been a half-hour North or East of San Diego but at each one 8-30 people gather throughout the week to share their lives one-to-another, to be on mission and to grow in their gospel understanding. The primary ethos of ‘being the church’ is now in the small home gatherings throughout the week that gather together with other Missional Communities on Sunday’s for a celebration service.

In this shift the role and responsibilities of the Elders had to change. How should an elder express his role in the decentralized life of Missional Communities?

Here is our beginning thoughts: (click on below image for larger view)

An elder primarily expresses his role through the oversight in the life of a local community. This is done as follows: (~20-60 people)
• Overseeing 2-3 Missional Communities.
• Being on mission and teaching people how to live missionally.
• Counseling people
• Teaching
• Active discipleship of leaders who lead MC and other areas.
• Leading people in prayer
• Ensuring mercy ministries are occurring locally and that people are meeting needs of the church community.
• Being active in the marriage, funerals, baptisms, teaching of sacraments and baby covenant service of your local community.
• Conducting new member interviews for those in their area.
• Demonstrating hospitality and encouraging others to be hospitable.
• Visiting people, following-up when people seem to be missing.

An Elder secondarily expresses his role through a local site:
• Regular attendance at the weekly site gathering.
• Serving communion at the site gathering.
‚Ä¢ Ensuring the needs of those who attend the ‘service’ but are not part of a MC are met.

Lastly, Elders also are committed to the vision of the movement and are involved in helping the corporate body.
• Lead the movement in one ‘cause’ area. (Eg. Apologetics class, Premarital Class, Site Director)
‚Ä¢ Attend regular movement-wide elder meetings and elder/deacon meetings. Kaleo recognizes this role requires a tremendous commitment to meet with people, build relationships, answer emails, phone calls, visiting people, attending meetings and functions. The role of elder requires the flexibility and time to invest in these things. It is because of the primary focus of being involved in the life of local MC’s that Elders have the option to opt-out of these movement meetings but can attend at any time to provide their input.

2009 Technology & Church Planting Conferences Roadmap

Posted by D. Goodmanson on Jan 8, 2009 in Church, Church Planting, Church Technology, Ekklesia, General Technology, Leadership, Ministry Design, Monk Dev | 3 comments

Here are a few good conferences coming up that are on my roadmap:

[REVISED 5/11]

National Religious Broadcasters Convention & Exposition (February 7-10 Nashville, TN) The NRB annual Convention & Exposition is the largest nationally and internationally recognized event dedicated solely to assist those in the field of Christian communications. This international event networks thousands of Christian communicators, from program producers to authors, pastors to engineers, directors to vendors. NRB’s professionals emphasize strategy and innovation to tap the power of new media ministry models. The dynamic Exposition consists of over 300 companies and is an active marketplace for those seeking tools and services to expand their ministries.

The Idea Camp (February 27-28 Irvine CA) The Idea Camp is a FREE, open source hybrid conference designed to help people move from the realm of ideas to implementation. We are gathering some of the most innovative and creative leaders from around the country (this means YOU!) to share ideas, intentionally network, and move collaboratively into idea-making. Whether your passion is church leadership, non-profit work, social entrepreneurialism, technology, media, creativity, culture making, church planting, spiritual formation, compassionate justice, etc., this is the conference for YOU. Session:

• Church Planting

BibleTech:2009 (March 27-28 Seattle, Washington) Join us to explore the intersection of Bible study and technology. This two-day conference is designed for publishers, programmers, webmasters, educators, bloggers and anyone interested in using technology to improve Bible study. BibleTech 2009 is an opportunity to meet others who share your interests and hear from industry leaders. Session:

• Content Distribution Strategies: Getting the word out online

Christian Leadership Alliance Conference (April 20-22 Atlanta, Georgia) offers Biblically based fundraising and stewardship courses for leaders of Christian nonprofit organizations. Session:

• Leading Website Development

Catalyst West Coast (April 22-24 Irvine, CA.) a conference to inspire the next generation of leader.

National New Churches Conference (April 20-23 Orlando, Florida) Come and learn with us… as we experience the stories of those who are in the middle of movements… as we discover what God is “up to” around the globe and what He wants to do through us.

• Using the Internet to Gather, Disciple and Create Community
• Websites, Technology and Church Planting

Acts 29 Bootcamp (May 5-7 San Diego, CA) Kaleo will host a Boot Camp beginning May 5th of 2009. Are you considering planting a church? Are you ready? The Acts 29 Boot Camp can help make the difference between success and casualty. Speakers for this event will include Mark Driscoll, David Fairchild, Scott Thomas and many more.

Echo Church Media Conference (July 29 Р31 Dallas, TX) The ECHO Conference will challenge and inspire the way you do ministry. ECHO will encompass all things media – visual, web, music, technology – and hopes to resound the truth of Christ through the power of media and technology. It will be a gathering place for church leaders to discover new and creative forms and uses of media. Engage in a community of creative believers seeking to change the world through the use of media and technology that communicates the truth of Christ.

• The Truth about Church Websites and Effective Online Outreach
• Beyond the Web 2.0 Noise: How to use the Internet to Disciple & Create Real Community

Christian Web Conference 09 (September 11-12 La Mirada, CA)

• What does the Gospel have to do with Social Media?

Cultivate October 27 Chicago, Illinois)

• Session on Web Strategy

STORY – Gospel Communication October 28-29 Chicago, Illinois)

• Workshop on Social Media, Web & the Church

National Outreach Conference (November 4-6 San Diego, CA)

• Leveraging the Internet to Gather, Disciple and Create Community

Creating a Philosophy of Ministry

Posted by D. Goodmanson on Dec 4, 2008 in Church, Church Planting, Ministry Design, Sermon, Teaching | 8 comments

Tim Cain is part of the Kaleo Movement. This last year he and his wife journeyed to Bethlehem Baptist to be the church planting intern at John Piper’s church. While he was there he has had the opportunity to plan a church plant and lay out what that will look like when he returns to San Diego. A lot of this writing includes material from Total Church, our conversations, Tim’s convictions and what Kaleo envisions for new church plants.

Tim’s Philosophy of Ministry document includes items such as:

- Building a ministry that reflects three expressions of being the church.
- Core theological convictions that shape the people.
- The practices and life behaviors of the community.
- Mission, Gospel & Community interactions.

Philosophy of Ministry (pdf)

Aside: If you’d like to connect with Tim drop a comment with your email and I’ll forward it on to him.