We’ve finally redesigned the Center for Church Communication site, and with the new look comes a new RSS feed. We hope you’ll check out the site and update your RSS feed:

New feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/cfcclabs

While you’re checking out the new site, be sure to check out our Echo Ticket Giveaway.

Thanks,
The Center for Church Communication Team

“We’ve gone from the Gutenberg generation of the church to the Google generation of the church,” Ware says. “For 500 years, things have been one way. And now, in five years’ time, almost everything has changed. The gospel message doesn’t change, but the presentation of it and the accessibility of it and everything in the culture around it has changed.”

We've released an official job description for the Regional Network Coordinators to make that a little more specific. In a nutshell, the Regional Network Coordinators serve as reporters, promoters and representatives.

Check out their detailed job description and connect with one today:

RNC Job Description (PDF, 832 KB, 8 pages)

What's your role as executive director? What do you actually do?

In the simplest terms, I act as the coordinator for our experiments/initiatives/projects. I help turn ideas into proposals for our board of directors so that the initiatives we want to launch get put into motion. Our board of directors is made up of many of my closest colleagues and working with them is a complete joy. They are an absolutely stellar group of church communication professionals.

Additionally, I've gotten to work hand in hand with the CFCC team including Joshua Cody, Michael Buckingham and Kevin Hendricks. This has been great for me, because I learn from each of them, since each has their own area of expertise. I'm also learning a lot about leading a nonprofit from those that have been involved for a lot longer than I have. Once you've served on church staffs for a couple of decades, it can give you a ministry model mindset. But leading a nonprofit requires some additional tools and the whole team has been graciously accommodating me as I learn some of the new skills my role requires.

Also, our team is growing and we've just added 19 Regional Network Coordinators. They are a diverse group of supporters from across the United States, each of whom has a unique view of the church/communication intersection. The coordinators are like our eyes on the ground alerting us to churches who are communicating with excellence. Besides our coordinators, we're expanding in other ways as well. We're going to establish a brand new role, project catalyst, designed as a right arm for me when we launch some of the new projects we're planning. The Church Marketing Lab is also defining its leadership team and we've added project leaders to help support our moderators there in the labs.

Basically, if you look at any one part of our organization, you'll see either growth or planned growth so we're in the middle of a wonderful season of transition.

I'm in a "crow's nest" position so I have a bird's eye view of both our ship and the horizon. I get the privilege of connecting with the people on the deck and getting to peer into the future, helping chart what's up ahead.

"We are a firebrand of communicators, sparking churches to communicate the gospel clearly, effectively and without compromise."

2009 Annual Report (PDF, 2.7 MB, 14 pages)

The 2009 annual report includes an overview of CFCC, the projects we offer, the leadership team and the current financial reports as well as a summary of financial reports since our beginning in 2006.

The Directory is a list of tools, resources and companies that help the church communicate better. Consider it a yellow pages of church marketing. You'll find technology blogs, freelance designers, marketing communities, church management software and more.

The site has a handy 'Suggest a Link' feature where you can add resources we may have missed. We expect the Directory to grow and expand as more resources are suggested.

An important thing to note is that the Directory is focused on church marketing. This is not a list of Christian marketers or a list of companies that could help the church. This list is limited to organizations that specifically cater to the church. That's not to say these are the only organizations that can help the church, just that they specifically cater to the church. It's the difference between Seth Godin's blog and LifeChurch.tv's Swerve blog--both great resources, but only one focuses on the church. That niche focus will keep the list efficient and useful.

So we encourage you to check out the Church Marketing Directory. Help us add links to it and make it a helpful tool for churches.

She discussed ministry excellence with skill and poise in a recent piece from the State of Ministry Online. Asked about the definition of excellence in online ministry, Cynthia had this to say:

Excellence used to be about making your blog spectacular, but now we are seeing many more evolutionary and collaborative open source efforts. Sometimes online excellence is seen when someone has taken the initiative and laid the foundation for others to follow.

She was also quoted recently in Faith in San Antonio as well, discussing the delicate challenge of making wise decisions about when to embrace new technologies.

We look forward to Cynthia's continued role in helping the church balance technology and effective communication.

Last year, our newly appointed board of directors gave me the task of acting as hub (read: director) for our communication initiatives in 2010. I realized I would never be able to tap into all the creative communicators serving in churches across the United States (and the world!) without a lot of help. Fortunately, since I’ve worked in churches for so many years, I’ve got a lot of friends.

Brad responds to the fad of Christians making puns or spin-offs of popular culture items, saying:

"The whole claim for Christians in general is that God is the source of all creativity. I think there's something to being original that will speak to people in a way that we don't have to copy."

It's always nice to have an opportunity to point folks looking for a quote from the "Christian perspective" in the right direction. We hope to see more loving and challenging quotes like this come from the church moving forward.

Our own Michael Buckingham is quoted on the issue, saying:

"The Internet isn't powerful because it connects you to information, but because it connects you to people."

And they go on to report our unscientific poll results to help get the pulse on how churches are doing with social media.

We're always humbled and excited to be involved with publications like Leadership Journal. We look forward to continue giving advice and challenges to the church community at large as we all try to communicate the gospel more clearly.

The board members include Brad Abare, Dawn Nicole Baldwin, Phil Cooke, Drew Goodmanson, Scott McClellan, Kem Meyer and Kent Shaffer. They first met in October and appointed Cynthia Ware as our executive director.

That's quite a team of church communicators and we're proud to have them on board. This new executive team will lead us forward, giving us direction, wisdom and guidance as we help the church matter.

The event was a huge success, and CFCC was honored to participate in the forum. It's exciting to see conversations happening about the current role and state of church marketing as well as dreams of what the future holds.

You can view the whole stream online at Vimeo.

He examines the obvious benefits of the technological advance--greater access to biblical texts, great connectivity amongst individuals and improved availability of resources for those seeking to go deeper.

But perhaps more astutely, the article considers the drawbacks of this technological advance. He warns:

A life-giving, biblical church community must understand the difference between using technology to communicate the transforming power of the gospel, and letting the gospel be transformed by technology. We need more thoughtful Christians who are determined to heed Henry David Thoreau's warning against becoming "the tool of our tools."

You can read the entire article on the Christianity Today web site.

On Tuesday, 250 Web-savvy Christians -- from blogging pastors to iPhone programmers -- gathered at Park Community for Cultivate 09, an interactive conference on ministry communication, which includes marketing strategy. More than a third of Americans younger than 50 don't have a religious affiliation, according to a 2008 study by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, but conference organizers say Web-based campaigns help bring younger, "unchurched" people into the Christian community.

The article covers the benefits of connecting via technology as well as the potential pitfalls of bypassing personal relationships in favor of online connectivity. It also includes a mention of Center for Church Communication founder Brad Abare:

The conference's proceeds benefit, in part, the Center for Church Communication, a nonprofit that tries to steer churches away from bad clip art and ineffective marketing. In its online labs, 3,500 people have shared their innovative ideas, said Brad Abare, 30, the center's founder.

Don't hesitate to read the entire article to see their view of churches marketing and communicating online.