Preview 4: The Results

In our last newsletter we discovered The Virtual Brainstorming how it will allow you to begin to network with others in ministry like never before. But if I may for a moment, I would like to begin this preview of The Results area with a quick thought about what it means to program a weekly service in a contemporary church. If you play a role in the planning of the weekly services at your church, you understand the pressures we experience each week. Here at MinistryHub.com we state the obvious; Sunday Comes Every Seven Days. At Willow Creek Community Church they call it Getting Beyond The 52, meaning that once your Sunday service is finished, and you've taken time off to rest, eat, sleep and see your families, we each have roughly 52 hours to do it all over again before Sunday comes once more. As I stated in the last newsletter, when we started MinistryHub.com we took a survey to see how churches were spending their time, and what we found was that many of those churches were spending 20+ of those 52 hours searching for the right idea. I, obviously, am all for using the arts to create compelling services, but I believe the effect of this weekly time crunch and the pressures that it brings has created a consumer mentality out of all of us. After all, we need those ideas to keep the ball rolling, right? So to accommodate this need, many, if not the majority of websites in existence, help us consume more and more product, to meet our needs, our individual needs. I believe though that we have all been called foremost into ministry, not only to be consumers, we do have to do our job after all, but more so to be ministers to help others. Although we work to build and strengthen our individual churches, we should also be able to build and strengthen The Church. I say all of this to reinforce the thought that when you participate in a Virtual Brainstorming Session and make suggestions, you are not only helping yourself and your team, but you are helping many others in ministry as well. For when you submit ideas, and those ideas then get stored for that topic and they continue to grow, it's here, in The Results area, that we can all experience the full force of MinistryHub.com!

If you have entered The Results area of MinistryHub.com, then you have selected your topic in The Hub, participated in a Virtual Brainstorming Session where you suggested ideas, ranked those suggestions and then paired elements together that you believe would work well together, closed out your session and have now moved on to The Results. For each of the 4 categories; Music, Videos, Drama, Other Ideas, you can set the display settings to My Groups Ideas, showing the ideas you and your group just brainstormed, or you can select All Ideas For Topic, where you can view every idea that has ever been selected for that topic. This display of ideas can then be sorted by; Ranked, this is a cumulative average of the overall rankings of each element. Popularity; is the ranking average in addition to how many times each element has been suggested, and last is a simple alphabetical sorting.

Towards the bottom of The Results is an area for other product related to your selected topic. It's here you will find graphics, books and other products, as well as a Print Friendly Option that allows you to select what categories and how you want the printed document to be displayed. This way you can print every idea you find and then bring that list into your own team brainstorming sessions, because we all know that those meetings are usually only as good as what you bring into them.

Once you have found the right idea, just select and click the title and you will then be taken into The Store, where you will then have several option that you can then make, but we'll dig into that in our next newsletter.

I'm curious what are your thoughts, about what was said earlier, about us being a consumer vs. a minister? Let us know your thoughts.

Tim Yates, MinistryHub.com

Preview 3: Virtual Brainstorming

All right, so far we have given an overview of MinsitryHub.com, and in the last newsletter we dug into The Hub. So up next is The Virtual Brainstorming Area.

First, why brainstorming? When we first began to develop MinistryHub.com, we knew we needed a format that would allow those in ministry to communicate with one another, as well as, begin to develop a continually growing database of service ideas. So in the early stages we sent a survey to over 15,000 churches throughout the United States. From that survey, we discovered that an amazing 95% of those churches utilize brainstorming in some form during their weekly creative process. So, we thought why not use this format as the main focus of the site. Brainstorming is a process that churches already use and understand.

So how does it work?

The Virtual Brainstorming Area of MinistryHub.com has been broken into two parts. First is the Suggest area where you Brainstorm for ideas. Its here that you suggest, just like a typical brainstorming session, specials, worship choruses, movie clips, media clips, dramas and even out of the box ideas, that are then displayed in the Suggested Items area. When your team decides that enough ideas has been submitted, just select the Go To button and move on to Rank And Pair. In Rank and Pair there are two simple questions that need to be answered for each suggested element. First: Would you use it? Yes, No, Maybe or does the element not really apply to the selected topic? Then second: Are there any two items that work well together? You know, a song that perfectly sets up a drama, or a movie clip that leads into a song. If you see two that will work, simply link them together. That's it, in just minutes you've contributed and ranked your ideas, that are then collectively gathered and sorted among all of the ideas collected throughout Ministryhub.com for that topic.

Two Different Rooms, Two Purposes.

There are two types of brainstorming rooms found within MinistryHub.com. First: The Virtual Brainstorming Room. This room was designed to create an online replication of an actual brainstorming session that you might experience with your own creative team. Enter a room and you will see up to 8 people can sit around a chat based table and begin to search for ideas for their services. Join a public room from within The Hub and begin brainstorming with others in ministry from throughout the country, or create a private room for your own creative team. As you know, one of the biggest challenges of an all-volunteer creative team is finding a meeting time that works for everyone. Through the Create A Room feature found in The Hub you can create a brainstorming time that works for you and your team, such as, later in the evening when kids are in bed, or over a lunch break. All they need is a computer with an Internet connection to join in anytime, anywhere.

The second type of room is called The Open Idea Room. This room has been designed so you can draw as many people as you wish, to gather as many ideas as possible. Create this room to remain open for 24, 48 or 72 hours, and then send an invitation to anyone with an email address. Either directly from within The Hub or when the room has been created, a link will be sent to you that you can then forward to whomever you wish to participate. Think about it, how many time have you been stopped in the hall, before or after a service, for someone to tell you about a great song that you just have to do! With the use of the Open Idea Room you can begin to capture those ideas and many more while involving many people from within your church. When the room time has finally expired you can then go to the Rank and Pair area and answer the two questions for each element.

Room Features

One of the first things you will see when you enter the Virtual Brainstorming Area is the chat based table. Its here you can communicate to your friends or make new ones with the use of this chat area. Next select the tab for Suggest A New Item and begin making suggestions. In this area select the tab you wish to contribute to, enter in the search field what you are trying to locate, select your element from the items listed and then make a comment or description and then select suggest. We've added some fun things also, like emoticons, the Umbrella of Grace and if someone bags on your idea, hit them with a Splat Ball! Just select their table icon a pop-up will appear and fire away!

Once again it's our desire that The Virtual Brainstorming Area will be a fun place where you can connect with your team, or others in ministry, and enjoy yourself as you work towards building compelling services that can clearly communicate the Gospel.

Next up is The Results area, the real rewards of MinsitryHub.com!

The MinistryHub.com Team

Preview 2: The Hub

In its simplest form The Hub was designed to assist you in the building of an online creative team, existing from those of your home church, friends and then others in ministry. No longer will you need to search for ideas alone, either as an individual or alone as a church. Sign in and connect instantly with others through the use of the features found in The Hub, such as; The Buddy List, The Hub Chat, Featured Topics, Featured Products, and the 5 main directory tabs; Brainstorm Your Topic, My Queue, My History, My Network and Featured Product.

The Hub Chat

This simple chat area is just a quick way to speak to anyone who has signed into The Hub. Chat with others to join you in a Virtual Brainstorming Room or just to say hello. Using the Hub Chat you can begin to develop relationships instantly.

Buddy List

The Buddy List is similar to a typical buddy system that you are probably already used too. It's a quick way to access your friends and see who is currently online. Find your friends, see their profile, send them a message, begin a private chat, or find what room they are in and join them instantly.

Featured Topic

This area is designed for quick access to Virtual Brainstorming Sessions that are on demand, such as seasonal holidays like Easter or Christmas, as well as current ministry trends, such as The DaVinci Code. With the Featured Topic area you can sign in and begin brainstorming immediately.

Featured Product
The Featured Product area is connected to the topic list. Just select the topic you wish to brainstorm and the Featured Product area will display the most popular product for that topic.

The next section you will notice are the 5 easy tabs that direct you to the full benefits of MinistryHub.com.

Brainstorm Your Topic

The first of the 5 tabs allows you to select the topic you wish to explore. As the instructions state, it really is easy with our two step process; first make your selection from over 214 topics to brainstorm, and then second, either join a room currently in progress or create a room that works at a time for you and your team.

Creating a room is simple, you only need to answer three easy questions. First Which type of room do you want? You have two options here, a traditional Virtual Brainstorming Room that holds up to eight people, or an Open Idea Room, where you can invite as many as you wish to participate. All they need is an Internet connection and an active email to send the invitation. The second question is When do you want to room to begin? Here you can create a room for a time that works for you, or begin brainstorming instantly. And then last, Who do you want to brainstorm with? It's here you can invite those from your buddy list or enter any number of emails and they will be sent an invitation to join. Once you've answered these three questions, just select Go and depending on your settings, if you have selected now, you will join your room instantly, or if you created a room for a later time you will be directed to the area titled, My Queue.

My Queue

The My Queue area of MinistryHub.com allows you to interact and connect, with those invited to the Virtual Brainstorming Rooms, that either you have created or rooms that you have been invited to participate. For the rooms that you have created, you can edit the time, what type of room it is, as well as who has been invited. Verify if they have received their invitation, and if they have accepted or declined to join in, as well as send them a message, or a reminder once again about your scheduled meeting time.

The second section is for meetings that you have been invited to. It's here you can accept or decline the invitation as well as send messages to the other participants.

My History

The My History tab gives you access to The Results area for all of the topics that you have previously brainstored, as well as access to those products that you have tagged as Save This Idea For Later.

My Network
It's our desire for the customers of MinistryHub.com to be able to connect with others in ministry, without having to share their email address if they choose to do so. We make that possible through My Network and it's two main areas. First is People Search, where you can locate like-minded individuals with the same background, church size or location as you. Second you can connect with them through, the Message Center, by sending them a message, adding them to your Buddy List or by inviting them to a private chat.

Featured Items

The last tab we will look at is the Featured Items tab. Just as the name implies it's here you will find articles, advice, surveys as well as product that we would like to bring to your attention.