Add to iTunesBrian Bailey, Author “The Blogging Church”
Introduction
As you know if you’ve been following along on Read/WriteWeb this week we’re focusing on Non-Profits. As part of that, I interviewed Brian Bailey the Author of The Blogging Church. We talk about his role both as a Web Director at one of the US’s largest churches as well as the book he recently published. While Brian is focused in on one specific aspect of the non-profit world, I hope there are lessons for all of us as we look at how to apply technology to whatever non profits we’re passionate about.
Links
Transcript
| Sean Ammirati: So, why don’t you start by giving us a little bit of your background and tell us a little bit about how the book came to be and that kind of thing? | |
| 00:30 | Brian Bailey: Sure, Sean. I really appreciate the chance to be with you. I’m currently the Web Director at Fellowship Church, one of the larger churches based in Dallas. We have a couple of campuses in the Dallas area, and then one in Miami, Florida. So, I am in charge of our websites there. We have a couple of different websites as well as websites for each of our campuses. |
| My role there is just leading the technology team; designers and developers and outsourcing and different things like that to deliver great web solutions for the church to both reach people who have never been to the church but also to serve the people who attend regularly and things like that. | |
| We also have kind of an eCommerce site as well that works with the pastors, with other churches and conferences and things like that. So we get to do lots of different interesting development projects and also different things that kind of help us push the envelop a little bit. It’s a great place to be. | |
| 01:30 | The book itself, “The Blogging Church,” came out of a conversation that started back in 2004 with Robert Scoble when he was at Microsoft. He was visiting the Dallas area and, at the time, was often visiting organizations that use a lot of Microsoft products and things. |
| So he was visiting the Dallas area for a wedding, and I invited him to come visit Fellowship Church to see how we were using Microsoft because we have been using quite a bit of their stuff in a lot of different ways and some interesting ways. So he accepted that invitation and spent about an hour at the church, and I had to meet him and he’s just an outstanding guy. | |
| 02:09 | He wrote a post about it that really sparked a lot of conversation at the blogosphere and really just generated a lot of different things that came out of that. I developed a friendship with him that we still stay in touch today. Through my relationship with him, when he came this time to write the “Naked Conversations” book with Shel Israel, he contacted me about being interviewed for that book. |
| So, when that happened and been interviewed for that book…and the same people that were behind publishing that book, Wiley. Their editor there, Jim Minatel, contacted me because he saw that interview. He was working on the book with them on blogging, primarily on corporations. He had the idea of what a book about blogging and churches and how churches could use blogs. We were doing some different things with blogging at the time. So, that was just an incredible opportunity. | |
| I had always been interested in writing a book and was blogging at the time heavily. So, it was just a great chance to kind of combine a couple of my real passions; the church and blogging and communication and writing and things like that. So, it was just an awesome opportunity. | |
| 03:15 | So from that conversation, we ended up getting a contract together and everything, and that was back in 2005. Wrote it over, a lot of it into 2006, and then the book just came out in January of this year. It has been a wild process but I always trace it back really to that blog post back in 2004 when I invited Scoble to stop by our church because that kind of started the whole process. So it has been a very fun ride. |
| Sean Ammirati: Cool. That’s awesome. So, tell me just a little bit about your church. How many members do you guys have? | |
| 03:50 | Brian Bailey: A typical weekend is about 20,000 people attend. Again, we have a main campus location just north of the Dallas Fort Worth Airport and then we have a couple more in the Dallas Fort Worth Metroplex and then again the one in Miami, Florida. So there are five campuses altogether. It’s about 20,000 people each weekend. They usually rank us in the top five or ten of the largest churches in the country. |
| There was recently an annual survey that was done about the most innovative churches in the country, and Fellowship Church was in the top five of that. So, it’s just a very good dynamic place, constantly changing, constantly trying new things, dropping things, starting new things. It’s just a very creative environment and it’s just a great place to be. | |
| 04:38 | Sean Ammirati: Interesting. I do want to get into blogging, which I’m sure is one of the innovative things you do. Can you touch on some of the other things from your role as a technology director, maybe that your church does, that you consider innovative and maybe part of that recognition that you just received? |
| Brian Bailey: A lot of our stuff is very innovative on the media side which is something I actually am not heavily involved with myself, but definitely on the video side and creating short films and things like that, just really some awesome things there. | |
| From a technology perspective, we’ve got a couple of different interesting things on the website. And recently, we just launched a new series for this fall called ineed2change.com. For that, we did a separate website that was just for that series, ineed2change.com. The two is a number 2. | |
| That was a site that really didn’t have anything specifically to do with the church. It’s not branded at the church or anything like that. It’s just a site where you can go on and share what you need to change in your life, and you can also see what everybody else is submitting. So it has just been an incredible site. | |
| 05:46 | We launched it about three weeks ago, and the response has just been amazing. We probably did a lot for the community through billboards but also through kind of grassroots word of mouth campaigns and acts of kindness and flyers and then just direct mail and all sort of different ways. So, there has just been a huge response to that site. |
| I think probably almost 4,000 submissions have been made in the last three weeks. Just seeing this, the interesting things that people have shared from their heart about just what they want to change in their life, it has been really interesting. | |
| This one little technology bonus that your audience would probably be more interested in is we also did a Twitter feed for that which was fun. So, we would often cross those - a lot of the things - to Twitter. So that was a good way to just kind of…just another way to get the word out about it. Those would be some of the recent projects that we’ve done primarily. | |
| 06:46 | Sean Ammirati: The Twitter thing is very interesting. How many people do you have following that Twitter account? |
| Brian Bailey: I think it was probably close to just 20 or so. Of course, you always learn with all the technology things that you do, it was a fun thing to promote and indeed some people wrote blog posts and things specifically about the campaign specifically because it used Twitter. | |
| Sometimes, you do things. Just start conversations of, “Wow. This church is using Twitter in a cool way. That’s interesting. I never saw that before.” So, sometimes it serves that purpose. | |
| 07:19 | I think for this case, not many people would want to follow it for very long just because of the sheer volume of stuff we were putting out there. In about two weeks, we probably put a thousand things on there. I use Twitter a fair amount too, and there is only so much of that you want in there. |
| It was interesting experience and experiment. If I did it again, I would probably instead of trying to post just about everything that people were submitting which I think probably overwhelmed, I would probably do more of the top, the really 10 good ones from each day or something like that. It would be a little bit easier for people to follow. | |
| 07:55 | Sean Ammirati: Sure. So on this site, you have sorted out what people submit. Do you have any idea how many people came to that site, ineed2change.com? |
| Brian Bailey: I think the last I checked, it’s probably earlier this morning and it was getting close to 30,000 visits. | |
| Sean Ammirati: Wow. | |
| Brian Bailey: It has been fun. | |
| Sean Ammirati: It’s really great. OK. Well, let’s transition to an area that you can literally say you wrote the book on. As you go and you talk to both your church and then other churches, what are some of the, and I don’t want you to obviously give away your book, but what are some of the stories that emerged for you that are some of the most unique ways that you’ve seen the church use blogs? | |
| 08:42 | Brian Bailey: What I love about technology and churches and especially about blogging is that there’s almost as many different uses of it as there are different kinds of churches. So just like the thousands of churches that approach things differently, it has been amazing to see how different the uses of blogs are. |
| There is everything from churches that use them very much internally for their staff who just communicate. They might have it as for staff or they might have a really large staff or they might be that kind of a startup church where they’re all working out of their homes and coffee shops. | |
| So, I’ve seen them sort of used, even if it’s just a private blogging system just for their staff or key volunteers. That’s a fairly common use. Definitely, one of the more common ones would be just announcements and keeping up with the goings-on in the church and just almost more like an email newsletter or something like that. | |
| 09:38 | I think the rapid adoption where you’ve seen so many people in the church world using blogs has been driven a lot by just senior pastors and teaching pastors and things like that and people like that. I think a lot of that is just, it’s just the perfect medium for so many of those pastors partly because they tend to be the opposite. They tend to be writers. They’re speaking every weekend or heavy readers, and we all know that bloggers tend to be people who really love to read and really love to write. So, I think that appeals to them. |
| Then, one just really core thing is that it has really proven to be such an incredible way for pastors to connect and relate to other pastors. In the past, being a pastor of a church is usually a very lonely position, and the only time you really get to interact with your peers is at a conference once a year, and you can barely afford to go to that. So, a lot of times, it’s just kind of lonely at the top and you have the people in your church but really nobody will understand what you’re going through. | |
| So, I think pastors who started blogging a couple of years ago and then started to find all these other pastors, they were like, “Hey. I’m in California but I know exactly what you’re going through. I’d sure go with that same thing.” Or, “Hey. I taught that same topic a couple of weeks ago. Here’s what I did.” | |
| 10:50 | So, that to me has been probably one of the core ways that blogs have been used. It’s just pastors talking to other pastors and getting that feedback, getting support, learning from each other and things like that, and being able to do it so inexpensively. Pastors are always so pressed for time. Blogging is something they can do at any hour of the night and get that response throughout the week and things like that. So, I think it has been really powerful. |
| Churches have also obviously done things; innovative ways that’s like when you’re launching a new campus or you’re launching a new church in an area. It has been a great way to just see how people will be able to stay up-to-date with the story of that church from the very beginning. | |
| Again, it’s such an inexpensive easy way to do that. A startup church can start a free blog and communicate and keep everybody involved in the story and just point into this website, and they can literally do that for no money. So, when you have a startup church, you’re dealing with having only a few hundred dollars and no paid staff and things like that. That’s a really attractive option. | |
| 11:54 | Sean Ammirati: Interesting. Those are some good uses of blogging. So obviously, you knowing Robert Scoble, and it sounds like yourself, being a technologist, I’m sure you read both church blogs and maybe other people that blog, that people in this they basically consider to be traditional blogs like ourselves and TechCrunch and Robert Scoble. Are there any major differences you see between how, or maybe even going down to personal blogs, between the blogs being written by churches and by pastors and sort of the technology blogosphere, if you will? |
| Brian Bailey: That’s a great question. You’re right. I do read those, and in fact, I’d probably lean more towards the technology side. I just find I get a lot of and so many ideas from that area probably more so than specifically church blogs just based on what I do.. | |
| 12:57 | Kind of a related topic that maybe a little bit different than you were talking about but it’s that I think I talk a lot in the book and it has always been kind of a point of mine. It’s just trying to get more of the Christians to join the rest of the blogosphere and to not try to create a separate blog or do their own or whatever else it might be whether it be Facebook or MySpace; all these kinds of things. That it’s more important to have those conversations across boundaries and not just kind of develop your own kind of circle of people who agree with you and kind of stay in that area. |
| 13:34 | I try to do that myself - of just trying to reach people that certainly don’t believe the same things that I do but have a lot to offer, and we have so much in common even though we might not share spiritual beliefs in common. I read plenty of people on the tech world but I disagree with all the time on different things whether it be politics or whatever it might be.But those are some of my favorite blogs just because they bring something to the table and they bring originality. They help me change my perspective or question where I’m going and things like that. So I found those to be extremely helpful. |
| 14:07 | As far as similarities or differences between the two, I think the similarities that I have noticed the most in the past is not one that’s positive. It’s the fact that it’s possible that people outside of the church world might be surprised that inside the church world and on these church type blogs and things like that, there’s as much debate and argument and criticism as there is the tech world. |
| Unfortunately, you kind of like it to be sort of this wonderful place of refuge where everyone is very kind to each and there’s all the support and all these other things, and of course, a lot of times those are what happens if this is the case with people and things. But in general, just like a regular blogosphere, there’s plenty of room for people who can sit and anonymously criticize, question, argue, debate, and people who never have gone to a church or never met that person or whatever feel very comfortable saying very nasty things about them. So in that sense, it’s not that different from the rest of the blogosphere. | |
| 15:14 | Sean Ammirati: That’s interesting. Is there like a TechMeme for the Christian blogs, the church blogs? |
| Brian Bailey: Basically, like it aggregates Christian tech blogs and things like that or Christian blogs in general. | |
| Sean Ammirati: I think that’s more where I’m going at. Maybe even if there’s not a site like this, I think that being a TechMeme shows just how thematic a lot of the blogs in the tech community are, right? We have a theme emerge and we talk about it for a day or two and then we move on to another theme, but we all tend to be talking about the same kind of thing. | |
| Even if there’s not a site like that, this conversation, this debate that’s happening inside of the Christian community, do you see that spamming across multiple blogs to maybe some popular topics inside of the Christian community will bubble up and will be a hot topic for a couple of days and then something else will be a hot topic? | |
| 16:04 | Brian Bailey: Yes, definitely. Again, some of the good news is that a lot of the time, those are the same topics. There really are a lot of the leading Christian bloggers and things like that are reading so many of the same blogs, whether it be SAS code or Creating Passionate Users when that was going and things like that. So a lot of times, it’s the same hot topic that it is than those other areas, so I thought it was a cool thing. |
| Yes, definitely there are topics that kind of rise up; church news that it wouldn’t be of as much interest to people outside of the church world. But whether it’s, “Hey, did you see this new church? It’s doing this different thing.” Or, “Hey, this church just launched a Facebook thing,” whatever it is. So there’s definitely kind of hot topic or whether it’s for criticism or support, either way. Church is taking big actions or pastors doing surprising things or whatever it might be. It tends to definitely generate lots of cross blogs. | |
| 17:00 | Sean Ammirati: OK. I’m sure you get into this in your book itself, but if you were to advice a pastor and they wanted to start blogging or some other church leader, what is your recipe to get started as a church blogger, I guess, or blogger in general? |
| Brian Bailey: The first thing for that to me is always just starting by reading blogs if they’re not already doing it. I think it’s always good to read blogs for a couple of weeks. Subscribe to as many as you can find; recommendations from friends or wherever you can get them, and just really get a feel for it. | |
| I think blogs now are probably common enough and it’s probably not as necessary. Everybody is familiar with it, but it’s still a good idea to get a feel for just what’s common and what’s not, what’s accessible, how do you, just quoting the blog, there’s just so many kind of little mannerisms, ways to be comfortable. I think it’s the key just to get a good lay of the land and that type of thing. | |
| 18:13 | It’s funny, you can go in so many different directions. In general obviously, there’s nothing wrong with just diving in and going for it. Find that free blogging service. Pick your name and start and just see how it works. There’s really nothing wrong with that. |
| I think it just depends on how seriously you’re taking it, how long-term. It’s not that easy to change blogging systems. It’s not easy to point people to your new blog. So, in the book, I do kind of go through that. It’s good to kind of really think about what kind of name you want and who are you writing for and your audience, and those kinds of things. That’s not as much as fun as just starting and just seeing what their reaction is. | |
| 18:57 | I think any time that you blog, no matter who you are, it’s good to have some purpose behind it. It’ll help you stay with it and help you know whether you’re succeeding at your purpose or not. So, if you can remember one thing, it’s your purpose. It can be just to have fun and comment on anything you think is interesting. The purpose doesn’t have to be a grand one. |
| It can just be very casual, but it’s good to know in advance like are your trying or is this blog meant to communicate to people who have never been to the church? Do you really want to capture their interest and draw them in? Is this to keep your members up-to-date on the latest news? Is this to talk to other pastors and get feedback on your sermons? Is it just for your friends and family and to talk about the football game and your kids in school? They may be all of the above, but I think it’s good to have some guiding principles there. | |
| 19:53 | Sean Ammirati: Interesting. I assume a lot of the people at your church in Dallas blog as well. |
| Brian Bailey: On staff and in the church itself, is that what you’re talking about? | |
| Sean Ammirati: Yes. I’m thinking more about of your people on staff. Where I’m really going I guess is, you can answer this specifically for the church if you want, but I’m also interested in general trying to step back out and look at how nonprofits are using technology. How would you make the case to somebody in a nonprofit, specifically a church or just in general, that they should start blogging? What would be your justification for doing it? | |
| 20:30 | Brian Bailey: I would say there’s almost no more efficient inexpensive way to communicate with a bunch of people. I just find it to be an incredibly powerful way to connect with just so many different people. In the past, nonprofits - churches, everybody - were always typically pretty far behind on the technology curve, and there are a lot of good reasons for that. |
| The primary ones are expense and technical talent on staff. So a lot of times, again whether it’s a church or a nonprofit, a lot of times the staff are very small. A lot of times, the expenses are very high and the money is very short. So in the past, it was very hard to justify an expensive website or web development project or whatever it might be. Blogging is so inexpensive and so easy to do that it’s an outstanding way to reach people. | |
| 21:33 | So, depending on your type of audience, it can reach an audience your organization might not normally find much…it might be hard to reach normally. If you traditionally market or try to reach people whether it’s an email or newsletter or direct mail or different things like that, it’s very likely that you will reach a whole new audience through blogging that will be people that you really want to get involved in your organization. |
| Bloggers tend to be very passionate. They tend to be very plugged in and they tend to connect to others. So if you can get a passionate blogger to really follow your organization and get involved in your story and things like that, they’re going to write about it on their own blog. They’re going to tell their friends. They’re going to generate a lot of interest much more so than almost any other kind of communication. | |
| 22:55 | There are lots of different ways to do that. Again, there are so many different kinds of blogs, but if you do have a core leader or if you have core people on your staff who can do it, it’s a kind of a special talent, blogging and writing in that certain style that really appeals to people and pulls them into the story. So, if you have that person who can write that way, it can really change how people view your whole organization. |
| We see that all the time with some of these different large organizations, and definitely it’s done with their blogging, and what Scoble did for Microsoft and different things like that. It’s just amazing how one person writing a passionate blog about why they are, where they are, why that company does what it does, how much that can just generate a conversation about it. | |
| 23:14 | People who would never think about that company in the past or would just never have a positive feeling and suddenly, those attitudes can change and they can at least be given a second thought, a second look, where they might not have been in the past. |
| Again, it’s just an outstanding way to communicate. It doesn’t have all the burdens of spam and different things like that. Again, it’s just so inexpensive and easy. It’s hard to imagine not doing it. | |
| 23:44 | Sean Ammirati: That’s great. I couldn’t agree more as a blogger myself. Brian, I really appreciate you taking the time to join me today. Again, the name of the book is “The Blogging Church,” correct? |
| Brian Bailey: That’s right. | |
| Sean Ammirati: Soon, you can get in on both local bookstores as well as Amazon and Barnes and Noble, and that kind of thing. | |
| Brian Bailey: Exactly. | |
| Sean Ammirati: OK. Great. Well, thanks for joining me today, Brian. Again, this is Sean Ammirati for ReadWrite Talk covering the people behind the web. | |
| Brian Bailey: Thanks, Sean. |
September 16th, 2007 at 12:49 am
Dozens of Catholic priests and even a few bishops are bloggers. Anyone interested may want to check out CatholicBlogs.com.
September 20th, 2007 at 11:12 am
Blogging to share the wealth…
We’ve been getting our feet wet during the past year with blogging here at Leadership Network. The reason we blog is to share the wealth of information we’re learning as we connect innovative churches around the country to multiply their…
October 8th, 2007 at 9:54 am
Thanks for doing/posting this interview. I enjoyed it and found it helpful.
Also, glad I came across your site - it looks good!