Media Outreach

“The Intersection” is a new series where we talk with pastors that are at intersecting faith, culture and technology. Our desire is to pass along not only what they are doing but how they are doing it – so that you can see if it would work for you.

I met Pastor Les a few years ago when his church was looking to step out of a template site that wasn’t meeting their needs. He decided to allow faithHighway to create a custom website that would help him reach his online goals.

Over the course of the years we have spent several hours, tweets and emails getting to know each other better. Les loves Jesus and love the Church, I can honestly say that Les is the real deal. He also loves to use technology to reach his city for Jesus.

Les can you give me some background about the church and how long have you been there ?

We are a non-denominational church in the heart of downtown Oshawa, Ontario, Canada, and our lead pastors are Frank and Chris Seixas. We began as a church plant in 1991 with 17 people, and have since grown to a weekly attendance of 400, with two Sunday services. Our mission is “to love God, love people, make disciples, and make a difference.” We have a one year internship program, and we actively support missions in Cambodia, Zimbabwe, Brazil and Canada. We have about 40 small groups for every age, including children, and we just had Wacky World Studios redesign an exciting space for our children’s ministry. For the last couple of years, we have been working hard at excellence and community outreach. Our goal for this year is to add either another service or campus in a nearby community.

How are you using your website to increase member involvement ?

Well, the flash gallery and calendar do a good job of communicating upcoming events, and we have created a guide of ministry opportunities for download, etc. But the bulk of this happens beyond our website, where we build community through blogs (www.frankseixas.com , www.leslamb.ca , www.philjean.ca ) that promote discussion (sometimes quite lively discussion!), an online newsletter and surveys, social media sites like facebook, etc. Each of these things are helpful tools that add another facet to our online ministry.

How has the use of technology changed the way you do church ?

Frankly, it’s added a lot more work. It takes a lot more time and effort, for example, to create a quality video to do your announcements than it does to just get the microphone on Sunday morning and do it verbally. But it’s worth it, because it extends your reach and impact. We’re easier to find, and more people are contacting us online before they visit the church than ever. This week, I got contacted by an agnostic who was raised by atheists. He’s looking for God, and doesn’t know where to start. So he googled “Oshawa Churches,” and ours was the first one he saw. He watched one of our messages, and emailed me. Soon, we’re going for coffee to talk about Christ, and he’s rearranging his work schedule to come on Sunday mornings.

How are you using media to communicate your message ?

We publish a weekly news video that is displayed in our services and posted online. Video and audio recordings are uploaded weekly, and we have two podcasts, one for youth/young adults, one for Sunday services. When something fun happens, we try to record and upload it to our youtube channel. I’ve created flickr and facebook pages for our members to upload photos of events and keep in touch. And of course, we blog, which I consider another form of media.

In January, I created on anonymous online survey and sent it out to 1, 280 people through our email system. Many of them no longer attend the church, or had only visited a few times. Realizing most people never tell you the real reason they didn’t stay, we wanted to really listen to what they had to tell us. We got 114 responses, and 520 individual comments, from both current and ex-members, in 7 days. I compiled a report and took it to our staff for discussion. Now I’m blogging about the results in a series. Further discussion is now happening as I post the anonymous comments and respond to them. It’s given us an opportunity to help people understand where we’re coming from, to let them know we care about what they have to say, and to tell them what we’re doing about it, where applicable. On non-negotiables, it also gives us a chance to explain what we’re not going to change, and to provide a reason why.

This has been invaluable in helping our church community process all the changes we’ve made in a short space of time, and it’s given us a transparent way to reach out to those who may be struggling with that. Here’s a link to one such post, so you can see what I mean.

Blogs do something that no other medium can do. If I can recommend a good resource, “The Blogging Church”, by Brian Bailey and Terry Storch is what turned me on to this, and I think every church leader should read it. Before I read that, I thought blogging was just a time waster. Now I’d never go back.

How has the use of technology helped your ministry change lives ?

Of course, it is Christ who changes lives, but I see technology as a tremendous tool to communicate Him. Recently, I began setting up our discipleship courses online. People who can’t take them in-house can now login, download the handouts & watch all 10 classes for each course. Last month, a friend connected me with another friend on Facebook, and I had the privilege of introducing him to Jesus on the phone. Because he lives far away and is only now looking for a church, I gave him a login to do our courses online, so he’s getting some good teaching. Our Sunday messages are listened to around the world, and I’ve worked hard to improve our SEO to get us to number one on google, so people can find us easily.

If you were the Chief Technology Czar for churches, what would be your recommendations ?

In 2009, going to where people are means going online. Having an effective online ministry means diversifying. Different tools do different things. Websites are passive things people have to go to; newsletters, broadcast emails, etc. are active things that take your message to them. So do both. Blog, and never underestimate the growing power of social media. Things like social media and blogs are really just conversations. And the conversation is going on whether you join it or not. I’m planning on doing a blog post soon on how social media is changing the church, because the longer I use that medium, the more I realize it is changing the way things work. And I don’t want us to be left behind.

I would also encourage church leaders to invest in technology and in the staff to use it effectively. It is not frivolous to spend money on tech, provided it’s done well. One church that really inspires me this way is Granger Community Church in Granger, Indiana. If you have time, check out their website at www.gccwired.com. They are years ahead of us, and I would say they’re one church that really “gets it.”

Les thank you for sharing what is working for you !

You can find Les at his blog
www.leslamb.ca
Or his twitter
Leslamb

pic by Kiddi Kristjans