Have you ever seen Fury? Its an amazing movie about a group of guys who are in a tank in the second World War. Check it out if you get a chance.
The amazing part of this movie is that during the filming, one of the actors became a Christian.
Simply put, Shia Labeouf said that he couldn't just read the bible and pray in a fake way as the script called for his character to do. But God touched him.
What a beautiful sense of the Holy Spirit.
As you all know, I've been a youth pastor for a couple of years now, and whats amazing to me is people constantly think I'm doing good things, and working for the Lord.
But I do nothing at all!
It is only through the power of the Holy Spirit that people come to Christ, and as we see in Shia's case, you don't need a pastor, or youth pastor, or mentor, or priest to lead you to Christ. Just open your Bible. Talk to Him. He is begging you too.
I am Nothing. He is everything.
I can't help but think of this scene over and over and over: Here Am I. Send Me!
More on Isaiah 6:8-9 soon.
Chained To Him.
Now, the key is to get the attention of the SEO's (Search Engine Optimization, here is a great beginners guide). Which means we want our pages to be Relevant and Popular.
I run social media for my church. I wanted to do this to the best of my ability, so after months of talking to people, reading blogs, looking up research, and taking advantage of every resource I possibly could, I put everything together to the use of social media in 4 simple rules.
1 - Consistency is King
Post. Like. Update. Blog. Write. Check-in. Respond. Regularly. But no more than once per day.
2 - Link Everything
Everything needs to be linked to each other in order to grab the SEO's attention and create traffic to and from webpage to webpage. So link everything. Blog to Twitter, Twitter to Facebook, Facebook to blog, Facebook to Instagram. Link everything.
3 - Quality Over Quantity
The old tried and true rule. Make sure that whatever you post is of the highest quality. If its a picture, make sure its not blurry and its grainy. If its a blog check for spelling errors (I know, I should take my own advice seriously!). Whatever it is. Quality speaks wonders.
4 - Protect Yourself
The last thing you want for yourself or your business is to have a negative user experience (UX), or get a bad reputation from a review. Make sure that you are posting things you are allowed to post! For example, if you are posting pictures of kids at VBS, make sure you get the parents permission or at the very least, inform the parents of this possibility before posting it online. Give the parents an opportunity to opt out before your splatter pictures of their kids online. (I'm saying this from experience!)
Above all else, remember these 3 goals.
Create Community. Maintain Relationships. Communicate Vision.
