Categories
church communications experiment

How to Set Up a Video Studio in Your Basement – A Pastor’s Guide

Over the past few days, I have been working on putting together a makeshift studio that I can use to record videos for the congregation and community. It will also be helpful for the ever-increasing number of video conference calls these days. I want to share with you a bit of the process, in case […]

Categories
communications developing leaders fun life ministry

The Power of “Good Job”

One of the jewels of the Shawnee County Parks and Recreation system is the Lake Shawnee Trail. Nearly every time I go for a run, I use it in some way. At times, a short loop around Tinman Circle and others around the entire lake with an extension down Berryton Road to reach my target […]

Categories
church communications

Eero: My Church WiFi Hero

Last month, I undertook the task of upgrading the wireless network at Berryton United Church. I am a bit of a tech geek at heart and enjoy things working well. I am grateful that there was an existing wireless network, though one of the challenges was that it was a different network in the sanctuary […]

Categories
communications life ministry

Some Things Change and Some Things Stay the Same

It has been 649 days since my last blog post. Much has changed since then. Our children are 3 and 2, respectively. I switched from WordPress.com to a WordPress installation, thereby starting over on traffic and links. I am beginning my third year as the pastor appointed to serve First UMC of El Dorado, KS. […]

Categories
communications united methodist church

The #li2012 Word Cloud Project

I am part of a team from First United Methodist Church in El Dorado, KS attending Leadership Institute 2012. I collected Twitter updates tagged with #li2012. Then I used Wordle to create word clouds with the text of updates during the conference. I edited out Twitter usernames, RT and #li2012 to get a better view of the conversation. […]

Categories
church communications ministry

Transition Preparation Document for First UMC El Dorado

One month from today, I will begin serving as pastor at First United Methodist Church in El Dorado. Last week, I had the opportunity to spend time with some of the key leaders and staff from the church. I shared a document with everyone that I met outlined some of my personal priorities as well […]

Categories
communications kansas united methodist church

The #kwc12 Twitter Word Cloud Project

As a follow up to the The #gc2012 Twitter Word Cloud Project, I completed a similar project for the Kansas West Annual Conference. I collected Twitter updates from May 22 to 27 that were tagged with #kwc12, #ksw12 and #kswumc. Then I used Wordle to create a word cloud with the text of all the updates for […]

Categories
annual conference communications ministry renewing the church

2012 Twitter Hashtags and Live Streaming for #UMC Conferences

At the end of the #dreamUMC chat last night, I volunteered to collect hashtags for United Methodist conferences this year. I hope you will find it helpful to stay connected across the denomination. Will you please help me complete this list? Please send me an @reply on Twitter @andrewconard or leave a comment on this […]

Categories
communications united methodist church

The #gc2012 Twitter Word Cloud Project

The #GC2012 Twitter Word Cloud Project Twitter was a powerful tool of engagement during General Conference 2012. I thought it would be fascinating to archive and analyze the updates tagged with #gc2012. On Tuesday morning, I set up an Archive of the #gc2012 hashtag through a HootSuite Pro account. Every day I downloaded the data […]

Categories
communications life ministry

Telling the Story: An Example from the @OlatheChamber

I appreciate a well told story. Telling stories is one of the most effective ways to lead a community or congregation. The church that I serve, Resurrection West, is a member of the Olathe Chamber of Commerce who recently released a video to promote Olathe. This model could be effective for a wide variety of […]

Categories
communications life

Do You Info Snack?

I sure do. I recently heard this phrase and found it to pretty accurately describe my habit of using my iPhone to check news, play a game or read email while having down time of even a minute or two. Do you info snack?

Categories
communications ministry

Leaving WordPress.com for Google+

There have been many opinions shared about how Google+ (a new social network from Google) has had an impact on the online social media scene. People have posited that Google+ will eventually cause people to leave another network. I posted about this possibility myself. http://twitter.com/#!/andrewconard/status/89782495683428352 After conversation with a good friend, I realized that there […]