Over the past two weeks, we’ve been looking under the hood at the role of a campus pastor at a multi-site church. If you’re a campus pastor at a multi-site church and want to be interviewed, just let me know. If you’re a LifeChurch.tv Network church pastor or a North Point Strategic Partner pastor and want to be interviewed, let me know.

Starting next week, we’ll look at a twist on this campus pastor concept: network or partner churches of a mother multi-site church. This may be a new concept for you.

These churches that we’ll look at are autonomous churches that have chosen to use a communicator like Andy Stanley or Craig Groeschel as their primary teacher and let the senior pastor of the church function in a role similar to a campus pastor at a multi-site church. I’m, personally, fascinated with these churches and again, I’m building up to a point.

I know my parent’s generation would say, “But that’s what we pay him for. We pay the pastor to preach. If he doesn’t preach, then what are we paying him for?” I’m seeing and advocating a switch in the way we view the senior pastor role and don’t think that the senior pastor has to be the primary communicator (I’ll write more about this in the future).

Another example of this being played out is at Mars Hill in Seattle. At Mars Hill, you’ve probably heard of Mark Driscoll, but may not realize or have put together that Mark is the teaching pastor, not the lead pastor. Jamie Munson is the Lead Pastor. That’s a healthy, working model of this concept that I feel strongly about. Jamie can be the lead or senior pastor and lead the church and someone else (Mark) can be the primary communicator (both live and via video at their multi-site campuses). See HERE for more info.

Today is the day to submit any questions, comments, feedback, thoughts you’re processing, etc. about what we’ve been dealing with the past two weeks. Have you enjoyed the interviews? Are you starting to grasp what I’m building up to – that’s there’s a difference between a preacher and a pastor and the two are not synonymous. What do you think about that statement?

We’re 11 days away from launching our second campus of West Ridge Church. Our desire to is start four more campuses over the next four years. With that in mind, we wanted to develop a framework to define the constants all of these campuses would share. Indirectly, that also helps clarify where each of the campuses also has freedom.

That led our leadership team to a conversation where we discussed how West Ridge would become one church in multiple locations. Borrowing from a similar resource from Community Christian Church in Chicago, we landed on these campus constants. Every campus of West Ridge Church will reflect the same:

1. Mission
2. Vision
3. Strategy
4. Shared Curriculum
5. Teaching Team
6. Leadership Structure
7. Leadership Development
8. Financial Model
9. Communications & Web Strategy
10. Central Services

Like everything we do, I’m sure this strategy will be tweaked over time particularly as we gain new insights through experience in multi-site. To download the full document, I encourage you to visit Tony’s blog HERE.

For those of you who are already engaged in a multi-site strategy, have you talked through campus constants? If so, how does your list differ?

Have you ever wondered if Jesus considered the distribution of His words, as much as the words themselves?  I think it’s pretty clear that He did.  During His earthly ministry, He spent time dispensing Truth, exposing falsehood, and demonstrating love.  Along the way, He chose his audience and forum carefully.  Those who saw and heard Him were blessed (John 20:29), but those people, in turn, perpetuated a viral firestorm that spread throughout the world and continues to this day.

They used the tools of the day to spread His message. Throughout history, there is a long history of people using new technologies to spread the gospel (examples here, here, and here).

If Jesus were walking the earth today, I think he would have a Website.  It’s kind of fun to dream about what he’d do with it (music playing on the home page? Popup ads? Big photos of the disciples? I think not…)  One thing is for sure.  He would be using it–along with every other available means available–to spread His message.

You and I are the Church, and Jesus left us with the task to teach others about Him (Matthew 28:16-20).  We should be doing everything possible towards that end, using the technology available to us.  Assuming that you are preaching the unadulterated Truth from your pulpit, then you should be using online tools to spread that Truth to the ends of the earth!

If you have a Website for your church, Here are 10 suggestions on how to improve and enhance your sermon audio or video content. Read this as a quiz and see how you would score your church Website:

1.     Add scripture references to every sermon.

2.     Organize your sermons by date. Covenant Life Church does a great job of this (click on the date tab): http://www.covlife.org/resources.

3.     If you preach sermons as part of multi-week series, then be sure that your visitors can find the series easily. I suggest creating a landing page for each sermons series.  Mars Hill has a good example: http://www.marshillchurch.org/media/trial/preview.

4.     Don’t charge money to hear your sermons online. Give them away to all that will listen! (You don’t charge admission to attend your services do you?)

5.     Use the MP3 format for audio, as opposed to Windows Media, Quicktime or another proprietary standard.  This ensures the broadest possible compatibility.

6.     Provide an easy way for people to share the sermon with others (Email, Facebook, Twitter)

7.     Write a synopsis of every message, to make it easy for people to understand the “big idea” inside each presentation.

8.     Include every sermon in your podcast, no later than Monday lunchtime. Traffic logs consistently show that sermon content is in greatest demand the day after the service.

9.     Provide links to documents and supporting materials.  For example, any outlines, notes, or other resources should be included as part of the online sermon experience.  This is especially true if you provided these resources to people who were sitting in the room when you recorded the sermon.  Treat your online visitors like first-class citizens and give them the same resources!

10.  Every sermon should be searchable (your site does have a search feature, right?).  When someone on your home page is searching for “prayer”, “marriage”, “Jesus”, or “end times”, your sermons should appear in the results right alongside your other resources.  With good keywords in place, you’re more likely to provide the right message at the right time, right when a person needs to hear a certain message.

Extra credit: Provide a transcript or manuscript of your sermons.  These serve both as an aide to the hearing-impaired, and also a great tool for discussion group and small group leaders who want to build on the content of the sermon.

So how did you do?  Think about how you might be able to build or improve your own church’s media archive this Fall, and take advantage of the amazing tools available to you. Heaven knows, people need to hear the Truth via any method possible.

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Brad Hill is founder and President of SiteOrganic.  As one of the leading providers of online ministry tools, they design some amazing sites for churches around the country. Their heart really is all about helping ministries reach more people online for Christ. In addition to their portfolio of easy site management tools, SiteOrganic has a brand new media sharing system called Media Suite 2.0.  If Brad’s post got you thinking about how to improve your sermon archives, then definitely check out http://www.siteorganic.com/media2 and give him a call!

Over the next several blogs, I’m going to give you a little peak into my head and heart and what I have been chewing on for the last few years. For about three years, I have been fascinated with the multi-site church movement and the unique role of campus pastor at a multi-site church. About two years ago, I interviewed campus pastors at well-known multi-site churches around the country.

In the next few blog posts, I’m going to share the interviews I did with multi-site campus pastors. Keep in mind, these interviews were done two years ago and that some of their answers and situations may have changed by now – as a matter of fact, I’m sure they have. For instance, Dave Clark (who I interviewed as a campus pastor at National Community Church in Washington DC) is now on staff at Fellowship Church in Grapevine, TX.

However, some of the key issues, principles, challenges and advantages are still the same and that’s what I want you to reflect on. I’m leading up to something and will share more of my heart and my vision for the future in the near future. These interviews (and how God used them in my life 2 years ago) are foundational for what I’m working on now and have planned for the future.

After I share the interviews from campus pastors of multi-site churches, I will share brand new interviews with the next level of my vision – campus pastors and pastors of network churches or strategic partners of multi-site churches. These are autonomous churches that use video teaching primarily. Again, I’m leading up to something with all this and will eventually make a point.

As a primer for this conversation and the future conversations, I encourage you to pick up and read the following books (if you haven’t already):

• The Multi-Site Church Revolution: Being One Church in Many Locations
• A Multi-Site Church Roadtrip: Exploring the New Normal

In the meantime, if you’re a part (member, staff, volunteer) of a multi-site church or a network church, I want to hear from you. Please leave a comment and let us know about your involvement. Also, if you have any questions in general about all this, please comment as well. Campus Pastors: I want to hear from you!

The first example was of worship leader Matt Redman. When I first blogged about him over a year ago, he had created an account, but was not using it, yet. He had a total of 310 followers.

I’m writing this blog post on August 11, 2010. As of today, Matt Redman is twittering regularly and has 21,135 followers. Wow! Look:

The second example I pointed to was LifeChurch.tv’s Twitter account. Now LifeChurch.tv is active and has 3,586 followers as you can see here:

The next example I gave was of Willow Creek Church. Willow now has 3,774 followers on Twitter and tweets regularly. You can check them out here:

Lastly, I mentioned that Rick Warren had reserved his spot on Twitter and had 5000 followers before ever writing his first tweet. Now Rick has 130,463 followers and is a regular on Twitter and encourages church leaders daily.

So… have you claimed your digital real estate? Have you grabbed you or your church, business or organization’s name?

In last week’s blog post “An Introduction to Social Media Marketing”, I referred to SMO. (SMO) Social media optimization, sometimes known as social media marketing, is a branch of search engine optimization that isn’t as mainstream as it should be. Every business and church can benefit from some form of engagement with social media networks, but not every business (or church) does engage. In the very near future, any business ignoring SMO will do so to their severe detriment. This is why I do my social media marketing company (GTK Solutions) and something I help educate business owners about.

Here’s just a few of the functions an SMO campaign serves:

*Exposure. This is the main thing most businesses aim for when they engage in social media optimisation. Many companies let increased exposure remain as the limit of a campaign’s advantages. A little thought can make social media work harder for your website optimisation campaign.

*Customer service. As more of the average businesses can be contacted through social media than in any other forum, it makes sense to use social media networks as a kind of customer service line. The publicly viewable nature of social media communication means that positive customer interactions get your business some excellent coverage, although for the same reasons negative encounters are best taken offline.

*Brand and reputation management. One of the major changes social media has wrought upon the internet is the need for results in real time. This aspect of social media comes in as an advantage when your brand needs a little support. Businesses are using social media to respond to bad press in their own words, getting in before the media does too much damage.

*Media coverage. The social media can be used as your own little media network, without the trouble of bothering with journalists.

*** I hope you know that my heart is to educate, inform, train and equip you as Church leaders. Any mention to my company (GTK Solutions) in my blogs is just a passing reference to what I do during the day. Please know that my business is not geared to churches (they can’t afford it). I’m not writing this for any other purpose than to share for free what others pay me to tell them. My clients for GTK Solutions are businesses only.

However, I do offer consulting (not marketing) to churches and am passionate about teaching and equipping church leaders and pastors about social media. Let me know if you’d like to talk with me about consulting with your church or organization for SMO. I also include social media and online strategy in my report when I do a secret shopper for a church. If you have interest in that, go HERE for more details.

I thought this was a great article/blog post by Michael R. Macias on that I came across on the Small Business Tech blog. This is what I try to get across to clients that I work with: social media marketing is a marathon, not a sprint. Just like I said in my older blog post “Diving into Social Media” – you have to be in it for the long haul. Read what Michael had to say to business leaders:

Far too often in the business world the term return on investment (ROI) is used to justify actions or strategies. Though the term certainly has a place in the small business sector, it doesn’t fit everywhere. And there is one place it should never be used-social media. Imagine if all of us treated our “real” friends based on the concept of “ROI” like we do with our “virtual” ones. Chances are it would look a little something like this: “Today I hung out with Billy, but got nothing in return, so I won’t be doing that again, even if we’ve been friends for 20 years.” We’d all end up without any friends if we lived our lives that way. Well, the same rule should apply to any social media efforts your small business engages in. Using Facebook shouldn’t be about tracking ROI, or measuring the benefits of your friends.

Granted, there are metrics or insights, available to show you how effective your messages are, but that shouldn’t define your efforts. Social media is about more than just sales conversions or coupon deliveries…it’s really about relationships. Today’s consumers want to feel connected to a brand, and have a personal relationship with it. It’s about engaging people, inspiring them, motivating them, and encouraging them to appreciate your brand. When you decide to dive into social media, think about treating it exactly as you would a new friend. As you get to know them, and they get to know you, you start to like each other more, and the next thing you know, you are introducing each other to new people. I believe in the business world we refer to that as word of mouth marketing. So before you try to rate your “virtual” friends, or create a system to track their value, stop and think, “Would I do this to Billy?”

This was a guest post and thank you Michael for taking the time to write this great post. You can find out more about Michael and his business at his website www.insidethecube.com . An impressive website and it is worth taking the time visit. Also you can follow Michael and his business on twitter http://twitter.com/CreativeQube.

Did you know I do social media marketing for businesses? I never really talk about my day job on here. I consult with churches from time to time and do secret shoppers at churches on weekends, but during the week I run a social media marketing company called GTK Solutions. The “GTK” is named after my three kids: Grace, Tommy and Katie. By the way, if you want to get social media and social media marketing tips and quotes and links to blogs that educate and inform, follow my company on Twitter: https://twitter.com/gtksolutions.

I consult and market for clients in the social media realm, dealing with SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and SMO (Social Media Optimization). I thought I’d do a couple of blogs on here that educate you on things like this and share with you what I share with my clients.

If I can help out doctors and businesses, you know I want to help out Church leaders. So what do I do with businesses? I first do a discovery meeting with the client to learn more about their business, their target (who they want to reach), their existing online presence and their goals. The discovery process and questions I ask are some of the following (these are things you need to think through in your situation):

GTK Solutions Discovery Questions

1.         Do you believe in what you do?

2.         Would you buy what you are selling?

3.         What social marketing are you currently doing? Even unintentional communication about your business.

4.         If I searched social media sites today what would I learn about your business?

5.         How do your customers use social media?

6.         What is your brand?

7.         What is your reputation among those you serve?

8.         What social media marketing seems to be working?

9.         What social media marketing seems to not be working? What will it take to stop this?

10.       Who is your target audience?

11.       What date are you thinking of going public with this new campaign?

12.       What goals do you hope to see met as a result of this social media campaign?

***  First, things first. If you’ve never read my blog post “Diving into Social Media” – stop and read that. It’s a great place to start. So before I start answering questions you’re not asking: What questions do you guys have about social media marketing and how it can benefit your church and boost your online presence? Of course, I’m assuming you’ve seen the Social Media Revolution video, know how important social media is, how many people can be reached by it and that you want to reach more people for Christ.

The new book by Senior Pastor Kerry Shook and Chris Shook, co-founders of Woodlands Church in The Woodlands, Texas, helps readers focus on their key relationships—spouse, children, close friends—with the aim of deepening each. Instead of what they call “love at first sight,” the authors are encouraging a “love at last sight” mentality.

With regard to marriage, Chris Shook said: “Love at first sight is the idea that you meet that one and fall in love and that’s it. As Kerry and I found out in our 26 years of marriage and in raising four children, we found that love is really what happens in the in-between times, what you do in the tough times and in the times when you aren’t filled with butterflies and roses and music.

“We want the last time that we see each other, we want us to be more in love than ever before,” Shook added. “Since that’s our goal, it means working on that every day.”

Readers are challenged “to think of three key relationships in your life—and it could be family members, friends, co-workers—and tell them they are important to you,” Shook said. “Find people in your life that mean a lot to you and then really focus on those three relationships during the first 30 days, and we hope that after that month, this will become a lifestyle, a ‘love at last sight’ lifestyle.”

The book divides the 30 days into four weeks and the four keys behind the “love at last sight” lifestyle: being all there, acting intentionally, risking awkwardness and letting go.

As with their previous book, Love At Last Sight can be used by an individual, group or whole church. Drumming up interest among churches, Shook said: “There are actually many churches who did a campaign for One Month to Live who have already expressed a lot of interest in doing this as well, so we will be launching and meeting a lot of churches this fall with churches across the country.”

As one part of the book’s launch, the Shooks are encouraging participation in a Facebook Fast on Aug. 25.

“We do feel like it’s really important to recognize that we’re becoming too dependent on social-networking sites to conduct everyday affairs of relating to each other, to the people we love,” Shook said. “So we are encouraging a national Facebook Fast where for a day you don’t go to social-networking sites and only use your computer for necessary things that day for work or school or whatever—not texting if possible, but calling people or seeing them face to face.”

To order the book, go HERE.

Top Christian media website, Evangelize.com, has rebranded it’s video download site as MinistryFlix.com. To celebrate this name change, the site is giving away brand new exclusive content each week throughout the summer, created by some of its top selling producers. Please know some of this content you can’t find anywhere else on the web!

The site offers thousands of short videos that give viewers an opportunity to hear about important themes. Videos tackle issues such as gossip, worship, relationships and forgiveness – all from a Christian perspective. Many of the videos feature stars from such hit television shows as “The Office,” “Community,” “Parks and Recreation,” “Glee,” “Saturday Night Live” and more.

The site’s founder, Tom Rice, says “We are constantly bombarded with stories and visual imagery that compete for our imagination and aim to influence the way we view our world. Our imaginations are often led to value what is contrary to God’s teaching. MinistryFlix.com thinks it’s time to reclaim our imaginations,” says Rice.

MinistryFlix.com believes that parables and imagery are just as influential today as they were when Jesus delivered his sermon on the mount. They have put together a vast resource of materials that they believe will help capture the imagination of their audience and lead them closer to Christ.

“People yearn to hear truth that will set them free. Your audience might be your church, your family or perhaps your friends who don’t know Jesus. They’re ready to listen,” says Rice. Rice wants people to view MinistryFlix.com as the top digital resource for offering the best in Christian media for church, small group or individual use. The downloadable videos range from inspirational videos, documentary testimonials, and comedies and often feature recognizable actors. The content on the site is produced through a partnership of top Christian media producers.

Don’t miss that last point – it separates MinistryFlix.com from most of it’s competitors. They screen and filter their videos and won’t put up just anybody. My problem with some companies is they have so much junk on their website that you have to search for hours to find anything usable. Only the top Christian media producers have been selected to be on MinistryFlix.com. It’s really a who’s who of Christian media resources. If you want to save yourself time, it’s worth you bookmarking them and checking them first when you’re looking for a video clip for your ministry.

In case you missed it in the opening paragraph: They’re giving away FREE videos every week. The new Deidox film is only on their site and available as a FREE download. At least go get your free video!