Regardless of how high tech your church is and how big of a budget your church has, your church needs to be using Twitter as one of it’s main communication channels. What is Twitter?
Twitter’s tag line is “What are you doing?” This question is answered, literally, by millions of users throughout the day, every day. From the benign to the intriguing, people will, it seems, share endlessly about their lives. You’ll hear some deeply personal thoughts, strong political opinions and just about every other topic if you start to follow a bunch of folks.
The above quote is from an e-book written by my friend, Anthony Coppedge (@anthonycoppedge) titled The Reason Your Church Must Twitter. This e-book is a step by step guide of how your church could and should use Twitter to effectively communicate within specific ministries as well as broadcast messages church-wide.
It doesn’t matter if you are a highly technical geek or if you barely know how to turn your computer on, this e-book is for you. It breaks all aspects of Twitter down to a manageable and understandable level and walks you through how to set your account up and get yourself situated to effectively use Twitter. Even if you use Twitter every day already, this book shares concepts that you likely have not considered.
Every church is different and so there is no cut and dry right or wrong way for your church to use Twitter but you certainly have many options. The Reason Your Church Must Twitter gives you all of those options. There is application for youth ministry, children’s ministry, young adult and more seasoned adult ministry as well.
The beauty is that you can reach your people on their computer and/or on their cell phones, via SMS text messaging, which is a huge thing. Phone calls are tedious, email is often not read and fairly labor intensive for a church and in the end, ultimately, communication is key.
The information in this e-book is great and very necessary but when it comes right down to it, how will you implement a Twitter strategy in your church? Does it take more than information and knowledge? You better believe it does and Anthony covers how to decide on a Twitter strategy in the final chapter of the book.
More than once, I have seen a church be convinced to try something technology related without having a real strategy and in the end, it flops and the technology is blamed. In reality, technology, whether it’s web related or a piece of equipment, is a tool and it’s only effective if it’s used correctly. Anthony offers great insight into ways to practically begin using Twitter in your church and make Twitter a valuable resource.
The e-book is only $5, and honestly, it’s worth so much more.
If you have been reading my blog(s) for any amount of time, you understand my heart for volunteers in the church. Anthony shares this heart for volunteers and it shows through his offer, check this out:
We’ve kept the price very low ($5 – five bucks) to make it affordable for everyone. All we’re asking is that if you’re using this E-Book for your ministry, please make sure you’ve bought it.
We fully license churches to buy a copy for a staff member and share it with their volunteers for free. For example, if your church has three staff that could benefit from the book, then please pay the ridiculously affordable $15 and give out copies like free candy to your volunteers!
Pretty simple. Pay for this e-book for each staff member that you want to have it, then just go nuts on your volunteers and let them have the benefit of this e-book for no charge.
If you have read this far and you still feel lost, that’s ok. The e-book The Reason Your Church Must Twitter will clear everything up and more. It will be released on January 16, 2 days from now. I’ll post a link to the website in the near future, it’s still being fine-tuned for this big launch.
Very Cool. I am looking forward to getting it for myself. Sounds like it will have helpful info even for a layman such as myself. Hope to see more churches connect with Twitter. I know I have enjoyed the insights of Terry Storch (@terrystorch)with Youversion.com, Gary Lamb (@garylamb)with Revolution Church, Shaun King @shaunking)with his launching of Courageous Church, Mark Batterson (@markbatterson)of NCC, and all of the guys at Northpoint Ministries in Atlanta, GA. These are only a few of the many that I glean spiritual insight from and it is all thanks to Twitter. I never would have know much of them if it wasn’t for this great social network medium.
Thanks for the resource. I’ve been live-tweeting our services at @sewardchurch We are a very small church and still figuring out exactly how it might work, but it is fun. I’ll have to check out the book.
Well I’m going to be a negative voice for Twitter.
I’m a techy, I understand it and I can see why some folks would want to use it … but use it in a Church! I think the problem of communication is not in what tool you have/use but in the folks behind the communication.
You’ll either have folks who do communicate or those that don’t and one needs to change that before expecting a tool like twitter to work.
Also, it may be my Brit attitude, but sharing every minutae (and potentially boring) detail of ones day can be a huge turn off. It certainly would be for me and this is the HUGE downside to twitter.
Just my 2p ….
Stuart,
You’re not the only one. I guess I’ve never really “gotten” Twitter. I don’t see the point. For me, I’ve never seen the benefits of Twittering. It just seems like a mass text message that is very limited in it’s use. I just figured it was a matter of time before it died out and people found something better, so I never bothered.
And yes, I am a tech guy. Been developing web apps for years now, and am the lead developer of my team at work.
You guys can try and convince me otherwise, but I just don’t see the point.
Stuart and Greg,
I love hearing that you’re not yet convinced! It means that you’re open to new possibilities.
If I may, I’d challenge you both to read the e-book. It comes out tomorrow at http://www.twitterforchurches.com (we’ve kept the site down until later tonight). If you don’t learn that Twitter is INCREDIBLY useful and not simply narcissistic ranting, I’ll personally credit you the cost of the e-book.
I am truly convinced that any tool can be leveraged to accomplish ministry goals. The key is understanding if the tool is useful enough, has a high probability for adoption/use and if it’s easy enough to use. In the case of Twitter, the answer is a resounding “Yes!” on all three counts.
Please allow me to ask you one question (and I’d love to have you reply here and answer): “Twitter is faster than email, easier than phone calls and more manageable than mere SMS group text. By it’s very definition, Twitter will allow churches to give quick updates, drive traffic to websites and remind people of events more efficiently than ever and, best of all, to the right demographic every time. How is that anything less than a great communications tool for churches?”
Sincerely,
Anthony
Anthony – ask as many questions as you like, after all that’s part of the aim of any blog surely?
I think you’ll find I didn’t actually disagree that it could be a good thing. What I said was (or tried to) that unless the folks behind the tool can communicate effectively anyway then the tool becomes irrelevant.
Put it this way … if you are a poor organiser, then using a tool to organise you will help but it won’t make you a good organiser. Twitter falls in to the same category. It’s useful but it needs to be used wisely and well, but if the person(s) behind it don’t ‘get it’ or are normally poor communicators anyway then twitter will not fix that.
In my church we seem to be particularily bad at communication. We used to be good, but then we had a lady who was an excellent organiser and persuader. She was employed by the Church and basically spent her day “sorting” the church out. Since her passing to glory they’ve tried to replace her but each time with a person who is a gifted minister/pastor but organiser and communicator – not a hope. Beyond this, not all of our church have mobiles or instant access to comms.
Twitter could work for our youth group; it could work with our childrens ministries; it could work with our worship team but until the heads of these departments and their helpers become per se better communicators then I don’t see it.
I’ll likely still buy the book irrespective of the refund offer.
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Oh, and one major downer for Twitter in the UK (or is it just with my SP?) is “We currently don’t support sending SMS to this number”.
Sort of does in one of the main reasons for using it.