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2013 State of the Church Online Report (free PDF)

Kent Shaffer —  April 9, 2013

It’s obvious the Internet has changed the world. We all get that now. But its evolution is so swift that I’m not sure I’m ever caught up to fully realizing its global impact.

Anything this huge and woven into the fabric of society affects the way we do ministry. You don’t have to use it. Just like you don’t have to use the printing press or audio recordings in ministry. However, when society overwhelmingly engages such a medium, I think it makes sense for most ministries to explore using it well.

That’s the challenge. How do church’s use websites well?

Monk Development researches the topic each year, and you can download the 2013 State of the Church Online report for free.

The underlying idea is a website can be a valuable ministry tool if you know how to support users along each step of their discipleship journey from visitor to casual attendee to engaged member and dedicated Christ-follower.

A Few Highlights from the 2013 Report

VISITORS
According to the study, churches have seen about a 17% increase in new visitors to their websites since 2009.

Church websites have become one of the first touchpoints churches have with their local community. But its not a billboard or street sign that is necessarily getting them to your site. In fact, search engines now account for over half of all church website traffic, and an increasing number of these visits are on mobile phones and tablets.

So what’s a church to do?

Think useful. Create for those actually using your site – easy-to-find directions, service times, and other valuable details.

Think search engines. Create content that can be found by how people actually search – “Los Angeles church” is more practical than “baptist church”.

Think mobile. Create a site that can be used on mobile devices because that is how many will access it.

ATTENDEES
Monk Development’s research shows the more people interact with a church website, the more likely they are to feel like part of the larger community.

If you want casual attendees to engage and become more involved, give them opportunities via your website with online sermons, events, and next steps (i.e., how to get involved, how to get connected, etc.).

Keep in mind a website isn’t a golden ticket that solves all of your challenges. Rather a church website is a complement to the relational work you do.

In 1 Corinthians 3:6, Paul says, “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.” When used well, a church website is a valuable plow or watering hose for your kingdom work.

ENGAGED MEMBERS & DEDICATED CHRIST-FOLLOWERS
Let’s streamline what’s important so that we can focus on what’s most important. If not careful, ministry can become bloated with inefficiency. Sometimes we step on the gas thinking we’re getting somewhere when we are only spinning our wheels. We need the Holy Spirit as our navigator, but it is up to us to act on his direction and act well.

You can streamline your church website. Use social media, particularly Facebook, to communicate in a way that meshes with people’s natural rhythm of life. Simplify your online registration or giving platforms to remove barriers to participation and even save time. While in and of themselves these things seem small, they can eliminate some busyness of the process and free up time that ideally will be used for spiritual practices.

You can use this same approach with discipleship. Consider using an online community platform like Cobblestone to enhance small group interactions and complement face-to-face relationships. A community platform isn’t limited by meeting times and buildings, and if used well, it allows for small group interactions and accountability to be more easily nurtured throughout each week.

For more highlights and in depth research, you can download the 2013 State of the Church Online report for free.

Special thanks to Monk Development for supporting Church Relevance by sponsoring this post.
In Technology
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Church Event Planning Without the Stress (free slideshow training)

Kent Shaffer —  March 4, 2013

With the rise of megachurches and attractional ministry models, an increasing number of U.S. churches use big events to disciple their congregations and reach new people. As with any ministry model, it comes with its strengths and weaknesses.

THE PROS: Church events can be a great opportunity for fellowship that deepens the relationships within the church. Events can reach new people in the community, particularly those who might have an aversion to weekend church services. And events often provide a low-commitment opportunity for idle church members to test the waters by volunteering and, hopefully, become active members of the congregation.

THE CONS: Of course, anyone who has ever planned a church event knows they can be expensive. They can use time, money, and manpower needed for more valuable ministry. And worst of all, too many church events keep the congregants so busy that they lack the time needed to live out the Great Commission through relationships with nonbelievers.

So what’s a church to do?

Ask yourself, “Does this event help or hurt God’s will for our church according to how we’ve been guided by God’s Word and the Holy Spirit’s leading?”

If God wants you to do it, do it.

If not, don’t.

And if it’s unclear, then judge the need for the event by (1) your church’s purpose, values, and mission, (2) the available budget, (3) the expected success, and (4) the New Testament’s example.

How to do church event planning without the stress.

ACTIVE Faith assembled a team of four seasoned church event planners, so that you can learn from their wisdom how to balance priorities, eliminate stress, promote the event, and stay within budget. A few highlights include:

Ask God to show you what He wants the end result to be for the attendees and revisit that “end” regularly to make sure you’re still on track.

Be flexible but not a push-over. You will never be able to please everyone, and you risk losing control if you try.

Enlist a diverse planning team. Specifically, surround yourself with people gifted in areas you are weak.

Click to view the full slideshow on church event planning.

Special thanks to ACTIVE Faith for supporting Church Relevance by sponsoring this post.
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How to Maximize Church Volunteers (free ebook)

Kent Shaffer —  January 30, 2013

As a community of believers grows, its needs new leaders raised up to handle the increased ministry needs. This is true for churches that handle growth by multiplying into new locations and for churches that keep their growth in one location.

It is the story of Acts 6:1-7. The early church was a time of growth where 5,000 men could find Christ from just one sermon (Acts 4:4). Yet we see in chapter 6, that the Greek-speaking Jewish widows became lost in the bustle of growth and were neglected. Seven men of good reputation and spiritual maturity were chosen to meet that need.

Unfortunately, raising up volunteers isn’t easy. It’s hard work. And to have Acts 6 quality volunteers takes a culture well-equipped at discipleship and cultivating spiritual maturity long before being appointed to serve.

ACTIVE Faith is offering a free ebook on “How to Maximize Church Volunteers”. It is a great primer introducing best practices of modern churches for appointing, training, and supporting church volunteers. The more you grow, the more you need structure.

Volunteer Challenges Based on Church Size

The benefit of house churches (<25 people ideally) is they have no need for volunteers to run major equipment, maintain facilities, or manage ministry operations. What volunteer needs do exist tend to happen naturally, such as greeting newcomers and watching kids.

But as a church grows, even a house church, the need for volunteers and structure increases as the ease of relationships decreases.

For example, it is said that the quality of community intimacy declines after a house church exceeds 25 people. At this size, it is less likely for everyone to take part and more difficult to know each other deeply. At around 100-230 people, we experience Dunbar’s number – our cognitive limit of being able to know who everyone is and how they relate to each other. This is a medium-sized church (51-300) that still has some relational agility but still needs structure to meet all ministry needs and appoint believers according to their gifts.

Large churches (301-1,999) often undergo intense growing pains as they learn they can no longer know everyone. It is at this size and above that we more commonly see volunteer mistakes, such as:

  • not communicating volunteer opportunities
  • lack of clear leadership
  • lack of leadership training
  • lack of accountability
  • lack of volunteer appreciation
  • haphazardly appointing volunteers (lack of necessary spiritual maturity, abilities, etc.)

By the time a church grows to be a megachurch (2,000-9,999) or gigachurch (10,000+), they’ve usually figured out structure and now must work even harder at relationships and love. If left to itself, structure and management become cold and sterile. You can’t systematize love and relationships; trying just seems artificial and disingenuous. It is a weird tension because you need structure, but true love is sloppy. This is non-negotiable. It doesn’t matter how structured and high performance you are, if you don’t have love, it is in vain (1 Corinthians 13).

So each stage comes with its own challenges. Regardless of what size you’re at, download ACTIVE Faith’s free ebook and think through if there is anything that your church needs to change.

Download: How to Maximize Church Volunteers (PDF)

Special thanks to ACTIVE Faith for supporting Church Relevance by sponsoring this post.

In Leadership, Resources
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Clover Donations

Kent Shaffer —  December 27, 2012

Clover has become well-known for its affordable, user friendly church websites. And now they offer a great solution for mobile and online giving called Clover Donations.

Since launching this past summer, Clover Donations has already helped churches, ministries, and non-profits accept over $6 million in donations. For most churches and ministries, Clover Donations’ cost and functionality is hard to beat. Features include:

  • Complete control of the look and feel of all donation forms for your church or ministry’s tithes & offerings, event registration and more. Clover Donations offers an unlimited number of forms and funds for maximum flexibility.
  • Recurring giving.
  • Minimize fees by allowing donations via bank account transfers (just 29 cents no matter how large the donation using this method)!
  • Maximize accessibility by allowing donations via credit cards (including American Express if you like).
  • Responsive design intelligently molds the donation form to fit the assortment of browser screens (including mobile devices).
  • Donation reporting, donor management and transaction control.

Open Church, the nonprofit I’ve been working on, experimented with several options for online donations and found Clover Donations to (1) save us the most money while (2) simultaneously giving us sophisticated administrative features usually found in more expensive solutions.

For clarification, this is not comprehensive donor management software. It only serves those donations made through its donations gateway. However, this data is easily exported for use in more robust accounting solutions so that you track all offline and online donations.

For more information, visit CloverDonations.com.

Special thanks to Clover for supporting Church Relevance by sponsoring this post.
In Resources, Technology
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Checklist for Reaching Church Visitors (free download)

Kent Shaffer —  December 18, 2012

ACTIVE Faith has created a free downloadable checklist for reaching and keeping church visitors. It’s full of pragmatic advice for eliminating confusion and helping your guests quickly know the ins and outs of your church. Most importantly, it offers great steps to ensure your guests are engaged and welcomed in a friendly way.

Tools like this are incredibly valuable if you are mindful of a few things.

(1) Checklists like these are designed primarily for affluent, consumeristic cultures.

To clarify, all churches globally need friendliness and to excel at developing genuine relationships. However, not all churches cater to consumeristic cultures. The more affluent and intellectual a culture is, the more they trust in their own strength rather than God. In fact, the wealthier someone is, the more they tend to focus on themselves, their desires, and self-expression according to 2012 research by Paul Piff at UC Berkley. These people need Jesus, too.

This is more about socioeconomics and expectations than it is geography. There are wealthy congregations in Seoul and Nairobi that are prone to consumerism. And there a congregations reaching the working poor in the United States that could care less about what the parking lot looks like and how the nursery smells. The point is you can’t be all things to all people simultaneously, but you can be like Paul and become a servant to the niche culture you’re currently reaching (1 Corinthians 9:19-23).

(2) You can’t systematize the work of the Holy Spirit, but you can increase the likelihood that someone will hear the Word of God, which is the source of our faith (Romans 10:17).

You should never dilute the gospel for fear of offense. At the same time, I think it is good within reason to create an environment that attracts people to come and hear. Consumeristic church visitors are looking for external things to meet their spiritual needs. They want church features and an experience that caters to their preferences. It can be a slippery slope that should be prayerfully navigated and only considered a strong foundation of gospel-centered doctrine and a healthy congregation that is pursing Christ.

(3) We fall short in being like Christ. Good ministry tools and resources can help us stay on course.

Outside of an encounter with the gospel, the greatest thing your church can do for visitors is have volunteers and a congregation that overflow with the joy of the Lord, selflessly love, serve well, and make themselves available to go deep relationally. It sounds wonderfully ideal because I think it wonderfully embodies being the hands and feet of Christ. Yet mankind always falls short of Christ’s standard, which is why I am grateful for God’s grace and for tools like this visitors checklist that nudge me in the right direction.

Research by Elmer Towns discovered that in a growing church the likelihood of an individual eventually becoming a part of that church is 15% for 1st time visitors, 38% for 2nd time visitors, and 70% for 3rd time visitors. But this isn’t about catering to first-time guests or third-time guests. It is about, hopefully, nurturing a culture in your church that takes one step closer to selflessly loving and serving the newest and oldest faces in your congregation.

Click here to download your free copy of ACTIVE Faith’s checklist for reaching and keeping church visitors.

Special thanks to ACTIVE Faith for supporting Church Relevance by sponsoring this post.

 

In Resources
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Measuring Ministry Effectiveness (free ebook)

Kent Shaffer —  November 29, 2012

Church leaders want to be good stewards of what is entrusted to them, but each generation has struggled to find an appropriate way to measure their effectiveness.

Businesses measure return on investment (ROI), but measuring return on ministry investment (ROM) is much trickier. Here’s a few reasons why:

  • The Inputs
    Healthy ministry takes more than money and heavily relies on a mix of time, money, talent, and obedience to the Holy Spirit and God’s Word. These inputs are a difficult mix to quantify.
  • The Results
    Even trickier is attempting to measure spiritual fruit – authentic conversions, maturing believers, discipleship, accountability, right heart attitudes, purity, and biblical obedience.
  • God’s Economy
    What is the most effective thing in ministry doesn’t always make rational sense. After all, God likes to use the foolish things of this world to confound the wise (1 Corinthians 1:27). While it is good to be strategic and make wise choices in ministry, we must always be sensitive and obedient to leadings from the Holy Spirit. In other words, we must be willing to throw out our plans and programs and follow the Holy Spirit when He guides differently. Sometimes healthy and obedient ministry is reaching thousands of people, and sometimes it is spending 40 years to win one convert. What matters is obedience.

Reality is it’s impossible to measure ministry effectiveness with man-made metrics. There will always be some mystique to the way God works and what He truly defines as effective.

So how do churches measure their effectiveness?

While there will never be a perfect formula, churches have found supplemental metrics by counting attendance, finances, commitments to Christ, baptisms, small group participants, and volunteers. While not direct indicators, these metrics can be good hints as to a ministry’s health.

Some church leaders have borrowed tools from the business world, such as Harvard Business School’s Balanced Scorecard (BSC) for performance management. Nonprofits and businesses have been using the Balanced Scorecard for two decades to:

  • Align efforts with the organization’s vision and strategy
  • Improve communication internally and externally
  • Help prioritize programs and projects
  • Evaluate performance against strategic goals

Free Ebook

Ministry consultant Eric Soon has tweaked the Balanced Scorecard to better fit churches’ needs, and ACTIVE Faith is offering a free whitepaper – “Excellence in Ministry: Balanced Scorecard” – as a great introduction to using the BSC in ministry.

If your ministry is healthy and built on a strong foundation of prayer and listening to the Holy Spirit, then tools like the Ministry Balanced Scorecard can be a wonderful complement to your ministry and produce greater stewardship as long as you use it within the framework of your unique calling.

Special thanks to ACTIVE Faith for supporting Church Relevance by sponsoring this post.
In Leadership, Resources
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3 Reasons Churches Should Offer Online Giving

Kent Shaffer —  November 6, 2012

Online giving has become quite popular for many churchgoers, but there are still quite a few church leaders hesitant about offering it to their congregations.

We live in a society plagued by debt and fleeting self-restraint, so it is understandable that many ministers are reluctant to encourage credit card giving. If they do, are they undermining their theological convictions and biblical principles? And if they do, can their church afford the additional costs of credit card processing?

3 Reasons for Online Giving

Fortunately, Active Faith’s ServiceU has spent years listening to ministers’ concerns and studying the real effects of online giving. Here are a few insights they’ve picked up along the way:

  1. Online or Else
    There are emerging demographics that rarely give any way but online. Young adults are the lion’s share of them and are increasingly managing their lives online – banking, bills, friendships, giving. At a time when the Church is losing many of its young people, avoiding online giving will only further cut the diminished contributions. At the same time, these digital lifestyle shifts are also steadily creeping into the habits of older generations.
  2. Online Reduces Risk
    Churches often don’t realize the risk (errors or fraud) inherent in manually processing the offering. Some might say, “If it ain’t
    broke, don’t fix it.” Of course, that works until it doesn’t. Unfortunately, fraud is a real threat to churches today.
  3. Online Saves Time & Money
    Manually-processed gifts also take considerably more time than online’s automated processing. While online giving does charge a processing fee, it almost always is far cheaper than the amount of wages paid to staff to manually process giving.

FREE Ebook answering 9 Questions about Online Giving

Of course, there are many more questions than just these 3 areas. To continue the discussion, ServiceU has been kind enough to create a free ebook – “9 Questions You’re Already Asking About Online Giving”. In this ebook, you’ll learn:

  • What online giving is and is not.
  • How you can customize the online giving experience.
  • How to introduce the option to your church, what objections to expect, and how to respond to them.
  • How to leverage the technology for more than just tithes and offerings.
  • And more.

Download it now.

Special thanks to ACTIVE Faith for supporting Church Relevance by sponsoring this post.
In Resources, Technology
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