Don’t be Afraid to Pay for Social Media Ads

Let’s recap the economics of how social media companies work. Your church gives the social media companies free content (video, photos, etc…). In exchange they provide a free service that will connect your church with social media users. 

Of course, somewhere in this exchange, the social media companies need to make money, so they sell ads to companies who can then target users based on what their users display an interest in. Therefore the more users that join their social media platform and use it, the more money the social media platform can make.  

Social media platforms have one goal: keeping users engaged. Whether that’s watching videos, interacting with comments, or just scrolling through articles, they want to keep the users on their platform for as long as possible. By keeping users engaged on their platforms, they can charge companies to show ads to their users. 

However, social media platforms’ goals often do not align with most churches. For most churches, the goal of social media is getting the word out about their events and programs with the hope that the viewer will click on the social media and leave the platform to view the content on the church website.

So how do we solve this problem?

Most churches’ first reaction is to see if they can create more engaging content that will organically reach people.  And while that should be a consistent strategy with creating content, it doesn’t always solve the problem. 

So eventually at some point we will need to…

… Read More

—

Click here to read the rest of the story from our content source/partners – Thom Rainer.

قالب وردپرس

Kanye West Releases New Song, Campaign Ad Urging Americans to Work Together, Rely on God

Kanye West Releases New Song, Campaign Ad Urging Americans to Work Together, Rely on God


Kanye West, who is currently running for president, just released a new campaign video on Instagram urging Americans to work together and turn to their faith in order to insight change. He also released a new song about his presidential run.

“What is best for our Nation? Our people? What is just? True justice? We have to think about all these things together as a people,” West says in the ad.

“We as a people will revive our nation’s commitment to faith. To what our Constitution calls ‘the free exercise of religion,’ including, of course, prayer,” he goes on to state. The campaign ad ends with the big letters “VOTE” sprawling across the screen and encourages Americans to vote to make a positive change in their country.

Kayne Wests Campaign video

In addition to the campaign video, Kanye also dropped a song in a Twitter post, with the caption “The whole team is so energized that I had to release theme music NAH NAH NAH.” The song is set to scenes from Star Wars and a UFC knockout fight. In the song, he raps about his Presidential campaign, saying, “next time you text, can it wait? You are talkin’ to a presidential candidate.”

The song is also about how we should trust God for protection and let Him fight our battles for us, as evidenced…

… Read More

Click here to read the rest of the story from our content source/partners – Christian Headlines.

قالب وردپرس

Grape Expectations

The seasonal selection of Niagaras, Lakemonts, and Jupiters go far beyond the “reds” and “greens” of the grocery store.

The post Grape Expectations appeared first on TASTE.

SBC prof wants discipline for churches that promote ‘wokeness’

Owen Strachan, formerly executive director of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, was named Monday, May 12, 2014, as the organization’s new president. | (Photo: CBMW)

A Southern Baptist theologian in Kansas City, Missouri, is under fire from some pastors and Christian academics for recommending Matthew 18 discipline for those who “teach and promote wokeness.”

“In churches and institutions, those who teach and promote wokeness — binding the conscience of people with new unbiblical laws — must face Matthew 18 discipline. The church has tolerated the spread of wokeness too long. It is time for a line in the sand,” Owen Strachan, an associate professor of Christian theology and director of the center for public theology at the Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, said in tweet Saturday.

The tweet drew attention to a recent series of presentations the professor made at Redeemer Bible Church in Minnetonka, Minnesota, on Christianity and Wokeness.

In Matthew 18:15–17, Jesus outlines a multi-step approach for dealing with unrepentant sin which culminates with excommunication from the church community.

“Wokeness” is commonly associated with the Black Lives…

… Read More

—-

Click Read More to read the rest of the story from our content source/partners – The Christian Post.

قالب وردپرس

Pastor Patrick Garcia resigns from The Hills Church

Patrick Garcia resigned as lead pastor of The Hills Church in Indiana. | YouTube/The Hills Church

Two years after his controversial firing from the multi-campus Crossroads Christian Church in Indiana, Patrick Garcia has resigned as the lead pastor of The Hills Church, created by former Crossroads leaders and members, after confessing to a monthslong affair with another woman.

“I wanted to inform you that I am resigning from my position as the Lead Pastor at The Hills Church. Ashamedly, for the past 11 months I’ve engaged in an inappropriate relationship, both physically and emotionally. The Bible makes it clear that one can’t lead a church while abdicating his first responsibility of leading the home. My family—especially my wife Savannah—deserves better than the husband she’s had over the past few years. The Hills Church deserves a leader of integrity who lives above reproach,” Garcia, 33, said in a statement released by the church on Facebook Sunday.

Garcia said he will undergo “a season of restoration so that the root of my brokenness and dysfunction can be addressed.”

“Let me be clear: No one is to blame for this repeated wicked behavior but me. My…

… Read More

—-

Click Read More to read the rest of the story from our content source/partners – The Christian Post.

قالب وردپرس

Tribe That Formerly Practiced Witchcraft and Killed Missionaries Turns to God

Tribe That Formerly Practiced Witchcraft and Killed Missionaries Turns to God


The Yali Tribe in Papa New Guinea, which used to kill missionaries, practice witchcraft and engage in cannibalism, is now following God and graciously accepting 2,500 Bibles flown to them.

One-thousand four hundred of the Bibles were children’s Bibles, while the rest of them were regular Bibles. The Bibles came from Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF), a Christian organization that flies Bibles to areas that cannot receive them in other ways.

One of the Yali Tribe’s church ordered the Bibles after there were not enough to give to the Yali Tribe’s village, MAF reports. The Yali tribe were waiting for the plane to land and the women and children were celebrating by chanting in their local tongue and dancing.

One of the flight pilots, Dave Ringenberg, who is also an Instructor Pilot and the Director of Papua Operations, said that “It was a holy moment – one to be remembered.”

This flight took place 55 years after the tribe was first discovered by Mission Aviation Fellowship in a flight survey in 1965.

The Bibles handed out to the tribe were translated into southern Yali. After 32 years, the translation was completed in 2000. World Team missionary, Stan Dale, and a Yali man named Luliap Pahabol worked together to complete the Gospel of Mark, the first book to be completely translated.

Dale was working on the book of Acts when he and colleague Phil Masters…

… Read More

Click here to read the rest of the story from our content source/partners – Christian Headlines.

قالب وردپرس

Remembering Elie Wiesel’s Nobel Peace Prize: The power of trusting your past to God

Elie Wiesel, 81 year old Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize winning author, smiles during a press conference in Budapest, Hungary, Thursday, Dec. 10, 2009. (AP Photo/Bela Szandelszky)

Elie Wiesel was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on this day thirty-four years ago for his role as “the world’s leading spokesperson on the Holocaust.” Wiesel lived through the horrors of the Holocaust after he was sent to the Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps as a teenager. 

After his release, he became a journalist, but it took him ten years before he felt able to write on what he experienced. His memoir was originally published under the title And the World Remained Silent but is better known to English-speaking audiences as Night. He has since written over forty books on the Holocaust, but Night remains the most prominent. 

While it’s been at least fifteen years since I last read it, his haunting account of what he and others went through remains a powerful and formative influence on my understanding of the period, and the same is true for countless others. 

The platform he gained by poignantly sharing his experiences gave him the platform to become “the leading figure behind the establishment of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.” and positioned him to become an advocate for other persecuted minorities as well. 

How God can redeem your past

My hope and prayer is that no people group ever has to experience what the Jews faced at the hands of the Nazis in World War II, though even now there are people groups like the Uighur Muslims in China who are coming to know something of that struggle. Still, we don’t have to face a historical atrocity for God to be able to use us to help others. 

The willingness to be open about our past is often all the Lord needs to redeem those hardships and struggles in a way that helps others today. 

And it’s all right if it takes a process to reach the…

… Read More

—

Click Read More to read the rest of the story from our content source/partners – Denison Forum.

قالب وردپرس

Group Creates Site to Help Christian Voters Understand Candidates’ Platforms Through a Biblical Lens

Group Creates Site to Help Christian Voters Understand Candidates’ Platforms Through a Biblical Lens


The Salt & Light Council has created a new political resource to help biblically-minded voters parse through the candidates’ positions in line with a biblical worldview.

“Biblical Voter”, created two years ago by the council, has information on local, state, and national candidates for every government election.

The website informs voters by providing handouts, showing videos, and comparing Democrat and Republican candidates’ policy positions to what the Bible teaches. The website even has links to the four major Christian and Conservative Congressional Scorecards to showcase how each candidate aligns with a biblical worldview.

The scorecards come from a libertarian think tank Freedomworks, The Family Research Council, The Heritage Foundation, and Christian Coalition, which was co-founded by Pat Robertson.

The website also provides links to help visitors register to vote and find out where their polling place is.

There is also a link to help register others to vote by helping them with a voter drive. On the voter drive page there is a biblical voter pamphlet one can order online in addition to a voter registration kit.

In statements to The Christian Post, Salt & Light Council President Dran Reese explained, “If pastors aren’t making voting a priority treated equal to other priorities of the church, people are not going to…

… Read More

Click here to read the rest of the story from our content source/partners – Christian Headlines.

قالب وردپرس

Amy Coney Barrett Defends Her Pro-Life Beliefs: It’s the ‘Position of the Catholic Church’

Amy Coney Barrett Defends Her Pro-Life Beliefs: It’s the ‘Position of the Catholic Church’


Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett on Tuesday stood by her signing of a newspaper pro-life ad and her membership in a faculty pro-life group, although she did not disclose to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee how she may rule in future abortion cases.

If confirmed by the full Senate, Barrett would replace the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg and become the fifth woman to serve on the Supreme Court. She also would – according to Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham (S.C.) – become the first “woman who’s unashamedly pro-life” to serve on the high court.

Multiple Democratic senators, including Sens. Richard Blumenthal (Conn.) and Kamala Harris (Calif.), referenced a 2006 pro-life newspaper ad that included Barrett’s name and said the undersigned “oppose abortion on demand and support the right to life from fertilization to natural death.”

Barrett told GOP Sen. Josh Hawley (Mo.) she signed the ad while walking out of church with her family. It was sponsored by the St. Joseph County Right to Life.

“At the back of church there was a table set up for people on their way out of mass to sign a statement validating their commitment to the position of the Catholic church on life issues,” Barrett said. “… The statement that I signed, it was affirming the protection of life from conception to natural death.”

Barrett also was a member of…

… Read More

Click here to read the rest of the story from our content source/partners – Christian Headlines.

قالب وردپرس

COVID-related mental health disorders will increased suicides

Amid a dramatic increase in suicide over the last two decades, a number of faith leaders have weighed in on whether or not those who commit suicide are condemned to hell. | (Photo: Pexels)

A second wave of devastation stemming from the novel coronavirus pandemic including soaring suicides and drug overdoses is imminent with the declining mental health of communities, medical researchers warn and it is expected to disproportionately impact the poor, older adults, blacks and Hispanics.

The warning came in Mental Health Disorders Related to COVID-19–Related Deaths published in The Journal of the American Medical Association on Monday. The article was authored by NYU Grossman School of Medicine researchers: Dr. Naomi M. Simon from the Anxiety and Complicated Grief Program; Dr. Glenn N. Saxe from the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and Dr. Charles R. Marmar from the Center for Alcohol Use Disorders and PTSD.

“While nations struggle to manage the initial waves of the death and disruption associated with the pandemic, accumulating evidence indicates another ‘second wave’ is building: rising rates of mental health and substance use disorders,” the doctors wrote. “This imminent mental health surge will bring further challenges for individuals, families, and communities including increased deaths from suicide and drug overdoses. As with the first COVID-19 wave, the mental health wave will disproportionately affect Black and Hispanic individuals, older adults, lower socioeconomic…

… Read More

Click Read More to read the rest of the story from our content source/partners – The Christian Post.

قالب وردپرس