Episcopal Church Foundation Vestry Papers - for leading congregations

Podcasts, YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, Facebook. We hear continually how churches need to embrace the new social media to help share our good news. Yet so few of us do it, or it takes forever to get it going.

What’s going on?

Trialability.

I learned this concept in the fall of 1985 in my first semester at the Ohio State University in a Ph.D. program in New Media Technologies. In terms of technology, that was about six light years ago. Yet the concept is one I return to more than any other I learned in the nine long years it took me to finish my degree.

Basically, trialability states that in many cases over half the inertia in a system is in the first repetition. This means that while it is a great idea to put up a podcast on your website, actually capturing the audio, turning it into an MP3 file, and posting it on your website for the first time can feel like climbing Mt. Everest. The second time will be more like scaling Campbell Hill, the highest point in Ohio.

So here is what it is important to do in launching any new technology for ministry. Concentrate entirely and completely on getting it done once. Start to finish. No skipping steps. No short cuts. And be sure a number of people know those steps and can perform them. The rest will come much easier if you start right.

So if you are planning to roll out a new format or method, at least double the time needed to get it up and running and push out the start date far enough to have the time to do it right.

Video, sound, pictures, distribution lists, password protected websites, RSS feeds, blogs, tweets – these are all incredible tools for ministry. But remember; things take time. Give it the time to do it right once. The rest will come much easier.