Christian Web Resources

In February of this year, Jeroen Nawijn authored a study on vacation and happiness. Her work was published in the Applied Research in Quality of Life journal, and it showed that our level of happiness during vacation actually has a lot more to do with the planning, preparation and anticipation preceding vacation, more so than the actual vacation. (For more, the LA Times has a good summary of Nawijn’s research.)A similar line of thinking is behind Devin Leonard’s article on Steve Jobs (“...

We’re no stranger to talking about statistics. No, really. We did a 9-part series on it. But the only statistic you can keep track of isn’t the number of butts you’re putting in pews. We wanted to know which statistic—aside from the church answer of “salvations”—that you would most like to see increase 100% over the next month.The winner was our old friend of “total attendance.” 31% of you said that’s the place you’d most like to see improvement. But it was only by a nos...

Why don’t we have green stop signs? This is a simple question with a simple answer. A green stop sign is confusing. Our culture’s sub-text says red means stop and green means go. It is obvious why we don’t have green stop signs. But how many churches and pastors prepare communication pieces that could be considered just that—green stop signs?Pull out your trusted bulletin/worship folder/program. Look at just the words, your content. Look at the number of words. Do you have an entire p...

Haven’t been checking in on the Church Marketing Lab regularly? That’s all right, we’re here to point you in the direction of great discussions and show you some of the work we’ve seen passing through the photo pool lately.Or if you aren’t even familiar with the Church Marketing Lab, it’s the place to go to incubate church communication ideas—from questions to graphics. But don’t believe us. Check out this work that’s passed through lately and the great feedback that has e...

Never have so many people had so much to say.Maybe they have, actually, but never before have so many people had the ability to say exactly what it is that’s on their minds. From a teenager in the Philippines to multi-billion dollar companies, human beings are just beginning to understand, capture and utilize the power of the social web. From blogs to tweets to status updates to YouTube videos, we have become a virtual society of content creators and show no signs of slowing down. As the ti...

Today we’re talking with Shaun King, a vocal pastor and activist who has used Twitter and Facebook to rally causes and get results. He’s the pastor of Courageous Church in Atlanta, a father, husband, grad student and founder of aHomeInHaiti.org, an organization that literally came into being in response to the earthquake in January.Tell us a little about aHomeInHaiti.org—what’s the basic plan, how are you accomplishing it, etc.?Shaun King: We formed aHomeInHaiti.org to meet a need we ...

It seems everyone has an opinion on how social media ought to be used. Some are staunchly in the camp of “social media isn’t social without conversations,” while others view it a way to deliver information to places people are currently congregating. But how are churches using social media? Well, here is what your churches are up to:46% of you primarily use social media as a pipeline for delivery of news and updates. You’re feeding in RSS feeds or making updates as bulletins to anyone...

The Kiwis are at it again. This time it’s a church in Taurunga who found themselves warned for trademark infringement. Against whom, you might ask? DB Breweries—a local beer company.There’s obviously some level of humor in a church marketing themselves in such a way that might or might not confuse them with a beer company. What’s even funnier?  That “a number of individuals—including other churches—were increasingly adopting the format to promote their own message…”.The ch...

It’s been a busy few weeks on the Job Board and Freelance Board, with plenty of new openings since we last updated you. We’ve seen everything from internships to director positions open in the past few weeks. Here are a few of the latest openings:Parkview Baptist Church needs a freelancer to produce series intro videos.Interested in being a customer evangelist for MonkDev?Sevier Heights Baptist Church is hiring a graphic design intern.Thinking high level? Consider this communication direc...

Fresh from cfcclabs.org, we have some exciting news. For years, we’ve tossed around the idea of publishing a long-form resource for church communicators. The idea has been born, re-born, tabled and re-imagined more than a few times over. But it looks like it’s finally coming to fruition.Thanks to new project catalyst Tim Schraeder, Outspoken: Conversations on Church Communications has the commitment of over 50 leading church communication professionals. It’s intended to be published thi...