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It’s been more than a year since I first suggested the idea of a sermon blog.  The concept is to take a pastor’s sermon messages beyond the Sunday service, beyond mere online sermon notes, and even beyond the conventional podcast, and create a real tool for ongoing spiritual development.  I’ve had the opportunity to help my church do that for the last several weeks, and I’m excited to be able to share that with you.
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Last week I wrote a bit about what it means to inform people on their terms.  In this day and age, we simply can’t assume and expect people to be always looking for or listening to our communications.  People are constantly being bombarded with messages and have a natural tendency to skim and filter, sometimes missing important messages.  They also have so many different choices in the ways, tools, or modes to use to communicate that it’s impossible to get a message to everyone using the same mode.

“The big challenge, however, is deciding which modes of communication to use.   Does a small church in a rural farm town need a website, an e-newsletter, and a blog complete with RSS feeds?  Should a multi-national ministry mail out monthly newsletters to all its supporters?  Does a business need to be able to text message their clients when they have a sale to remain competitive?�

Let’s take a look… (more…)

I thought about wishing you all a Happy Halloween, but I know many of you don’t celebrate Halloween because of it’s ties to the occult.  Then I thought about wishing you all a happy Reformation Day, but many of you are Catholic.  It’s not even fall for all of you, so I’m left with wishing you all a great last day of October.

I’m back from Chicago and Kurt has passed the blogging baton back to me for our final article in the Sounds from the Church series. Last week we resurrected the idea of a sermon blog, which can be a great resource including sermon audio as well as notes, links to additional resources, and suggested next steps.  Once you go from simply posting sermon audio on your site to including it in a blog, a natural and very simple next step is to podcast your sermon audio. (more…)

Over the past couple of weeks we have been addressing the hows and whys of putting sermon audio on your website.  As I was writing those blogs, I was reminded of a blog article Paul wrote a couple months ago entitled “Supercharging Sermons with a Blog.”  I thought it would be a great addition to our theme for this month (and an easy blog for the week;)  Putting sermon audio on your website is just the tip of the iceberg.  There are many ways you can use your website to enhance your congregations experience and understanding as well as the effectiveness of the sermons.  In Paul’s article he addresses several ways you can do this.  So without further adieu: (more…)

Last week we discussed the why’s of putting sermon recordings on your church’s website. (Last week’s article)  So you got all fired up, went and recorded the sermon this week and now…oh yeah, I didn’t really mention anything about how to do it.  I figured that’s a pretty big part of putting sermon audio on your website, so that’s what this week is about with some tips and instructions on sermon audio.  (Here’s a little secret: These tips will also be useful with other types of audio. Shhhh) (more…)

Last week we looked at how to better involve your congregation in your church’s ministry and enhance their worship experience through your website and your worship team.  That applied to many of today’s churches, but not all, since there are still many churches that are purely traditional.  This week I want to discuss something applicable to every church.  Whether traditional, contemporary, a home church or an Internet church, every church has a sermon or message each week.  The sermon is another sound of the church, which should also be a sound of your church’s website. (more…)

Today I’m finishing up our series on the purpose of a church website by focusing on the third purpose, a resource for spiritual growth.

A lot of Christians seem to think that spiritual growth happens only within the four walls of the church.  Whether it’s the pastor’s sermon, the music of a choir, ensemble, or soloist, the study of God’s word in Sunday school or a small group Bible study, they rely on spiritual leaders to feed them spiritually.  While sermons, worship, and group Bible study are an indispensable part of a Christian’s walk with God, our relationship with God is also a personal one.  Our personal relationship with God is dependent on personal communication to and from God.

People who are seeking God, new believers, and even veteran believers can feel distant from God at times.  We all have seasons where we struggle with doubts or have spiritual questions.  Sometimes our relationship with God can become stagnant and we need some advice on how to get out of a spiritual rut.

Why leave the people of your church to struggle with these issues on their own?  Why leave them to search for answers on Google?  The Internet is full of people, resources, and books offering a wide variety of spiritual insight, some of it good and some terribly misguided.

Every church has the ability to serve as a resource for the personal spiritual growth of its members through its website.  Here are some ways you can do that.  (And yes, if you haven’t noticed, I do like lists. )

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As I was lying in bed at 5 this morning half-conscious trying to decide whether to sleep for a few more minutes or get up and start my day an idea hit me.  My mind drifted to a conversation I had with my pastor a couple weeks ago about the general trend of church websites.  I told him I see church websites fulfilling three general purposes: to help people looking for a church home, to assist people already attending the church to know what ministries and activities are available for them, and to help people grow spiritually by providing additional resources that complement the services and ministries.  I expressed how great I thought it would be to put audio of his messages online along with additional resources for people who wanted to go deeper on the topic.

That’s when it hit me and I got up and started writing…

A blog is the perfect format for helping people go deeper and apply sermon messages to their lives! (more…)