Eight Ways You Can Connect beyond Sunday AM for Free

One of the best things about the digital world is that once you have a computer and an internet connection, almost everything else is either low cost or completely free.  Here are some ideas for connection that are much more interesting than simply sending an e-mail to connect with your congregation during the week. 

1.  Create a piece of digital art each week for people to download from your website (or blog if you want to enable RSS) to use as desktop wallpaper. It is a great way to allow people to engage with the teaching throughout the work week.   If you want to design for optimal screen resolution, Onestat.com currently reports 1024 x 768 as the most common. Or if you are using Google Analytics, look up the most common screen resolution for people viewing your website. 

2. Leverage the intellect of your SAHM’s (Stay-At-Home-Moms) by creating an open-source forum where you can solicit advice and input onwhatever missional challenges your congregation is currently facing. 

3. Create a Twitter account for your church and send “tweets” updating people during a community project (ie. for Habitat for Humanity….walls are up….floor is laid...) or more inspirational notices daily related to the teaching for the week. 

4. Create your own community Craigslist with a twist….everything is free.  People can post what they have to give away or things they are looking for either within your church community or to the greater community at large.  The forum structure can be created free of charge using simplemachines.org.

5. Have your church youth group participate in a photo-based scavenger hunt by texting the list each morning one item at a time and having the group respond via MMS with their cell phones. 

6. Create a YouTube Channel for your church (or small group)and upload content.  (Caveat:  YouTube works best for short video clips rather than long teaching segments and worship music shouldn’t be uploaded unless you fully own the rights or have a plan to pay royalties to the composer.)  YouTube accepts a wide range of video fileformats such as .WMV, .AVI, .MOV, and .MPG transferred from most digital cameras, camcorders, and cell phones. Videos are limited to 1GB in size. Side note: if you convert to an FLV file before you upload to YouTube, you can control compression and maintain stereo.  If YouTube converts for you, it creates mono audio.

7.  Digitize your archives. What do you have sitting around that others might enjoy having access to?  Just this week, I was able to send a photo from 1969 to a mother and her daughters because Karen Clary Harper scanned an old church directory and loaded it into the "Southcliff Youth - 70's Edition" group in Facebook. (You could also do this on Flickr, Picasa, MySpace, etc.)

8. Create a podcast designed specifically for commuters.  What could you create that would make people feel relaxed (or possibly even laugh) while they are sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic?  What goals could you help people reach? (Like someone who wants to memorize scripture?) Feature it on your website and make it easy to download.

Of course, your creativity isn't limited to this list.  I would love to hear whatever you come up with.  My e-mail is below!

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