Online Giving

Yesterday i wrote about the possibility of using technology for online giving. I assumed it must be a tricky thing to organise, but i see that within days of the deluge, the Uniting Church has managed to set up an online Flood Appeal.


If this can be done so easily, I can't see why a similar site can't be made for church donations. Add another box for people to select the congregation of their choice, and it's done.

Oh, and kudos to the uniting church for doing something online. Perhaps they heard the same stats that i did:

"The buzz surrounding electronic giving options continues to grow as online donation capabilities improve and text-messaging campaigns take hold. The American Red Cross says it raised $35 million within 48 hours of the January earthquake in Haiti, with half arriving via its website and $5 million through texts."

Half the money arrived via the website, so without it they would have raised 50% less. That's what i'm talking about.
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ps. remember Mars Hill - only 8% of their website visitors are from their city. If it wasn't for their online giving, they'd be refusing the contributions at least 92% of their people.

Successful Fundraising

You may have read the book Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller. It was to be made into a movie, until a financial backer pulled out. Fortunately, 2 guys started Save Blue Like Jazz and raised $125,000 in 10 days and the project was back on.


CMS draws 5 lessons out of this fundraising success, including:

* they crowd-sourced
* they had a clear goal
* they used technology

By contrast we have the church. Instead of crowd-sourcing we ask more and more from fewer and fewer people. The clearest our goals get is 'to balance the budget' or 'to carry out restoration on the the church roof' (hardly awe-inspiring).

And technology we also struggle with. Often the only donating option is to bring physical cash, to the church building, on a Sunday. To people who are accustomed to doing financial transactions by phone, online or by card, it's another instance of the church painting itself as something that belongs in the 1950s.

I'm not sure whether it's the method or the inspiration that's holding us back, but it's worth comparing the effectiveness.

The End (Of Common Sense)

Only 3 days into the new year and someone is out predicting the end of the world this year. No surprise to me that this happened in America.

Seemingly oblivious to Jesus's words that no-one knows the day or the hour, this group has mixed selected old testament passages with numerology, and some seemingly baseless assumptions; to come up with 21 May 2011 as the use-by date of the world.


Why do people do this? I'd estimate at least 99% of people would dismiss this as loopy, and distance themselves further from anything faith-related. Of the 1% who might be scared into faith (i'll leave the ethics of that for another day) surely most of them will leave when the prediction falls flat (like with JW's in 1975).

In the end, next to nothing is achieved and massive damage is done to the credibility of anything Jesus-related. I just don't get it. Do you?

All Talk, No Action

I must admit, i'm a bit of a fan of the Barna Group. They do a bunch of research that helps us know what's actually going on. And of course, i loved their book unChristian. Most recently, they did a study on change.


The summarisation of the research was that despite:

lots of time discussing and debating religious beliefs and spiritual practices, ... all of that interaction has translated into very little change in people’s faith life.

What little change there was (only 7% could think of any change in the past five years) most of it related to what people did within the confines of church, and not so much with the integration of faith into everyday life.

Also, as i've kind of talked about before, the study suggests that much of the time spent in reflection and conversation is about "deriving a greater sense of comfort and support from their religious beliefs" rather than being challenged by them.

And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds

-Hebrews 10:24

Free Christmas Advertising

At Christmas and Easter churches advertise their events. The traditional way has been to pay the local rag to bury a 2-inch ad at the bottom of page 67 (if we're lucky). If we're unlucky, it doesn't even get published.


It's perplexed me for some time why this seems to be the preferred method of advertising. Especially now that facebook ads are so usable. Some advantages include:

Cost per click
This is exactly what it sounds like. If people aren't interested in your ad, you don't pay for it. You pay only for the number of times your ad is clicked on.

Knowing people see it
Do we even know if anyone reads page 67 of the local paper? Online, you know whether people are seeing it.

More information can be communicated
The ad can link to a page of your church's website, where you can place as much info as you like. (Not limited to the little space in the paper ad).

Reaching more people
Facebook makes up 21% of all page views on the whole internet. Daily users average 56 minutes per day on facebook. Defintely beats the local paper!

Reach your target audience
Ad can be specified to show to people in your local area, to save your budget for local people, who can actually attend your church.

Surely the only thing stopping us is a lack of experience and know-how. But even this is taken care of.

The good people at CMS have done a simple tutorial on this, which includes a coupon code for $50 of free advertising on facebook. The coupon expires Dec 31, 2010. Just in time for Christmas ;)
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ps. also see CJ's FB ad experiments ... Part 1 + Part 2

Pledging Allegiance When Kingdoms Collide

"No wonder it's getting hard for seekers to find God nowadays. It's difficult to know where Christianity ends and America begins." writes Shane Claiborne in Chapter 7 of Irresistible Revolution. "God's name is on America's money, and America's flag is on God's altars."

This chapter is very much about pledging "allegiance" and where that allegiance lies. Is it to our God, as demonstrated in Jesus, or to our borders and our patriotism?

There is no doubt that we must mourn those lives lost on September 11th. We must mourn the lives of the soldiers. But with the same passion and outrage we must mourn the lives of every Iraqi who is lost. They are just as precious , no more, no less. In our rebirth, every life lost in Iraq is just as tragic as a life lost in New York or DC. And the lives of the thirty thousand children who die of starvation each day is like six September 11ths every single day, a silent tsunami that happens every week.

Living out his beliefs, Shane spent time with Iraqi families in Baghdad at the time it was being bombed. He played balloon volleyball with kids. Bombs started exploding. The kids kept playing. "These children were raised hearing bombs - in 1998, in 1991 - and yet they will still play in the park with people whose country is destroying theirs."

When told of US christians who support the war, the Iraqi bishop said to Shane (about Iraqi Christians) "We believe 'blessed are the peacemakers.' We believe if you pick up the sword you die by the sword. We believe in the cross."

I guess the main point is that if we are truly reborn, and if God is our king, then perhaps we could learn from those kids - playing games with Americans even while being bombed by Americans. After all, "it is more courageous to love our enemies that to kill them".

A Fishy Tale

The good folks at IE Day put together this little video parable.



Just like a Jesus parable, there is so much truth in it; and is very well told.