Category Archives: portfolio

facebook for church.

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facebookAre you using Facebook?  Do you have a person or page set up specifically for your church?  If not, there’s no better time that the present to do it.  It’s FREE!

Recently I received an email asking a few implementation questions about setting up and using Facebook for church.  Here’s the Q&A:

What is the one thing we need to make sure of?  

To do it!  Communication in this day and age is social networking and interactive dialogue.  The days of mass email and communication ‘downloading’ to people is changing.  Our email boxes have become like our snail mail boxes, full of stuff that we don’t need.  Most people simply don’t have the time to weed through all of it.  Facebook cannot be your main source of communication (not everyone will be on it), but it brings the church to where a lot of people are already.  Continue reading →

marketing and media on a small budget

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I’ll be leading a breakout session this year at ministryCOM.org, September 10th and 11th.  Would you like some great ways to do marketing and media in your church on a small budget?  Take a look at ministryCOM!  There are lots of great breakout groups to enhance and provide ideas for your church communications.

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Check out this breakout session…

ministryCOM: marketing and media on a small budget

Here are the details for the breakout session:

Are you a small church?  Or maybe you’re a large church?  No matter what size, we all have one thing in common: a limited budget for marketing and media.  We are all affected by the economy and our culture.  We have an obligation to connect God with people in culturally relevant ways.  There’s good news!  Being on a limited budget forces us to be more creative and find innovative ways of getting our message out to the masses.  Continue reading →

a mystery BUZZ in our community – badecono.me

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Last night I went to dinner at one of my favorite local restaurants, Andrea’s.  The owner, who has referred to me as ‘the bad economy lady’, said a lot of people have been asking about BADecono.me.  So what is BADecono.me, you ask?  It was our Easter marketing campaign.

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BADecono.me is a microsite.  If anyone is not familiar with that term…

Main Entry: microsite1
Part of Speech: n
Definition: a separately promoted and often temporary auxiliary Web site that is part of a larger site but has a separate URL; also called minisite

Ours was designed for a temporary purpose, to market Easter services, but with the intention of keeping it long term.  The advantage to keeping a microsite is that it can still generate traffic from the topic.  Just because we’re done with that message doesn’t mean the economy is better.  ;)  Microsites can be geared toward any specific topic.  We had another one a while back called mymiserablemarriage.com.  We still get frequent traffic to that site and that was used over two years ago.  Easter is almost two months past and BADecono.me is still generating 10% of the traffic to our website.  Continue reading →

groovy! a VW bug for the stage!

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3kb3o53ldZZZZZZZZZ95h2c3413596b971967I so hope this is still available!  Imagine this… a 70′s style series with this painted Peter Max style.  Waiting to hear back to see if it’s still available.  I love stage props!!!  What else would you guys do for 70′s stage props?  (besides dressing up your pastor as a hippie)

creative element: trust

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We moved into our church building about 2.5 years ago.  The building was a company called PC Dynamics, and they made computer chips for large equipment.  As we were renovating the building, there was a lot of vinyl tile being scrapped up off the floors so we could have the industrial concrete look.  All I could see was a lot of really cool mosaic tile pieces!

I saved a few bags full of these little tile pieces.  After saving them from the trash three times, I decided they would be safer at my house.  Two years later… a project!!!!!

We have a service called ‘Deeper’ that we do once a quarter for believers to go deeper in their walk with Christ.  We try to theme these, and this one was about fear.  Mostly inspired by the economy and trying to understand where people are, we wanted to provide something helpful.

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We made an 8′ by 4′ board, painted the word trust on it and spray painted 600 tiles pieces with a rainbow of colors.  As people came in the door, they got a tile or two.  During the service, they were asked to write their fear(s) on the tile.  We had paint pens and painting supplies set up on 6 tables.  As people finished their tiles, we had a team of people gluing these inside the word TRUST.  Toward the end of the service, we raised it up and shined a light on it, revealing the beautiful piece of art.  It was an awesome evening!

Saving those tiles might have been crazy, but it sure worked out to be a powerful creative element during the service.  It was also an incredible way to get volunteers plugged in to the arts in our church.  I was amazed at how many people wanted to help!  :)

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bigger than yourself

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cool

Laura Hairston, a most talented singer is releasing her first CD entitled BIGGER THAN YOURSELF.

Upcoming CD Release…
6:00 PM, May 31, 2009
@ Preston Trail Community Church, Frisco, TX

All proceeds go to the kids of Casa Hogar Elim Orphanage.

I had the privilege of creating her CD art.  Not only is she talented, but amazingly fun to work with!

Her CD release is a great bringer event for our church.  We have all invited people that may not be part of a church, but they can come and get a feel for what it might be like to come to church.  A great seeker event, not to mention all of us Laura groupies that can’t wait for this night!

God uses people in so many cool ways!  :)

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church flickr

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flickr_logo_gamma.gif.v59899.14Flickr is a great way to keep a database of church photos, and cheap!  There is a free account available, so you can try it without a financial commitment.  When you’re ready to take the plunge, $25 a year gets you unlimited space.

Here’s the reasons I like flickr:

  • Inexpensive, unlimited space
  • Access to photos and images from any computer with internet
  • Interfaces with Facebook and many other online services
  • Allows church designers easy access to a photo database
  • Shares church photos with church people
  • Easy to organize photos
  • Has online slideshows
  • People can download the original size photos and get prints made if they like
  • You can secure sets for use only by people that log into your account

yes, it’s a sculpture.

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Two years ago, our worship leader Rod had an awesome idea to have a bunch of old TV’s on stage for a series called Expose’.   The cool thing about Rod is that he would have an idea, but he presented just the basic form of it so the people designing it started with just a basic idea.  I’m not always the best idea person, truth be told, my gift is in taking an idea or concept and running far with it.  So the bunch of old TV’s turned into this!

3275318719_1e1ec3cc31Jerod, AKA Kidvid, who has the gift of getting a good deal on everything, made a deal with Frisco Resale that we could buy any TV they had for $10 and we would donate them all back at the end of the series.  Our budget was $500 for the whole series that started on Easter Sunday.  We bought around 15 television sets, one that had serious vertical hold issues.  (which we throughly enjoyed and purposely kept in the sculpture)

3276144530_20b1847bebOne of our volunteers, Tony, helped build the TV sculpture.  Rod found that a bit funny that I referred to it as a sculpture.  Well, it is, don’t you think?  After it was built, Jerod and another one of our volunteers, Bob, ran signals to the sculpture.  We ran 2 signals to make it look random, and used 2 computers with graphics that coordinated with the large side screens.

We also made a large lit EXPOSE’ sign built from 6 Ikea light boxes and some electrical conduit.  Cost?  $80  We hooked it to a dimmer pack on the lighting board and it looked great!  The photo is posted below, although it’s not very clear.ikea lights

All in all, we were under budget by working a few deals, using stuff we had in the church building and we were able to give a little back to the community after it was over.

So you’re thinking this was 2 years ago.  Why post this now?  Because with everything switching to HD, the thrift stores are being flooded with old TV’s!  If you like this idea, now is a great time to do it.  Vintage televisions are available.  :)

is it possible to make a peep look masculine?

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Hangin' with my peeps on Easter Saturday

Hangin' with my peeps on Easter Saturday

Our church building was originally a computer chip manufacturing facility, which gives us a nice industrial decor, but very limited parking.  In our efforts to get a lot of people in for Easter, we asked our regular attenders to come on Saturday night.

Our most cool communications chick, Allison, thought up this great slogan with a play on the Easter candy peeps.  HANGIN’ WITH MY PEEPS ON EASTER SATURDAY.  Catchy?  Yes.  Cute?  Yes.  Cool, then let’s design some t-shirts!  Anyone that takes one commits to coming to church on Saturday night.  Continue reading →

WHAT!??!!? how is having no marketing money a GOOD thing?

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The most simple answer is that you have to be more creative.

Anyone with a large budget can throw money at a marketing campaign.  Now, I’m not saying that anyone that has a lot of money to spend is doing it unwisely.  What I am saying, is that you have to be a lot more creative in your methods when there is not a lot of money, and in most cases, that can led to some really creative marketing methods.

Here are a few good reasons to have a low marketing budget:

  • Again, you have to be more creative to maximize the impact of those few dollars.
  • A high impact, low cost plan is being a good steward of your money.
  • You’ll probably spend some extra time price shopping, and you may find some new vendors or new ideas.
  • You might end up in a thrift store shopping for stage props, so you are being green!
  • Some things might be done in-house instead of outsourced.  Usually more people in the church are involved and this is a great way to get volunteers plugged in.

Do you have any tips to add?  Please do!  :)