Network Use

Thanks for your interest and enthusiasm, Fred.

You're absolutely right...we need to spread the word even more. Last week we sent this email to every Christian Reformed Church, asking them to forward it to their congregation. Hopefully they do, and maybe a 'nudge' from someone in the church would help!

Show and tell really helps...and we'd love to visit churches and classes. We've discussed the latter but the tough part is staffing and expenses. This online Network has a modest budget and no full time staff. We're hoping the word can spread from person to person within churches and between churches. In other word, we're counting on YOU and people like you to help!

Here are some other tips for spreading the word in your church. And we're hoping to soon update this video tour so people can show it in councils, classes, or wherever ministry leaders are gathered.

The momentum is growing. We're getting about 15,000 pageviews per week - a 50% increase in just the past month. But the potential is still so much more - most people involved in local church ministries haven't yet joined The Network.

Other ideas? What else can we do to get more people connecting on The Network?

I think the Classis suggestion is a good one, and maybe in addition to the letter suggesting it to churches, a letter could be sent to the Clerks of Classes with a copy of the updated presentation on CD/DVD. Perhaps you could even find some network users from around the country to be the face of the network at Classis if travel is cost-prohibitive?

Thanks. I love the idea of having Network users - especially you "Community Builders" - represent The Network at classes! Much more do-able then sending staff, and they'd probably listen to a local person more :-)

We'll be getting to work on updating that video soon. In the meantime, if you do have opportunity to speak to classes about The Network, grab it. Video or not, I've done many presentations where I just took people on a live tour of the stuff I find interesting about The Network (show the various sections, look at the Top 10 list, show some of the cool features, create an account for someone in the audience to show how easy it is).

So if you have an opportunity to do your own personalized tour, go for it! And, even beyond the video, let us know how else we can assist you (e.g. Network mug to give away? something else?).

It would be helpful to have an about us/purpose page or something explaining the mission/goal. In order to find something, I had to search and find this form with the link to the email sent to churchs. 

Also, perhaps including an article in the Banner about "The Network"

Thanks! That "New to the Network?" page is exactly what I was looking for! Perhaps putting it on the home page would make it more assessable. 

oops, I guess I have not been faithfully reading every article of the Banner!!!!

Thanks for your work!

So far, despite a lot of emails, and local bulletin notices, few in our congregation have registered on the Network. I would like to see more use of it as there is so much information, but perhaps there needs to be more interest stimulated and a need to go there. I don't have any suggestions right now, but would like to hear ideas that have worked.

I've sometimes just sent a personal email to someone at church along these lines.

Dear _________,

I just spotted this article about [topic related your ministry] on the network, and I thought you might find it helpful for your ministry. It seems like there is often interesting information here, and you can subscribe to receive email updates for this [blog/forum/topic] by visiting this page. [Include link.]

Thanks for everything you do!

If they choose to sign up or not, that's up to them, but I know of several ministry leaders who have subscribed and read the content regularly, even if they don't frequently comment on the site.

I hope this is the right place for this.

I signed up yesterday, and posted a comment. Today, I received an email indicating, I think, that some has responded to my comment, but every time I try to go back to the topic where I posted, or several other locations on the Network, I get this message:

 Access denied You are not authorized to access this page. What's happening? Ken