Update on MyChurch.org

Last Thursday, I wrote this post about a new website I’d read about – MyChurch.org. The time-stamp on the post says it was created at 1:39 P.M. I’m not sure if that is the time-stamp WordPress put on it when I started writing it, or when I actually “published” it. I had a comment posted by Joe from MyChurch.org offering to list my church if I sent him the information. That is an incredibly quick response. Since this blog gets almost no traffic (literally), I’m suprised they found it that fast. Kudos to Joe and the people at MyChurch for being on the ball like that. They must have listened to Rick Klau’s talk, too. Oh, and Joe – if you see this – I’ll be replying to you soon.

Also, MicroExplosion has a review up of MyChurch.org. They got a sneak peek at what will be released on Wednesday.

MyChurch.org – community site for churches (and people)

While looking for more stuff online about the Rick Klau talk I mentioned earlier, I came across this post that mentioned MyChurch.org and it’s beta launch next week.  Immediately I went to visit the site.  It let me sign up for an account, even though the site refers to it being in private beta and the beta period starting next week.  Give it a try.

It allows both individuals and churches to set up profiles there.  It also appears that churches will be able to blog, podcast, and maybe even do video podcasts there.  Individuals can identify the church they belong to and join that church community.  I looked for Bethel Lutheran and they are not listed yet.  It also allows individual members to submit the information for a church (if it’s not already found) so the church can have a profile set up.

A very interesting idea, and one that I might not have given a second thought to if I hadn’t just listened to Rick Klau’s talk about reaching out using the internet.

Preaching to the Wired

Via this post at ChurchMarketingSucks.com:

Rick Klau is the Vice President of Business Development for Feedburner. He recently spoke at the ELCA Communicator’s Conference in Chicago on August 4, 2006. His topic was “Preaching to the Wired” – about how churches can and should use modern communication mechanisms to communicate and reach out. The total lengh is approximately 75 minutes, but it is well worth it. I’ve listened to it completely once, listened to parts of it several times, and I’ll probably listen to it several more times to make sure I absorb all he has to say. The link to the RealAudio streaming file can be found here. It is listed under August 4.

These are some of the quick notes I made during my first pass at listening to it while writing code at work:

Points to frame the discussion:

If you’re on the internet, and you’re not on MySpace, you’re not on the Internet.

If your evangelizing, and you’re not evangelizing through the use of blogs, podcasts, video blogs, or Second Life, then you aren’t fully evangelizing.

—

Not just about communicating to young people – The fastest growing demographic of people with internet access is retirees. They are often consuming the most amount of information online due to the amount of free time they have during the day. This is not just “how to reach the young people”.

For anyone under the age of 20, more than 2/3 of the messages they send or receive are via IM.

Weblogs are just websites that are arranged chronologically in reverse chronological order. Weblogs are Google’s “drug of choice”.

Typical church website:
Service hours
Map of location
Driving directions
List of staff

How likely are people to link to that? Not very likely. Must have original, relevant content to be linked to.

Smokin’!

I read on the Dallas Observer Blog Unfair Park about a website called Smokin’ a Phattie. No, it’s not about what you think, and it’s completely work safe. It’s like a MySpace for people that like to grill. Wow.