Brian Bailey is the Web Director for Fellowship Church in Grapevine, TX, and the primary author of The Blogging Church: Sharing the Story of Your Church Through Blogs (Jossey-Bass 2007), an essential guidebook for churches as they navigate the blogosphere.
The idea for The Blogging Church, co-authored by Terry Storch, came after Bailey developed a relationship with prominent blogger Robert Scoble, who was serving as Microsoft’s chief product evangelist at the time. Scoble and Shel Israel interviewed Bailey for a chapter in their book Naked Conversations: How Blogs are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers. During that process, the idea for a book on blogs and churches was conceived, and Bailey was more than happy to be on board.
Overall, the strength of The Blogging Church is the heart from which Bailey and Storch write. From the beginning, they establish that a blog, or any other tool a church considers implementing, must complement, support, or advance the ministry goals and values of the church. Once the philosophical is established, Bailey and Storch share their perspective—as well as the perspectives of several successful bloggers—on the practical approach of sharing the story of your church and fostering authentic conversation through a blog.
COLLIDE: What is the Fellowship Church philosophy on using technology and the Web in ministry?
BRIAN BAILEY: We look at the Web as just one more way to reach people, and we have a lot of different ways we do that. A blog is just one more of those ways. We look at every opportunity—whether it’s an event at the church or websites or television—as a different way to reach people, get the message out, and introduce them to Christ. Obviously, the Web is one of the high-impact ways to do that.
So many people want to go to the website before they step foot in the church. If a friend invites them, they want to check it out. Our goal is to try to reflect the core ministry values of the church—to reflect the excellence and the passion and what the church is about—through the website.
COLLIDE: You mention in the book that the Church is often lagging behind our culture technologically speaking. Why do you think that is?
BAILEY: I think there are a couple different reasons for that. Certainly, one reason at the core of the issue is often resources, both staff and financial. In the past, technology solutions were very expensive and required a lot of expertise. However most churches are fairly small, and most churches have a small staff. Being able to justify investing a lot of resources and finding a staff person who can manage all this technology is quite an undertaking. When so many of a church’s resources have to be focused on the core mission, I can see how [technology] would continue to not fit in.
But I think what is different about blogging, and a lot of the new social aspects with the Web, is that they’re so easy to become a part of and they’re so inexpensive. A church, a pastor, anybody can have a blog on Blogger for free in five minutes.
COLLIDE: Have we reached a period in time where it’s a given that an American church should have a Web presence of some kind? Or is that a case-by-case situation?
BAILEY: It certainly seems like we’ve reached that stage, and it seems the vast majority do. Even if it’s just a place to get information on how to get to the church and service times, the vast majority of churches have some sort of Web presence. One of the things I talk about in the book is that there are lots of different ways to get your message out, and I look at it as there are lots of different tools you can use. Different tools work better for different churches, based on your demographic, your area, your size, and lots of other factors. I think churches should be really good at being who they are. If you’re a rural, low-tech church, I don’t think your website should try to pretend that you’re not. Sometimes you’ll see that a church invests in a Flash-driven, high-energy website, and then the church is very different from that. The main thing is that your website should reflect who you are.
COLLIDE: You mentioned directions and trying to communicate what the church is all about. In an ideal world, what are some things that a web presence would include and some things it would exclude?
BAILEY: There are a lot of options. The more content that a church can give people access to, the better. Listening to or watching sermons, that’s obviously a very common thing. A lot of churches cover registration and membership processes; that is also very common. You have a lot of churches that push online giving, which after a lot of debates over the last 10 years that has become fairly common and effective, and saves the church a lot of money by automating that type of thing.
Those are some of the basic things, but beyond that churches are just dipping their toe in it in Communication as far as getting into more community aspects on their website—actually having forums or blogs with comments going. Some of the really clever churches are leading into aggregating all of their members’ information. Then if you’re a member of the church and you have a blog, your blog can be integrated into the church’s site. You can see posts from you and see posts from other members of the church and staff.
There are some really interesting ideas out there as far as building community, and then of course you have different churches playing with things like SecondLife and Internet campuses like at LifeChurch.tv. Churches are just starting to see what the possibilities are out there, and asking if you can really have a church community online. The next question is if you can develop an ongoing relationship with a person if it’s exclusively online. I’ll be interested to see what the results of some of these experiments are and whether that’s possible.
COLLIDE: What are some of the common mistakes made with, or misuses of, technology in the church?
BAILEY: You asked what I wouldn’t have on a website. I think not trying to do things that other people do a lot better; just focus on your core mission. One of the most common things is offering an email service, like a free email account to your church members. This trend has thankfully pretty much gone away: trying to be a portal and saying, “Search the Web from our home page! Here’s the weather!” We’re to the point where I don’t think there are too many people that want their church website to be their primary destination, where they’re going to do all their banking (Laughs). Thankfully, the Communication trend has been: find your focus, your core mission, and do that extremely well. Let other people do their part extremely well. If there are already free, incredible, amazing email options, then don’t try to offer that yourself.
COLLIDE: You mentioned LifeChurch. Obviously they’re a church that is experimenting and being innovative with media and technology. What other churches or pastors are using blogs or technology in the right way?
BAILEY: I don’t know that I’d use “right” and “wrong,” but there are definitely churches and pastors that I see doing cool things and that seem to be effective in what they’re doing. I’ve always loved Mark Batterson (pastor of National Community Church in Washington, DC) at Evotional.com. I’ve seen a lot of pastors’ blogs quickly become blogs talking to other pastors. That serves a huge purpose, and it’s great for pastors to network and learn from each other, but that really is different from a pastor trying to talk to his church and cast a vision for his church. I think Mark does a really good job of doing both.
Steven Furtick at Elevation Church in North Carolina is a young pastor that has a great blog. The blog is always very energetic and is mostly targeted toward his church. Those are really fun to read. Those would be the first two to come to mind. The great thing is there are a lot of them out there that we’ll never really hear about, but they do a great job for their church, and it’ll be effective for them.
COLLIDE: The Blogging Church seems like a must-read for church leaders who are blogging, or are thinking about blogging. Can you give would-be bloggers or bloggers who want to get better some quick advice?
BAILEY: As far as being successful in blogging and doing the best job possible, I would say that the two core things that tend to make the biggest difference are: consistency and authenticity. If you want to develop readers, have people regularly checking out your blog, and connect with more and more people, you really have to put a lot of effort into it. One of the key things is developing some sort of blogging rhythm so that your readers can expect something from you. They know when to expect it, and they tend to come back for more. They tend to tell other people about it. So when you launch a blog and say, “This is my new blog and I’m going to be doing this …”, and then two weeks later there are still no posts, it makes it hard for people. So think about it in advance and plan on putting some effort into it.
The second thing is what you mentioned earlier, being authentic and being yourself. Really be honest and upfront about your goals. Share funny things that happen, share mistakes that happen onstage, and whatever it is, be honest about those things. Don’t try to paint a 100 percent great picture. I guess this is a third thing: point people to God and the church. I’ve struggled with this and I write a lot about it in the book. People start to connect with you directly, and there can be an ego-feeding thing. If you’re a part of a ministry, the focus needs to be to point people to get involved in the church and grow closer to God.