How did your church do this last year in church technology? Did you finally get involved in new social media beyond Facebook and Twitter? Did you make your website smartphone and tablet-friendly? Did you create an app for your church? Did you move back-up files to the cloud? Though these accomplishments might count for bragging rights at church geek gatherings, there a more critical question for Christian geeks, techs and communicators and that is:
How did your church communication technology help your church fully fulfill the Great Commission?
Though we all love technology, the foundation for all we do in tech, communications and life is found in Jesus command to us:
Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” Matt. 28:18-20.
Our Great Commission, the command to share the good news of salvation in Jesus alone with others and to help them become mature disciples is what it means to fully fulfill the Great Commission. This is not only the North Star and measure of success in our Christian lives; it should be our measure for success in everything we do in our church technology and communication ministry.
Just because you love Jesus and want to serve Him, don't automatically assume that your hard work in technology, especially in the church communications area, which is vital to the spiritual success of any church, is contributing to fully fulfilling the Great Commission. Though it isn't always easy to measure precise spiritual growth, we can measure whether our audience is accessing the communications we create with the intention of helping them come to know Jesus and grow to discipleship maturity. To begin to measure our spiritual effectiveness, a good place to start is to measure how much people access our communications. However. . . .
Humans are notorious in our ability to deceive ourselves
We do this all the time. "Donuts aren't really fattening on Sunday—this is the only time I eat them and besides, they are in pieces and everyone knows that the calories drain out in cut-up donuts." is one of my favorite self-deceptions. This is closely followed by, "A big meal after church and/or on Sunday night is OK because I'm doing it for fellowship in ministry."
Another one that is easy in church communications and technology is: "We've just finished redoing the website and people will love it and access it a lot." A close one to this is: "Facebook and Twitter and oh my, my Google Circles really keep our church connected." Or "Our videos are greatest -- people are looking for humor when they want to find a church--and they are smart phone accessible!"
Honest measurements help keep us honest
I may love my Sunday donuts and overeating in the name of ministry, but I am also attempting to lose weight and when Monday comes around, there is one infallible way to test my Sunday food assumptions: I step on the scale.
If we want to be honest in how well our technology preferences result in real ministry impact in the lives of church members and the people outside the church, we need a scale to decide whether our assumptions are true or not. One scale that is useful is to take a Technology and Communication Survey of your congregation. Following is one you could use. At the end of this article is a link to a ready-to-print PDF of it and other resources on Church Communications Planning. Using the survey is like stepping on the scales--it can give a useful shot of reality in how impressed your audience is with your communications, how often they use them and if they are helping them grow in their faith.
You want an honest measure and to help you get that, the following two guidelines are very important:
- The ONLY way you will get enough answers for it to matter is for you to hand it out on Sunday morning (yes, gasp), have people immediately fill it out (it will take no more than 5 minutes) and immediately turn it in.
- It has to be totally anonymous.
If you don't do BOTH of these, don't bother—you won't have a true representation of your church and/or it won't be an honest response.
Formatting note for the sample survey below-- the PDF and editable MS Publisher file of this survey has boxes where the bullets are.
Church Technology and Communication Survey
What technology do you have to receive messages from the church? Check all you have; put a star by the ones you use frequently.
- Computer at home
- Computer at work
- Computer at school
- Laptop
- Mobile phone
- Smart phone
- Tablet computer
Which of these channels do you regularly access for church information or teaching? Check the box.
***Please a star by the channel or channels YOU PREFER to get your information from.***
- Church Email newsletter
- Church Website
- Sermons online/podcasts
- Church or pastor's blog
- Google Circles
- Printed Church Bulletin
- Printed Church Newsletter
- Others (please put in any other communication channels you use here)
Three additional questions, please be honest in your answers:
How well informed are you about church events? How can we do better?
Do the church communications encourage you in your Christian life, help you grow as a Christian, and teach you to share your faith? How can we do better?
Anything you'd like to ask or tell us about the technology or communication ministry of the church? Overall, how can we serve you better in technology or communications?
What this will help you learn
A survey like this will put your excitement about what you are sharing on the scales of reality and will help you answer and analyze some of these questions:
How many people in your congregation have the technology to receive what you create?
It is easy to forget that not everyone has the same tech tools you have. For example, creating videos for mobile phone access and QR codes might not be time-justified if very few people have phones that can access them.
In my own experience in a church that has been hard hit by the recession, I know several pastors and leaders with iPhones and Blackberries, but the congregation members who are out of work or underemployed and who are concerned with their ability to pay for one phone line of any kind greatly out-number them. But that's my church—yours might be completely different. You won't know unless you survey them.
How often do people in your congregation access the church information in the channels you send out?
This is important for you to know how often you need to update your material—but this also needs to be paired with the additional comments people make because your responses may be a little circular in results. What this means is that if you frequently update your website and social media, people will probably access them often. If people don't access them or if they are not starred as something they access frequently, even though you may update them often, it may say more about the quality of your information.
If you update things often and your people don't access them, take some time for one-on-one conversations and in a nonthreatening way try to find out why they don't.
What is your congregation's preferred method of receiving information from you?
It's great if the way they want to hear from you is what you are doing. If not, it may be they don't know how to use the channel or they don't understand why it is valuable to them. If that is the situation, you may want to do a demonstration on "How to use our Facebook page" or "How to receive Twitter updates from the church" or "What our church website has for you." After you do some training in these areas, track to see if it makes a difference in who is accessing these areas. One great thing about websites and social media is that we get statistics on access, which is one more way of stepping on the scale for a reality check. You may think you have the most clever and interesting twitter feed ever, or the most clever church Facebook page, but if your stats are flat or declining, your congregation may not be as impressed as you are.
Beyond the channel, evaluate the content
The questions following the check boxes on the survey above, specifically:
Do the church communications encourage you in your Christian life, help you grow as a Christian, and teach you to share your faith? How can we do better?
are one of the most important parts of the survey because people don't go to a church website for fun or entertainment value. They go there looking for help in their spiritual lives.
That help is most often expressed by a simple desire to find out, for example, what small groups are available and when they meet, or what the pastor is like as a person as revealed from his or her blog, how to become a Christian, or how to grow in your Christian life. If your website or other social media don't have significant, useful content, it doesn't matter how many images scroll on your home page or how fancy are your images.
Fancy moving images are everywhere on the web.
Significant, eternity changing content is hard to find. No matter what channel you use or how technically advanced it is, if the content is challenging, useful, uplifting and spiritually helpful, your people will access it. If it is just a pretty shell, they'll bypass it.
Make your content worthy of the Lord and reflective of Him. Use your content to help people come to know Jesus and grow in their faith and not matter what channel you use, your people will access it.
Don't lose track of your North Star
Technology has its challenges and it can be great fun to learn new technologies and to create new communication systems. But we must never lose sight of the people we are creating the communications for. We must always make sure that we are serving them and in doing that fully fulfilling the Great Commission given to us by our Lord.
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CLICK HERE To go to the PDF of the survey, an editable MS Publisher file of it and a png image (so you can use it on a PowerPoint to tell your congregation what you want them to do).
