Our mission is Worship the Lord…Reach all People…Equip to Serve.  We must keep the main thing the main thing.

I took my wife to a restaurant last night that seemed to be stuck in 1963.  They did not accept credit cards – the sign read “Cash Only”.  They were very friendly and made us feel like we were locals.  A sign on the wall read “If you made a reservation, you’re at the wrong place.” The food portions were huge but the price was very reasonable.  The waitress (no servers) turned in our order on that green pad of “Guest Checks”. Remember those?  And, when we paid for our meal, we walked up to the register – none of this paying the server business.

And this place was packed on a Wednesday night.  Why?  They were focused on the main thing.  The food was GREAT (lots of fried food – nothing healthy).  The service was GREAT.  The price was GREAT.  They simply focused on the main thing.

What is the main thing for the church?  Worship, Reaching, and Equipping. We can have all the newest technology and our methods can be on the cutting edge, but we must always… keep the main thing the main thing.

It seems as if there is a church on every corner in every city in America. In this video, Pastor Daniel uses a Google map to talk about what would happen if all of the individual churches stood together as THE Church.

CCH Audio and Video podcasts are back in the iTunes store. CLICK HERE to subscribe today and take archived CCH messages with you wherever you go!

We’re beginning a new series this weekend at Chapel Hill. Join us as we look at God’s word and discuss Living the Spiritual Life.

The Internet Campus is off to a great start. Hundreds of people are connecting with us each week from all over the world. What a unique ministry tool and opportunity for our church! Would you consider getting involved? You can help by spreading the word!

We’ve discovered that most of our viewers are connecting with us through social media. Would you consider emailing, tweeting, or posting an invite to http://internet.churchatchapelhill.com ? This is particularly important 15 minutes before the start of service (Sat at 6PM or Sun at 10:45AM).

• Email: Go through your email contacts and invite them to join us.
• Facebook: Post status updates encouraging others to connect with us online. Be sure to include the link from above.
• Twitter: Tweet & Retweet invitations to the Internet Campus. Also, tweet about your experience while @ChapelHill.
• Tag Your Tweets: We have a new hashtag for this series. If you add #SpiritLife to the end of all your tweets mentioning @ChapelHill they will show up in our live stream. Cool huh? Not on Twitter? What are you waiting for? Its time to get connected! Sign up here.

We are very excited about this new ministry opportunity and hope that you will partner with us.

We are excited to announce the launch of The Church at Chapel Hill Internet Campus on Saturday, Sept 12 @6PM.

We will begin streaming our worship experiences live every weekend on Saturdays at 6PM EST and Sundays at 10:45AM EST.

Our entire worship experience including worship, teaching, dramas, videos etc. will be broadcast.

Help us spread the word.

COMING SOON:  The Church at Chapel Hill Internet Campus.

No longer will location be an issue. You, your family and friends will be able to experience The Church at Chapel Hill from anywhere.

We are partnering with 316 Networks to produce a high quality live worship experience that anyone, anywhere will be able to access via the internet.

Start spreading the word to your family and friends. The CCH Internet Campus is about to take off.

We’ll announce the ‘go live’ date here on Threads so check back often… or better yet – subscribe via email or RSS.

In this how-to post we’ll get you setup to receive automatic alerts whenever a new entry is added to this blog. You’ll no longer have to visit the website to see if there’s something new. You can make Threads come to you! If you’re already familiar with how to do this you might want to read a devotional instead. We’re going to keep this short, painless, and with minimal geek-talk. Cool? Follow these simple steps and you’ll be all set.

• Determine what type of subscription works best for you. There are a few options. You can receive updates via email or RSS or by following us on Twitter.

1. Via Email: Click here or in the right hand column. Enter your email address when prompted and you’re all set
2. Via RSS:

• Determine which RSS Reader you’ll use. Most blogs use RSS (Real Simple Syndication) “feeds” which can be aggregated together and displayed by what’s known as an RSS or Feed Reader. You’ll need one of these applications, but don’t worry. Most current browsers (Internet Explorer, Firefox, & Safari) have readers built in. If you’d like something a little more resourceful try one of the free apps such as Google Reader, or Bloglines. iPhone users may want to try NetNewsWire.

• Subscribe: Once you’ve decided which application you’ll use, click on the Subscribe icon, which is located in the right column just under the search field.

3. Twitter. For those of you who use Twitter, you can follow @chapelhill to receive messages when new content is added.

We hope this helps. Please feel free to ask questions below.

“Will you add me as your friend?” is a common question today through the online community called Facebook.  Online communities and other social media tools have created a very different world in a very short period of time.  Note some of these facts I read recently:

   *  YouTube surpassed the 100 Million U.S. viewers in one month this past March.
   *  More people are now accessing “member communities” than are using email.
   *  Only young people are on Facebook?  Wrong.  The fastest growing demographic is the 35-49 year old age group.  Over 11                  million users from that age group were added in 2008.
   *  9.3 Million visitors went to Twitter.com in March 2009 – a 131% jump from February!
   *  In Eastern Europe recently, a crowd of 10,000 people gathered to protest the direction of government.  The rally began with 6          people and 10 minutes of planning but within 24 hours, thousands gathered for the protest.  How is that possible?  Through            utilizing social media networks like Facebook, blogs, SMS (text messages) and emails.

We have these same tools to reach people for Christ.  In fact, The Church at Chapel Hill will have Friend Day Weekend on July 18-19.   It’s through Jesus that our friends can experience new life.  It’s through the gospel (not Facebook) their lives can be changed and their eternal destiny re-routed.  Do they really need to be your friend on Facebook?  Maybe not, but if Facebook, and Twitter, and text messages can help us reach our friends (and new friends) for Christ, shouldn’t we go all out?  Starting this weekend, we will be highlighting different ways The Church at Chapel Hill is using social media.   Check out the new series “Trendy” this weekend.

Why not go all out with social media connections and let’s set new records – not on social media sites -  but with people coming to hear the gospel on Friend Day?   Maybe it’s a simple as logging on and saying, “Will you add me as your friend?”

Methods of communication between people, businesses, and churches are rapidly changing and compounding. It wasn’t long ago that email became an every day part of life. Now people are engaging one another on social networks such as Facebook, Youtube, and Twitter (the new craze and personal fav). In addition, websites, blogs, podcasts, and status updates are used as a means of broadcasting an individual’s thoughts and life experiences. The ways in which we communicate will continue to evolve and will never the same.

How do these changes in communication impact the gospel presentation? Should local churches adopt every trendy social media that pops up? Are pastors expected to have a Facebook (and now Twitter) account? Should churches keep an active blog? If so, who’s supposed to manage all of this stuff? At The Church at Chapel Hill we are asking ourselves, “What should our role be in the online community? What responsibilities do these means of communication create?”

Web 2.0 reflects a global shift to interconnectedness. People desire relationships, even if they are only online, and spend ample amounts of time perusing the web. If used correctly, the platforms mentioned above can greatly expand the reach of any church. As the cliche’ states, the message doesn’t change. However, the methods do. We must begin thinking Ministry 2.0.

At The Church at Chapel Hill we are certainly not experts, and surely there are better models, but here’s our thought process and a few tools/platforms we are currently implementing.

Website: www.churchatchapelhill.com
Content MUST be updated regularly. Reading a stale website is like reading yesterday’s newspaper. Our site provides our congregation a place to view recent images, watch weekend messages, and even signup for current events. We intentionally highlight our website inside of our services and on most print pieces.

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Douglasville-GA/The-Church-at-Chapel-Hill/50198901344
Used to communicate event info, share photos, and allows viewers to comment on current message series, etc. Facebook is great but requires attention to remain current and relevant. Again, stale (old) is bad.

Twitter: http://twitter.com/chapelhill
Twitter is a rather new social media and we are still discovering its many uses. Currently, we use the service to interact w/ our congregation as well as other church leaders. Our updates provide info about services & events. We use Twitter to drive traffic to specific pages within our website. We also tweet quotes/points from our weekend services.

Hey, why not follow us for a better idea of how we?re using Twitter? Our user name is @chapelhill

Blog: http://threads.churchatchapelhill.com/ (Congrats. You?ve already found this one.)
Threads is brand new for our church. We just launched this blog on June 11th.

YouTube (or Vimeo):
We were previously using a YouTube channel to provide video content on the web. We have discontinued this and now rely on our website for embedded video distribution.

As you can see, we believe the web is a great place to connect with our local community and provide import information to our congregation. However, if something becomes ineffective or if we simply cannot manage the tool properly, we do not force it. YouTube is one example.

Important:
As stated previously, Web 2.0 is about connecting in relationship. Simply broadcasting without responding to others is really missing the whole idea. Being active in social networking requires regular interaction with your readers, followers, or audience.

Feedback:

Let’s hear from you. How is your church using these social medias. Do you have ideas that we haven’t thought of yet? Is your church using Twitter? If so, leave the user name and church info in the comments field below. We’ll add you to our growing directory.