What is in Kelvin's Head?

25 More Questions for people who want to make their churches grow

31/05/2015
A lot of people seem to have been sharing my 25 Questions for people who want to make their churches grow on social media.

So, here’s 25 more…
1. If you didn’t have to go to your church on Sunday would you still go?
2. Are the clergy happy?
3. Are the musicians happy?
4. Does the congregation have a stronger ethos than that of its denomination?
5. What one thing could you change this week to make the worship better?
6. Why didn’t you make that change last week?
7. What steps are you taking to make the phrase “All are Welcome” come true?
8. Do you do church business on a Sunday after church or is there a better time for that?
9. In the next month are you more likely to spend time on ecumenical activities or church growth activities?
10. Do people who leave become ex-members who have disappeared or do they still contribute to the life and ministry of the place?
11. What is the noticeboard like?
12. What is the first thing you see when you come through the door?
13. Did you implement the recommendations of the last “mystery worshipper” you asked to give you a candid assessment?
14. Which church events in the next six months will be newsworthy locally?
15. Which church events in the next six months will be reported in the local media?
16. Do you have enough staff and who decides this?
17. What would your clergy really like to do that they can’t because of the laity?
18. What would your laity really like to do that they can’t because of the clergy?
19. Which would attract young families more – a bible-based week long summer activity for children or letting it be known that gay people are welcome in your church?
20. Can you email those members of your congregation who want to receive regular updates?
21. Do you email those members of your congregatio who want to receve regular updates?
22. Has someone done the work required to make sure emails sent to large numbers of people don’t end up in spam boxes?
23. Who in the congregation has gifts that could be better used doing a different job in the congregation than what they are currently doing?
24. Who is your volunteer co-ordinator and is it obvious how to contact them?
25. Can you volunteer without being a member of the church?
church growth

18 responses to “General Assembly on sex and singleness”

Kennedy

27/05/2009

DCampbell writes:
Wow, Kennedy – I hadn’t realised there was so much or so many people to it, but surely it is not beyond us to have some kind of webcast of the more important sections of the proceedings

Webcasting from Palmerston Place presents a number of challenges:

resourcing the camera crew, vision mixer and director (kit and people) and integration with the projection system to carry any slides and visuals
looking at the lighting to allow good pictures but without interfering with the projection system (which suffers from light spill from the windows already)
Network and machine infrastructure in the building to capture and code the video.
Dedicated bandwidth (with Quality of Service) to transfer the video and audio stream out to a distribution server. (We currently piggyback on Palmerston Place’s own internet connection).

An alternative would be an audio stream with a general shot webcam updating every 30 – 60 secs but again would probably need a dedicated connection to the net to ensure that there was no breakup.

This is not a litany of reasons for not doing things – it’s just a realistic assessment of the resource requirements.

Kennedy

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Kennedy

27/05/2009

Or another thought-

We start having Synod on the Th/Fr/Sa after the Assembly on the Mound and share the costs of the setup.

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Kennedy

27/05/2009

No, I suppose a general ‘piskie tag would work just as well, but I’m with Kimberly and would prefer #piskie

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kelvin

27/05/2009

My only problem with piskie is that in some parts of the UK a “piskie” is one of the little people, and not necessarily a nice one.

See for example:
http://www.mysteriousbritain.co.uk/england/cornwall/folklore/the-piskies-of-cornwall.html

“Some people saw them as the souls of pagans who could not transcend to heaven, and they were also seen as the remnants of pagan gods, banished with the coming of Christianity. In tradition they are doomed to shrink in size until they disappear. “

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Elizabeth

27/05/2009

Maybe it’s just me, but I have always found the potential confusion between pisky and piskie immensely pleasing (by ‘always’ I mean, since I discovered the term – not too many years ago!). It’s one of the (many) reasons I’m pleased to be on the pisky/ie side of the pond.

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David Campbell

28/05/2009

Thanks Kelvin – all this stuff is quite amazing really – especially Kennedy’s informative and knowledgeable material about what is actually needed. I agree about the Primus’s charge being essential, but if live streaming (if that is what it is called) is too intensive an operation in all kinds of ways for an admittedly small audience, why not do a twice daily edited digest of each day’s business like the one the Revd Dougkas Aitken does for the CofS?

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Kelvin

28/05/2009

Rob Warren already does do digests in audio format – video may well be the next step, though it is quite a big step to take.

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Kennedy

28/05/2009

The video update that Douglas Aitken does is a copy of his audio update with appropriate video material behind it ie you don’t get any actuality from the chamber.

We would still need editing and coding time before the video could be uploaded to an external server.

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