Mike runs a website called Train-ee which helps people learn how to use Expression Engine, a great content management system for websites. Mike has just finished a series of articles entitled Building A Church Website. In the process of writing that series, Mike actually created a sample church website.

That could have been the end of the project. But Mike had a better idea. And so he is auctioning off the sample church website at eBay. You can see the sample church website here. The auction will also include a year of hosting, some training/customization from Mike, a year’s subscription to a donor management software package, and more.

Proceeds from the auction will be donated to charity:water, a non-profit organization bringing clean and safe drinking water to people in developing nations. In addition, proceeds from the sale of Mike’s books and screencasts during the auction will also be donated to charity:water. Finally, Mike has provided a PayPal donation link so that even if you’re not interested in the church website or Mike’s training materials, you can still donate to this great cause.

The auction will begin on Wednesday, April 29 at 1:00 p.m. ET. Full details about the auction and a video from Mike are available here on the Train-ee website.

I would strongly encourage you to visit Mike’s site, watch his video (I learned some things I didn’t know about water!), and consider what you might be able to do to help him support a great cause.

The vast majority of unbelievers today are not searching on “church” at Google. They aren’t interested in us. But strategically including content on our websites which corresponds to the felt needs of unbelievers in our area and then optimizing for related search terms is an effective form of outreach today.

I encourage you to visit the Church relevance blog today to hear what Kent has to say on this important topic.

Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows its users to send and read other users’ updates (otherwise known as tweets), which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length.

I just finished reading a new e-book from Anthony Coppedge called The Reason Your Church Must Twitter. With a subtitle of “Making Your Ministry Contagious,” it’s a short, fascinating read.

Within it’s 63 pages, Anthony gives a concise rationale for the church’s use of Twitter. There is no wasted space here — it took me about an hour to read the book and all of the information is valuable.

How A Church Can Use Twitter Effectively
Anthony advocates using Twitter to remind church members of events, drive traffic to the church website, effectively target segments of the congregation (and not send irrelevant information to other segments), pass along urgent prayer requests, keep church members informed of last-minute changes, reinforcing aspects of weekly messages, etc.

I’ve been using Twitter for awhile now (and I must admit that I’m fairly sporadic in my tweets — I still find myself not thinking about it much while I’m in the midst of a project), and have thought about how the church could use its functionality, but Anthony has “taken it to the next level.” His e-book includes a number of great ideas for how the regular use of Twitter could improve a church’s communication with and among its members.

A Personal Reaction — Your Mileage May Vary
He also points out how Twitter can be used as a means of conversation between church leadership and the congregation, especially in large churches where the pastoral staff can be isolated from church members in many ways. On a personal level, I have to admit that I’m of two minds on this. I hesitate to even mention this because I don’t want to distract from recommending Anthony’s book in any way, but in the end, I did want to relate how I responded to the e-book while I was reading it. In the end, that Anthony’s e-book made me think about these things is a testament to its value.

While I recognize that Twitter (like blogging) can “put a face” on a distant church leader for church members (and that can be helpful in some ways), I struggle with the idea of using the technology to improve the symptoms of a flawed paradigm of church life (I don’t think the New Testament ever contemplates a hierarchical church structure in which leaders can become isolated from those they lead) without addressing the cause itself (I believe that hierarchy defeats community and that we must address the issue if we are ever to reach the world for Christ). I recognize, however, that my view of traditional church paradigms is definitely a minority-view. At the same time, I believe Twitter (like blogging) can definitely become a tool to minimize the isolation of leadership, which would be a very good thing.

Very Helpful — How To Use Twitter
One of the most helpful parts of the e-book for me was the compilation of chapters (4-6) which outlined how to use Twitter. Since I haven’t used it as much as I would like, I learned a few new things which had been a bit confusing to me in the past:

1. How to establish settings for using @ replies
2. How to send a direct message to someone
3. How to retweet
4. Ways to manage multiple Twitter accounts

Software And Services To Help You Use Twitter
I also was happy to see the listing in Chapter 7 of software and services which make using Twitter easier. From applications which help you manage Twitter feeds, to desktop Twitter clients, to mobile apps, to services which help you share photos with your friends on Twitter — there are a lot of helpful suggestions all in one place. That alone was worth the price of the e-book (more on that in a moment).

Chapter Listing
Here is a complete list of chapters in the book:

Chapter 1 - Twitter as a Megaphone
Chapter 2 - Twitter as a Conversation
Chapter 3 - Twitter for Pastors
Chapter 4 - Setting Up Twitter in 1 Minute or Less
Chapter 5 - How to Tweet
Chapter 6 - To Follow and Be Followed
Chapter 7 - Making Twitter Even Easier
Chapter 8 - Churches Using Twitter
Chapter 9 - Unexpected Bonuses
Chapter 10 - Deciding on a Twitter Strategy

A Great Price!
I must say that I was honestly surprised by the price of the e-book. As a digital media strategist in my day job and in my ministry, I do purchase internet marketing e-books from time to time. When I clicked through from the Twitter for Churches home page, I was honestly expecting a price like $19.95, $29.95, $49.95 — those are the sorts of prices I usually see when considering an e-book. Anthony’s book sells for $5.00. Believe me, it’s a great value!

Buy The E-Book Now — You Won’t Be Sorry!
In conclusion, let me just say that I believe Anthony’s new e-book is a no-brainer purchase for churches and ministries. If you purchase it, you definitely will not be sorry!

The result? According to the Christianity Today article, John 3:16 became the hottest search on Google. Interesting.

What’s more interesting to me, though, is the generally mediocre (at least from an internet evangelism perspective) results that are displayed when one searches on “John 3:16” at Google.

In the natural Google listings, here are the first 10 results:

• BibleGateway.com passage lookup (New International Version)
• BibleGateway.com passage lookup (King James Version)
• Wikipedia article on John 3:16
• Blue Letter Bible passage lookup
• A Flash animation
• An AllAboutGod article on John 3:16
• The home page of John 3:16 Mission
• Passage lookup on the website of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops
• An article on fanhouse.com about Tim Tebow’s use of the verse on his eye black

Here are the paid listings:

• “Win a free iPhone easily” from prizecarnival.com
• An invitation to bid on John 3:16 at eBay.com (interestingly, the second line in the ad reads “Shop Victoriously”!)
• “John 3:16 at Amazon”

If local churches were already bidding on John 3:16 for local pay-per-click listings (so that their ad was only displayed to people living in their local geographic area), how many people would have been taken from watching the BCS championship game, to searching on Google for “John 3:16”, to clicking on a paid ad from a church in their local area and visiting a page on the church’s website especially designed to intrigue website visitors enough for them to consider joining the church for one of their local gatherings?

What an opportunity that has been missed by local churches across the world!

Obviously, local churches could not be expected to know that Tim Tebow would be displaying John 3:16 on his eye black (since apparently he has displayed Philippians 4:13 in the same location before — I’ve never been a big college football fan, so I may be mistaken). But if they were already bidding on that phrase (which should probably be a natural target for pay-per-click bidding by churches), they would have already been prepared. But since the overwhelming majority of churches have probably never even considered pay-per-click advertising, the opportunity was probably lost forever.

Thanks to @Serbia for the tip.

Here’s a story about the decision from the Muskegon Chronicle (Gospel Communications International is based in Muskegon, Michigan).

Let’s pray for the employees and the ministries who will be affected.

For more information, visit www.gowestafrica.org.

Thanks to the Facebook For Pastors Facebook Group for the heads up!

I’m a member of a few different social websites (I’ve linked to my profiles in case you’re interested):

• LinkedIn (I use it 3-4 times a week)
• Facebook (I use it every day, usually multiple times)
• Plaxo Pulse (I don’t use it very much - someone invited me, so I signed up)
• Plurk (I just signed up a couple of days ago - I’ve heard good things about it)

Of course, there are many other social networks. I also have a Twitter account (until recently, I hardly ever used it).

Most of these social networks have a way you can update your status frequently throughout a day. Some use this feature, some don’t. The people who use it most effectively are not talking about what they ate for breakfast, but are sharing quick links, thoughts, etc. At the moment, I’m probably a little bit too much on the side of “what I ate for breakfast!”

The problem I’ve had in the past with using these status updates is that if I’m a member of five different services (and could be a member of many, many more), how am I going to update my status on all of them? I could end up doing nothing but updating my status!

Enter ping.fm — it’s a service in beta which allows you to create one status update that then gets pushed out to all of your social networks. Plus, they have a feature which allows me to use GoogleTalk to send their automatic service an update and that update then gets pushed out to all of my networks. Since I do all of my email in gmail now, it’s very convenient for me to just click on the pingdotfm chat partner (as I said, it’s actually an automated service) and write out a quick couple of lines for my status, hit the enter button, and know that all of my social networks will soon (some in a matter of seconds) have my updated status.

The final piece of the puzzle is that Expression Engine (the content management system I use) has a plugin that allows me to display my Twitter status updates in the sidebar — that’s what you’re seeing in the “Quick Thoughts” section (since I was experimenting initially, you’ll see a duplicate entry or two — the duplicate entries should go away in the next few days as I add more updates).

As I was telling a friend about what I had set up, I started thinking about how a church could use this. If the majority of a church’s members had Twitter accounts, their updates could be combined into a “congregational Twitter theme” which would allow everyone to stay on top of what other members were up to. I have a feeling this would provide an enhancement to face-to-face community and bring people in a congregation closer together.

Does anyone know of any churches doing something similar to this? Just curious.

His Hands Media uses digital technology to present stories that inspire people to invest and participate in God’s important work in the community and around the world. We specialize in video production and website design that extends the reach of Christian organizations and ministries allowing them to raise the funds necessary that will bring aid and hope to people in need, through the message of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

I was especially intrigued by a video they have optimized of a trip to Ghana by volunteers from Opportunity International. The video is located here. As the folks from His Hands Media point out, the quality of the video is surprisingly good seeing that it was filmed with the inexpensive Flip Ultra video camera.

What would it be like if our short-term missions teams brought several of these Flip Ultra cameras to capture video of their activities? Depending on the availability of internet access, the teams would be able to quickly upload video of the mission which could then be shared with friends and supporters back home.