Ready to start blogging? Unsure where to begin?
Opening thought. Just Blog.
I was told i needed to start a prayer group. I'll skip the longer background story and fast forward to about 7 years ago when I was told I had to start a prayer group in order to get Young Life (a ministry to teens) going in my city. Find other ministry minded adults, who care for lost youth, and pray for 6 months. So I set up the first prayer meeting. Invited people to my house. And then decided I needed to call my pastor Dave Haney and find out "how in the world do I do a prayer group".
His answer: just pray. Don't spend an hour talking about praying. Don't discuss different ways of praying. Just pray.
He did go on to offer some tips, but his key message and the one I remember to this day was to get started. Just do it.
Thus my encouragement to my church leadership friends out there (aka the blogging timid) is to get started. Just blog.
With that said, gently I hope, here is how to get started.
- Platform. Blogger and WordPress seem to be two of the biggest and best free blog platforms. For more, see Get Started in 5 minutes. There are also fee based services like TypePad that have some extra features (unnecessary for most pastors). If you have tech skills, you can also set up and host your own or have your ministry IT people do it for you (eg. we run Drupal).
- Writing. For some interesting tips on blog writing see Mary Jaksch's post or ProBlogger.
- Engage. Make blogging a part of your weekly habits. Read, comment and engage with other bloggers on their sites. Become part of the community. Blog rolls on the sides of blogs (see Brain Food on the right) are great places to begin.
Bonus: Five questions to think about (you might want to write out the answers).
- What will you blog about? Need help? - see 10 Ministry Blog Ideas.
- How often will you blog? In general 3-4 times a week is a good goal.
- Who is your audience? You might try thinking of 2 or 3 specific people as you write to help you stay on target.
- How will you handle comments? No comments? Allow anyone to comment (and say anything)? I'd recommend allowing comments, but require approval. This puts a little extra work on you to moderate the comments (review and then publish) but helps facilitate the dialog with your readers.
- Sample? You might think about writing a couple of sample posts in Word (or email yourself) to get a feel for style and the effort required (time budgeting).
- What exactly is a blog? (background information)
- Blogging Code of Conduct
I hope this helps (please let me know).
Just blog.
This post is part of a series:
Chris Goodman is the Director of Ministry Development for the global internet ministry of bible.org. He is also the Director of Business Development for bible.org's publishing ministry, NET Bible Press. Chris' skills do not include speeling, grammar, or biosciences. He does however have a passion for being faithfully submitted to Jesus Christ, seeking effective models for ministry in the 21st century and partnering with others in the journey.
Can someone pointmen in the right direction for find a resource where a church which has grown from 17 to 2100 can consult to find out the appropriate number of trustees for a congregation the size of ours (2100 and growing). We are looking to find some sort of criteria, best practices, benchmarks that we can use to ensure that our Trustee Board is aligned with the size of the church's congregation size
I asked a couple of people to weigh in on your question and here are their responses:
1. One question needs to be answered first: “What is the function of the
‘trustees’ (an office not found in Scripture). If by trustee one means “elder”
(in biblical terms) than they are to shepherd the flock (e.g. Acts 20:28). The
reasonable question, then, is “How many people can we expect an elder to
shepherd?” (This will probably differ a bit from one individual to another.)
That will set you up to do the math.
If, however,
“trustee” really means “deacon” (the pastor is the elder, the elders are the
deacons, and the trustees are the deacons – I suspect this is what is meant)
then I think we find our guidance in Acts 6. You appoint the number of deacons
necessary to carry out the tasks you are doing. Thus, you identify the
ministries that need leadership, determine how many are needed in each, and add
up to find the total number needed. That’s as close to the Scriptures as I can
get.
2. You might look at the Willow Creek Association. The have a number of resources that might be of assistance.