Here’s to hoping your Independence Day weekend is spectacular…
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Here are a few ways you can be sure to have dismal results from your direct mail campaign:
Follow these simple steps and you can easily torpedo your whole campaign. Which is cool, because you have plenty of money to start the new church, right?
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I’m writing this as a response to Ron Klabunde’s post 10 Ways to Create Margin. Its a good read and something every planter should think about. Margins go hand in hand with health. Church planters will be told over and over make sure you have margin in your life. The root biblical concept is Sabbath. We weren’t made to run 24/7. Here’s the problem. Margins aren’t possible. Not only are margins not possible but to extend the writing analogy the words don’t fit on the paper anymore. They go off onto the desk and up the wall. Ron’s point is correct: as the organization grows it gets even worse. Every minute of the day you will be faced with great demands for your time. This is why pastors don’t develop leaders, deepen their faith, study, disciple people, etc. They have too many urgent things that have to be done. The interesting thing is that when emergencies arise suddenly there is time. If your kid breaks his arm you’ll find time to take him to the doctor. Suddenly what was urgent can wait. So if crises can interrupt the urgent things, then why not time with your wife, vacation, personal time with God? The harsh reality is that you will spend your time on what you value. If all your time is going towards preparing for Sunday morning, then the show has become an idol. Pray that God makes urgent in your life the most important things.
Tags: church planter · church planting · margins · new churches · ron klabundeNo Comments.
Here’s our weekly round-up of the best church planting blog posts we’ve seen:
And a few book reviews:
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There is some confusion about whether or not churches need to apply for 501c3 exemption with the IRS. The answer is yes and no.
According to IRS Publication 1828,
To qualify for tax-exempt status, [churches] must meet the following requirements:
• the organization must be organized and operated exclusively for religious … purposes,
• net earnings may not inure to the benefit of any private individual or shareholder,
• no substantial part of its activity may be attempting to influence legislation,
• the organization may not intervene in political campaigns, and
• the organization’s purposes and activities may not be illegal or violate fundamental public policy.
So,
Churches that meet the requirements of IRC section 501(c)(3) are automatically considered tax exempt and are not required to apply for and obtain recognition of tax-exempt status from the IRS.
The IRS 1023 form, used to apply for 501c3 exemption, is something of a beast. There are lots of essay answers and you have to compile financial data. It is not impossible, but I don’t know any pastors that got into ministry hoping to fill one of these bad boys out. Oh, and it costs $750 to apply.
The official reason to apply is not to determine if the church is exempt or not. All churches are. The question it does answer is whether your organization is a church or not. Wouldn’t it be awful to get audited by the IRS five years in and then have them come back and say, “No, you’re really a political activity committee,” or “You’re actually a financial counseling service.” Then all of the contributions ever made to the church could be nullified, and therefore taxable to the donors. Ouch. Fortunately, the IRS has never been in that business and generally takes an arm’s-length approach to churches.
Practically speaking, what it does is grease the donation wheels. Probably you didn’t know that churches are automatically exempt before reading this. Chances are really good that the manager at the local store that you are soliciting for a donation for your c0mmunity service event doesn’t know that either. Some will not donate anything until they have an IRS 501c3 determination letter with your church’s name on it in their hands. Sure, you could argue, “But we don’t need one!” But let’s face it, some corporations that provide nonprofit discounts and donations have a beauracracy that requires having that determination letter. Wouldn’t it be easier just to be able to hand them one?
So, you can decide for yourself whether to apply or not. Just know that it is way easier to apply at the beginning, because you get to use proposed budget figures for the financials. If you wait several years in, you’ll have to provide actual income & expense figures. That’s a taller order.
featured on newchurches.com
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So you’ve spent way more time than you had anticipated creating the new website for your church plant. Then you went and did your best to optimize it with on page SEO techniques like making sure you have meta descriptions and keywords for each page. Your site has been up for a while – do you have any idea how many people have visited the site? Do you know which pages within your site are most viewed? The answers to these questions and others can help you fine-tune your site based on your visitors’ behavior.
Google Analytics is a free service that you can sign up for to get all kinds of metrics about your website. Take the Google Analytics tour for a great overview. It takes about 45 seconds to set up your free account. The hardest part is copying and pasting some HTML code to each page of your website. Depending on how you manage your site (the “back end”), you should be able to do this yourself without too much trouble. Or you should be able to ask your designer/site host to do it for you.
Either way, knowing what happens on your site is way better than just hoping that it works.
featured on newchurches.com
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It’s been a slow week but here’s our round-up of the best church planting blog posts we saw over the past two weeks. Got a blog or post you want us to review? Let us know in the comments.
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Church planters are always asking me, “How do I get my site to show up on Google?” When you publish a new site, it’s like being a bottle in the ocean. The object can found, but the odds are low. Getting your site to rank on Google is the art/science of Search Engine Optimization or SEO. There are services you can pay to do the work for you, but I don’t recommend it because you can do all the work yourself. If you are the kind of person that pays to have gas put in their car, or pays the UPS store $10 to put your item in a box for you, then you might be a good candidate. But if you are a church planter on a tight budget (which is redundant because every church plant budget it tight), do a little research and do the work yourself.
Step 1: Add your URL to Search Engines. Google and Yahoo are the two most used. Click the links for instructions.
Step 2: Place free online ads. Here’s an old post about this step. In addition post a free listing on the following sites:
Step 3: Get Social. Social Media is your friend. At a minimum the church should have:
There are literally hundreds of social media sites. My advice: pick the most popular and stick to those. If you have teens in the church that want to start a social media ministry, then let them update to their hearts content. But you don’t want to spend all your time online and not in the real world. Think of each of these social media outlets as another bottle in the ocean with the same message. You get enough bottles out there and people are going to start finding you. Don’t expect that by doing these things you will show up first on Google. It takes time. Remember to be diligent about keeping your website current and posting new content to social media sites. Do this and over time you will show up and you might even win the popularity contest. And if you only take away one thing, remember links are king.
Tags: church planting · Marketing · new churches · SEO · websiteNo Comments.
We hope you enjoy our weekly round-up of the best church planting blogs we read this week:
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Social media ain’t about one-night stands, it’s about relationships
’nuff said
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