Notes from MinistryCOM Day 1: Terry Storch

  • We're meeting at The People's Church, a megachurch in a community on the outskirts of Nashville, on the south side. You could call it a suburban church, I suppose.
  • The MC is Evan McBroom, who heads his own communications consulting firm in Indianapolis called Fishhook. He said we communications people are like sled dogs--someone's always whipping us from behind, and the view ahead isn't so great, either.
  • The church's worship team led us in both the morning and afternoon keynote sessions. Very good group, superb sound. I need to look up the song "Mighty to Save," so we can do it at Anchor. "My Savior, he can move the mountains...."
  • The keyboard player nodded his head throughout most of the singing. He tried to find things to do with his left hand (which, in a band, isn't really needed)--grab the side of the keyboard, adjust the microphone...anything to keep it away from the keyboard. That's tough for a keyboard guy.
  • Terry Storch, the Digerati Pastor at Lifechurch.tv in Oklahoma, gave the morning keynote. LifeChurch is a highly innovative, multi-site church which has the coolest church homepage. They have their own church in Second Life, a virtual reality world. At least one person became a Christian through it. Storch is very highly regarded by Christian communications people.
  • Storch talked about how the communication revolution has affected the church. The Guttenberg press brought the printed word, radio brought the spoke word, TV brought the visual word. The internet, at least what's called Web 2.0, is all about participation. Churches focus on one-way communications, while the web is about multi-faceted communication.
  • He said "Church 1.0" is all about service times. "If you want to know what we do, come to the church at our times." But with "Church 2.0," people want your content anything they want it, not just when your church doors are open.
  • "Churches are al about a building." If it doesn't happen in the church building, it's not "church." He said he led more people to Christ at Starbucks than inside the walls of his church. He mentioned the idea of the "Omnipresent Church." The church is about people, and it happens constantly, not just at designated times.
  • Rather than go "out" to do outreach, we should be "in" communities like MySpace and Facebook. We can make relationships online, and then turn them into physical outreach by meeting those people in person. He said his wife met two such persons already.
  • We used the phrase "Each one reach one." But that's addition. We now need to think, "Each one invites everyone."
  • 1.2 billion people in the world (out of 6.6 billion) are connected to the internet today.

Posted on September 13, 2007 11:36 PM|

Comments

Mighty to Save is the song and CD title of one of the Hillsong worship CDs. Good choice!

Posted by: Dave Datema | September 14, 2007 02:07 AM

Great song Steve, We have done it at UC a few times now. Song Select has it on their site

Also great notes thanks for the info

Posted by: chris | September 16, 2007 11:00 PM

So...is my sled dog analogy correct? The one part I left off is that sled dogs LOVE to run! Really. They seem to find great joy in the task - the adventure - but even still there's a lot of whippin and sniffin!

Posted by: Evan McBroom | September 19, 2007 10:03 PM

Yes, Evan, I love the running part. And in my particular world, I don't have many people on my tail.

Posted by: Steve Dennie | September 24, 2007 09:47 AM

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