Live It How to Develop a Successful Strategy for your Ministry in the Digital Age Whitney Hopler Editors Note: The following is a report on the practical applications of David T, Bourgeois book, Ministry in the Digital Age: Strategies and Practices for a Post-Website World (IVP Books, 2013). Since Jesus has called Christians to communicate the greatest message of all – the Gospel – to the world, it’s vital for all church ministries to do their best to spread the Gospel through the greatest worldwide communication tool: the Internet. But it’s not easy to minister to people successfully online, since digital technologies are constantly changing, and so are the expectations of people who use the Internet. The key to success is developing a strategy for proceeding with online ministry and relying on God’s day-to-day guidance to carry it out. Here’s how you can develop a successful strategy for your ministry in the digital age: Go to where the people are rather than expecting them to come to you. It’s not enough to simply set up a website and hope people will find it online. While you do need a website as a basic place where people can get information about your ministry on the Internet, you need much more than that in order to reach lots of people online. That’s because, today, most people use the Internet to build relationships with others instead of just searching for information. Social media sites such as Facebook are immensely popular, and so are sites that allow people to broadcast messages, such as YouTube and Twitter. It’s important to do your research to find out where people in your ministry’s target audience are going online – and then to establish a presence for your ministry in those places by participating in the online communication taking place there. Learn about the people in your ministry’s target audience. Get to know the people you’re trying to reach online by gathering demographic information about them (such as their age range and where they live), their current perspectives on faith and how mature their faith is or isn’t right now, and the ways they typically use the Internet. One free and thorough resource you can use to conduct research into people’s Internet usage is the Pew Internet & American Life Project at pewinternet.org. christianity
Posted on: Fri, 08 Nov 2013 08:42:50 +0000
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