Outside The Box Ministry

Several month’s ago I became familiar with Creo Productions.  They are a full service video production company located out of Michigan.  Some of the work they have done includes producing videos to promote books.

They combine narration with graphics to communicate in a short period a time the central message of a book.  They are very powerful in comparison to reading a synopsis for a book.  You can check out some of their work on their website.

They have produced videos for Greg Stielstra, author of “Pyro Marketing” and Michael English’s “The Prodigal Son Comes Home“.

On a side note, you can download a complete audio version of Pyro Marketing from Greg’s website for free.

Facebook, the social utility that connects you with people around you, has over 3,000 types of applications that you can “plug-into” your personal profile. There are many different types of applications available. You can display the books you are reading, the music you are listening to, rate movies you have seen, draw graffiti and much more.

Since Facebook has opened their platform to developers to develop their own applications you continue to see new ones come up almost every day.  I’m not the only one who has been thinking about this recently, but this would be a great opportunity to develop Facebook applications for ministry purposes. Dan over at Blog Ministry has posted about this idea as well. He has created a Facebook Brainstorm discussion board for you to share your ideas.  Dan mentions in a few posts that there have been several applications that have been developed by Christians for Christians.

Here are a few that I have come up with:

1. Who Is Jesus- an application that updates daily talking about Jesus and a link to how you can know Him personally.
2. Ask a Christian- an application where someone can post a question and others can answer it.
3. Share Your Story- an application that enables you to post your testimony by text or video

What are your ideas?

Are you looking for new ways to reach people with your message or looking for more distribution sources to deliver your content?  There is huge potential for evangelism and discipleship using mobile technology.  You can find an extensive guide on the Internet Evangelism Day website.  Here is a list of ideas for using mobile phones for your outreach from the site.

1.  Downloadable Bibles and books
2.  Video clips and mini-presentations
3.  Text messaging
4.  Wallpaper (screen backgrounds)
5.  Games, ringtones, wallpapers
6.  Web Access
7.  In developing nations

Last night while visiting my local Barnes & Noble, which my wife and I enjoying doing often, I very much enjoyed eating a chocolate chuck cookie from Starbucks and read a lot of the book, Free Prize Inside: How to Make a Purple Cow by Seth Godin.

In his book, which is an easy read, he outlines how a company should rethink how they spend their money on advertising, doing BIG innovation projects and R&D. Instead they should focus on “soft innovations”. These are about small ideas that anyone in an organization can think of. It is all about what Godin calls, “making your product into a Purple Cow.”

You can apply this idea to your organization or church by creating an environment for your staff or congregation to be a “champion” of an idea they might have that can bring change or a great opportunity that can make an impact on your community, nation or world.

I have written about Squidoo before. For some time now I have been using my “lens” as a way to test the interest level that visitors would have in a certain topic ( Sermon, Church and Ministry Videos).  In my testing I have found the Squidoo pages rank very well in natural searches on Google.  For example, if you do a search on “church videos” my “lens” comes up, as of the writting of this post, in the top ten of the natural search.  It also has done well under the searcn term “ministry videos”.  I recently added the term “sermon videos” to see how that will do.

As a result, I found that there was interest in the topic so I created a new blog which I have linked to it from the Squidoo lens.  This has been a good source of new visitors to the Church Video Reviews blog.  So, if you are thinking of creating a new website, blog, business or product consider using a website like Squidoo to do testing.

Are you stuck on a project or finding a new idea?  Instead of giving up, check this out whatagreatidea.com.

In the latest edition of Outreach magazine they reveal the 2006 Resource of the Year Awards. This year’s “Best” award goes to Bill Hybel’s book “Just Walk Across the Room”. You can check out other category winners on Outreach’s website.

Today Campus Crusade for Christ had a national Call to Prayer for the tragedy at Virginia Tech.  You can find out more about specific prayer requests and join in an praying for the students that were impacted by this tragedy at the Campus Ministry website.

The other day I discovered a book written about The Starbucks Experience. There are five principles that transformed the company that can be beneficial to any church or ministry. They are:

Principle 1: Make It Your Own
Principle 2: Everything Matters
Principle 3: Surprise and Delight
Principle 4: Embrace Resistance
Principle 5: Leave Your Mark

How would you apply these principles to your situation (i.e. church, ministry or business)?

I wanted to let you know that I have started another blog about church and ministry video tools. Many churches, perhaps your own, are incorporating videos into their services, classes or ministry events.

This new blog takes a look at videos and tools that have been produced and were you can get them. You can search for videos from multiple video download distributors all in one location. It is my desire to do regular reviews about church and ministry videos, presentation software and special offers available. Check it out at ChurchVideoReviews.com.