Your church definitely has a website, probably a Facebook group or Fan Page, and maybe a Twitter account. But a LinkedIn group?

LinkedIn can be seen and treated as the ugly step-child of social media sites. Unless you seriously need a job or seriously hate your current one I doubt your logging hours on it.

However establishing a presence on LinkedIn can be strategic for your church or ministry.

Here’s why:

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Watch the “Big Game?”

I’m sure you saw some of the advertising spots, right? The one that got me the most was the Google’s Parisian Love:

The Google Super Bowl commercial reflected my desire to see the church grow in its ability to be more strategic especially in leveraging online tools and platforms.

Here’s what I came up with:

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This is a Guest Post by Brian Barela.

We faced a choice: create a below average offline experience or refine our online experience using the critical mass from our normal meeting.

My ministry launched a virtual meeting this year – Chico CRU Live – and although we saw good participation traffic started to fade.

Our meeting happened to fall on Veteran’s day which meant our students did not have school and our ministry did not have access to our meeting room.

This is what we did:

• Designed a studio style meeting at a large house that some of our student leaders rent
• SHORTENED the meeting from an hour and a half to just under 30 minutes
• Encouraged students to watch the meeting with other students that they live with
• Instead of providing a one to one meebo chat option, we opened up a group chat to facilitate connection amongst our students
• Asked ALL of our students to use their facebook status as means of exposing others to the live event

These key factors influenced our actions:

• Many of our students (75%) did not understand the concept of a virtual meeting other than the novelty
• Many of our students (75%) did not grasp the power a virtual meeting has to expose new people to who we are and build trust and credibility BEFORE they ever come to a meeting.
• Only 6% of the student population participate in a Christian group (church or parachurch). My interpretation is that 94% of the campus does not see Christianity as a valid expression of their life journey.

The results (these metrics are from that day alone):

The key metrics for us were % of New Visits, Average Time on Site, and Referring Sites

• % of New Visits because we desired to raise awareness of our virtual meeting

• Average Time on site because we are still trying to understand the average length of online participation

• Referring Sites because our goal was that in students updating the facebook status that it would drive significant traffic to the virtual meeting

I have two questions for you as we continue to refine our virtual meeting:

• If you have been measuring your virtual meeting/online church what has been your average time on site?

• What have been some meeting design issues that you have wrestled with in converting/translating an offline meeting to an online one?

So, what are your thoughts?

This is a Guest Post by Brian Barela.

The two contending philosophies I have heard in relation to virtual ministry are:

1. Virtual church/ministry IS church/ministry–that is the experience, although different from the physical, meets the same needs and produces the same RESULTS.
2. Virtual church/ministry COMPLEMENTS church/ministry–similar to wheels on a vehicle, virtual ministry ENRICHES the overall experience of church/ministry.

Rather than debate each side, I wanted to share my experience in launching a virtual ministry through Campus Crusade for Christ on the campus of Chico State University in Northern California.

We have currently hosted six virtual meetings since late August that consist of:

• A live broadcast on our website via livestream
• A live chat option throughout our meeting which started with Ustream chat, but at the moment is a Meebo chat widget
• A recording of both the worship set and the main talk, which is then uploaded to our Vimeo page and then posted on our Facebook Fan Page the next day

These are some of the key observations/statistics I have made in making my college ministry virtual:

• We have averaged 60 viewers for the last six weeks; the average length of their online experience is under ten minutes, the majority being closer to two minutes.

• The majority of viewers have been FRIENDS–either supporters of our ministry, relatives of our students and staff, or curious/interested Campus Crusade staff members from different campuses around the country and world.

• Out of all of viewers so far (around 420), only one has been clearly identified as our target: a non-believer student that attends Chico State. We confirmed this by means of the student chatting with me during the broadcast (we are using the free version of Livestream, which does not provide robust analytic tools).

• The process of archiving the worship and the main speaker has gone from two LONG videos (15 minutes of worship, 20 minutes of speaking) to two SHORT videos (one song of worship, 2-3 minutes of the speaking). This has been perhaps our best insight into the process of making the experience more user-friendly.

Some key tips I would pass on to anyone considering launching a virtual ministry:

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Today’s Meatspace Monday is a Guest Post from Brian Barela, a Campus Director for Campus Crusade for Christ.  He pitched an amazing idea and I loved the idea.  You can also follow him on Twitter.

“A steady diet of walking or running is great for the legs, great for the cardiovascular system, and certainly beneficial for overall health but doesn’t do much for the arms, for example. Swimming is great for the upper body but doesn’t have much to offer the lower body. Put walking or running together with swimming, however, or swimming with cycling, and you’re working all of the body’s major muscle groups for optimal health and greatly improved overall muscular fitness.”–from this article.

As one who enjoys exercise, I’m an avid practitioner of cross training.

I enjoy cycling, as well as yoga and kettlebells (watch a video of them in action). As a campus minister working exclusively with college students, I’m acutely aware that I’m not as much a practitioner of cross training for my overall fitness as a leader. I’ve noticed that many of my most developmental experiences or resources have come from outside of Campus Crusade for Christ; this is not a knock against my organization but rather an acknowledgment that those from different ministries and the business world have much to offer as I seek to reach lost students for Christ.

This October, I attend the Virtual Goods Summit held in San Francisco. The summit focused on how to launch, develop, and market virtual goods, mostly through online gaming. At first and maybe second glance, this would not be a developmental opportunity, as there was no linear connection between virtual goods and college ministry.

However, I left the conference inspired to lead more boldly and with new ways to think about a vital part of college ministry–connecting with students online. Also, the summit was hosted and composed primarily of entrepreneurs. I’m learning that my job is highly parallel to that of an entrepreneur, and gained confidence from seeing and hearing from people who lived and breathed starting and trying new things.

My challenge for Meatspace Monday is this:  Initiate via one of your social networks a person from a different field to meet up with you and share either an insight, key developmental experience, or even some of your field’s philosophy.

I’m confident that you will receive much more than you planned on, and may be inspired to pursue that dream or idea in your own field that might be the spark that moves your organization or church forward in seeing Jesus get the glory he deserves in our lives and ministries.

For me, I left inspired to develop a web application that will allow our Campus Crusade staff to share resources more effectively and leverage the vast amount of bible studies, discipleship articles, and wisdom that our organization has accumulated in its 58 year history.

What will it be for you?