With Thanksgiving coming up next week it’s a good time to show some gratitude. Give thanks to the people around you and encourage someone today:
Encourage someone today. #sketchism pic.twitter.com/cH8Cqm3Qtf
— David Uribe (@sketchism) November 22, 2013
Thanksgiving is a powerful opportunity for churches to model gratitude. Use social media to ask people what they’re thankful for. People respond to questions on social media, it promotes engagement and it’s easy. Give it a try next week.
We’ve got plenty of links to help you out and give you some Friday motivation.
- Santa’s Coming: Christmas is coming up fast, but it’s not too late to spread the word about your Christmas services. Folks have been sharing more ideas on social media, including Christmas Starts With Christ in the UK and the Adopt an Angel fundraising program at Newbreak. There’s also a roundup of 2012 ideas we posted back in January.
- Spring: Ready for Easter? If you’re feeling late to the game on Christmas, might as well skip ahead and be ready for Easter. Shawn Wood has a webinar coming up to help you get more people to your Easter services.
- Shoestring: 3 ways to create a communications calendar on the cheap.
- Social: 10 surprising social media stats that may have you tweaking your strategy. Such as the fastest growing demographic on Twitter is 55- to 64-year-olds and social media has out-stripped porn as the number one activity on the Internet.
- Signage: Earlier this year Steve Fogg shared his insights about creating signage. This week he shared the results of his signage project, along with lots of great pictures of pretty signs.
- Shady: 99Designs sounds like a cheap way to crowdsource design—something both Rick Warren and Michael Hyatt support. But we’re not so sure about crowdsourcing design.
- Seriously: Debates have raged over online church, now it’s time to duke it out over online communion. Money quote: “The way we operate now, if you want to receive [Communion], you have to come to my church sometime between the hours of 9 and 12 on Sunday morning,” says Andy Langford. “I don’t think there’s any other institution in our country that can survive on that kind of business model.”
- Struggle: Phil Bowdle talks about the crippling fear of being disliked. Those people-pleasing tendencies can kill your effectiveness as you try to keep everybody happy. Here’s a tip: Get over it.
- Savings: Don’t forget we released our ebook bundle earlier today, which includes all three of our ebooks and can save you $3. We also have a multi-copy pack for your entire staff.
- Silence: Having trouble with church members playing on their phones, staying awake or leaving early? Here’s a wacky solution from Elevation Church featuring UFC’s Vitor Belfort as the “values enforcer”:
