Best of Church Social Media and Ministry 2.0 Resources

Church and Christian Organization Using New Media to Spread the Gospel:

Are you a youth pastor who’s looking to get into blogging or perhaps Facebook? Or maybe you’re a worship leader who wants to connect with Christians online? Or perhaps your heart is a-twitter about the wonderful and fun world of blogging? There are a cornucopia of opportunities provided by Ministry 2.0 that are inexpensive and only require some dedication, a passion to spread your message, and a small learning curve to get up to speed on the culture and technology of new media.

When you think about church social media, the work of creatives like David Russell, Mark Batterson, and the crew at National Community Church in DC do is pretty important. 54% of the folks that visit NCC do so first based on seeing their website (cite) Although, the church social media movement doesn’t stop there, increasingly ministries like the Southern Baptist Seminary in Louisville are going big with social media too.

Using Interactive New Media for Your Church Website:

Aaron has a fantastic post about Church Social Media here, which explains the use of RSS and blogging in very easy to understand terms.

If you are interested in Facebook, Facebook for Pastors will be a great read to help you use Facebook for your church.

I would check out YouVersion from the folks at Lifechurch.TV. It allows users to create notes and share them in an online version of the Bible. Its a way to create dialoug about interpretation, theology, and meaning. (Giving away church resources is cool. Kudos to innovators like Craig + Bobby, although I think they technically borrowed this idea from Granger and re-mixed it a bit)

You may want better internal productivity or communication, in which case the free tools from Granger Community Church @ Wired Churches or Lifechurch may be helpful. Alternatively the open source church resources from Phoreo look quite handy.

You can also use Sermon Cloud to distribute and find sermons. Sermon cloud uses tagging, which is a big part of the way web designers are using to organize the web these days. Sermon cloud is a fantastic sermon aggregator, which is similar to the social news sharing site Digg.

Here is one of the best summaries of the church social media space I’ve seen with 8 fantastic tips on leveraging web 2.0 for Christian organizations (see also Blood Water Mission, Compassion International, and Bread for the World). His tip about using video is particularly spot on.

Other sites in the Church 2.0 space includeBlogs 4 God which is a social voting site similar to Digg (although I don’t know if it provides any Google link juice).

Another great aggregator is the church and the best religion, faith, and theology blogs at Alltop. (although to be honest, its sad that there isn’t a breakout category for Christian blogs and pastor blogs, as EACH of these represents such a HUGE part of the blogosphere)

I would check out Flower Dust, Raggamuffin Soul, and Without Wax.TV. I’d also see what Brad Ruggles is up to, because he seems to know what’s up in terms of connecting. (and his t-shirt designs are pretty sweet too) You might check out an example of a sermon video on Vimeo at Chad Lewis’s blog.

Have a cool service project or other fun event at your church is going to do. Vimeo and similar video platforms are design savvy and a great way to spread your multimedia message.

My friend Jared has a great introduction to social media whitepaper and resource guide. Finally, Social media rockstar Chris Brogan who is always sharing a plethora of tips, has a great Church Pastor Workflow.

Finally, here is a great post of new media and web 2.0 tools for Christian organizations. This is a great resource list for nonprofit social media and blogging too.

Social Media Marketing and Your Church Organization:

Have a great church 2.0 application, tips, or resources? Have a cool example, case study, or perhaps a cool church themed video?