Posts Tagged ‘Tim Schraeder’


CFCC Meetups for 2011

The Center for Church Communication (CFCC) is organizing a number of informal meetups at church marketing events around the country this year. The idea is to focus on what many people enjoy the most about events—the conversations. CFCC Co-Director Tim Schraeder is taking the lead and has set up a CFCC Meetup Group to coordinate the efforts.

“Conversations matter,” Tim said in the announcement post on Church Marketing Sucks. “I know in my own life, I’ve been impacted by the conversations and relationships that were made in the hallways of conferences I’ve attended.”

The first meetup will be at Catalyst West in Irvine, Calif., on March 2. Other meetups are planned for Cultivate, Echo, Story and Catalyst East.

Cultivate Conference to Support CFCC

The Cultivate Conference for nonprofit and church communication leaders is coming to Southern California in May. The event is being organized by Center for Church Communication (CFCC) board member Dawn Nicole Baldwin and CFCC co-director Tim Schraeder. All proceeds from the event will be donated to two charities: CFCC and InvisiblePeople.tv, a nonprofit telling the stories of homeless people.

Cultivate is May 4-5, 2011, at First Christian Church in Huntington Beach, California. Registration is $129 per person through April 4 and $159 thereafter.

“Cultivate is more of a conversation that a conference,” says Schraeder. “Oftentimes the conversations that happen in the hallways of conferences are more important than the content being shared from the stage. At Cultivate, we are bringing the hallway conversation to the stage.”

The Cultivate Conference first convened in October 2009 in Chicago where nearly 300 communication leaders gathered to discuss the challenges and opportunities for churches and nonprofit organizations leveraging social media.

“We’re most excited about the opportunity to help those that are helping others,” says Baldwin, founder of the brand strategy firm, AspireOne. “These communication leaders are doing some amazing things—they just might not have a platform to share their stories. Everyone wins.”

Speakers for Cultivate 2011 include:

In addition to the speakers, a featured panel made up of communications leaders from nonprofit, social justice and ministry organizations will help disseminate and  discuss content and ideas shared by the speakers.

More information and registration details can be found online at www.cultivateconference.com.

Interviews with the Board

Over the past few months we’ve been doing a series of interviews with the members of our board of directors over on our flagship blog, Church Marketing Sucks. Here’s a round-up of those interviews:

  • Phil Cooke: “Worry less about preaching in jeans with your shirttails out, and more about changing people’s lives.”
  • Brad Abare: “Churches that understand deep down how they create, transfer, embody and express value are churches that get it.”
  • Kem Meyer: “We need to spend less time creating content and more time helping people connect with and make sense of content that already exists.”
  • Scott McClellan: “It takes faith to tell a story before you’re sure there will be a happy ending. But it’s the conflict, the adversity, and the suspense that draw people into your story and invite them to walk it with you.”
  • Dawn Nicole Baldwin: “Discover what God’s unique call is for your church and live that to the fullest.”
  • Kent Shaffer: “Churches need to be measuring life change.”
  • Drew Goodmanson: “More churches are starting to get that the web isn’t just a new method of communication but a radical paradigm shift that impacts the entire organization.”
  • Lori Bailey: “What I hope to see is churches coming closer together in learning and sharing, as well as helping and rooting for each other.”
  • Maurilio Amorim: “If churches understood the power of social media in creating conversations over a wide platform, they would spend more time trying in that space.”
  • Chad Cannon: “At the end of the day, numbers represent people, and those people represent a story of potential life change. Churches should be about numbers.”

At the time we did the interviews, Tim Schraeder was on the board and Cynthia Ware served as executive director. Since then Tim and Cynthia have swapped roles, but we still have our interview with Tim and we can go back to an earlier interview we did with Cynthia:

  • Tim Schraeder: “Our message is unchanging but the ways we communicate it are changing before our eyes.”
  • Cynthia Ware: “If you are confused about who you are as a church–your story will always be confusing, possibly bland and likely impotent.”

New Leadership for CFCC

The Center for Church Communication (CFCC) announces two new additions to the leadership team. Effective Feb. 1, Justin Wise and Tim Schraeder will serve as co-directors of CFCC. They will replace the current executive director, Cynthia Ware, who will transition into a member of the board of directors.

Justin Wise is a blogger, communicator and creator of BeDeviant.com, a blog focused on church, culture and technology. Justin also serves as digital director for one of the largest Lutheran churches in the United States. In addition, Justin has served as a project catalyst and the social web strategist for CFCC. Justin and his family live in Des Moines, Iowa.

Tim Schraeder is a communications consultant for Church Solutions Group and was previously the communications director for a large church in downtown Chicago. He blogs his thoughts on church communications at TimSchraeder.com. In addition, Tim has served as a project catalyst and Regional Network Coordinator and in October 2010 he joined the CFCC board of directors (with the co-director position Tim will step down from the board and be replaced by Cynthia). He lives in Chicago.

Tim and Justin will continue to have “day jobs,” as the role of co-director is currently a part-time position. Tim will oversee relationships and communication, including the Regional Network Coordinators, media relations, the Cultivate Conference and the Outspoken book project, which Tim serves as the lead curator. Justin will oversee projects and development, including team oversight, Firestarter, CFCC Ad Network and sponsorships, and much of the new development on the horizon.

“The board of directors was unanimous in the selection and appointment of Justin and Tim,” says CFCC founder and board chair, Brad Abare. “We are thrilled to see where God leads us into the near future, under the capable and courageous leadership of two highly qualified and uniquely gifted men.”

Since Oct. 1, 2009, Cynthia Ware has been the executive director of CFCC. Recently she’s taken a larger role with a private university that has continued to demand more and more of her full-time commitment. “Cynthia was exactly what we needed these past 16 months,” says Abare. “Her ability to rally a team and mobilize the masses was critical to further establishing the foundation of this fledgling nonprofit. I’m so grateful that we will continue to tap into her wealth of experience as she transitions to a new role as a CFCC board member.”

The Center for Church Communication is a firebrand of communicators, sparking churches to communicate the gospel clearly, effectively and without compromise. It helps local churches communicate better through various Labs and associated projects, including its flagship blog, Church Marketing Sucks. Founded in 2004, CFCC is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization.

New Board Members

The Center for Church Communication recently welcomed four new members to the board of directors:

Welcome aboard!

Outspoken: Conversations on Church Communications

We recently welcomed Tim Schraeder aboard as a project catalyst, and churches are already going to start seeing the fruits of his genius.

This week, Tim announced Outspoken: Conversations on Church Communications. It will be a collection of short essays from Tim and over 50 church communication professionals, each focusing on their area of passion or expertise.

Already on board are names like Shawn Wood, Phil Cooke, Jon Acuff, Tony Morgan and Ben Arment.

The book is expected to arrive this winter and will be available in both printed and electronic versions. We hope it will become a guide and staple for anyone looking to re-imagine the way they communicate the gospel. Follow Tim’s blog or Twitter feed for continuing Outspoken updates, or you can follow Outspoken on Twitter @OUTSPOKENbook or “Like” it on Facebook for the latest.

Project Catalysts: Tim Schraeder & Justin Wise

Say hello to the newest members of the Center for Church Communication team: Tim Schraeder and Justin Wise. They’re our new project catalysts, which means they make things happen.

Tim Schraeder is the director of communications at Park Community Church in Chicago. He has a frequently updated blog (which is known for excellent conference notes) and has done some guest blogging for our own Church Marketing Sucks. Tim is quite outspoken about church communications and has an idea brewing for a collaborative project that will provide a much-needed resource for churches. We can’t say much about it now but we’ll unveil details about it in the coming months.

Justin Wise is the digital director at Lutheran Church of Hope in West Des Moines, Iowa. He’s also quite the blogger and has done his share of guest blogging for Church Marketing Sucks as well. Justin has been working behind the scenes on Firestarter, a new initiative that we’ll be announcing later this week. From conception to completion, the project has taken three months and it has given Justin (and soon the rest of us!) a glimpse at the creative ways God is moving in the church.

So stay tuned to see what happens when we set our project catalysts loose.

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