I have heard several stories over the past 6 months where young children have been exposed to hard core pornography on the internet. This was stuff that they didn’t go looking for. It came searching for them like some kind of wicked, sleazy stalker in the dark. Those parents were devastated and left trying to repair their little ones’ innocence and all of them wishing it had never happened.
These stories have left me very concerned that the world is moving faster than many parents are prepared for.
If this has happened to you and your child, please know that Jesus can and will restore that child’s innocence when you pray! Talk with your child and work through all of their questions. Then pray with them, and for them, and you will be amazed at how easily Jesus can wipe their little soul clean for a new start. The last thing you should do is start down a self-accusational road that makes you feel condemned and keeps you from ministering effectively to your child.
So, I want to address this in as helpful way as I can. I don’t normally write blog posts that are this long or this detailed, but I really believe this is an important and timely issue. If you have young children, or have friends that do, please take the time to read through this and pass it on. Read more…
Have you ever noticed in Scripture that Jesus, even though He revolutionized the whole world with just 3 year’s worth of public ministry, never seemed liked He was in a hurry? He waited 30 years before He even revealed Himself publicly. Then, after His very public baptism and affirmation with an audible voice from heaven, He disappeared for another 40 days.
After Jesus’ incredible ascension into heaven, His disciples didn’t immediately run around telling everyone, they went to Jerusalem and waited like Jesus had told them to (finally they were listening). Then, after an extended time in which they “joined together constantly in prayer,” God moved, and just like that 3000 people got saved.
His timing, manner and method will be perfect, be it fast or slow. [We should] take things one step at a time with Jesus’ earthly ministry and the early church’s start as our pattern. They understood that prayer is the work and everything else is the result of the work.
What are you struggling to “take one step at a time” with right now?
I had a peculiar experience today in a worship service. First, there was a normal worship set with music played by a competent band with a competent worship leader through a more than competent audio system into a room with competent acoustics. The music was “right”. The sound was “right”. The lighting was “right”. The worship leader led strongly without getting in the way. Nobody in the band seemed overly concerned with performing but genuinely wanted to help aid us in worshiping Jesus. I have no criticisms at all.
What was peculiar to me was what happened at the end. The set ended, the lights went out, the band mostly left the stage, and a large group of men came up on the stage. It was a choir made up of about 15 or so men from a local Teen Challenge camp. In case you don’t know, Teen Challenge is a Christ-centered drug rehab program begun by David Wilkerson many years ago. This choir was primarily made up of men who are former drug addicts.
“Are you crazy? I don’t have time for a blog, Facebook, and Twitter!” ~ You
Yes you do. I’ll show you how to leverage Twitter and your WordPress blog to get your feet wet in the social networking world with minimal effort. Read on.
What is Social Networking?
I mentioned in my first post of the series that we are now living in a global culture. Everyone is asking the question “Where do I fit in this new global world?”. The internet, to a large degree, has been the arena in which people have sought to answer that question. We’ve seen a shift in the past 10 years or so. Around the new millennium, people were just trying to make money with the internet. Since then, the big innovations have been centered around people connecting with other people. This is social networking. People finding new ways to connect to each other on the global stage of the internet (at least, that’s how I define it…)
There are a dizzying array of social networking options out there. Feel free to explore them, but I’m going to focus on the two big ones: Facebook and Twitter. (forget MySpace – it’s been thoroughly trounced by Facebook at this point). Let’s take them one at a time.
Twitter – Beautiful in It’s Simplicity
So be careful not to underestimate it. Twitter began as a simple question, “What are you doing?” Not very impressive. What’s impressive is how the “hive mind” of the web took the simple idea and used it to redefine social networking.
This video might help with the background:
I was very skeptical of Twitter at first. It all seemed very narcissistic to me. But I finally got convinced to try it and I’ve never looked back. I’m meeting people that I never would have met any other way, and it’s one of the few social networking tools that I have tried that actually improved my life.  If you need more convincing, here’s 12 more reasons to start today. For the rest of you that are ready to dive in, here’s what you need to do:
Get your free Twitter account. Choose a username that makes sense and can be remembered easily. Resist the temptation to give yourself a goofy nickname.
Use their tool for adding anyone in your contact list to your follow list.
Search for anyone else you want to follow. You can search by name, topic, whatever. Check out people you like and see who they follow. This really is the key to enjoying twitter. Following people in whom you are interested.
Get a desktop twitter client. The web interface is ok, but Twitter will really come alive for you when you get a nice desktop app for it. I very highly recommend Twhirl for beginners. Try Tweetdeck when you get the hang of things.
Start by listening and making note of how other people use twitter. When someone says something you think is interesting or entertaining, Retweet it. Reply if someone asks a question. Take your time, ease into it.
Remember that Twitter is about adding to a conversation. Don’t let it become all about you. Use it to point out interesting things on the web. Use it to share thoughts, quotes, etc. Think of Twitter as microblogging. The more value you add, the better your experience will be.
Tweet your blog posts. Every time you publish something on your blog, announce it on twitter and provide a link to the post. This way you are leveraging your twitter following to your blog.
Use your phone. You can send tweets by text message and use the mobile version of the Twitter website. Blackberry and iPhone also both have some nice twitter apps.
I have to confess. I don’t really like Facebook and I don’t go to it very often. But, no one really knows it. If you go to my Facebook profile it will look like I’m there all the time. It’s not so.
Where Twitter is like a focussed, short, and somewhat controlled connection tool… Facebook is like trying to drink from a fire hose. It’s overwhelming to me at times. I’m certainly a minority there… Facebook is HUGE and most of the people in my church are active there. Here’s how I maintain visibility on Facebook without letting it rule my time:
Install the Twitter Facebook application. It will tie your Twitter messages to your Facebook status. Once you’ve done that, every time you send a tweet it will show up on your Facebook profile as a status update. 2 birds with one… tweet. ;-)
I use Flickr to share photos with family. There’s a facebook app for flickr too. Every time I add a photo to my flickr account, it shows up on Facebook. 2 birds again…
Google Reader has a facebook app. If you use Google Reader to manage your RSS feeds, you can install the GR app and every time you “share” an article in Google Reader, it appears on Facebook. Notice, all this Facebook activity and I haven’t gone to the FB site once.
Now the only time I have to go to Facebook is when someone emails me from there (rare for me because I don’t send emails out from FB) or does something on my profile that warrants a response. SHhhhhh…. don’t tell.
As you can see, Twitter really is at the center of my social network. I suggest you set yourself up the same way.
The next, and last, installment in this series will be a guest post from Trendsetting Design to help you use the power of graphic design to enhance your ministry online and offline.
I mentioned in my first post in this series that there is a new expectation in our church culture that wasn’t there just a decade ago. People want to know their pastor, and that’s perfectly right and good. I don’t think most people expect to know everything. They don’t want to stalk the pastor, they just want to know him. They want to have some sense (even if vague) of what his family life is like, what he laughs about (if he laughs), and what his dreams are for the church and his own life. This isn’t hero worship. It’s kind of the opposite, in my opinion. It’s taking the pastor off the ivory pedestal and making him human again. It think that’s a good thing.
If we pastors are honest, we will admit that our hesitancy to setup a personal blog has to do with a fear of being more vulnerable than we have been in the past. You need to get over it. If you don’t, you are going to find yourself more and more ineffective as a leader. This is a bigger issue than your website.
I started blogging before I became a pastor. It was just an unfocused creative outlet for me. Then I took the pastorate and the significance of my litte corner of the web totally changed. Immediately people in my new church started reading. I didn’t know it, but they were making connections with me through this medium. People that did not know me yet, felt like they were getting to know me before I was able to even introduce myself. I didn’t feel like a stranger to them anymore.
THAT’S POWERFUL!
Visitors to our church mention my blog when they meet me. They already know some of the funny stories about my kids. They know some inside jokes. They know my first name. Pastor, if you aren’t blogging you are not taking advantage of one of the most powerful leadership tools available to you.
General Tips
I suggest that you do not use your church website as your blog. Most CMS-driven sites will allow you to blog. I don’t think this is ideal. It will help you and your readers to have your own space. It should look different and have it’s own web address. You should feel free to speak freely and make the site your own. And your readers will feel like it’s more authentic this way.
Please. Please don’t turn your blog into an online devotional. In my opinion, this is perhaps the number one mistake I see on pastor blogs. Your blog, on the whole, should not be an extension of your pulpit ministry. Stop preaching, and talk. Talk like a human being. Sermonize on Sunday. Conversate on your blog. If you want to blog your sermons, I suggest you do that at your church website. Keep your blog personal.
Practice using a personal tone in your writing. Address your readers by using the pronoun “you” a lot. When you write, imagine that you are talking directly to a person. This will inspire you to be personable. A blog is not a formal writing medium. It’s informal, personal, and conversational.
Be yourself. Talk about books you are reading, thoughts you have, what you love about being a pastor and what’s hard. The temptation to build a false persona as a pastor is very strong. Resist it when blogging. A lack of authenticity is murder in the blogging world.
Don’t be long winded all the time. One of the main reasons I hear pastors cite as to the reason they don’t blog is that they don’t think they have the time. That’s because they don’t understand blogging. It doesn’t need to be long. Just a paragraph or two. A few minutes of your time. Of course, there will be times when you want to really knuckle down and write some serious prose. Go for it when you want to. Mix it up. Just don’t feel like you need to write a book every time you post. Relax and have fun with it.
Post with some regularity. This doesn’t mean you have to post every day (though that would be nice). I post about 2 times a week. However often you can do it, decide on a basic schedule and stick to it. People will get into a rhythm with your site and consistency will build stable traffic.
Have an opinion and state it with passion and sincerity. Passionless writing is boring.
Remember that what you publish, is out there forever. Never say anything about someone that you wouldn’t want them to hear. Never click “publish” when you are angry. Never use your blog to solve relationship problems. If you wouldn’t email it, don’t blog it.
Remember that blogging should be a 2-way conversation. That’s what commenting is for. Encourage it by asking the reader to respond. Write in a way that inspires people to add to what you said. Leave something unexplored and ask for opinions. Commenting is what makes a blog fun for you and your readers. Encourage it.
Make it easy to comment. I’m a big proponent of wide open commenting. No pre-moderation. I think anything more restricted sends the wrong message. However, at the very least, don’t make people register at your site before they can comment. Having to remember yet another username and password is a barrier many, many people will not get over in order to comment (myself included).
How to Get Started
It’s a whole heck of a lot easier than you think to get a blog up and running. I’ll give you two options, in order based on the best to the least desirable.
Host your own blog with your own domain and use WordPress to do it. WordPress is the best blogging platform. There, I said it. And I believe it. This doesn’t require much expertise, but some. If you are new to blogging, you probably will not be able to do this on your own. Find someone to install WordPress for you. This gives you maximum control over the design and functionality of your site. It will be yours to tweak and make your own. Installing WordPress is easy and should not be expensive to hire someone to do the basic install for you. In fact, this is one of the things that a geek volunteer in your church could do with some research.
Create a free WordPress blog, hosted by WordPress. It takes less than 5 minutes to create the free account, choose a theme, and start blogging. You have less control over your design and funtionality than if you hosted it yourself, but it’s the same engine running it. DON’T USE BLOGGER, or any of the other free blogging platforms out there. Just do what everyone else eventually comes around to and start with WordPress.com. If you decide later to host the site yourself with the WordPress software, moving it from the free hosted service to your own is a cinch.
Go on. Get started now. You can thank me later.
The next post in this series will be about social networking. Don’t worry. It won’t hurt.
Most pastors know that they need to get plugged into web technology, but they have no idea where to begin. This series is for you. I want to help you engage your city and the world with the gospel. I also have another audience in mind. It’s those that still don’t see the need to get on the web tech bus. Maybe your seminary prof told you the web is a dark and evil place that should be avoided at all cost. Or maybe you just see this as a big fad that will go away soon. Let me address that problem first as a way of providing some context.
Only a crazy hermit could deny that web tech has taken over, particularly in the form of social media and networking. Still, I meet pastors all the time that simply don’t see how participating in that world can possibly benefit their ministry. If they do participate, it’s begrudgingly. They say, “Humph. I guess these days this is the kind of thing you have to do. All the young kids are doing it, so I suppose we should too.” In other words, I don’t see the value in this, but I’ll do it to make people happy. However, I know in my own mind that I’m not going to really give this a shot. I don’t understand it, so it must not be important.
What are you doing for Easter this year? If you are in the Kernersville, Winston-Salem, High Point area of North Carolina you should stop by and see us at KCC. We are planning a killer event this year. We have a big, flat field behind our building and we will be putting it to good use this year with an outdoor festival. We’ll have music, dance performances, door prizes, giveaways, a bounce house for the kids, food, and more.
I have heard several stories over the past 6 months where young children have been exposed to hard core pornography on the internet. This was stuff that they didn’t go looking for. It came searching for them like some kind of wicked, sleazy stalker in the dark. Those parents were devastated and left trying to repair their little ones’ innocence and all of them wishing it had never happened.
