My favorites from their list are:

WorshipHouse Media- 12 Days of Christmas.- Visit their site on the days marked with a bow on their calendar and unwrap your free gift.

Igniter Media-  Giving away a free Holly Branch Loop

Muddy River Media- All their stuff is free. They’ve got Christmas Trivia slides, music videos and more!

My additions:

Amazon.com- 25 Days of free Holiday Music- visit this site each day for a new Christmas song.

CreativeNerds.co.uk- Give your website a splash of holiday with these Social Media Christmas Icons

I’m always excited to hear that churches I work with are experimenting with live streaming because, while this is often times a financial step of faith, it indicates a desire to reach people where they are.

Last week, I visited a church website that had just added live streaming to their site. Since it was a Monday, the live stream page obviously didn’t have a service playing. Instead, it was their church logo.  Because of the free streaming service they use, an advertisement played.

The first word out of the actor’s mouth in this ad said the “B” word.  I was totally taken back. I know this church has no control over the advertisements.  They may even be embarrassed to hear about it.

When our church launched the website back in January, we experienced something similar. To ensure that our site had multimedia on every page, we embedded a few YouTube videos.  It was a cute stop-motion video of a little toy pig on the Children’s Ministry page.

Following the completion of the video on the page, the list of “related videos” displayed on the page. What, you ask, did it advertise? None other than a documentary of the dissection of a pig. It was grotesque and disgusting. Most of us have had to do something like this in our middle school or high school years, but we would never want to scare a kiddo, you know?  It took us all of 5 minutes to take the video off the website.

With the church always looking to be good stewards of its funds, where do we draw the line?  Is free worth it?  Do you see a problem with ads like this being displayed on your church website? While we are trying to reach a generation in the midst of their culture, where is the boundary of remaining above reproach?

I really believe it could be argued either way!  Let’s see if we can get a general consensus here… Vote below.  Does it matter what is advertised on your website following a free streaming occurrence? Yes or No?  Explanations welcomed.

Photo By: jking89

pic by webtreats

Today, Greg gives some tips on how to set up and communicate guidelines for your staff & leaders when using Social networks such as Twitter & Facebook.

pic by Anne Helmond

Today, Greg talks about many of the mistakes churches make in their welcome videos. If not planned properly, a welcome video can turn prospective visitors away from our churches. By planning ahead and loosening up, we can greatly increase the chance for making a successful welcome video.

pic by falln_angel

Greg talks about why not all websites fit on all monitors.

pic by totalAldo

Here are a few ideas that you can use to help tell your churches story online.

1. Have a good story to tell – if you aren’t doing anything as a church why are you in existence ? Find out why you exist and do something !
2. Welcome video from your pastor – people connect
3. Testimony videos from people that go to your church – this is amazing !
4. Update your website with pictures and videos from the outreaches you are apart of
5. Tweet praise reports and prayer requests throughout the day
6. Create videos – like the one above – that serve as memorials to what God did over a certain season in the life of your church
7. Give people in your church “permission” to tell your story and ask them to come up with creative ideas todo so

What are some other ways you can tell your story well online ?

pic by martin kingsley

It was great to see that my tribe was taking advantage of twitter, vimeo, flickr and live streaming. I am curious about you though… what “tribe” do you belong to and how is your tribe using social media to connect to those inside and outside your tribe ?

1. Can you give me some background about the church and how long have you been there?

Regions Christian Center serves the Wamba section of Texarkana and was first chartered in 1936 as Wamba Baptist Church.  We are still a Baptist church with our local affiliation being with the Bowie Baptist Association, our State affiliation with the Baptist General Convention of Texas and our National affiliation with the Southern Baptist Convention.  The church has been in our current location since 1954.  The Texas Baptist Men built the first church on this site.  We recently renovated that first building with a grant from the BGCT and use it for our Wednesday night and youth services.

I came to Regions in March of 2006.  The membership had dropped from a very active 300 to 17 members who just refused to let the church die.  Today we have an active membership of 123 and have averaged one baptism a month each month the last two and one half years.  But the most astounding statistic to me is that for the last quarter of 2008 and the first quarter of 2009 100% of our active family units gave something to the church.  I cannot say that they tithed because I make it a practice not to know names of who gives, how much they give or what they earn. But they give – bless the Lord.

We were able to pay the church off in December of 2008 and are completely debt free.

2. How are you using your website to increase member involvement?

The calendar is the most used feature of the website.  We post the church activities, special guests, all church socials, summer camps, etc.  They also like the apples of gold where I was posting the bulletin inserts for a while.  In fact they read that so much that they were not reading the bulletin so I am re-thinking the whole issue, web site or bulletin.  The younger crowd says web site, the older members say bulletin.  Probably both.

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

It really has not changed, but it has enhanced.  Most notably by the flow of information, but also by allowing those looking for a church home to see what we believe, how we worship and where our focus is before coming.  The result is that most visitors come back and eventually become involved to some degree with the church.

4. How are you using media to communicate your message?

We are not yet streaming, I am a little modest for that but then the message needs to go out…

We do not really use the media except for our in house multimedia equipment.

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

Technology re-defines illustrated sermons.  People are really drawn in by videos (we buy a lot and Blue Fish seems to be our most popular) and get this – - DVD music presentations.  Especially the younger members.

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

Consolidate or merge live web casts.  Big movie size screens giving the appearance of live personage on stage.  Great for seminars, small group presentations, etc.