I’m posting this late because I didn’t want to interrupt my how to blog series. I made this open letter for week 3 of module 3 of Praxis. It’s a practice value prop! If you have any thoughts or feedback feel free to contact me.
Dear Grace Bible Church,
I’ve been attending and volunteering for 3 years now and I’d like to help more. Every Sunday morning you tell the congregation to check in on Facebook at church. You’re trying to get an online presence and I’d like to help.
1) A Photo directory would help with your website. Two ways you could go about this: Creating a page where your members can automatically upload their own pictures, address, phone numbers, etc. Then put it all together making the directory.
How I could help: I know a photographer who can take pictures for you. I can do signup sheets for time slots on a certain day or weekend. Have people fill out their names and the time slots then come down. I can schedule the whole thing for you too.
Why this benefits you: It’ll make it easy on the church staff to get in contact with the people in your church. You’ll have all their contact information in one place. It’ll also show new people checking out your site who goes to your church. Maybe they’ll find friends they didn’t know go and would ask them about it and become interested in going.
Whichever option you choose I am happy to do all the planning and creation for you.
2) Improving your website. You have a welcome video showing the church along with all other website essentials. I did notice you have a picture and story time area that have been in the process of being made for 3 years now. I have my own website that I’ve created. I can help you with creating these pages to complete them.
There are some things that could use some cleaning up. Your website doesn’t have a tab logo. This will make your site much cleaner just from that. A new website background would make the world. Your current is very bland and a new one could really liven the place up.
Why this benefits you: I believe the picture page would be a great asset. Especially if you take pictures of events that the church does. Like VBS and the concert at the park. Having church staff and then taking pictures to upload goes a long way. People will see you in the community in the moment but now they’ll see the work you’ve done forever. Showing the identity and transparency of your church.
As for stories I’m not sure what you want there. Bible stories? Or real-life stories of miracles happening to people. I think even using it as a documentation for things your missionary campaigns have accomplish would be a good idea for this area. If not, we could make an area for all three.
I can have both the website and photo directory done within a month.
3) Church social media. There is a church twitter and Facebook account. This is a good step in your online presence but after taking a glance at it there isn’t much there. There are posts to the sermon online and that’s it. I would love to run your social media page or can give you some recommendations of people who would be great.
If you were to choose me I’d run it by taking pictures while the sermon is happening or even before showing everyone walking around. Show some people enjoying a cup of coffee before or after the sermon and add a quick caption to it. It’ll go a long way and show that your church is the place to be.
Pictures of future baptisms, quotes, and books would also be a big one. Having a picture for someone’s family to see of such a big moment is so important! A quick picture of a quote either by the pastor or someone else would be great in picture form. It’ll be motivational and encouraging. Taking pictures of people reading Christian books would also encourage the congregation to go out and read challenging philosophical books.
4) Your youth group needs someone to run their social media. You already have a facebook page but it’s vacant of all life. Nowadays teens all use Instagram and Snapchat. You could really use this in your advantage. Making the youth group a snapchat to send daily bible verses to teens to keep a streak going.
As for Instagram, we can take pictures of the teens during game time, or during the lesson. Post it on there for their friends to see. If we tag them in the pictures it’ll show up for their friends and get them interested.
I could do this as an ongoing project starting now.
Having these things in place would build awareness about the church and strengthen it’s signal. Involvement of our congregation and improving their experience will greatly improve. I’d like to offer these ideas, in exchange for having the experience to list on my resume and portfolio.
Toby
Toby Lopez 