Effective Web Ministry makes a great point with a recent blog, Quick! Follow Up!
A recent study showed that of people who send comments or seek responses from websites:
– one in five near receives a reply
– a third receive messages that are deemed unhelpful
– 31 percent of firms did not respond consistently or did not respond at all to online inquiries
– only 47 percent were answered within a day of being sent
If you’re doing ministry, how quickly are you responding to inquiries?
How quickly are you responding to visitors to your blog, website or even your services?
I try to keep a rule in my office: Always return calls the same day you receive them.
Now, somedays that just not possible, but when I’m on the other end, a quick response goes a long long way.
Respond quickly, efficiently and completely.
Month: May 2005
4 Ways Blogging Can Change Your Church
Churchmarketing sucks.com relayed an article from Lifeway that tells of 4 Ways Blogging Can Change Your Church.
Here’s a quick summary:
1. Blogging will bring churches closer together as it closes a communication gap
2. Blogging will help to develop sermons and classes
3. Blogging will break down barriers and remove masks
4. Blogging will help the church to engage the culture.
Saint John’s Bible
So I was doing a bit of web surfing before I went night, night tonight and I came across this site, The Saint Johns Bible.
I haven’t had much time to look at it and seeing that my laptop battery is getting low — and it is 4 in the morning. I probably won’t look at it much more tonight.
But it looks very interesting. According to the site:
At the dawn of the 21st century, Saint John’s Abbey and University seek to ignite the spiritual imagination of believers throughout the world by commissioning a work of art that illuminates the Word of God for a new millennium.
Apparently they are writing the entire Bible in calligraphy with ink and quill. Some of the artwork looks amazing.
I’ll be excited to stay on top of this and see the progress they make.
Flowers make all the difference
Originally published as Church Flowers in The Belton Journal
A pastor in St. Paul, Minn. blogged this week about a flower garden planted in front of his church.
First of all, I love pastors that blog regularly. It gives a lot of insight into the ministry and what they go through and see throughout the week.
Some even give insight into how their weekly sermon progresses.
Fellowship Church in Dallas has a blog set up for their entire church staff to post notes and journals on. (UPDATE: While Pastor Ed Young still blogs, I can’t find the blogs for the entire staff anymore.)
It gives you a connection with the staff that you might not otherwise have.
But I digress…
Pastor Pat Kahnke of St. Paul Fellowship Church writes that he noticed a bunch of kids bustling around in the church parking lot earlier this week.
As he walked closer he realized that a number of his church members had taken the initiative to plow up a weedy section of their church lot and plant a flower bed in its place.
While planting the flower bed, one of the church members knocked on a neighboring house door to ask to borrow a water hose.
The church neighbor said they could borrow the hose that day and year-round to keep the flower bed looking healthy.
And as a result, another member volunteered to plow the man’s backyard for him.
What a great sign of ministry on so many levels.
They took the care of the church upon themselves
No one sat around and waited for a church beautification committee to tell them what needed to be done. No building committee hired out work that church members could easily do.
People took responsibility for their church and went the extra mile to be sure their place of worship was taken care of.
What if each of us looked for areas in our own churches or work places where we could go the extra mile without being asked?
What if we quit shrugging responsibility for things in our offices or church and stepped up and said, “This needs to be done — and I’m going to do it. Even if it’s not in my job description and even if I may not be an expert on the subject.–
They involved outsiders
One of the things I love about this story is that it involved people in the neighborhood.
Now granted, with a little planning they could have brought their own water hose, but think of the ministry opportunity they would have missed. In the process, they made sure that a neighbor of the church knew what was going on at the church and then found a way to meet him at his need.
Wasn’t that Jesus’ entire ministry was about? He met people at their need.
If we are passionate about what we do, or wherever we do it, it can be contagious – people will want to be a part of it.
A business cannot grow without new customers and a church cannot grow without new members. We must rid ourselves of being exclusive or selective in who we reach out to. We must bring outsiders in.
A few months ago I wrote about George Masters who was so passionate about Apple’s iPod, that he spent several hours designing a complete television commercial based on his favorite toy.
“Why would a school teacher spend a good chunk of his free time, for five months, crafting a really slick ad for no money? For no real recognition other than a, ‘Hey, that’s cool,’ from a few friends? Because he really, really likes his iPod,– wrote blogger Andy Havens. “Masters frankly admits that he partly worked on the project as a way of teaching himself some computer animation basics, and to be part of a portfolio. That being said, why pick the iPod mini as his subject? Because he’s a huge fan. And let’s remember that ‘fan’ is short for ‘fanatic.’–
If we can get people passionate about our product or message, people will become a part of the message and share it with them where ever they go.
Little efforts can go a long way
Third, as Pastor Kahnke wrote in his blog that he was blessed and ministered to by seeing their effort and the beautiful flowers left by their effort.
A pastor who was worn down was encouraged and blessed by a small effort by members of his congregation.
I can’t imagine that this group of church goers would have realized the impact their thoughtfulness had on their pastor, or the impact it would have on a newspaper editor some 1,113 miles away.
You never know what impact your willingness to serve will have on others.
CWF Results from 5-22-05
Sorry for the delay, but here are Sundays CWF results from Mountain Home, Arkansas.
Chris Idol def. Michael Malick
Eagle def. Son of Thunder James Zebedee
Tim Storm def. Rob Jesus Freak Vaughn
Jesus Freak and Michael Malick def. Chris Idol and Tim Storm
And more importantly, 10 people made decisions to follow Christ.
Praise God.
Sand is overrated. It’s just tiny, little rocks.
I’m really tired from this weekend. But for some reason I’m just not ready to go to bed. I’m afraid I’ll lay there staring at the ceiling or the back of my eyelids forever. Maybe I’ll go home and watch a movie or two. I’m thinking about Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. It’s a really clever movie that sometimes I wish and wonder if it could be true.
Could you possibly erase someone or an event from your mind?
And if you could, would you really want to?
I can think of several events or people I might like to erase, but what purpose would that serve?
What if I erased my sister’s death? Where would that leave me? Would I just hurt even worse because in my mind she would have just simply disappeared? I would never want to erase her from my memory or any part of her. She means too much, even as bad as her death hurts sometimes.
I can think of ex-girlfriends that I would probably love to erase, but there’s always so much I can look back on foundly and wish to return to those happier moments.
What would you erase if you could? And why?
Either way, I think I may head home, open a cheap bottle of wine and enjoy the rest of the evening before I finally run out of things to think and worry about.
“Sand is overrated. It’s just tiny, little rocks. “