I’ve not surfed around much (just created my account), but I saw that one of my favorite Bible versions is used — the English Standard Version.

Here is a description from the site of what YouVersion is all about:

• Organize – YouVersion empowers you to organize the content that’s important to you!
• Share - Simply share meaningful content with anyone, anytime, anywhere.
• Community - YouVersion makes it easy to connect and collaborate with others.
• Contribute - With YouVersion you have the power to share your content with your closest friends, family, or anyone online!

This online venture is a ministry of LifeChurch.tv. Learn more about YouVersion at the Swerve blog, including upcoming Bible versions to be included.

Related posts:

1. Product Review: Mars Hill Church iPhone App Mars Hill

1. Upcoming events / news items, and
2. Personal blogs of church leaders

In this post, I want to expand on #2 and explain why I feel so strongly that church leaders should be blogging.

Double-edged benefits.

Blogging provides a win on two fronts. First, if you do a good job of blogging and a good job of educating your church on how to read your blogs (see more on that below), you can achieve extremely efficient and effective communication at a super low cost.

But even if nobody in your church ever reads your blogs, they still have enormous value. Their continual stream of content improves the viability of your website with search engines and presents your church to the internet as an active place.

This is why I say that blogging is by far the best place to focus your energy and resources if you are looking to improve your website. Blogging takes time. So forget about trying to add every little nifty gadget and gizmo that you think makes your website neat and pour your energy into providing a continual stream of quality content through blogging. This is where you have the most to gain.

Blogging is communicating.

Let’s set aside the trendy word “blogging” and just call it what it is. Blogging is communicating. Most every church leader from the beginning of time would likely agree that communicating is important. I think too many people get caught up in thinking that blogging is some kind of fancy internet fad or trend and that’s why they choose not to participate. But if we think about blogging as pure communication, I think its value becomes more clear.

Think about everything that you are trying to communicate with your church and even with those outside of the church. Put it all on your blog – thoughts on your vision and direction, new initiatives, events, announcements, philosophy, the reason why you made a certain decision … etc. Drill this down to each ministry level. If you’re a children’s minister, you need your own blog. At the very least, each primary church leader should be blogging about everything related to their church and their ministry.

How to get your church to read your blogs.

This one is easy. Just put information on the blog that they can’t find anywhere else. In every other form of communication you use, always direct them back to the blog for the full story. If you send an email, include only a small summary and give them a link to get the full information on your blog. In printed pieces, do the same thing. This is where having a blog CMS that supports friendly URLs is very helpful.

Then, teach your church how to subscribe to your blog. Nearly every major browser has RSS subscriptions built right in. Show them how to do it so that they’ll get your content automatically.

Integrate your blogs into your primary website.

The absolute best scenario for your ministry blogs is to build them right into your primary website. That way, your website benefits from all of the traffic and content added to the blogs.

To do this, you could build your entire website on a blogging platform like Wordpress, or you could use a website CMS that supports integrated blogging. Cory Miller right here at ChurchCommunicationsPro is an expert on the former. For the latter, I’ll give another shameless plug for my company’s content management system, Sky. It has blogging built right in so you can easily add unlimited blogs to any page in your site (and it also has friendly URLs. Hooray!). There are others out there too. Just look for the ability to integrate blogs with your main site.

In conclusion.

Forget about the mystique and start blogging not because it’s trendy, but because it is communication. Share everything about your church through your blog and use other means of communication to point back to the blog. Educate your church members on how to use and subscribe to your blog. In short, make the blog the center of your church communication. It will benefit your church and also give you a better church website than all the flash animation in the world could provide.

Tim Wall is a former church communications director. He currently serves as the director of product marketing for Element Fusion, a web development company located in Oklahoma City. In addition to leading worship part-time, he also blogs at DailyGenesis.

Related posts:

1. 4 Keys to Effective Church Websites: Free Webinar WebDesign.
2. Church Web Design, WordPress and New Services Over two a

Here they are:

1. I’VE MADE SOME INCREDIBLE, AMAZING FRIENDSHIPS

I count some of my closest friends to be “virtual” friendships … all of whom I’ve never had the privilege of shaking their hands.

These guys and gal could be my five reasons alone: Brian, Nathan, Nate, Ryan, Penelope …

There are many, many more … but these five are the ones I chat with the most ….

[And I'm meeting more and more each new day!]

2. GOD HAS USED ME DESPITE ME, BEING ME

I’ve been blessed monetarily beyond my wildest expectations as I’ve done business online … and, honestly? I didn’t run onto the business playing field with my Christian evangelist hat on. I didn’t plan on making ministry my no. 1 priority through my business.

I just wanted to live my faith THROUGH my business … and if and when the opportunity arose … I would share the love and grace of my Lord.

But I just literally “fell into” my online business stuff … and been totally blessed in the process (see No. 1).

And amazingly, despite myself and my total unworthiness to be used in His work, along the way, God has opened doors to sharing my faith with many people. In fact, I believe several times, He just drop-kicked the door open and said, “OK, here you go, captain oblivious.”

3. THE WEB IS RIPE FOR MINISTRY

Bobby from LifeChurch.tv re-opened my eyes to this when we had lunch a couple weeks ago. He said to me that the web (and technology in general) is literally allowing us to have access to the entire world (read: almost every tribe, tongue here) …

Can you imagine?

I’ve had contact with people in Australia, Japan, India … all over. I need a map with thumbpins to plot them.

And like Bobby and LifeChurch … I believe the church needs to be there. Online. Listening. Loving. Sharing. Praying. Being.

Did you hear that? Yes, we, the church, need to be there … we need an active, living, constant presence on the web. We need to claim this technology for the Gospel. We need to redeem it for the Lord and His Message.

We need to use it to take that amazing Message, virtually, to the ends of the earth ….

4. THE LORD CAN AND WILL BE GLORIFIED … THROUGH CODE.

I don’t mean Bible code …. I mean, He will and must be glorified through HTML, XHTML, CSS, PHP, Ruby, whatever … He must get glory through us … as we wonder into this world of organized code we call the Internet.

Reread No. 3 for a second …

OK, welcome back …

God must get glory online. Are we to abandon and forsake the web as “vile and evil” and retreat like we did so many institutions?

No! No! No! No! Never!

Let us take the banner of Christ online … together. Let us live out our faith online to all those God intersects our lives with.

We must charge into it … sure, we will make mistakes. We will cross lines. And sometimes stumble and fall flat on our face. But we must not let that fear stop us … we must, with discernment, GO.

Let us do it with humbleness and love … and truth, wrapped in grace. Let it ring through with our Savior’s touch. Let Him be our theme!

But we must go.

5. YES, WE MUST GO

Again, we must go.

I believe … I see … this grand field for ministry laid open for us.

Sometimes I feel as though the Lord has led me to a mountaintop and allowed me a glimpse of amazing opportunity. At times I want to run away from it and bury my head. I want the safe and security of familiarity, where others have made all the mistakes before me and I follow the worn path.

But my friend Brian reminds me of Moses. He told me, “God equips the called, not calls the equipped.”

[Refer back to No. 2.]

This opportunity is not just for me, or a select few, though. It is for you. The Bride. The Church.

We must go.

Come with me …

Join me in staking the flag of Christ on the Web …

… that all the nations may rejoice …

… in the goodness and greatness of the Crucified God!

No related posts.