Telling Connections

Who'd Have 'Thunk'?

My favorite television program on Saturday during my early teen years was "Game of the Week." If I remember correctly it was on NBC. One reason that it was my favorite was the colorful descriptions and stories of past baseball players by the broadcasters Peewee Reese, Curt Gowdy Sr, and Dizzy Dean. I remember one remarkable discussion following one player's stealing of third base. Dizzy used the words, "he slud into third." Gowdy's reaction: "You mean slid, don't you." Dizzy responded by saying his "slud" came from slide, slud, just like sing, sung. 

Dizzy wasn't the best grammarian, but he was colorful. His descriptions and his stories attracted and engaged those watching.

People, young and old, are always looking for this type of engagement in worship services. When it is not there their spirit's sense a boredom, irrelevancy, and gloom. Yet, worship is a time of accepting and participating in God's invitation to be present. Wonders! Miracles! Stories of God's work! Sensing God's presence!

Area III of the ABC Great Rivers Region have invited and scheduled Len Wilson and Jason Moore of Midnight Oil Productions to share a seminar on Creative Worship.  This seminar will be hosted by First Baptist Church of Peoria IL on March 8, 2008. This seminar is not purposed to demonstrate technology, but to engage us in better facilitating worship of our God through intentionally designing and implementing worship services. "Creative" Worship is meant to stretch us to use verbal, audio, visual, and even kinesthetic cues to engage worshippers...to take the metaphors of this age, redeem them, and use them to witness to God's work in Jesus Christ.

Whether or not you choose to register and participate in this seminar, ask yourself "What can I do to help our worship service better engage people of all ages and offer them a "holy and safe place" pregnant with the opportunity to encounter God?"

A Web Editor's Christmas List

Here it is:

1. The site honors God
2. It serves users' needs
3. Users are learning
4. The server is ALWAYS up.
5. Broken links automatically repaired
6. Sites linked to are always up-to-date
7. Adobe reduces price on its software
8. RSS Scrapers (automatically generates news feeds from site) more user friendly
9. PDFs submitted for posting never exceed 250 kb.
10. Image compression software more efficient (better quality for less size).
11. Navigation systems with less bulk (to not eat up screen real estate).

Some of these reflect frustration; some of these reflect my life's purpose. But all of these are familiar to all of us who plan, authorize, design, publish, and edit web sites.

Blessed and Wonderful Christmas

webmaster

Help Others Stay Up-to-Date with Your Web Site

Your web site is one in a billion. It may be that good, but it is for sure just one in a vast ocean of web sites and blogs available for people to use.

Your web editor may be very diligent in keeping your site up-to-date. However, the number of people who are using your site may be going down. Does that mean that your site is not needed? Not necessarily. It may be that your users have started to become dependent upon notifications that something on your site has changed.

That notification is more and more being done through RSS feeds. RSS is a way of helping those who want to keep up with news and stories on many different blogs and now more and more web sites. In fact some writers are urging that all web sites publish an RSS feed. You've seen on web sites those little orange symbols with white concentric arcs depicting broadcoasting action. (They may have the letters RSS, XML, or ATOM on them, too.)

If you have your blog or web pages of your site to automatically "feed out" (or using an rss scraper or manual publishing) that you have a new article on the web page then when you upload that page to your web hosting service computer a summary notice of the headline and a first few words of the story will be sent out (syndicated) to those who use software that keeps them informed of new news. This software is called news aggregators or readers.

The reason these are used more and more is that people do not have to navigate to your site and study it to see if there is something new on it. They have it "fed" to them. Then they can go and find it quickly through the link provided by their news reader.  Now people can feed their information addiction by keeping up with tens if not hundreds of sites and blogs instead of a few.

The most recent editions of Internet Explorer, Opera, Firefox, and Safari all offer the opportunity to make a link to these automatic "feeds" of news.  A full service freebie that I use is Sharp Reader.

This trend to peruse RSS feeds before looking at web sites underscores the need for web sites to be current and fresh.

Do People Know Your Church Has a Web Site?

"O the weather outside is frightful..." Freezing rain. The township plow just past spreading some sand and salt. The driver was going all of 5 miles per hour.

Frightful is also the experience of wondering if anyone is using that wonderful site your church just posted. How can your church staff increase the chance that it is.

First, do all the active members of your church know that your church has one and how to get to it?
Include the address of the church site in the bulletin each Sunday. Also include the e-mail address.

Second, do all inactive members and friends of the church know? Include the web address of your church's site in the masthead of your church's newsletter and in the masthead or footer of your church's official stationery.

Third, do other churches know that you have the site? Make sure that the community chamber of commerce web authors have your address in their church listings.

Fourth, does your greater Church family know? For churches who are affiliated with the ABC Great Rivers Region, please forward your church's web site address to Candy Stivers. She will make sure that it is included in your church's contact information in the GRR's Directory of Churches.

Fifth, does the world know? There are many strategies for this. One that has worked for the ABC GRR, especially to be highly ranked in Google, is to develop a specialty page of specific information (not of a private nature) or special interest. If you "Google" on "advantages of pdf" Google will list the ABC GRR as one of the top listings. The Staff of the GRR developed a page of information explaining why the Staff chose it as the default format for web documents and e-mail attachments. This quickly morphed to suggesting ways to get less expensive software so that churches who could not see their way to affording Adobe's Full Acrobat Program could find alternative ways to convert documents to this format. So many people around the world have used this page - with the ABC GRR masthead - that it is consistently ranked as one of the top pages when "pdf advantages" or similar terms are used in a Google search.

There are many other ways. Don't immediately go for offers to get the word out about your site for a fee. There are other ways that do not require payment. The ABC GRR has never paid for getting the word out. The President of the GRR auxilary American Baptist Women's Ministries made up business card-like ads and gave them out with her organizations web address.

Dr. Ralph F. Wilson, E-Commerce Consultant in Web Marketing Today, June 14,  2006 lists and explains 32 ways to get the word out.

The best way will always be word of mouth. What motivates word of mouth but a consistently better and useful site. Work towards excellence in design and substance and people will find your site. Use the strategies written and referred to above and people will find what a few now know.

Better Serve Others with Your Web Page

Many church members begin their web ministry efforts with great excitement. But, after awhile, this initial fun gives way to work.

Golfers have heard, "Drive for show. Putt for dough [as in $]." Long and accurate drives off the tee are exciting to watch and very satisfying to hit. I have had that feeling about 3 times in 30 years of golfing. But, the real satisfaction comes to golfers when they can chip and/or putt accurately enough to have a chance to score par or better. This takes a disciplined approach of studying the lay and speed of the green, imaging the completed shot/putt, and a near perfect stroking of the ball with the club. Not just once, but every with every tee,  fairway, rough, and green of each hole (in my case around 90 strokes) demands this attention.

Web sites and their pages require the same disciplined attention. Instead of different clubs, webmasters use different software programs to post what will be winners for those who use their sites. This means that webmasters need to be able to use not only web page editors but also image, audio, video, word processing, and file transfer software. These need to be used not just once but with each weekly update.

As I surf church web sites, I learn a great deal. I even use some of these in the ABC/GRR pages. Sometimes what I learn is a challenge to me not to repeat the same mistake. Here is a list of what I have found can be done better by all of us.

• Update the home page at least once per week. (Lack of this is the most often voiced reason that users do not return. Having a web team helps by providing more to share the work.)
• Adjust the size of images and graphics to allow quick downloads. (Resizing the images dimensions does not do this. Resample (go from camera resolution to web resolution of 72 dpi), not resize.
• Ask yourself, if I had limited eyesight, could I use this sight?
• Walls of Words. Allow your eyes to de-focus on your page(s). Do you see large grey squares (composed of the words of paragraphs? Learn to write short sentences; short paragraphs.
• Does your page have enough graphics and images?
• Does your page have too many graphics and images?
• Can a person not familiar with your sight find what you want them to find quickly?
• Is there something waiting for your user with each step in the menu navigation?
• Can a person with a slower dialup connection use this page without frustration, or should you provide another page that is smaller - without most of the graphics and images.

Here are two resources to help you on these issues and more.

First, Ginny Redish's Letting Go of the Words is an excellent manual - nearly all inclusive - that I believe all webmasters should have next to their computers.

Second, the web tech section of the ABC GRR web site has many articles and how-tos. These are mostly short writings that also list additional helpful resources.

How Your Website Can Be the Best It Can Be

I have been learning a lot from the web sites of the churches of the Great Rivers Region. I appreciate the creativity and innovation of many who are using this tool for ministry. My learnings have been posted on the home page of the GRR web site in the form of series of articles of how churches are using this tool.

As I investigate these sites I have noticed clues that some of these are - or were - maintained by only one person. Many times this is the pastor.  Some have refused to have a web site because of this. Others have thought that contracting with a company to design and maintain your web site costs too much. I agree. I once priced what it would cost the GRR to have one designed and maintained with the number of pages and features we have. The cost was guestimated as in the thousands of dollars. You don't have to spend the money to have a good site, but you do need to spend the time learning and training those called by God from your congregation to do so.

Otherwise, there are missed opportunities. Many minds in collaboration make for a better web site. A web design and maintenance team also lessens the chance that a church's web site will get out of date. One single person does not have enough time to do it all from designing to testing to posting. But, if several people construct a schedule, then it can be done and done well.

Recruit and train a team to do it. Yes, there will need to be one team leader. That might be you, but even if it is, you can turn this into a discipling, even small group growth opportunity.

For example, though I am the team leader of the web technologies for the GRR, there are several staff members who help maintain the site. I may explore and test additions to the site and make sure that the site is "up" as often as is possible, but the church directory, area news, ab men, ab women, and many other divisions are maintained by others. If it takes me longer than 10 minutes per day to maintain a part of the site, I look for another to help out. For instance posting the Mainstream and posting Dr. Stinnett's Current Thoughts each take less than 10 minutes to convert to pdf, upload, and update the index pages for each.

The best service you can do for all those who would use your site is to have it up-to-date. Have your team member(s) change something on the home page at least once per week.

Design it so that the opening page is about what is happening now. Put the listing of sermons to be preached or available as downloads on another page. Put the church history on another page. Put links to these on the home page of your site.

What's the condition of your church's web site today. What can you do to make sure that it is updated before next week?

Communication's Cancer

Cancer. The word evokes fear, grief, helplessness, and hopelessness. I have had my mother, mother-in-law, niece and many other loved-ones die of cancer.

What many may not know about cancer is that this evil is actually the the results of, as a friend has described, "good cells run ammuck." When good cells continue to grow uncontrollably their growth becomes lethal to the rest of the systems of the body and eventually to the body itself.

Our communications can become cancerous. Good words can run ammuck. Words inappropriately timed, excessively stated, or targeted without discerning the audience are cancerous to our ongoing communication.

There is a less complex word for this: "Defensiveness."

Again, I quote from Naked Conversations by Scoble and Israel,

  "Whenever you are accused of doing something wrong, don't fight back - at least not at first. Listen, listen, listen. Try to get into the other person's shoes. Try to understand why he or she is angry with you before reacting. Always learn something from the interchange, even if you get fired. Don't go dark [withdraw], either. Over-communicate with everyone around you during a crisis. Say you're sorry if it turns out you were wrong. Mean it. If you were right, be respectful and as humble as absolutely possible. Give the other person a way to win, even if he or she is wrong. It's always best to see another day." (p. 195)

The authors are writing about blogging. But, blogging is a form of communication.

In the early moments or days of your being criticized, your natural reaction of offering explanations of why you have done or said something that now has you in trouble, are not heard as attempts to continue communication or start a dialog on a subject, but as a way that you are trying to rationalize your behavior. Your words may find an audience much later, but at first they are only heard as "I am not the one in the wrong here. You are." In short, you are defending yourself. You will either escalate the criticism or find others give up on you as recalcitrant - unwilling to even consider for good or bad, their words and your words and actions that brought you to this place.

Your words, the cells of communication, have become damaging to the whole body of communication and relationship. Defensiveness will eventually destroy relationships.

What has helped me in dealing with the sting and hits of criticism - hurt cannot not be present - is to re-frame the criticism as analysis. The word "criticism" has become so loaded down with baggage - mostly negative and destructive. When I do this I am more likely to enter into a conversation with the critic and coaching my critic so that I can learn.

But, I cannot learn anything or deal positively with the criticism until I take Scoble's and Israel's directive to heart and do it: Listen, listen, listen.

When you are clear of that last season of criticism and are healing; and before you get hit again, explore the possibility of learning to be a better listener. I would suggest the seminar on listening strategies by John Savage. Give me a call or send me an e-mail, I would love to be able to tell you about it. It is what has helped me tremendously.

Beginner's Blues

Back in 1987, I purchased my first computer. It was a cutting edge laptop computer - not even a "luggable." It was a Zenith with two 3.5" drives (one for the program disc, one for writing the data files), a great mono screen. It would even work with a mouse. No hard drive, but then I had not heard of such a thing.

I turned my attention to learning the basics of DOS and then MS Word. Once I did, I ordered an Epson NLQ dot matrix 24 pin printer. It took a while to configure it, but once I did I was off and running.

So far, except for configuring the drives to be able to print out the documents, this was very exciting. However, the blues quickly set in because I went over the top in my excitement about this new tool.

First, there was the bulletin. I found that I could change the default font by making it bold or italic or both. I thought this would prove useful in stressing some important dates and events listed in the worship bulletin. This was fine until a person I respected very much told me that I had overdone it. He was right. When most were put in bold, the eye was distracted from what should have been emphasized.

Next, there was that large amount of time that I chose to use to learn programs such as DBase III+ and Lotus 1 2 3. I look back now and kid my wife and tell her I had made her a computer widow at the time. I chose to get my office and visiting work done, but would spend time late into the nights at home reading manuals and trying these out. Looking back is less painful than it was at the time, at least relationship wise.

Then there were the times when I learned "best practices" of computer use the hard way. The first time I prepared my income taxes using Lotus 1 2 3, I had been working on that laptop for some 3 hours setting up the interactive spreadsheet to dynamically change as I updated figures. I was so into this that when my daughter toddled into the study and reached up for me to pick her up and set her in my lap, I had felt "must I?" Yet, I did. But I had forgotten to save my work. She was so fascinated with all those keyboard buttons... All I can say is that putting together the dynamic spreadsheet went more quickly the second time.

I read today the following in Naked Conversations by Scoble and Israel.

   "Blogging has lots of advantages. Lots of people can get to know you with a minimal amount of effort on either side. But, when push comes to shove, it's no way to build a deep relationship. If the only way people know you is through your blog, you become one-dimensional. There's a reason why industry conferences and trade shows are still well attended. Nothing beats face-to-face meetings. They are certainly more intimate and memorable than meeting through a grid of pixels on a computer screen"
(p 179).

Beginner's Blues refers to the forced learning of better using tech tools. It is found in both using the newly discovered tool for everything you do AND spending most of your time using the tool.

Be careful. When your personal relationships with people in the church are difficult, it is often easier to retreat to your office and use the computer. When people offer criticism as to how you use it or kid you about playing with your new toy, you may become defensive and not listen and learn.

Pray for discipline in the use of this tool. Spend the time to use it. It is a valuable tool and can help you in your ministry, but it is one of many tools that you need to use.

Getting out and mixing with people in visitations, making phone calls, participating in socials, preparing for meetings, and attending community events are also tools of ministry. Don't ignore them.

Why Many Pastors Hate E-mail

"You don't want to know."

Ever hear those words during a conversation when someone mentions that a person has criticized you or something/someone you are loyally committed to and you have asked, "What did he say?" By not telling you, the person you ask is trying to spare you the emotional "hit" and perhaps, trying to rescue the relationship you may have with the person saying such harsh things.

There are few places where comments to people can be as filled with poison and crudeness as they can be in an e-mail. Add to that our expectations that church people are, or ought to be, gracious. Now, you are set up for not just emotional "hits" but mushroom cloud explosions in your soul.  And, worst of all is the oft-repeated practice of these e-mails not being signed.

In the first church I served, long before e-mail was available to anybody but huge corporations, I received such a letter. In this case it was signed. I knew the person. This person had become a member of the church I was pastoring. Yet, the content was in no way encouraging a healthy relationship. It was one line after another of comparing me with another pastor - personally and professionally. One phrase after another lifted the other pastor up on a pedestal and put me in Gehenna. This other pastor was not a predecessor of mine, but a pastor of another church in the community.

After beating myself up for awhile, my wife suggested that the church I pastored and I myself would best be served if I shared the letter with the Diaconate. I did. They listened to my anxiety and hurt. They encouraged me. Then they sent two of the Deacons to explore with the author of the letter what might be at the center of such comments. Finding no un-addressed affront by me, the Deacons admonished this person and suggested that this person leave the church in favor of joining the church whose pastor this person admired.

If only anonymous e-mails could be handled like this! They sting. Pastors have hearts that are particularly vulnerable. That's what helps them to be good pastors.

When we receive criticism it is difficult to distinguish whether the words are legitimate calls for growth on our part, calls for help on the part of the authors, a satanic dart to destroy, or a call for growth or for help used by the enemy to destroy. Many times we are set up by the amount of stress we are already dealing with consciously or unconsciously.

Before empowering the anonymous criticism by further beating yourself up or addressing it in a general way from the pulpit, blog, website, or newsletter,  pray for discernment. Describe how you are feeling about it to God. You will find some peace in this, more each day. Allow God to direct you to a person you can share this with in all confidence. (Your area minister would be glad to be that person.)

Use this occasion as a learning time. Ask yourself, "What am I learning about myself in the way I have reacted to this criticism? Is there anything here that I can use, whether the author's language was of the tone of helping or hurting, to grow?  Is this a call for help. Remember, some people will dare you to care for them before they will allow you to care for them.

There is no getting beyond the emotional "hit." There is no such thing as immediately feeling release from the pain when someone tells you with all sincerity, "Don't take it personally."

There is a choice. Grow. You cannot control the other person, but you can take steps to grow in your dependence upon God and in your fellowship with others and come out of this a stronger, better equipped servant.

What is a Web Site?

What's your web site?

• Electronic brochure about your church?
• Worship service bulletin?
• Online weekly or monthly or annual magazine about your church's mission, ministry, and people?
• Historical journal?
• Photo album?
• Billboard advertising your church?

What type of web sites do you find most useful to you? One of the types listed above? Or is there some other type of web site that attracts and holds your attention?

What is there about a site that attracts and holds your attention?

• Design
• Type of Information
• Currency of Information
• Interactivity
• Writing style
• How quickly pages appear
• Graphics and Images
• Surveys
• Sound
• Video

Would your church be served by discerning whether the type of web site you now have is meeting the needs of the those for whom you have set up your web site?

Here are two resources to help you in your discernment.

• www.useit.com
• Letting Go of the Words, Janice "Ginny" Redish

Though writing has changed in style with the online generations, that  principle that the teachers who taught us to write drilled into us should still guide us. "Write/Compose for the reader, not for ourselves."