Planting Space

Here is some great information posted by web design & hosting company Church Web Works:

“Here are some suggestions about how to improve search results on search engines:
…[a] free option is to visit search engine sites individually (i.e. Google, Yahoo) and find out if they will let you register with them for free. Google’s page is located here.

A similar option that may be more effective is to visit sites like www.addme.com. They offer a variety of options to register your site with search engines. Some options are free while others charge a fee.

You can also improve your rank on search engines by getting other sites to link to yours. Find local sites (chamber of commmerce, etc.) and directory pages that may add a link on their site to yours. Here are some other church directory sites to get you started:
www.churchangel.com
www.netministries.org
www.usachurch.com
www.worshipquest.org
www.findachurch.com
www.churchzip.com
If you want people to easily find the physical location(s) of the organization, use this link to learn about Google Maps listings.”

Remember, though, that posting your church all over these church sites above is like advertising your new church on Christian radio. Who do you think your audience is going to be?

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I spent Monday in downtown Indianapolis with Jake Nelson, who has planted Response Christian Church.  He took me around the downtown area to show me the target area of the new church.  One building in particular caught my eye.  It was a magnificent church.  The architecture was amazing.  I asked what church it was.  Jake’s answer shocked me.  He said, “Oh that’s not a church, its condos.”

There is something sad about seeing a church building that no longer has a congregation meeting in it.  As I did a quick Google search, I found several churches that had been converted into condos.  While the church planter in me loves the creative use of space, I can’t help but wonder how we can ensure the churches we start never see this fate.  So here is my list, feel free to add your comments on how to condo-proof your church.

1. Be externally focused.
2. Train up elders and leaders that understand the importance discipleship and evangelism.
3. Constantly evaluate what you do.
4. Continue to conduct demographic research and needs assessments for you community and shape ministries to fit.
5. Be willing to change.
6. Be relevant.
7. Don’t condo-proof.  Go with trend and sell that outdated building for top dollar and use the funds to start new churches and build community centers.

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If you are fundraising for your new church plant (did I really just say if?), a great way to connect with your supporters is to invite them to visit in person. Everyone on your list should certainly be invited for Launch Sunday, but you may want to consider inviting key contributors for other significant events:

• The donor who sent money for your bounce house or ice cream truck may want to come to the first big outreach event where you use these
• The donor who sent money for the A/V equipment could come for the first dry run of set-up and tear-down
• A significant donor could simply be invited for a personal tour of the town. Demonstrate how much you’ve learned about the people in the community and refresh in their mind your vision

You get the idea. Remember that ministry is all about relationship; so is support raising. Treat them like family and keep them included in what’s going on. After all, one of their motivations is to participate in the Kingdom by supporting you. Don’t muzzle the ox while it treads out the grain.

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Last week I posted a blog on email marketing which included a link to a review of several of the providers.  There was one company that review left out that we recommend to all of our church planters: Web Accelerated Marketing.  I’ll review it based on the criteria from my post.

1.  Check the templates:  WAM has a good supply templates in several categories from Church to Restaurants.  If you can use Microsoft Word, you will feel at home editing the templates.

2.  Ease of Use.  WAM has a familiar Microsoft feel to the software.  Like any program, it takes a little getting used to.  After working with WAM a few times the user interface has become familiar and comfortable to navigate.

3.  Does it have tools to help you avoid the spam filter?  Yes.  WAM employs a double opt-in process for all contacts ensuring that you will miss the spam filter.  They also highly recommend not using a public email address like Gmail or Yahoo as those are abused by spammers.

4.  Can you get help?  WAM includes built in video tutorials.  While not comprehensive, they do seem to be working to add new and updated tutorial videos.  You can also submit help questions through the program and typically will receive a timely answer.

5.  Can you customize the html?  Yes.  For the brave and tech savvy, WAM allows you to switch to view the the source code of the template so that you can customize the template.  I’ve done very little website editing and was able to play around with the source enough to achieve the look I wanted.  WAM also employs graphic designers who will develop a customized template with your branding.

WAM does much more than html email.  It also has built in tools to allow you to track the response, publish web content, create landing pages, build in feedback forms, surveys, and opinion polls to your site, as well as generate Personalized URLs (Purls).

If you are still deciding about what E-mail Marketing service to use, here is the kicker: ITS FREE! The creators of WAM know that church planters don’t have any money and so they have decided to give away for free for the first year of the church.  This really makes WAM a no-brainer.  Try it out, kick the tires and if you don’t like it you aren’t out any money.  To sign up click here.

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Two of the early milestones that any church planter must accomplish is developing a prayer support team and financial supporters.  When God begins to plant a vision for a church in a pastors mind, fundraising and support letters are not part of the vision that keeps them up at night.  (That’s comes later when they start dreading it.)  But most don’t stop to consider how significant it is for a supporter to receive updates and prayers.  

Most people never get an intimate look at the prayer life of a pastor.  By receiving updates and prayers, your supporters can see how your faith handles difficult obstacles, takes on the impossible, perseveres, and trusts God.  That open window into your life will help stretch their faith and serve as a model for how they approach God.  Essentially your prayer letters will serve as discipleship tools to your supporters.  As you share stories about lost people coming to know Jesus, your supporters will be inspired to reignite their passion to reach out the lost in their midst.

So the next time you realize its been over a month since your last prayer update, don’t dread it.  Take it as an opportunity to teach and inspire the people who are making a sacrifice of time and money so that this new work of God can exist.  

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Email communication is great… so are blogs, websites, facebook and my new favorite, twitter.  The problem is some people just don’t get the whole electronic world in which we live.  On top of that, everyone still appreciates the personal touch of a handwritten note.  Now I know you are thinking that there is no way you can do that for all your contacts but you just aren’t planning ahead for it.  There are a few strategies you can try:

• Sort your contacts by birthdays and send out cards once a week to everyone with an upcoming birthday.
• Simply block out (plan ahead, put it on your calendar just like a meeting) 1-2 hours per week to send thank you notes and personal cards of encouragement.
• Sub-contract out the job… okay, not really, but you can have your spouse, older kids, or someone on your launch team send written notes.  Maybe the forge your name or just sign it from the “project”.  Either way a hand written note from someone else is still better than none at all.

You should also make some phone calls.  A few calls a week go a long way.  Maybe block off 1 hour a week in the evening (with your spouse’s permission) to make some personal calls when you can reach people at home.

Either way, you need to remember that all the communicating is about relationships.  It’s not about “getting something”.  It’s an investment in people.  Your supporters deserve to be loved by your church plant just as much as the people you are reaching.

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A nearly indispensable communication tool for you ’support raisers’ out there is the blog. Don’t know what a blog is yet (hint… you’re reading one)? Read what is a blog?. You can set up your own blog for free on Blogger or Word Press (among others). This is a great way to supplement your email communication and have your thoughts and ideas posted for anyone to be referred to. Plus, you can ‘publish’ it to an RSS feed and encourage your supporters to subscribe to the feed. It’s like having an electronic newspaper delivered to their homepage/blog-reader whenever you publish new content.

The free blogs will provide you with your own web address within their own domain (i.e. ‘thisismynewblog.wordpress.com’), but you can also purchase your own domain name and use their interface to create and post all of your content. Now your address can be www.thisismynewblog.com (as long as your desired domain name is available for purchase). A word to the wise: it is a good idea to separate your new church website, intended to be viewed by indigenous people in your area, from your blog, which is intended for people you are asking for money or to pray for personal issues about you and your family. I hope the reason is obvious.

A great personal spin on this medium is the video blog. Now you can record a short message from yourself to your supporters and they will get to see and hear you. They won’t have to guess about the tone of voice you’re trying to use in a typed blog (especially useful to you snarky wise-crackers out there), and they get the benefit of your non-verbal communication: body language.

Just like the email newsletter, you need to be disciplined about doing this on a routine basis; once a week should be about right. If you don’t post a new blog for more than a month, you will have lost your audience and an opportunity to easily communicate with them.

One last thought: I know you’re thinking, “You want me to send a weekly email and write a weekly post? How am I going to fit that into my already jam-packed schedule?” One way to maximize your time is to write the blog first with content that you would have sent in the email newsletter. Then compose the email using the first 2 or 3 sentences of the blog as a hook, adding a ‘read more’ link back to your blog. Voila, a 2-fer! And you thought it couldn’t be done…

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Email is a key tool in the church planter’s arsenal.  It is used for fundraising, marketing, internal communication, scheduling, and many other things.  The days of plain text emails are all but gone.  Emails now are saturated with html, pictures, and hyperlinks.  But don’t worry, you don’t have to be a web designer or graphic artist to create professional looking emails and best of all you don’t have to spend a lot of money.  Email marketing services do all the hard work for you by designing custom templates so that all you have to do is plug in a couple of pictures and write.  Most of these services as easy to use as your email program.  There are several great email marketing services to choose from.  Fortunately someone has already done the hard work of comparing feature sets between the major competitors.  You can check that out here.

Here are a few things to look for when choosing an email marketing service:

• Check the templates.  If the templates don’t look good, don’t waste your time.  The best thing email marketing services have to offer is their professionally designed templates.
• Ease of use.  If you can’t figure out how to use it quickly, move on.  If its not easy, chances are you won’t use it.
• Does it have tools to help you avoid the spam filter?
• Can you get help?  If you run into a problem, how hard is it to get help?
• Can you customize the html?  You may want to have the ability to customize the html to get just the right color or look.

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If you want supporters, for both prayer and for finances, you have to be intentional about communiating with them.  If you just wing it and communicate with them when it’s convenient, you never will.  Trust me, very few church planters are good at constant communication, which is required for constant support, without putting into place a plan and a structure.  Our next several posts will help you do just that.

The first step is to put it on your calendar.  Pick a day for your first communications blast.  We’ll focus on email during this series but you can also apply this to “snail mail” and phone calls.

You also need to determine what frequency to communicate with people.  Daily is too much… they’ll quit reading.  Monthly is not often enough… they’ll forget you exist.  We recommend weekly.  So pick a day you know you typically have some time and just block out an hour just like you would for a meeting.

Once it’s on your calendar you’ll find it much easier to actually do it.

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Getting the word out in your community is an obvious necessity for a new church plant. But do you have any idea how long it takes for some of the standard communication/marketing pieces to be produced? Since church launches are seasonal, you and a hundred other planters are all asking for services from the same marketing ministry providers at the same time. Don’t be caught having run out of time, because the designer or printer or whoever else may not have the bandwidth to accomodate a rush job when you’ve forced yourself to need it.

Here’s some simple things you can do to plan ahead:

1. determine which media or marketing techniques you could use to get the word out
2. narrow that list down to the ones that will work well in your community
3. assign costs & lead times to each item
4. give a copy of your plan to members of your launch team (ah yes, accountability)

Here are some typical lead times for standard communication channels:

• web site design - if you’re going fully custom design, you’d better count on this taking 8 weeks (more in some cases)
• direct mail postcards - if you’re smart, start this 6 weeks before your first drop date
• signage - this depends on your provider, but count on the design alone to take a good 2 weeks, then add some more time for production and as appropriate, shipping
• keyword advertising - here’s where you catch a break. You can get a Google or Yahoo! keyword campaign up and running by yourself in a matter of hours. Aren’t familiar with this one? Look for a future how-to blog post.

Hey, you probably know this, but you’ve got to have a website up and running before you start any of these other items. Every bit of communication you send out must have your web address on it, because that’s where everyone will go to check you out first. This has become a non-negotiable.

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