Andy Rowell

Church Leadership Conversations

  • Should you use technology to reach young adults or offer them something wholly different?

    There are some pastors who work with youth and college students who say, "We cannot compete with the world in terms of technology and entertainment.  What we can offer is relationships.  We need to focus on people, not programs." 

    Similarly, many people from liturgical traditions report that the young adults they know are turning to liturgical traditions and mystery and contemplation. 

    See for example Christianity Today’s February cover story:

    The Future Lies in the Past: Why evangelicals are connecting with the early church as they move into the 21st century.

    Chris Armstrong | posted 2/08/2008
    Christianity Today

    In this month’s Chronicle of Higher Education, there is a similar story by a University of Virginia professor suggesting that college professors need to help their students slow down and think, rather than pursuing the latest technological teaching technique.  The article is a must read for people who have an interest in college students because I have never read a better description of the internet generation.   

    Dwelling in Possibilities: Our students’ spectacular hunger for life makes them radically vulnerable

    By MARK EDMUNDSON

    ChronicleReview.com

    From the issue dated March 14, 2008

    Hat tip to Gary Friesen. 


    Five comments about whether the answer to reaching young adults in the church is to use technology or to offer them something totally different.     

    1. In the church, you have to motivate people to come back.      It is probably appropriate for an English teacher with very highly motivated University of Virginia students to try to slow them down.  As a professor the last two years at Taylor University, I was amazed at the power the professor had over students in comparison to being a pastor.  As a pastor you need to motivate people to want to come back.  As a university professor, they have to come back – their grades depend upon it. 

    2. Excellence in communication and teaching needs to be pursued.     I would not want university professors to rest on the fact that students don’t need technology, they just need old school teaching methods.  College students need outstanding classroom teaching to interest to help them engage the subject.  Regardless of the style, technology or no technology, the teaching task still needs to be done well.   Ditto, churches.   

    3.  The liturgical tradition is certainly not winning the day in terms of any sociological measure that I have seen.  Roman Catholics and Mainline churches are losing great numbers of people.  Many are becoming evangelicals.  But also many are becoming "no-religious affiliation."   See Pew’s Survey The Religious Landscape of the United States for the latest example.  "While nearly one-in-three Americans (31%) were raised in the Catholic
    faith, today fewer than one-in-four (24%) describe themselves as
    Catholic. These losses would have been even more pronounced were it not
    for the offsetting impact of immigration . . .  members of mainline Protestant churches and Jews are older, on average, than members of other groups."  There is much confounding here: there are too many variables to sort out why people are turning away from mainline and Catholic churches but I am simply pointing out that liturgy is no automatic solution for attracting young people. 

    4.  I like liturgical and nonliturgical churches and I think they can both learn from one another.  I think it is great to have liturgical churches and I have tried to push all of the evangelical churches I have pastored to greater appreciation of the church’s past and to implement forms of liturgy thoughtfully.  However, when I am around people (often connected to Wheaton College or Duke Divinity School) who argue that informal liturgical styles are woefully lacking, I tend to defend "the three songs and a biblical sermon" evangelical-style as having much to commend it.   

    5. I continue to argue that pastors need to think like educators or missionaries.      Educators who teach second grade, gear their programs to that age level.  We have to do the same in the church.  Meet people where they are at.  Similarly, missionaries to a new culture, need to speak the language of the people.  Though I agree with the Professor Edmundson that sometimes the culture is poisonous and needs to be critiqued – he argues that the frenetic lifestyle of students hurts their ability to understand life – we also will not be able to critique that culture until we demonstrate (as he has) that we know it well.  What I mean is that churches, if they expect to be effective at reaching un-churched or de-churched people with the gospel, need to be able to communicate with them.  I think the question, "How will someone experience our church if this is their first time here?" is an extremely important question and people need not betray their tradition to address it.  They may simply need to explain their tradition better so that the new person has a better experience.

    I think there is great reason to be suspicious of highly fragmented lives powered relentlessly forward by dizzying forms of technology.  However, I do not think that purposefully anti-technological liturgy communicates clearly enough with many people who are immersed in American culture.  We need meet un-churched and de-churched people half-way with modest uses of technology and draw them into community and contemplation from there. 

  • Updates: Family Photos, Courses, Books, Calendar, Facebook, LinkedIn, Favorite Podcasts

    A few of you have emailed to ask about the delay in posts.  My family
    and I are well!   I am loving my doctoral work here at Duke!   All is well.   

    Two excuses about blogging:
    (1) Blogging about politics and abortion will definitely make blogging feel like a burden!  (See my last post and comments).   The topics in this post are much lighter!
    (2) I have so many things I want to blog about that are related to church leadership but I just haven't found the
    time.  I think my coursework and family should get priority and the
    blog comes sometime later as I know you all agree!

    In the meantime, here are some updates.

    Family_2Family Photos  

    We had some new family photos of our family taken: Amy, Ryan (2 1/2) and Jacob (5 months) and me.  One is posted to the right.  The album is here. 

    Courses

    My courses this semester are:

    1. Scripture and Ethics with Richard Hays and Allen Verhey
    2. Church and Ministry in the New Testament with Richard Hays
    3. Theology of Mission with Laceye Warner
    4. Leadership with Allan Lind at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business.  I am just sitting in on this one.  Duke's business school, Fuqua, is ranked #9 by US News & World Report, #9 by BusinessWeek,and #12 by Forbes. 

    Books

    I have also updated the books I am reading this semester in the right column.

    Calendar

    I am preaching at:

    At both places my title is "Good News: Jesus is Enough" from Colossians 1:22-23 and Acts 11:17-18.

    My wife Amy is speaking at the Granville Chapel Women's Retreat April 17-20 and then preaching at Granville Chapel April 27th.

    I will also be at the "Jürgen Moltmann Conference" – the Society for Pentecostal Studies and the Wesleyan Theological Society Joint Meeting, hosted at Duke, March 13-15, 2008.  Calvin's James K. A. Smith will also be here. 

    Facebook

    Being a professor at Taylor University the last couple of years, I have been on Facebook for a while.  I recommend it as a way to connect with high school and college friends.  I don't use it for much else though you can spend lots of time on it! I recommend just putting up a profile and then waiting for friends to find you!  Facebook can produce a lot of emails unless you limit
    it to just Friend requests.  You have to join Facebook to see my full profile.  See my Facebook profile at this link.  My profile is a good example of a pretty basic one.    

    LinkedIn

    I am also on LinkedIn which is a networking site.  My LinkedIn profile is at this link. 

    Favorite Podcasts

    My favorite podcasts are (in alphabetical order):

    • BusinessWeek – Cover Stories – interesting to hear an interview between the executive editor and writer of each week's cover story. 
    • BusinesWeek – The Welch Way – interesting to hear former CEO of GE and business management guru Jack Welch answer questions. 
    • Catalyst Podcast – great interviews with church leaders
    • CNN Reliable Sources – video podcast that you watch.  Great to hear media critics discuss how the media has covered the stories in the news each week. 
    • NBC Nightly News – Amy and I often watch this at night when it downloads between 9:30 pm and 10:00 pm Eastern time.  It is on TV at 6:30 pm but we usually miss it. 
    • Lots of preachers

    These links will only work if you have iTunes installed (which is a free program).  I have explained podcasts before at this link.


    Music

    I am loving using Pandora for internet radio.  Free!

    Firefox

    If you are an Internet Explorer person, I would encourage you to try Mozilla Firefox which is very similar to Internet Explorer but I find it much faster in opening.  It is a free download.      

    Home Page – iGoogle and Gmail

    My home page tabs are iGoogle and Gmail.  I am enjoying them both. 

    Photo

    Andy_jan_2008bI also have a new photo on my blog biography page.

  • How to put ads on your blog

    Update January 26, 2008:
    In a month, I have made no money with Commission Junction, about $5 with Google Ads and $10 with Amazon Associates.

    Update April 1, 2008:

    I made no money with Commission Junction at all so I have removed
    the ads.  I made about $12 total with Google Ads and $26 with Amazon
    Associates.  I am removing everything but Amazon Associates.

    Over the years I have tried to help people get started blogging.  Probably the number one reason to blog is that you learn a lot about yourself, much like journaling or reading a vocational discernment book like What Color Is Your Parachute?  I started out blogging about theology, current events, sports, and church leadership and later realized that I am most passionate about church leadership. 

    Here is my latest experimentation in the blogosphere.  This week I have put up some ads.  I thought I would share with you, my faithful reader, what I have learned.  What I can’t tell you is how much I’ll make since I just put them up. 

    Three reasons to put ads up on your blog or website. 
    1.  Almost all publishers and media use ads. Almost every TV program, radio program, magazine and newspaper exist because of ads.  Using ads does not mean that you are compromising your integrity to sell ads.  The other financial options are to solicit donations like a Christian radio station or PBS or exist through subscriptions such as Consumer Reports.  Many bloggers also write books and thus hope that internet traffic will improve their book sales – many of the most well known church leadership blogs do this. 

    2.  This is a reasonable way to sustain content production.  Google’s revenue is almost exclusively from internet ads.  Did I mention I have a 2 year old and 3 month old and am a full-time doctoral student?  There is money to be made.  I don’t click on internet ads.  You don’t click on internet ads.  But clearly someone does.  Am I contributing to someone’s excess spending by putting ads up on my site?  Does it bother Christianity Today or Christian Century  writers that they have ads?  Aren’t ads a way to defray the costs very broadly to help the content provider (writers) make a living?  I’m happy to hear reasonable arguments in the comments against all advertising and marketing.  I’ll listen to them with interest.

    3.  You can try to market honestly.  People can choose not to click on the ads.  It is wrong to deceptively market something.  It is wrong to market bad things.  But links that take the person where they have chosen to go seem appropriate.  In other words, I think there are people who are interested in blogging with TypePad.  It is an excellent way to go.  I have provided a nice big link on the right side of the page.  If they end up going with TypePad, I get a commission.  That seems pretty straightforward.  I tell you below how you can choose what ads are put on your site which helps you market with more integrity. 

    Here is the information behind my ads and how I put them up and what I get paid.

    1.  TypePad. I have blogged using TypePad for 2 1/2 years now.  I have the "Plus" level.  It is very reliable and easy to use.  I have to say I love it.  I used to be on the Google-owned Blogger.  One of the problems with Blogger is that you cannot upload Word documents or pdf documents.  More recently some of my friends have chosen WordPress.com which is also free and allows you to upload files.  It is free but you only have 50 MB worth of space which can go quickly.  (For 5 GB of free storage try XDrive.  Omnidrive provides 1 GB.  You could link to files on XDrive or Omnidrive from your Blogger, WordPress.com and TypePad account).  I required all of my students last year at Taylor University in one course to develop a WordPress.com blog.  See my post:Why to Try Blogging and How to Start and my other posts in my Blogging category about blogging.  Most of the people on My List of the 70 Best Church Leadership Blogs use TypePad.  Like I said, it is very easy to use and I explain below how it easy to integrate ads.   

    If you have TypePad and want to put up an ad, go to  TypePad’s home page and click on "Join the TypePad Affiliate Program."  That takes you to sign up with Commission Junction  Here is the commission: if people sign up for TypePad from the link: "$30 per subscriber (14 days from initial free trial) and $100 one-time bonus for 10 or more subscribers."

    2.  Lenovo ThinkPad.  I also signed up on Commission Junction to advertise ThinkPad notebooks since I have a new T61.  It is a great laptop.  I ordered the specifications that Duke University Computer Store recommended.  Here are the specs I ended up with. 

    Download Lenovo T61_specifications.pdf

    Here is the commission: "start earning 3% commission on sales of all ThinkPad notebooks, ThinkCentre desktops and options and accessories sold through the program."

    3.  Amazon.com. I signed up with Amazon Associates.  Thus, the book links are linked to my Amazon Associates account.  If someone buys something anywhere on Amazon.com after being directed there by one of my links, "You earn a referral rate of 4% on items shipped by Amazon or third-party sellers."   If you have TypePad, once you have a free Amazon Associates account, it is very easy to set up under "Profile."  Then you just do your book list on TypeLists.  The Amazon Associates site also has many other ways to put links on your blog to Amazon. 

    4.  Google AdSense.  Sign up at Google AdSense.  Then you can put Google Ads on your site.  The difference here is that you are getting paid for the number of times the ads are viewed and the number of times they are clicked, not on commission.  "The program is free, and combines pay-per-click and pay-per-impression
    advertising – meaning you get paid for valid clicks on the ads on your
    site or search results pages as well as impressions on your content
    pages."  I also put a link to Google AdSense which pays me if some of you sign up for AdSense and end up making money through it.  Also I put a Google search on the left side of the page that allows you to search my site for posts you are interested in.  It also includes some ads that I get credit for if you click on them. 

    Google ads are linked automatically to the site so that I have little choice what gets put there.  This is a bit scary.  (I have put my ads to the far bottom right for this reason).  One good thing though is that under Google AdSense, you can go to AdSense Setup and then go to Competitive Ad Filter and screen out ads you do not want shown.  I have done this once already after seeing an ad that I was embarrassed to see. 

    Final advice about ads:

    1.  Some of this takes a little bit of computer know-how. Basically though, on these sites (Commission Junction, Amazon, Google AdSense), you just click on the ads you want to show on your site, then they produce the html for the ad.  You just copy and paste this into your website and it works automatically.  In TypePad, you just put that html into a "Notes" TypeList.  I did this for all of the ads.

    2.  Continue to make it easy for people to find your content.  If it is difficult to read your blog because of your ads, people won’t want to come back to your site.  Try not to make it too busy.   The more ads you put in prominent positions, the more hits you will probably get.  But in the end, if people find your site off-putting, they won’t come back.   Realize that most people are not as technologically savvy as you are and not as familiar with your site.  They will find your site confusing. 

    3.  I think it would be great if more Christian organizations utilized internet advertising so that we could advertise them on our blogs.  For example, I would be happy to find on Google AdSense or Commission Junction organizations I already support like Taylor University, Regent College, Duke Divinity School, and World Vision so that I could promote organizations that I already support and also get a tiny cut.  Wouldn’t that be win-win?  I know some would say that I should advertise those things without any compensation but wouldn’t it be more fun to work together?  Wouldn’t it be cool to have World Vision ads on all of our blogs but also to get a little compensation ourselves?  Or am I wrongheaded about that?  If you disagree, why don’t you have advertisements already for World Vision on your site?  🙂

    4.  I realize this is new territory for those of you who are pastors and professors and there may be implications for the institutions who employ you.  What will my church think?  Some of you are using your blogs as tools for communication from pastor to congregation (though it seems to me most of the pastor blogs are writing for other pastors).  Should I be making personal money off a church communication tool?  But in reality I think this is a similar situation to making money off books that pastors write.  All of these are issues you should discuss one on one with elders and superiors who are familiar with the medium of blogging and writing books and are able to give you good advice.  I wouldn’t bring this up in the middle of an elders meeting without having some good discussion with some people behind the scenes first.  It could get needlessly ugly just because of misunderstanding.  A search online for blogging guidelines or policies for pastors will turn up some useful resources.  They will probably want to talk with you about how much time you are blogging / writing a book / articles  "on church time."  It would not be good to have someone blogging all day and not ministering to their congregation.  This is also related to the issue of outside speaking engagements.  If you are doing tons of youth retreats and getting paid for them and neglecting your youth group, that wouldn’t be good.  Then again, some of that outside speaking / writing / blogging is appropriate and good and life-giving I think.  For those of you who are professors, the same rules likely apply though you may have to have in big letters: "this is a personal blog and the opinions don’t reflect those of the university though I do want to be respectful and you are welcome to let me know if you are concerned about anything I’ve written!"  In all these situations, it may be appropriate to share a portion of what you have earned from speaking / blogging / writing (your "moonlighting" money) with your main employer.  These could be dicey issues but I think they are certainly negotiable.  Get outside advice and input from other pastors / professors who write, speak, and blog and they will be able to share with you good advice.   I hope these institutions will generally be glad that their pastors and professors which they don’t pay all that well can find ways to make a few extra bucks.  No one is going to get rich doing any of this. 

    Other resources:   

     See also Adam Cleaveland’s post about putting ads on his POMOMUSINGS blog for the first time this week.  He has a huge readership. 

    Leadership Journal’s Out of Ur blog is another example to consider.

    Secular marketing expert Seth Godin says today that the key to internet traffic is producing good content.  No short cuts.