This is the fifth and perhaps the last post in the series: using the world’s tools:

 

Publish your own content is not about promotion. It is not about getting more people to come “in”, it is about pushing the boundaries of “in” to include the “out”… So stick with me. If you have anything excellent, make it available as a resource to others. This is using the worlds tools to multiply your fruit… This is missional thinking – helping others produce fruit.

 

• If you have a great preacher, package his/her content, and publish so that others (not your congregation or community) can benefit. Make it a podcast, a vlog (video blog), or whatever media suits.
• If you have excellent teachers, package their content, and publish… Make part of your site about material for bible study or small group leaders.
• If you create excellent media for sunday morning worship (drama, experience, music, imagery, etc) package it, and publish it.

Providing resources to others is a ministry in itself. Treat it like a ministry; like a mission, you are a missionary. It is a ministry to the world that your volunteers can participate in.

So how to do this?

 

• These are all “content” oriented ministries, so focus on organizing your content to make it easy to find.
  • Define categories or sections to keep things organized.
  • Moderate your content. Someone is responsible for knowing what is available. A librarian or a content manager.
  • Content can be submitted by anyone, but the librarian assigns it a category and makes sure it is “searchable”.

 

• Hosting – some rich content like audio and video is expensive to host.

 

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  • Use some of the and popular free hosting services like christianaudio.com, Youtube, Vimeo, etc.
  • Create and maintain external links and indexes to your content across hosting services.

 

• Build and maintain a base of subscribers

 

• Subscribers are people who have chosen to automatically receive your content.
• Treat them like your congregation who come to church every Sunday. They love you – so love them back.
• Make it easy for them to subscribe on several channels
  • Blog about your new content additions
  • Use social media like facebook, Del.ico.us, reddit, twitter, etc. to broadcast the publication of new content.
• Offer your subscribers the ability to give you feedback on your content.
• Be responsive to your subscribers

 

• Technical Sophistication – this requires some level of technical sophisitication

 

• Hogwash – my 13 year old son figured out how to host his own video channel on youtube,
• Experiment – try different things – some work some don’t – stick with what works and clean up those that didn’t.
• Ultimately you may want to construct your own content management system to manage your content (there are many free CMS software products available.

 

• Have fun – this is a ministry project so ensure that it produces fruit.

 

• Be excited about this ministry – if it feels like a duty, then you are probably doing it wrong
• Elicit feedback from your beneficiaries… Those who benefit from your ministry can tell you how they can get more value
• Celebrate those who benefit, pray for them and their ministries…. after all, you are helping them produce fruit