by Patrick Bradley: You’ve probably run into this: you want to send out a newsletter or important announcement but some people prefer email, some text and some social media. Who has time to manage multiple communication channels?

One of the ironies of our age of communication is that communicating as a organization can be harder. It’s easier and faster in some respects, but the proliferation of channels means that your audience is going to be split by personal preference.

The Obvious Choices

There is no perfect solution or channel. The common or obvious ways to get the word out are:

Email (including from your church management software)
Text
Website
Social Media
Mobile App

As a church planter, you’re going to run into this early as your raise financial support, build a prayer team and gather a launch team.

Every church runs into this on an ongoing basis with newsletters, events and other important announcements.

Your Options

There have been two basic approaches for churches to manage communication channels until recently:

Force everyone to conform to your preferred channel
Copy & paste to each platform every time you want to send something out

Fortunately, a new option is emerging and even becoming more and more reliable.

Automation!

There is a growing category of software that creates bridges between other popular apps. It’s a pretty simple idea: you set up a trigger that then fires an action. For example, whenever you create a new post on your church Facebook page, the service will automatically send a group text.

The ones I’ve tested out are:

Zapier
IFTTT (If This, Then That)

And I was pleasantly surprised to find almost a dozen other options that do the same thing.

This will take a few minutes to set up, but will save you hours over the course of a year.

First, decide on which communication channel will be your master. One inherent challenge will be the length of your message:

Short to Long – Twitter & text give you limited real estate, which is fine for their own platforms, but 140 characters is unimpressive as a blog post or email newsletter
Long to Short – You can say more but you’ll have to figure out how to automatically shorten it for Twitter & text

Then build your automations and set them in motion.

An Example

One way you could do this is to set up Mailchimp as your master, then set up the following automations:

post the message to your Facebook page using their native integration
post to your Facebook group using Zapier (group vs. page)
post to Twitter using their native integration (creates a hyperlink to full message)
send the shortened tweet as a group text using Zapier and Twilio (a paid app)
create a post on your WordPress website (perhaps on a news or announcements page?)
posting to your Mobile App will depend on your app developer

With this set up, every time you send a new Mailchimp, it automatically gets broadcast across all the different channels.

Another inherent challenge will be managing your contact lists. All of this sounds simple enough on the sending end, but there’s the whole matter of getting people to sign up for their preferred channel(s) and keeping their contact info and preferences up to date. But that’s a post for another day.

Don’t discouraged when faced with having to manage multiple communication channels. Make automation do the redundant stuff for you so that you can use your time for more important ministry!

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Source: How to Manage Multiple Communication Channels

The post How to Manage Multiple Communication Channels appeared first on Passion for Planting.

by Patrick Bradley: Keeping your intercessory prayer team up-to-date and praying for you can be easier if you pick one of these prayer team software tools.

Missionaries to countries across the globe commonly set up a prayer team back home that covers them in prayer while they’re in the field. As a missionary to your own community, you should do no less.

One of the hardest things in that process can be sticking with the discipline of sending regular updates. Not that you don’t want to, but if you set up a system that’s burdensome to maintain, you won’t. Keep your administrative burden light so that it doesn’t feel overwhelming to have to send out another update.

Each of the following prayer team software options have both mobile apps and web browser interfaces, so they’re easy to use wherever you find yourself sitting down to write a few bullet points for your team to pray over:

Group Email

MailChimp and MailerLite are group email programs that help you create quick & stylish email newsletters. They both have a freemium plan that will allow to get away with a lot for free before you hit the premium ceiling and have to start paying.

Email doesn’t seem to be going away any time soon since you need a valid email address to sign up for just about any other service. But your newsletter will also get buried in all the inbox noise and/or shuffled off to a promotions or forums folder by gmail.

Group email will also require the most set up of the options: you need to pick a template and get it all ready to use before you start sending emails to your prayer team. And you’ll need to add or invite everyone to the distribution list. But that’s mostly just a 1-time activity in the life of the team.

Social Media Group

Another great option is to set up a private Facebook Group (not Page). Every time you post new prayer requests, all group members get a notification or email about it.

This requires less set up – mostly creating the Group, which is pretty easy, and then adding or inviting Facebook users to the Group. Again, mostly a 1-time deal.

Group Text

This is probably the easiest, quick-and-dirty prayer team software option. Simply add everyone to your first text message and send it out. From there on out you should be able to just re-use the same conversation thread.

The browser option here probably only works if you have an iPhone-Mac combo. But texting with your mobile phone is what we do, right?

I’m sure there are practical limits here. Casual poking around suggests that it’s probably 10-25 people that you can have in a group text group. I’m sure I wouldn’t want to be part of a 200-person group text anyway. I’ve had lots of church planters with prayer teams larger than 200, so this wouldn’t work if that’s you.

Messenger Apps

I heard one futurist predict that messaging apps will be the next big thing after social media. They allow you to chat in groups in real time and more easily control who’s seeing what (instead of everyone seeing everything on your wall). And, at least for now, have fewer annoying ads.

WhatsApp seems to be the rising star. It’s built primarily for mobile but has a web browser interface, too. It’s free and has simpler privacy settings and mobile app permissions. You can have up to 256 users in a group.

Messenger is similar and published by the 1,000-pound gorilla, Facebook. It’s popular and tries to merge itself with (or take over) the SMS text functionality of your phone. If your people are on Facebook, chances are good they have Messenger, too.

But I won’t personally install it on my android device because of the incredibly invasive permissions it requires. It gives itself more access to every piece of data and function on my phone than my phone even gets.

The bottom line is that you should pick a prayer team software tool that allows you to quickly & easily send out updates. That removes a major hurdle to sending updates out regularly. Your prayer partners want to hear from you! Set one of these prayer team software tools up today.

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Source: 4 Intercessory Prayer Team Software Tools

The post 4 Intercessory Prayer Team Software Tools appeared first on Passion for Planting.

by Patrick Bradley: Prayer is a critical piece of your church plant. Use these 3 prayer team event ideas to elevate the value and presence of prayer in your new church.

We only get brief glimpses into the spiritual world in Scripture. This one reminds us that we are in a battle in the spiritual realm:

Then [the angel] said, “Don’t be afraid, Daniel. Since the first day you began to pray for understanding and to humble yourself before your God, your request has been heard in heaven. I have come in answer to your prayer. But for twenty-one days the spirit prince of the kingdom of Persia blocked my way…” Daniel 10 (NLT)

Prayer begins the assault on enemy territory, creating a beachhead for your church plant. The prize is the hearts and souls of people. But don’t expect the forces of the Deceiver to take it lying down. Encourage your supporters and/or Launch Team to pray with you using these prayer team event ideas:

Prayer Walk

Get together and pray through your target area. Some ideas for a prayer walk:

Pray as you go
Prepare people on the team with how to respond when people ask what you’re all doing
Stay together and walk to significant location or landmarks to pray
…or break into pairs/teams to canvas more territory; provide each team a digital or paper map of their target neighborhood(s)
Involve supporters who can’t be there in person by planning a parallel virtual prayer walk using a custom Google map

Prayer Vigil

Call it something cooler if you like, but the idea is to orchestrate constant prayer over, say, a 24-hour period. Some ideas for a prayer vigil:

Break your chosen time period into bite-sized shifts to lower the bar of participation; consider 10, 15 or 20 minute increments
Use a free sign-up service like Signup Genius to get all of your supporters to pick their own time slot(s) and get automated reminders
If you have access to a meeting place overnight, offer an in-person option if people want to show up for their shift

Prayer Campaign

Similar to the vigil, this orchestrates prayer daily for a specific time period like a week or month. Some ideas for a prayer campaign:

Connect the time period and/or the time to pray to a specific number that connects with the mission or vision of your church, such as pray for 42 days at exactly 2:42 pm
Use email or group text reminders daily to keep people engaged and inspired
Use email or group text to orchestrate specific daily topics
Communicate specific answered prayers and other victories at the end of the campaign so your pray-ers can celebrate how God responded

You can use these prayer team event ideas near the beginning of your church planting process and/or right before the launch of regular worship gatherings. Unleash your creativity and take prayer up a notch!

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Source: 3 Intercessory Prayer Team Event Ideas

The post 3 Intercessory Prayer Team Event Ideas appeared first on Passion for Planting.