CSL 010 – The #1 Most Underutilized Feature of your Church Website

Isabelle Faletti  (00:00:55):

Hello and welcome at ChurchSpring Live episode 10. Thank you so much for joining us today. My name is Isabelle Faletti and I’m part of the customer happiness team. And joining me today is co founder of ChurchSpring. Rohn Gibson.

Rohn Gibson (00:01:10):

Good morning, everyone. We’re thrilled to have you here.

Isabelle Faletti  (00:01:12):

Yes, we are. I see already people are introducing themselves. I love that. Thank you so much. If you haven’t yet, I would love to know who’s attending our live event today. So make sure to introduce yourself include your church name and where you’re from in the comments right below. Carol. Oh, we have two Carols this’ll be fun. You will need to give stream yard access to so that we can display your name. So when you get that prompt, just go ahead and click. Yes. That’s approved. No worries there. If you are new to church, spring ChurchSpring helps churches build intuitive, affordable, and frustration, free websites. We also love to help just equip church members and church leaders with amazing resources, such as church, ChurchSpring Live. So to day we are going to give you something a little secret. We, we’re going to be talking about the number one most underutilized feature of your church website and how you can actually start using it today, right after this, this event here so that you can effectively communicate to your church members. So buckle in because we have got a ride for you today. Rohn, before we get too, too much in the weeds here I know they have a few quick announcements, so take it away.

Rohn Gibson (00:02:38):

Yeah, I saw, I love this. This is so good. We’ve got so many people joining us chatting and today I’m welcome to just a couple quick shout outs. Totally welcome from let’s see Christ Covenant Church in Beaumont, Texas. Welcome. We’ve got Tasha joining us,ufrom the Promised Land church in Syracuse, New York. Welcome Tasha. I was going to try my best New Yorker accent, but I would totally butcher on this. I’m just not going to do it.

Isabelle Faletti  (00:03:06):

We see our live event attendees just drop at that.

Rohn Gibson (00:03:09):

I know! We totally would. That it would be a mix between Southeastern Ohio, Northwest Iowa, and some kind of New York, something who knows what I do. Kinda want to hear that now. Not today, but next stay tuned. We’ll see. All right, we’ve got Davis joining us. Welcome David from Bethel Empowerment Center. Thrilled to have you here. We’ve got Sherry from Nashville. Love that name. That’s my mom’s name. So welcome Sherry. We are glad you’re here. I’m glad Tasha you, you would even be laughing even more. If I were to actually do my New York.

Isabelle Faletti  (00:03:47):

Or groaning. Laughing or groaning.

Rohn Gibson (00:03:50):

Yes, we would definitely lose people, but Hey, we got some smiles up here. That’s awesome.

Rohn Gibson (00:03:56):

The last one’s Carrie, welcome from Great Commission Christian and let’s see St. Bethlehem Christian Church. Awesome. Welcome, Carrie. We’re thrilled to have you here, Pastor Richard. Welcome. Glad to have you here as well. And then one last one, Melvin, I know that I can count on you – literally this morning, I was out of my run and thinking about this and I was praying for you Pastor Melvin. So anyway, we are glad you’re here and I thank you again. I, I believe you’re the one– actually you’ve shared a testimonial with us that we’ve been able to use with several churches. I thank you so much, Pastor Melvin for doing that. If any other churches are here that would like to give us a testimonial on ChurchSpring. If we’re doing a great job and you’d like to give us a shout out we’d love to have those.

Rohn Gibson (00:04:43):

So you can send an email to support@churchspring.com and we’d love to utilize that to help get the word out, to help more churches. So anyway, ah, this is awesome. Do you remember the first one? So this is, this is kind of a big deal. We’re at episode 10, we made it 10 weeks, 10 episodes, and it is just an absolute blessing to be able to serve you all and to get this content into your hands. So before we jump into today’s topic again, just a couple of quick announcements. If you have any questions, we’ve already got an active chat. Yep. Thank you for that. Yes. If you have questions as we get into the topic today, please feel free. Put it in the chat, whether you’re watching on YouTube or Facebook, wherever you’re watching. Go ahead, make sure you give Stream Yard access so we can see your beautiful face and your name.

Rohn Gibson (00:05:33):

But put in that question and we will answer as many questions as we can during our time here today. Also we’ve already got some likes, some love some ha-ha’s. I’m sure that’s my New York accent comment. But yeah, if you agree as we’re going through this, if you like what you’re hearing love, what you’re hearing feel free, let us know that you can give us a, like a heart, a laugh whatever. We love to see those as well. And then also, if there’s somebody that you would like to invite to join us, you can either just reach out to them right now and say, Hey, join us on the ChurchSpring page. Or even just tag them. You can do a watch party and share the video, whatever works best to help us get the word out. Ultimately we don’t get paid to create these ChurchSpring Lives.

Rohn Gibson (00:06:20):

This is just something we really want to do to be a blessing, to educate and to just add value, even beyond the software that we provide and we truly count it a blessing and a privilege to be able to do so. So if you would like it share it, that would be awesome. And then lastly if you’ve got your water there, we’re going to talk about some things today and it’s good to get the juices flowing. So take a sip of water and get ready, get your, your pen and your paper ready. But I will say this don’t feel like you have to take super detailed notes. We’re actually going to do that for you. So you’ll be able to check out a rewatch of this video. In addition to we’ll give you links to all the resources. We talk about the main talking points that will all be available in the show notes at churchspring.com /CSL zero one zero. So again, (ChurchSpring Live) C S L zero one zero. So all that will be there and I’m excited. This topic is one that I’m going to be honest. I’ve been kind of chomping at the bit to talk about since we’ve started doing this because it is seriously one of the most underutilized features of church websites, and we want to change that trend, so let’s get into it.

Isabelle Faletti  (00:07:41):

So before we, we give away exactly what we’re talking about for the number one most underutilized feature. I do have a question for everybody who’s tuning in today to our live event. So pay attention here. Have you ever heard any of your church members say this? Oh, I had no idea. I didn’t hear about that church update. Where did you post that? Where did you hear that? If you have heard your church members say that type yes. In the comments below maybe you’re sitting over there just kind of shaking your head or kind of getting a big sigh because you just recently heard a church member. Just kind of be confused on what’s going on in your church. So type yes. In the comments below. If, if nobody has had that experience.

Rohn Gibson (00:08:31):

Oh, we got, we got lots of that.

Isabelle Faletti  (00:08:34):

There we go there,

Rohn Gibson (00:08:36):

We can’t even keep up. We’re getting so many. Melvin, Carrie, John, John Johnson, we’re coming in so fast. I thought I was clicking on John automatically. The excellent, great.

Isabelle Faletti  (00:08:50):

We get it. We get it. So if you want to increase communication with your church members, which yes, we all do. You need to be using this feature on your church website. So today Rohn and I, we are going to share some really practical tips and tools that can help you close that communication gap with your church members. So Tasha you say, can you say it again? Yes. I’ll highlight that. Yes, you can. I love the energy that we have here. So if you’re ready to learn about the number one, most underutilized feature on your church website, I want to hear if this was a live event, I would be that person right now saying I can’t hear you. So if you’re ready for us to share type, let’s go in the comments below. And Rohn and I are going to unpack this topic for you. So type let’s go. And I’ll say it again. I can’t hear you. We are so excited about sharing.

Rohn Gibson (00:09:49):

Yes. Type. Let’s go. Let’s do this. Let’s do this. Alright.

Isabelle Faletti  (00:09:55):

Tasha. Yes.

Rohn Gibson (00:09:58):

So if you came here today to not interact and just to consume content, you’re in the wrong place. We definitely want to interact with you today. And we’re going to ask you lots of questions like this, so I can’t hear you. That’s awesome. Hopefully you can actually hear us.

Isabelle Faletti  (00:10:13):

Yeah, hopefully you can Melinda.

Rohn Gibson (00:10:16):

Awesome. All right, let’s go. Let’s do this. What’s the first question.

Isabelle Faletti  (00:10:20):

Alright, so Rohn, let’s let stop being so secretive here. We all want to know what is the number one most underutilized feature on a church website that we should be using to increase communication with existing church members.

Rohn Gibson (00:10:36):

Yes. Yes. Drum roll, please. We are all tired of hearing that. I had no idea that was going on in our church. And there’s a reason for that. There’s a lot of communication. And this tool that I’m going to tell you in just a second is the tool you absolutely have to have. And that is a blog on your church website. So I know there might be some people here right now. Like I don’t even know what you’re talking about when you say a blog, but the simplest thing, a blog is a feature on your, on your, on your website. That’s basically a series of posts. So you can go there. You can put an announcement, you can put an encouraging word. We’ll give you lots of examples of types of things that you would populate and put on your blog. If you are relatively new to ChurchSpring, when you actually sign up, it’s already there, it’s called, we call it “Updates”, but it’s basically a place where you can go and post content.

Rohn Gibson (00:11:33):

And it continues to archive that content over a period of time. Okay. People can comment. So basically once you post you’re putting in your title, you put in your comment, you click post people. If you’re allowing them to, they can write comments on that to interact with the content. But the blog is one of the most under utilized pieces of on church websites today. And if you want to do your best to make some serious strides forward of not hearing, I didn’t even know that was going on in our church. You need to have a blog on your church website. Now I know out of the people that we have here right now, many of them are current ChurchSpring users. And you may have done that a little sin of deleting the blog from your church website. We’re going to help you correct that. Okay?

Isabelle Faletti  (00:12:22):

Sure. It breaks my heart.

Rohn Gibson (00:12:25):

You go to that. When we go to a lot of our, our, our customer size to check them out we’ll scroll down to the bottom and you’ll see this like blank box down at the bottom in the footer. What that tells us is you did that naughty thing. You got rid of your blog, and we’re going to show you how to fix that today. So another question or thing that comes up that we hear quite a bit is does, does a blog need to really be on my church website? And the answer is yes, back in the day like, you know, let’s say two years ago, back in the day, just for clarification, for us more seasoned individuals who are on the call today, back in the day, talking like two years ago, it used to be really difficult to actually integrate a blog into your church website.

Rohn Gibson (00:13:09):

So there’s all kinds of services, blogger and WordPress, and all these different services out there to have a, to have a blog. However then it lives on their domain name and they’re the ones getting credit for all the content. And there’s some serious significant positive impacts that can happen if you actually have the blog on your own domain. So we’re going to talk more into that. I’m not going to really get into it other than to say, if you have a blog, but it is not currently on your church website, we need to change that. So we’re going to talk a little bit about that here in just a minute, but the number one thing is your blog. What is it? It’s a feature on your site. That’s a series of posts that people can interact with. And it’s like the update board. If you think about the update board, it’s like the update board at your church, and then does it need to be on your, on your specific domain name? It absolutely does. And we’re going to talk some more about why that’s the case. Yep.

Isabelle Faletti  (00:14:09):

And along with that Rohn you mentioned that there’s external blogs or there used to be back back in the day. That was kind of the theme. And nowadays I see people using social media channels as, as their actual blog. So posting an Instagram post or posting a long, long Facebook post as their, as their blog. So that’s another example of what not to do to have that. That’s not your blog. We’ll talk more about how you can use these channels and use these social media channels as a tool to push out your blog. But that social media channel, that’s not your blog. No, no, no.

Rohn Gibson (00:14:52):

And Melvin, we’re going to help you brother. So just sit tight. I’ve got it. I haven’t deleted it. I don’t know how to use it. We’re going to do just that. So just sit tight, get ready. We’re going to tell you exactly how you should be using it on your site.

Isabelle Faletti  (00:15:06):

So from the Customer Happiness Team we kind of see two types of users. We see some ministry leaders who they are super new to websites and kind of digital communication, and they don’t quite understand just why a blog may be important. They haven’t gone down that journey yet. And then we also have some users who they, they do understand how to use the blog, but may not understand why do we need, need to use it for my church website. So Rohn, can you unpack, why is a blog important to have on my church website?

Rohn Gibson (00:15:47):

Yes, absolutely. So as we get into that, I’ll kind of maybe lay a little bit of groundwork and then jump in. So if your viewpoint or mindset is that your church website is just an online brochure, that’s the first thing we have to correct. Your church website is not just an online brochure for your church, if it is, you’re going to get that out of it, which means very little. Okay. So it’s not. This is an effective communication tool for you to, yes grow your church, but also to effectively communicate with your church. So why is the blog important to having your church website? Effective communication. Is it is our job as ministry leaders to do our best, to communicate with the members of our church. And the blog is just one of the super easy, fast ways to be able to do that. So, number one, why do you need it?

Rohn Gibson (00:16:41):

Why is it important, effective communication? It’s the easiest way to keep your church members up to date on what’s going on at your church and many other ways, but specifically just keeping your members up to date. It’s important that as you think about your blog, that you really understand. Who is the audience for my blog? Is it I want, I want to get new people in my community to find out about us and come to our church, or is it maybe, maybe 80%, it’s effective communication to church members  and maybe 20% of that is for new visitors. So I would encourage you to really think through, as you think of your content for your blog. And we’re going to give you a lot of ideas here. But just really think who is the audience for this. And then create content specifically for that audience.

Rohn Gibson (00:17:31):

Next you can use a blog. And the reason it’s important is that it is a tool to equip and teach and disciple members in your church beyond Sunday. Yeah, this is not just a like, Hey, here’s a bulletin board of some new event that’s coming up. There’s a of things that you can do to use it as a tool to really equip the people in your church to really teach them and to disciple them beyond a Sunday morning service or whenever you have your service. So we’re going to talk more specifically about that, but it’s important because of that and equipping your members, discipling them extremely critical component in the church today. And then another thing to think about as you consider your blog is the voice and tone of your blog. So one of the important things in the church period is to make a personal connection, right?

Rohn Gibson (00:18:24):

Like we’re to have the fellowship of other believers, where to be a witness. Well, that starts with relationship. So your blog can be an incredible tool to make a personal connection with somebody. So when I say voice and tone, many of you like what in the world is that I want to give you two starkly different pieces of content on your church website. When you go to your statement of faith, it is going to be more direct, just clear and concise. This is what we believe on this topic. So it’s going to have, should have, here’s what we believe. Here’s the scripture references associated with that. So very clear cut. Direct. Okay. So that’s, that’s your statement of faith page? Your blog post a blog post should really be more conversational. So it’s literally just like you’re talking to me right now and you’re sharing about whether it’s the upcoming message or this upcoming event and things people need to know, or maybe it’s CoVid update or whatever that might be.

Rohn Gibson (00:19:27):

It’s going to be more of a conversational tone because your goal is you want to inform, but you also want to connect. That’s one of the great features of a blog specifically when you’re posting ask them questions, just like we’re modeling for you right here. We’re asking you questions to engage you through the chat and to start that really deepening of a relationship, even in this format. So highly encourage you conversational tone, make it really personal, ask them questions to engage them with your content, through your blog, where then they can comment and that sort of thing. So, yeah, super important. If you want to affectively communicate to your church members, you absolutely have to have a blog on your church website. And if you’re a church brain number, there’s no excuse. Cause we don’t that right in super easy to use.

Isabelle Faletti  (00:20:23):

Yep. Yeah. So it really is what I’m hearing you say, Rohn, is that you’re a church website blog- It is not this passive one dimensional piece of item on your website. It is this, this active conversational update on your website that, that can really be amplified to, to disciple your, your church members. I know later on in this episode, we’ll share exactly what that looks like, how church leaders can use your blog to actually equip and disciple. But I mean, it, it is so important. I mean, especially right now, just with where we’re at with the world, with a pandemic there’s your church website and your blog. There’s a lot of bandwidth you can get out of your website. And so that’s why probably listeners. That’s why Rohn and I are so passionate about using your blog on your website because it can truly change lives.

Isabelle Faletti  (00:21:21):

It can change your members’ lives. It can change their everybody who they’re connected with. So keep asking questions. I see that we have a couple of questions here. Chase, we will actually answer your question here very shortly. You asked, do our church members need to be online to be able to see our website. So Rohn will answer, answer that shortly. I do just want to address Reverend Johnny our site is not up yet problems. No worries. If you are a ChurchSpring member reach out to us, send in a support ticket and we’ll be very happy to help you out and get your site up and running in no time. Melinda, she commented that, Oh, that is helpful. It is more than an announcement. Yes, it is more than is an announcement.

Rohn Gibson (00:22:05):

And one thing I failed to mention is your blog should be one of the most active components of your church website. Yeah. So that, that that’s really a mindset shift from not having a blog, cause we’re not really understanding how to use it. Right. So the mindset shift that this is one of the most active kind of living, breathing components of your church website. So we’re going to talk specifically about how you can make it that way. But that’s just something to consider that I failed to mention. I want to make sure we circle back there.

Isabelle Faletti  (00:22:35):

Yeah. Yeah. Perfect. Okay, Brian, so I think we’ve done a great job of kind of establishing why a blog is so important to have an on your church website because we have to be communicating with existing members. So what does that actually look like? How do we take this and how can we add a blog to my church website?

Rohn Gibson (00:22:57):

Yes. So super easy again with ChurchSpring. Let’s say if you’re not currently a user, when you sign up, I know we had actually a question from Davis come in. So I think I can kind of answer that. I can answer two questions at once. So Davis’s question is not sure if this is the forum for this question. So forgive us, if not, we, we love questions, so keep them coming, but we have a website already. How can you guys assist us? I’m going to assume in this question that you’re not currently with ChurchSpring. If you are, that’s a different question. So go ahead and clarify that. If I’m, if I’m, if I’m off base here, but if you’re not currently using ChurchSpring and you do have a church website I guess my, my first thought would be if your current website is, and it’s working for you, then stay, stay where you are.

Rohn Gibson (00:23:48):

However, if there’s a reason you’re looking at ChurchSpring ChurchSpring is a website platform in and of itself. So you would sign up with ChurchSpring. Then you would basically migrate your content over, which is super easy. You can copy and paste. We also offer migration services, if that’s something that’s a potential solution for you that you would be looking for. So yeah, it looks like you’re not yet a ChurchSpring member. Okay. So that’s what I would encourage you to do. Go sign up for a seven day free trial, test it out, compare it to what you currently have, see if it’s a better fit for you and if it is great. So I’ll just say that there, but super easy with church ring, if you have deleted it. So if you, if you haven’t deleted it, like I think Pastor Melvin said, great, we’re gonna show you how easy that is to use.

Rohn Gibson (00:24:36):

However, if you have deleted it, all you have to do is go click the little plus icon, add a page, select the blog template that will show up and boom, you’ve got the blog right back onto your website, if you’re on a different platform. And there there’s so many to even start to give examples, right? However, it could be more difficult because some platforms don’t even offer blogging, a blogging feature as part of it. Many do, but just operate a lot differently. So I would just encourage you if you’re not a current ChurchSpring member, go check it out, sign up for the seven day trial or even attended demo with myself and my co-founder where we’ll show you literally how to set up a site with us. And if you did delete it, just go out a page, select the blog template. And literally you can add a blog feature to your site if you’ve deleted it in less than like five seconds. It’s that easy.

Isabelle Faletti  (00:25:28):

Yeah, it’s true. And I mean, that’s one of the features or one of the great time-saving benefits of ChurchSpring is that you don’t have to have a third party plugin or some confusing app to add to your website to have a blog which I just absolutely love because for those who are new to tech, you don’t need to be worrying about these third party apps. Cause that can be really overwhelming. So I love how easy it is just for, for ChurchSpring members that they can just super quickly add, add a blog to their website. Davis, it looks like you did ask more information about where you can get migration information. Go ahead and send us an email. You can actually send out there or fill out a contact form on our website that’s ChurchSpring.com/contact. Go ahead and send us a form.

Isabelle Faletti  (00:26:21):

We will we’ll we’ll get that. And then we can send you more information about migration there for you. And same thing with, with demo a demo webinar, it looks like you also asked about that we actually offer demo webinars every 15 minutes. So we should be able to fit in, or you should be able to fit that in whenever works best with your schedule. You can go to ChurchSpring.com/demo to sign up for a demo webinar there. So good questions. Thanks. Thanks for asking that. Rohn, it looks like we all, we have so many good questions today about blogs. I love this. Thank you everybody. These are great questions. And we are going to be addressing all of these. So if Walter specifically, will their members be able to get updates every time it’s updated. We’ll actually talk about that later on.

Isabelle Faletti  (00:27:10):

So stay tuned. We’ll talk about that in maybe 10 minutes, five minutes or so. So yeah, yeah, yeah. Don’t, don’t count us for five minutes here. So what type of content should we actually be adding to the blog? I know it can be overwhelming. Maybe if someone’s sitting, listening to us share about blogs. And then maybe thinking, I mean, if sky’s the limit, where do I stop or maybe they, people are a little unsure of where to, where do I start? We probably have some on both sides of that. So can you give some practical examples of what type of content we should be adding to a website blog?

Rohn Gibson (00:27:57):

Absolutely. So ultimately when you think about your content strategy, you want to think about what are the categories of types of information we want to share, right? So that’s kind of your, you’re kind of starting to eat that elephant of now I’m going to do, I’m going to add a blog to my side. I want to be consistent with putting content out there. Cause Rohn said this should most, should be the most updated section of our church website and it absolutely should be. So I’m going to give you some of those category ideas. Okay. So number one, and we’ve talked about it already announcements. We’ve been through this through the whole pandemic. You know, we visited a lot of our member sites, just looking for areas and opportunities of how we can help. How can we help improve communication through things like a pandemic?

Rohn Gibson (00:28:39):

I mean, we have the same things depending on where you live in the country, even related to weather, if there’s a big snow storm that rolls through and their churches have to be canceled, whatever that might be. So, and announcements is one of the easiest things to put out there. Literally you can put a title of the blog post. You can put just a couple of sentences if need or even longer video, whatever you want to do. But announcements are just one of the easiest things to put out there. So I highly encourage you to do that.

Isabelle Faletti  (00:29:08):

This is one of the, one of the easiest and when one of the most important, because I mean, we asked in the beginning of this, are you tired of hearing your church members say, Oh, I didn’t know about that. So announcements may seem almost too easy, but that’s the point a blog doesn’t have to be complicated. It is another channel that you are using to communicate to your church members. So if nothing start posting your announcements and I’m skipping ahead to our action steps. I’m so sorry, but post announcements on blog

Rohn Gibson (00:29:42):

This so good. I would just want to say this a good friend of mine gave me this quote that let’s see. Perfect. Let’s see. Imperfect action is better than perfect inaction. Ooh. So about your blog don’t, don’t overthink it. Do not overthink it. Remember imperfect action is better than perfect inaction and that’s what happens a lot with things related that we just don’t know the full scope of, or maybe we don’t have the full grasp of, we just don’t act. We don’t do anything. So imperfect action is better than perfect inaction. So we talked about types of content, number one, announcement, number two, weekly encouragement, literally just put something out there to encourage your people.

Isabelle Faletti  (00:30:31):

All need to be encouraged right now.

Rohn Gibson (00:30:34):

Art, we live in a dark world today. Let’s be an encouragement. You want to talk about being light in a dark place. I hate to say it, but it’s kind of really easy to be light and, and for people to see the difference, if you’re positive and you’re pointing people to truth and hope that we have in Christ, that’s a great thing. So a weekly encouragement that you could put out there, again, it doesn’t have to be long. We’re not talking 2,005,000 word blog posts here. It could be, you know, whatever, whatever you want it to be. It could be a hundred words, just a hundred consistent words. Every single let’s say Monday, that’s an encouragement to the members of your church, man. The impact that that can make is a measurable. The next thing is you could do a ministry spotlight, how many ministries in your church, maybe that people don’t even even know about talk about them.

Rohn Gibson (00:31:23):

You know, maybe it’s a nursery ministry. Did you know that we have a nursery minute nursery ministry say that 10 times real fast at our church and by the way, we’re looking for help. So if you know, you meet these qualifications contact so-and-so, but do those ministry spotlights, there’s so much ministry that happens in churches that people never see. Yeah. And therefore they think, Oh, there’s nothing going on. Spotlight those ministries, spotlight, what’s going on. Maybe even give a shout out to somebody in their faithfulness in these specific ministries, just to be an encouragement there as well. So anyway, ministry spotlights and other

Isabelle Faletti  (00:32:01):

Real quick on that run that can also tie into any community outreach opportunities that you have. So for my church, we just did a back to school backpack drive for a local organization in town. So it can have a ministry spotlight on a leader on a group within your church and then connect that to maybe something that they’re working on or Hey, and we just organized and gathered 500 backpacks for our local community. Check out more information, how you can get involved in this community organization here. So there’s a lot of nuances that you can have with even just your ministry spotlight and connecting it to other areas within your church and how your church is going out in your community and loving and serving.

Rohn Gibson (00:32:51):

Absolutely, absolutely great stuff. Two other ones here, number one, sermon, highlights and notes. So we would encourage you to, you know, you’ve got, when you post your sermon, you should be doing that when you post your sermon to the sermon section of your site, go ahead and put the notes and things on there as well. But maybe there’s some other things maybe it’s pre sermon, maybe it’s post sermon. I know I’ve, I’ve mentioned on previous episodes that my pastor, every single Friday sends out an email and basically says, here’s the sermon title. Here’s the main scripture that we’re going to be covering. So go ahead and read that to prepare yourself. Here’s some questions to consider as we approach whatever the topic is that he’s going to share. That’s the perfect type of thing. Every single Friday, there’s a post that goes out that basically starts to prepare people for the Sunday service.

Rohn Gibson (00:33:45):

So recommend that, remember there’s so much content like we talked about in a previous episode, the amount of content that you create specifically just in an hour, hour and a half service. And you can take that and start connecting the bridge from a Sunday morning service to help people live their life all throughout the week. And the blog can be a great way to walk with them all throughout the week. So lastly, and man, I feel like this is one of those just as time as this type of things, share content. There’s a biblical perspective on things that are going on in life right now. Yeah. And we could give a ton of a ton of examples. What, what should a, a Christian’s perspective beyond wearing a mask? What should a Christian perspective be on you name it? I think we’re on the front lines. The blog, is a super impactful tool to communicate to small and large audiences.

Rohn Gibson (00:34:44):

So let’s be the light. Let’s be the light in this dark time. And that’s one area that you can do that a biblical perspective on. I mean, it can be a current event. It could be a lot of different things, but utilize that as a platform to communicate the truth yes. To your congregation, but also to a world that desperately needs needs him. Tons of benefit of your blog. One of those, by the way you can just, as far as this biblical perspective, you could literally put a question. What does the Bible say about XYZ? People do searches and Google and literally they type in their question. You probably do this too. I know I do. You type in the question that you’re looking for the answer for. So if you actually have that as your blog title, what does the Bible say about X, Y, Z thing?

Rohn Gibson (00:35:33):

Well, if, if people are searching not only in your community, but all over the world, they could come to your site and actually have that unpack for them to answer their questions of what does the Bible have to say about that thing? So those are just five really quick examples to kind of get the juices flowing, get those creative juices flowing, but ultimately just get started. Remember, what was it? Can you say it? I can’t hear you. Let’s see. Did anybody type in the comments here? So imperfect action is better than perfect inaction. So just get started. Maybe it’s a Monday post. Okay. I’m going to start posting on Monday or I’m going to start posting on Friday to just share, Hey, here’s going to be the sermon title. Here’s going to be the scripture passages here are three to five questions to consider as we, as you prepare your heart for Sunday service.

Isabelle Faletti  (00:36:24):

And there are a lot of voices out there right now on social media, on the internet. And so this is a really, really practical and simple way that churches can be the body of Christ and can be speaking truth into church members and into community. So this is so important to live out what we are called to do. We have so many great questions run. Right now it looks like we are getting a theme of people asking what happens when I make a post? How do I post it to Facebook? What do I do them? We will, I see all those questions and we’ll be answering that. So keep those questions coming and hang out, keep learning. And w we’ll address that specifically.

Rohn Gibson (00:37:13):

Yeah. We’re actually going to answer a lot of these questions that are coming in with a couple of points. So let’s go ahead and do that. And then we’re going to circle back around to the question. So just sit tight, we’re going to answer a lot of these and then we’ll circle back around to the ones that we

Isabelle Faletti  (00:37:25):

Exactly. Yeah. So for those of those that are listening, they may be thinking I don’t have enough time to do everything that you just outlined, Rohn. So what are some practical tips that we can give to church ministry leaders to maintain a church website blog?

Rohn Gibson (00:37:45):

Yeah. So number one, the best way to maintain it is to have a strategy. And the tip of that strategy is volunteers. So you have people in your church that can write, that can type that can help you communicate, get them involved in ministry. I think that is one of the things that’s many times in church leadership, we get so bogged down with the day to day ministry that many times we forget to invite people into it with us. And so I would just encourage you to just maybe, maybe do like a personal check on yourself to say, am I doing that? Am I so involved in ministry that whenever something needs done and automatically gets put on my plate versus me thinking, okay, who in our church is not involved right now that could be involved or who is involved at this, this should fall on their plate.

Rohn Gibson (00:38:35):

So just, just take a moment even, and just think about that. What’s a volunteer or even a, maybe a staff member at your church that can really be the person to help you contribute. And maybe even as far as the content for the blog, so volunteer number two, create a content calendar. So we just gave you some really good examples of types of content to post to your blog on the church website. So create that very simply Fridays, have it be a kind of a a pre-service post, which again, I’m not gonna repeat what I just said earlier. You can go back and watch the rewatch. So kind of a pre-service post. If there’s any announcements that need to be put out there, even on Saturday to prepare people that could be put out there. So those types of things just put it in a calendar, assign it to a volunteer or somebody at your church that can help.

Rohn Gibson (00:39:30):

And then just, just go, just keep it going, keep it going, keep checking in. How are things going? How are we communicating? So lastly, time blocking that may be something for you, or it may be a reminder that you need to give to a volunteer or a church a staff member on your church. Is it isn’t just going to happen? Like we can’t sit here and talk about a blog and effective communication and think, well, I’m just not really going to do anything. And it’s just going to fix itself. I guarantee you, if you don’t do something, if you don’t put something in action a year from now, we can do the same thing. And you’ll be saying, yes, yes. I hear that. Yes. I hear that. Yes. I hear that. So the next question I’m going to say next year would be, what have you done to change it?

Rohn Gibson (00:40:12):

We’re giving you the number one thing you need to do to change it. Okay. So time block, put it on your calendar. If you’re going to do the Friday, pre-service announcements, scripture sharing questions, but that on your calendar one hour, or maybe even 30 minutes actually, cause you’ve probably done a lot of this, even with your sermon prep, that it makes it super easy to post this. I’m a big, big fan of habits. We all have them. The question is, are they good or bad? So I’m a big fan of grouping, good habits. So maybe on Fridays, that’s when you wrap up your sermon prep, you’ve got your, and I know we had a comment in the past about, yeah, right. Fridays. just work with me here. So let’s say it’s on Fridays. You finish up your sermon prep. Well, just put a 30 minute time black block at the end of your sermon prep to post, you know, this information to our blog. And then we’re going to tell you how to promote it and all that stuff here in just a second. But that’s some ideas just to kind of get you going as far as imperfect action, imperfect action. We gave you those ideas. Let’s put them into action.

Isabelle Faletti  (00:41:19):

That’s great. Yeah. And Rohn, I mean, we’ve talked about how can I do 1% better and for what you just outlined, maybe a 1% better is just sitting down and creating, creating that content calendar. And that could be, I mean, I’ve seen a lot of different examples of content calendars. You could just be using your Google calendar. If your church has a use Google for email and for your calendars, just create a new calendar. That’s called content calendar and start adding any council time block, right within that calendar. Or it may be an Excel sheet and maybe a Google sheet. So that’s just one way they can get 1% better. That’s huge for me because I get overwhelmed when we talk about, I get overwhelmed and excited when we talk about big ideas like this, because I just want to jump in and then I burn out really quickly because of that. So if anybody else is out there that you were just like me, that is helpful for me of what is one way that I can just get a little better, because like Rohn said and that’s part of your habit building. And then that builds into this huge end result that you had no idea that you could even even accomplish. So Rohn, let’s kind of answer the million dollar question that we have a lot of our listeners asking. How can I ensure my church bloggers are engaging with my blog?

Rohn Gibson (00:42:48):

Oh, here we go. I think I’ll still give it a moment, but age with a blog. So really cool features in type ChurchSpring is that when you post add content to your blog post, you can actually schedule, if you, if you a Flourish user, you can actually schedule your social media promotion right there, inside of that same screen. So no longer do you have to write content and then come over here to Facebook and then direct people back. You can literally connect your Facebook account, your Twitter account to your ChurchSpring powered website, and then it will come back into a, and then you can then use that to promote and drive people back to your website. So sorry, we’re having a couple of technical glitches here. Looks like Isabelle’s locked up. I see we’ve got maybe a comment or two I’m saying missing whatever he’s saying.

Rohn Gibson (00:44:08):

Obviously we don’t want that. So if you can hear me go ahead and just type, we hear you in the comments just to make sure we’re still connected. I know Isabelle, I don’t know if Stream Yard is having some challenges. It’s kind of refreshed on my side a couple of times. So I don’t know if it’s a stream yard thing or kind of what we got going on, but if you can hear us still, I see we’re still alive and there’s 28 people watching. So if you could still hear us go ahead and put, we can hear. Okay. Good, Tony. Thank you. Wonderful. We can hear you much better now. Okay. So just to make sure no one missed out, because this is like, I’m going to repeat it again because I want to make sure everybody hears it with a little hiccup we just had.

Rohn Gibson (00:44:55):

Okay. So how do I ensure my church members engaged with my blog? Number one, you have to promote it. Okay. So the way that you promote it, the best way to promote it is obviously use the tools that you have available inside of ChurchSpring. If you are a flourish user, when you post, when you go to write, literally write your posts, you’ll put in your title, your content. If you scroll down, there’s actually a place where you can schedule your social media promotion right inside of ChurchSpring. So here’s what you need to remember. The main hub of your communication strategy for your church is your church website. Again, you can say that one more time. A lot of people are like, Oh no, that’s Facebook. We’ll guess what? We’ve seen it even just this week. And I’m not making this political in any way, but we’ve seen it this week.

Rohn Gibson (00:45:46):

How content can be removed from these networks and you don’t control it. The reality is you’re playing in somebody else’s playground. You’re playing in Facebook’s playground. You’re playing in Twitter’s playground and I’m not, I mean, it’s their playground. They have the right to do whatever they want. They own it, but they have the right to do what they want with it. Whether I agree with that or not. So you want to use those social media platforms as a way, because let’s be honest. A lot of our church members they’re on Facebook, they’re on Twitter. Okay. So let’s leverage it, but let’s schedule our social media posts when we are posting to our blog and then direct them back to the blog to get the main content, the best way. The only way that you’re going to eradicate, hearing that, I didn’t know that was happening.

Rohn Gibson (00:46:31):

I didn’t know that was happening. I didn’t know that was happening is to start basically kind of moving people toward the behavior that you want them to have, which is we communicate the main hub for our communication is our church website. And therefore when you schedule your posts, go ahead and schedule your social media posts to direct them back. If you’re not a Flourish member currently, you’re probably like what in the world is even talking about. I don’t see that it’s on our flourish plan. So if you’re a current member you’re a sprout or a grow user, you can upgrade to the Flourish plan. And it gives you the ability to schedule your social media posts right inside of the blog feature. So check it out. It’s amazing. It will save you a ton a ton of time. Okay. So the other thing is, so social media sharing, we’ve talked about that, share it on your church, Facebook page, share it, then have your pastors in your church, share that content on their pages.

Rohn Gibson (00:47:32):

And then lastly, ask them the members of your church to help share the information. Okay. So if you’re not a Flourish plan member, yeah. Melvin why you just have to do the extra step basically is what it really comes down to. So if you’re not currently a Flourish plan member and you don’t have access to that, what you’ll have to do is you’ll basically go create your post, share it, you know, it’ll post to your website. Once you click save, it’ll post it to your website and then you’ll have to go to the different social networks that you’re using. And what you would do is you would just type like maybe a snippet, you know here’s the scripture we’re going to be sharing on Sunday, check it out and be, you know, have your heart and mind prepared for what the Lord has for us on Sunday, click, you know, you put the link to your blog, post people, click on that, come to it, right.

Rohn Gibson (00:48:18):

Then they can comment there and engage with the content. Again, the main hub for content and for updates related to your church is not your Facebook page. It is not Twitter. It is your church website. You use Facebook and Twitter to communicate, to tell them, to get the food, the full information. You go back. Just think how news organizations work. If you’re a Fox news, CNN, whatever fan you are, honestly, I don’t watch the news. I try to stay as far away from the news as I can right now. And if I need it, I know it’ll get to me. So a little personal information on Rohn Gibson there, however, just like the news organizations do it. If you follow any of them on social media, they don’t put the full story on Facebook. Why? Because they want the main content hub to be their network website.

Rohn Gibson (00:49:12):

It’s very similar here. You want your main hub, the main place where people go to get information to be your church website, and then you just put snippets and a little pieces of information and on there to take them back back to your church website, which is again, the main hub of information. Another Avenue that you can use is email, but a little bit of information in an email. You know, if it’s a longer post let’s say and encourage your posts, and it’s kind of longer, you don’t want to put all that in an email people. Aren’t gonna read that in an email, you would just put a little snippet and say to read the rest, read more click here. And it takes them over to that blog post, where they can see COVID updates. Great example, okay. You post a new update on your blog about COVID.

Rohn Gibson (00:49:54):

It doesn’t mean you update an old post. It means add a new post, right? Cause it dates it, it puts who posts it and then you can go, I’ll send an email, share it on social media and bring them back to that main place. So you can use email to promote your blog content. You can also use us slide during announcements, depending on how your church does this. My church, we have slides that kind of rotate as people are coming in to the sanctuary for church. And then there’s slides that run during certain times of the service. And then at the end of the service put right on there for the updates from, you know, stay in the loop visit.org forward slash updates or whatever that short URL you want it to be, which then could just take them to kind of that main page of your blog that has a list of the latest blog posts to help them stay in the loop.

Rohn Gibson (00:50:44):

So you can add a slide to your announcement slides. You can also add a slider to your church website. So when you come to your site, the main homepage, there’s a slider kind of that main top graphical section. We call the, that slider section. If there’s an important update, like find out the latest information on COVID for our church or whatever it might be. I’m using COVID cause obviously the time rent, but yeah, you can pick anything and then you can link to that specific blog post to take them directly there. So we’ve just given you four or five different examples of how you can promote your content. I could go on all day long on, you could promote the content, but the important thing is have a plan. So, and then execute on the plan. So when we have an update that the tip of the spear for us is going to be our church blog.

Rohn Gibson (00:51:33):

That’s what we’re going to use to communicate. And then we’re going to use all of these other avenues promotional avenues to take them back to the main hub of content, which is your church website. And specifically in this instance, your blog, one last thing to consider and is probably man, there’s so many things that are important, but this is, this is one of them. And we try to practice what we preach by the way. Okay. Consistency consistency is key. So even if it’s one blog post a week, just be consistent with one blog post a week, it’d be an updates that go, you know, that you post on Fridays, just be consistent, just like with ChurchSpring Live. Do you think there’s a reason it’s every Thursday at 10:00 AM central time, there is because then, you know, as the user Pastor, Melvin, he knows we’re going to be online every two or every Thursday at 10:00 AM central time.

Rohn Gibson (00:52:30):

And I can almost just guarantee I’m going to see Pastor Melvin pop in here and say good morning and be encouraging. Cause that’s how he is. He’s consistent. We’re consistent. So be consistent with your blog, just be consistent with posting, whatever it is. Again, imperfect action is better than perfect inaction. So pick something and just get started and be consistent with it. So I’m just going to go ahead and segue into action items here. I know we’ve got some questions, so I’m going to circle back to that, but action. It’s time for action. Imperfect action. So, number one, if you don’t have a blog on your website right now, add a blog component to your church website. If you’re a ChurchSpring user, all you have to do is go to add a page and the main navigation select the blog template there, and you’re up and running super easy.

Rohn Gibson (00:53:17):

If you’re not a ChurchSpring user, and it’s really difficult for you to add a blog to your site, maybe now’s the time to consider another option. So if that’s you, I know we actually have somebody that’s not currently at ChurchSpring member, that’s asked some questions. So if you’d like to see a demo, go to churchspring.Com/Demo, as Isabelle mentioned, we have them starting every 15 minutes. So you can go, you can sign up for that,umyself as well as,umy co-founder, Mike will walk you through it. We have chat off to the side where you can ask any questions you specifically have about the features of ChurchSpring. So I encourage you to do that next. If you’re like, Hey, I love what I hear. I like what I see on your site, we offer a seven day free trial.

Rohn Gibson (00:53:58):

It literally costs you nothing. We don’t treat you any different than any, any of the other members of church sprang. If you need support, we’re going to give you support. Like we believe in what we’re doing so much in the value that it offers and can offer your ministry, that we literally offer you a seven day free trials trial, where you can create your site. You can start putting content over, see if it’s a good fit for you. If you have questions, we’re here to help you. So if that’s you, if you’re in that category, you can go sign up church, spring.com/trial and start your seven day free trial. Like literally within 90 seconds, super easy. You can do that last action item for you. And this is probably the one that is going to relate to the most people. And that is start posting to your blog on a weekly basis.

Rohn Gibson (00:54:40):

Yeah, you all can do it. You can do it. It may be imperfect action, but it’s action that we can all take. So I want to hear we’ve been on here now for 54 minutes and 50 seconds. Okay. how many of you are going to commit? So I want you to put the word commit and in the comments, if you are going to commit to posting at least once a week, and I’m sure we have some overachievers amongst us. So go ahead. Thank you, Melvin. It absolutely is a totally free trial. So thank you for that. But if you are going to commit to posting at least once a week, put, commit, make that commitment, make that public, I’m going to do this and then commit to doing it and then take the next step of action. Awesome. Melvin, I knew I could count on your brother.

Rohn Gibson (00:55:33):

Commit Tasha. Okay. I got to show these off. We got Melvin, we’ve got John, we’ve got Carol and they’re going to commit to do it. So here’s the next imperfect action you can take right now. Don’t close down this window or maybe after we’re done. But if you, if you’ve got enough screen area where you can pull up your calendar, pull up your calendar right now in time block the time that you’re going to do it because a Oh, what’s the, what is that thing? The goal without a plan is a wish. Okay. So you made the goal. You’re committed to posting once a week, man. I love this. Love it. Love the hand up. Awesome Devorah. Hopefully I’m pronouncing that right. Tamra Walter. Oh, this is exciting. So take that next action. Let’s let’s take a plan and a goal and actually make a plan to make it a reality. So block that time on your calendar for that 30 minutes to an hour, every single week to post that content out to your church website. I can’t wait to see it.

Isabelle Faletti  (00:56:35):

And, and if, if you’re a current ChurchSpring member if you are going to post your first blog article this week, then once you’ve done that, send in a ticket or just comment on this Facebook live stream and share it with us because we want to share your joy, your accomplishments with you. And then if you want some feedback on your blog article, send in a support ticket and your website settings, and we will very happily take a look at your blog article and give any recommendations or just simply send you a party emoji and share amongst the team that we have another church who is using this super underutilized feature on a church website.

Rohn Gibson (00:57:19):

Yeah. So I’m just going to totally go freestyle here. So here’s what I’m going rogue here. So for those people who said they committed, here’s what I want you to do. I want you to come back to this video, that’s going to post on Facebook or YouTube, and I want you to type the word victory, all caps, victory dash. And I want you to post the link to your first blog post or to the blog post that you did this week to fulfill your commitment. And here’s what I’m willing to do. I’m willing live on an upcoming. I don’t want to promise next week, maybe next week. We’ll say, I think we can squeeze it in. We’re just going to squeeze it in. I’m going to commit. I’m going to commit to you all. We are going to screen next week and we’re going to pull up one or two of those blog posts.

Rohn Gibson (00:58:07):

And we’re going to give you live feedback on things you did awesome. And some things that you can do to improve. I’ll tell you one right now, every single blog post should have something to engage users. So a question some action to take so little power tip right there. I can already see next week we’re in here, we’re pulling one up and it’s going to be missing the engagement. Okay. So do something, some call to action to engage them, whether it’s leave a comment or whatever that might be to kind of engage with your content. So can you insert artwork into the blog? You absolutely can. Every blog has like the kind of the hero image, which then pulls in to some different places, but you can also write in line, actually add images. You can add video into that content. I’m more of a verbal communicator.

Rohn Gibson (00:58:55):

I’m sure that’s surprising to everybody that’s watching. So you can even record a video and embed that into your blog for us. There’s a lot that you can do there. So say it, Rohn commit. Yes, Reverend Golden, I am committing brother next week. So, but I need your help. I need your help because you need to come back. Once you posted it, type victory, all caps, shout it from the mountaintops victory dash, put in the blog, post a link to your church’s website with that blog post. And we’ll pull up some of those next week. And I give some feedback on how well to give you some encouragement to brag about you. And then also maybe give some feedback on some things that you can do to even maybe take it to the next level. So, yeah, super excited.

Isabelle Faletti  (00:59:41):

And when we do showcase and highlight your blog article, then you can be inspiring other church ministry leaders of how they can push out new content or how they could format or put an image or put in a video. So it won’t just be helpful for you. It’ll also be helpful for the entire community here. That’s joining us for ChurchSpring Live, which is just exactly what we do and why we want to build this, this family here. Okay, Rohn. So did we miss any major questions I do want to go through?

Rohn Gibson (01:00:13):

I knew that we have a, we have a new, a new feature that we’re going to announce, so you don’t want to leave. Trust me. You want to stay, you want to see this? But let’s just take a quick pause to make sure we get everything that we talked about. The artwork love this today. Awesome. We’re glad you’re here. Reverend Johnny, glad you’re here

Isabelle Faletti   (01:00:34):

Did get a couple of questions just throughout our entire live event that you are a church ChurchSpring member, and you’re not sure how to post that blog. If we didn’t answer the question of how to post your blog on your ChurchSpring website, I know I keep saying this, but I truly mean it. Reach out to our team. We want to support you. So reach out, send in a support ticket and we’ll help you add image, create your blog article. So reach out and we’ll give you those tools that you need to succeed.

Rohn Gibson (01:01:05):

Okay. Awesome. Yeah, it looks like we’re pretty good. Yeah.

Isabelle Faletti  (01:01:09):

Yeah. Nice. Nicely, nicely done, Rohn. Okay. So I know that you mentioned we do have a new feature or running kind of short on time, but we are so excited to highlight this new feature while our other co founder, Mike he is a Jack of all trades. And one of the things that he just is a rock star at is web design. So for all of those who you use ChurchSpring for your website and you enjoy the gorgeous just beautiful layout and design template of your website, Mike, our other co-founder he’s, he’s the guy behind those. And he just him and our entire team, they just released a new design that Rohn is going to show you right now.

Rohn Gibson (01:01:56):

Yes, we are super excited. One of the, one of the many benefits of ChurchSpring is that every new design that we launch you get access to, it’s not like when you sign up for ChurchSpring, you only get access to one design. Literally you get access to our entire library as it is when you sign up. And then every single design that we add moving forward, which has always several new designs every year, you get access to those as well. I’m excited today, today, BW our newest design. And let me see here, make sure I’m doing this right in the stream yard. So our newest design Moses, so we are thrilled. I know, I feel like I need confetti and I can drink whatever. So we are thrilled. And as Isabelle said, Mike, we’re going to get him on here. One of these days is just such a massive, I mean, really he’s just the heart of ChurchSpring.

Rohn Gibson (01:02:49):

You all – your church websites are a direct result of him using his talents and abilities to where, if my God, and to bless your church. So we’re excited. We’ll bring him on here one of these days, but this is Moses. Moses is a theme that we really wanted to offer some options that what I would say are kind of a more traditional kind of a look. So we’re not pushing the super contemporary on this one. We have quite a few that are kind of this middle of the road and you can kind of make it what you want it. I would say the same thing goes for this, but we really wanted to look at, okay, what’s a traditional more traditional option. So some of the features of this design, you’ll kind of see this photo kind of white border. That’s kind of a trendy thing that’s been going on. So we wanted to offer a design with that. So you can kind of see it, obviously the font pallet selection, which you can change, but the font selection there is again, more traditional

Isabelle Faletti  (01:03:49):

Scroll back up real quick and then click next on the slider so that we can showcase the slider image template. So one of the main factors or features of the sliders on this on Moses is that it is a square image. Some of our other templates have a circle image for their sliders, and we’ve actually had a lot of requests for new designs or new templates with the square image here for the slider. So for those of you who’ve been asking for that, this is a great new option for you for a design.

Rohn Gibson (01:04:21):

Yes, absolutely. And this is a great example right here of what we just talked about, the end, the know, create the link. It links right over to your blog. That’s all people get to have today. So anyway, this is Moses again, just kind of scrolling down through, again, you can see kind of that, that white photo border that goes all along the site, really nice touch there. Kind of a different treatment now to the events section, which I personally love. So you can check that out. Same thing here with sermons, a little bit of a different treatment there as far as the design style. So you can check that out as well, and then obviously implementing all the best practices as far as driving directions, they’re on every single page. And then we kind of did something a little different as far as a white background at the bottom but just gives it a really clean traditional look.

Rohn Gibson (01:05:11):

So we are super excited about this. I’ll just kind of highlight a couple of other pages. The sermons page, I’ll pull that up again. You’ve got your, your kind of hero image up here. Again, you can change the default. This is what it is. But then you can kind of scroll down and you can see kind of the formatting of how the sermons look kind of on a category page. I’ll also bounce over here to events and you can see that as well, kind of how that treatment works there also from a design perspective. So it love it super clean, more of a conservative look, and we are thrilled to be able to offer this. I need to take a quick drink. So why don’t you chat for a second before I start coughing like crazy.

Isabelle Faletti  (01:05:59):

Yup. Sounds good. One of the most frequently asked questions that we get from new members members who are not yet of using ChurchSpring is can I change the images? Can I change the texts that I see on your demo webinar or on your design? Absolutely. Yes. So we do provide kind of recommended images and color palettes for you. Just to get you started so that you don’t have to spend a ton of time changing images if you’re not at that point. So you can always upload your own images. You can, we even offer video backgrounds so you can upload a video background. You can change your color template, or I’m sorry, color palette and font selection. But these designs, it’s a great place to start. And I just love that when you use ChurchSpring, if it’s been, let’s say a year or if you’re, you’re new to ChurchSpring and you’re still in your trial and you’re, you’re just trying out different looks and feels. You can always change your website design. You can have a complete new design in like three clicks of a button. Yeah. Yes. And you will, and it’s, it’s, it’s free. So you don’t have to pay to change your design that is included in your ChurchSpring subscription with us.

Rohn Gibson (01:07:18):

Awesome. So, Carol, I’m going to answer your questionnaire just a second. We got some great feedback already. Mike. I hope you’re watching Sheila loved this. Love the new look, much cleaner, brighter, inviting. If you love it, if you love this new design, go ahead and put love in the comments. Let us know your thoughts. Honestly, we love this feedback cause it helps us know, okay, where do we are? The improvements we making are people really are they resonating with people? Are they going to use them? And I love this question, which is how do you make this, your website when you’re already and when you’ve already got one. So I’m going to show you right now. So first, before I jump into that, if you would like to see this site, the preview site, there’s a couple of ways you can do it.

Rohn Gibson (01:08:01):

Number one, you can just go to Moses.churchspring.org which is right there on your screen. And you can see literally a live preview of exactly what I just showed you. You can see that you can also go to our website, click on the designs page and you can scroll down here and select Moses they’re in alphabetic order. So you can see that you can click on the preview button and that takes you right here to moses.church, bring that to work. So the question of how do I make this, my design? So I’m glad you asked and I’m actually going to show you that right now. So this right now is our covenant design. So on this demo site that I’ve got set up this is the covenant design. You can see it’s got kind of that water colory type luck. So if you want to change to the new Moses design, all you have to do once you’re logged in.

Rohn Gibson (01:08:50):

So I’m already logged in. You can come over here, click on settings, and then you click on the website tab and then it’ll tell you, so the, the default tab here has gallery. And then you can see select design is covenant, which is the one that I just showed. And all you have to do is scroll down here again, they’re in alphabetical order, select Moses. It’s going to ask you a question. So would you like to switch to the design and keep your custom images currently in place? So basically what this is saying is the images that we currently have in the site. Do you want those images to replace your existing ones? Or do you want to keep the images that you already have? So let’s say you have an image of your church for your main hero image and you want to keep it that way, then you would just say, keep my images. Okay. However, I don’t want to do that because I’m demoing this for you. So I’m going to go ahead and say, use designs, images, and literally that click your site’s redesigned, like no longer is it. I’ve got to wait months for a redesign and pay thousands of dollars to redesign your website. You can literally change the entire look of your site to the Moses design. And literally, what was that like? Wow. Let’s just count them down. Click on settings,

Isabelle Faletti  (01:10:09):

One

Rohn Gibson (01:10:09):

Website -Two, and then I’m already here. So I go down and I select Moses, literally three clicks. I think that’s what you said earlier. You can change the design, the entire design of your church website to make it look like Moses. We got some luck. We got lots of love in here.

Isabelle Faletti  (01:10:28):

Yeah, I know we do. I love that. I love, I love the love, but when you do change your design all of the content, all the text, all the blog articles that you’ve uploaded, all the sermons that you have uploaded, all of that will stay on your website. So the only thing that you’re changing when you change the design is the look and the feel and maybe the images and kind of the, the foundation, the structure of your website. So if you’ve put in a lot of work of updating the texts I know we had someone ask if you can change the text, do different language. Yes. So when you get your new church church, spring website, all the default text isn’t English, but since we have an inline editor, you can change any of the, you see to any language. So when you change your design, all of that will come over with you and you won’t have to do a single thing to make sure that that migrates over with you. So just another reason of why just it’s real easy. So if you haven’t like, like Rohn mentioned, just go ahead and check out the different designs that you do have the option to. You may be really happy with your current look and feel, and that’s awesome. But it’s always fun to see kind of what’s out there and in a year, maybe you just want to give, give a new look to your website and now you’ll know exactly where it’s at in your church, spring website settings.

Rohn Gibson (01:11:50):

Yes. Awesome. Well, we are, we’re thrilled to offer Moses if you’re not a current ChurchSpring member again, and you’d like to check out Moses, go sign up for our seven day free trial. I’m like one of our current members said it’s absolutely truly a seven day free trial, no strings attached here. You can go sign up when you sign up, it will have a default design that’s included, but you can do just like I just shared and go to the setting section, go to the website tab, scroll down, select Moses, and literally you are up and running with Moses and that, that quickly so we’re thrilled to be able to offer this. I can’t wait to see how people use it.

Isabelle Faletti  (01:12:29):

Yeah, I agree. I agree. I’m ready to go change the design right now on my, on my church website. It’s just so beautiful there. Hey, thank you for everybody. Who for joining us today? I know some of you are regulars at ChurchSpring Live again, this says turret spring live episode 10. So just thank you for being committed. Thank you for letting us serve you in this way. We do want to hear from you. So what are your thoughts on ChurchSpring Live? What are some topics that you would love us to dig into? We’re, we’re D we’re going into kind of a new new season for ChurchSpring Live. And so give us some feedback. What are some things that you’ve just had questions about on your church website or church communication? You can just drop a comment in this live stream right now, or again, always reach out contact us and whatever way that is best for you, whether that’s email, contact, forum, or support tickets.

Isabelle Faletti  (01:13:29):

I would love to invite everybody who’s listening right now live or on the rewatch to join us live next week for ChurchSpring Live, we are going to talk about, Oh, one of the number one questions we get when anybody asks about church websites about church communication and that is live streaming. There can be a lot of confusion around live streaming, what it is, how do I do it? How do I start? How do I integrate it to my website? And we are going to answer all these questions and give you really practical tools. So we will, we will share just the basics of live streaming and share how you can live stream your services with zero budget. So you don’t have to have this thousands dollar budget to live stream. You can have a zero budget and live stream very quickly. So join us next week, Thursday, August six at 10:00 AM central to learn all about live streaming. And we’re actually going to do multiple episodes for live streaming because we understand the importance of live streaming. And we want to make sure that we have time to answer all your questions and really give just different levels of live streaming, because we know that there’s, there’s so much that you can do with that. So make sure to tune in next Thursday, August six at 10:00 AM central time,

Rohn Gibson (01:14:56):

We’ve got one more question and then we’re going to, we’re going to jump off. So the question from Tony, and I think maybe it’s coming a couple of times, so I appreciate your persistency and we’re going to honor that and we’re going to answer your question. So the question is language support for other than English. So we do not offer multilanguage support directly in the ChurchSpring program. So we do have we have churches in Canada specifically that one in English version and then a French version. So if that’s you, we actually recommend just having a French version and an English version. And currently that’s our recommendation and we do offer a discount. So if you wanted a second site to be able to offer French or whatever that might be you can reach out to us and we’d be more than happy to extend that for your second site depending on kind of what your logistical, how that would work for you. So again, I know we’ve got a church in Canada, they have an English site, then they also have a French site. And we’d be more than happy to to offer that to you as far as the, the multilanguage support there as well. So, yep.

Isabelle Faletti  (01:16:06):

Yeah. All right. Well, thanks again. For all of those who have tuned in live, if you have any questions for next week, when we’ll be talking about live streaming, how you can live stream your service with zero budget make sure to drop a comment and this Facebook event, or I’ll go ahead and schedule next week’s Facebook live stream and a couple of hours here or just send us a question at churchspring.com /contact. Again, we’re going to be talking about live streaming next week. So you do not want to miss this one. So thank you, God bless. And we will see you next week.

Rohn Gibson (01:16:43):

Yes. Excited for next week, just real quickly. Cause I know we’ve had some technical glitches and we had another comment come in. If you miss part of it I’m keeping my fingers crossed Lord willing. The recording will look good. So we’ll send out an email where you can go back and check on the rewatch and Lord willing, everything recorded correctly. And it was just some weird internet goblins messing up, messing with us today. So anyway, it’s been awesome. Hanging out with you all God bless you. Remember imperfect action. We’ve got some commitments that were made today and I can now wait. And I made one of them. My commitment was next week. We’re going to review some of the victory, so I need your help. So if you made a commitment, make sure to come back type victory, share a link, the link to your blog post, where we can go and check it out. And we’ll review a couple of those next week. So again, God bless you all. Thank you so much for joining us today. And man, I don’t know about you as well, but I can’t wait until next week. It’s going to be episode 11. I mean, who doesn’t want to know how to live stream was zero budget, right? I bet you do look forward to seeing you next week. Have a great rest of your week, everyone. Bye bye.

Isabelle Faletti  (01:17:56):

Bye.

• Welcome to ChurchSpring Live Episode 010 – What to Expect
• Let’s Learn!
  • What is the #1 most underutilized feature on my church website that I should be using to increase communication with my existing members?
  • Why is a blog important to have on my church website?
  • How can I add a blog to my church website?
  • What type of content should I add to my blog?
    • Announcements
    • Weekly Encouragements
    • Ministry Spotlights
    • Sermon Highlights
  • A biblical perspective on current events
  • How do I maintain my church website blog?
  • How do I ensure my church members engage with my blog?
    
• Action Items: Add a blog to your website and start posting weekly.
• ChurchSpring New Feature: Moses is a great fit for a traditional church and features a clean, structured look with a popular white border accent. Experience Moses at moses.churchspring.org
• Wrap Up &  Sneak Peek at Next Week: Are you confused trying to figure out how to live stream your church services? Do you feel overwhelmed trying to pandemic proof your ministry? With COVID-19 impacting your in-person gatherings, live streaming your services has never been more important. No matter your technical abilities or budget, you can easily live stream your sermons! Tune into ChurchSpring Live, Episode 011 to learn the basics of live streaming and how you can live stream your services with zero budget and no technical experience. Rohn and Isabelle will walk through the top 10 ingredients you need to live stream to pandemic proof your ministry. You’ll leave with the confidence to go live and effectively communicate with your church members in our ever-changing world.