Tuesday, August 27, 2013

Dynamic Community Outreach: Developing a Special Needs and Disability Coordina...

Dynamic Community Outreach: Developing a Special Needs and Disability Coordina...: Developing a Special Needs and Disability Coordinator is a powerful way to reach out to your community. Few churches have the resources to meet many of the social, economic or physical needs of many in the community. This position enables the church to know where to send someone if they are not able to meet a persons need.

by Rusty Ford

Developing a Community Resource Coordinator

Developing a Community Resource Coordinator 

 

This is one of the most powerful outreach tools I know of.
Developing Community Resource
Ministry
I am starting the book with one of the greatest tools I know for a church to use to effectively reach out into its community. You will see throughout this book that there are hundreds of ways for a church to reach  out into the community. As you reach out, you need to have tangible ways to connect with the people you meet. I will discuss different types of ways of connecting with people with the different types of outreach mentioned in the book. No matter what outreach you participate in, you will meet many people that have serious family needs. This chapter spells out a way to be ready to help anyone you meet get in touch with the services they need.
Communityresource

Tuesday, August 20, 2013

Dynamic Community Outreach: Reaching your community through your website.

Dynamic Community Outreach: Reaching your community through your website.: Reaching your community through your website. By Rusty Ford The church website is one of the most valuable outreach tools there is. I ...

Reaching your community through your website.

Reaching your community through your website.
By Rusty Ford

The church website is one of the most valuable outreach tools there is. I see very few good church websites as far as outreach is concerned. In fact I did a search for about 100 churches in my area and less than half even had a webpage. Some are just bad while some do a good job of meeting the needs of the congregation.  There are a very few that do a good job communicating to the community. Two important questions to ask are “Why would anyone outside our church want to look at our webpage?” and “What can we do to make our website inviting to those who do not go to our church?”

Any church committed to reaching their community should not be content having a good website; they should desire having a great website. A great website is one that is beautiful, easy to navigate, speaks to the church community, Christians moving into the area and speaks to the community. Many people looking for a church look at the church website before coming; so it is important to have all the information that they will need to make the decision to visit your church.

Monday, August 19, 2013

Dynamic Community Outreach: Tips for effective church websites

Dynamic Community Outreach: Tips for effective church websites: Tips for effective church websites One of the most important things you must do in community outreach is to develop a top notch website. ...

Tips for effective church websites

Tips for effective church websites

 by Rusty Ford

One of the most important things you must do in community outreach is to
develop a top notch website. I am  stunned at how many churches do not have
a website. A majority of people in most areas are going to visit your website
before they visit your church. Many people do an internet search for churches in
their area, if you do not have a website they will not find you. Below is simply
the best article I have ever seen on what needs to be included in an effective
website.

The information below comes from

www.InternetEvangelismDay.com
.
The green extra links takes to articles about the subject.
  1. Most church websites are designed entirely for
    their members, or unwittingly exclude non-Christians because of their choice
    of language and content.
    This is the main reason why church websites fail to reach into the
    community. It is a tragic missed opportunity. Biblical communication
    requires that we move over to where the non-Christians are, rather than
    expecting them to make the journey.| Extra
     
  2. A good church site must communicate with three very
    different target groups:
    • The church members
    • Christians moving to the area who are looking for a new church
    • non-Christians in the community
    “Visitors are increasingly checking out churches online before walking in to
    a service,” says Tom Harper of ChurchCentral.com.| Extra

Read more all 81 tips with links to much more information.
 http://community-outreach.com/outreach-evangelism-and-discipleship/tips-for-effective-church-websites/#ixzz2cSWub000

Tuesday, August 13, 2013

What would a church spy say about your church? Read more: http://community-outreach.com/outreach-evangelism-and-discipleship/what-would-a-church-spy-say-about-your-church/#ixzz2bssXEakJ

What would a church spy say about your church?

Here is an article I found very intriguing. It is written by Chuck Lawless who is the head of the Lawless Group church consulting. The eight questions the consulting spies answer are crucial to any church that wants to grow. If one of these spies came to your church what would their response be?

Read more: http://community-outreach.com/outreach-evangelism-and-discipleship/what-would-a-church-spy-say-about-your-church

Tips for effective church websites

Tips for effective church websites

One of the most important things you must do in community outreach is to
develop a top notch website. I am  stunned at how many churches do not have
a website. A majority of people in most areas are going to visit your website
before they visit your church. Many people do an internet search for churches in
their area, if you do not have a website they will not find you. Below is simply
the best article I have ever seen on what needs to be included in an effective
website.
The information below comes from

Read more: http://community-outreach.com/outreach-evangelism-and-discipleship/tips-for-effective-church-websites/#ixzz2bssGmRtX

Benefit from People Copying Your Blog Posts.

 by Rusty Ford

If you are like me, you spend a significant amount of time writing for your blog. We all know that people copy our content and post it on their sites, blogs, emails and social media like Facebook. I personally do not have a problem with this. I even invite people to do this as long as they credit back to the original article. Whether or not you want people to copy your material it is going to happen. In fact well over half of all content on the Internet is copied from another site. The question for me was how can I encourage other people to link back to my content.

Can Your Church Afford to Reach Out to its Community Read more: http://community-outreach.com/outreach-evangelism-and-discipleship/163/#ixzz2bsrhN5y6

Can Your Church Afford to Reach Out to its Community
by Rusty Ford
Budgeting for
Outreach

One of the major problems I see with churches and outreach
is budgeting. One of the major reasons that many churches spend so little time
reaching out to their communities is they do not have the money. One of the
reasons for this is that is not important enough to put in the budget. It is not
important enough to put in the budget because it is not a significant part of
the vision and strategic mission of the church for its community. We budget for
children’s ministry, mens and women’s ministry, missions and building costs and
salaries. I find it interesting that I have seen many a budget that includes
foreign missions and not a penny for local missions. Even more interesting is
seeing money for local missions for groups outside the communities outside the
area the church is located in and not any for local outreach.

The Birth Phase of Strategic Community Outreach

The Birth Phase of Strategic Community Outreach
by Rusty Ford
In the last three posts on strategic community outreach I have talked about the general concept of strategic community outreach, the conception stage and the pregnancy stage. In the conception stage you conceive the vision of how you are going to reach your community. The pregnancy stage is where vision grows and develops as you encompass this vision into every aspect of your church. The birth stage is where you put all of this into action.

Strategic Community Outreach “The pregnancy Stage”

Strategic Community Outreach
“The Pregnancy Stage”
By Rusty Ford
The pregnancy phase is where there the vision takes place
and develops. Since you have now developed the vision that the entire church is
going to be built on this is the steps to putting it into action. Step six
through nine carry you up to the birth stage. This is where you restart the
church built on the new vision. Just like in an natural pregnancy there is a lot
of growth that has to happen before life is to spring out off the womb.