Tickle Part 1 - Churches and New Media - What, why and who

The Art of Tickling - What, why and who?

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G'day! Welcome! We are starting a new brief series based on a session I did at the 2011 Christians in New Media Awards and Conference. This session addressed the question of "How can traditional churches and those with older congregations use new media without excluding people?"

What is New Media?

Now you may well be asking what is this New Media or Social Media as it is also known. It is Websites, Blogs, Mobile Applications, Video, Audio and Social Networks such as Facebook and Twitter! At the conference, we were given the opportunities to investigate how to do those 8 things, to a greater degree of skill! This series, based on that session is about putting that knowledge into practise!

To use New Media is to Tickle!

Now instead of using our question each time I want to address, I have summed it up into one word - Tickle!  Here is what Tickle stands for!

Teach & Train

Interact & Inspire

Create and Communicate

Kind and Kindle

Love and Learn

Encourage and Explore

So by the time this short series is over, hopefully we will have learnt a bit more about the art of Tickling and how to get people using it!

Why Tickle?

However, before we know how to tickle, there are two questions to answer. Our first question is why. You may well be here and not know why you should be using new media and tickle! Why do we want to know how to use New Media and include everybody? The church of the New Testament had the 3 r's! There were seen as radical! There were seen to take risks as led by the Holy Spirit! There were seen to be relevant to their communities! How far from this has your church gone?

• It can shows church acting as a community!
• Gives the excluded and elderly an opportunity to know they are loved, valued and included.
• Gives those same people, the chance to use their talents and spiritual gifts!
• Further along those lines it gives them an opportunity to further enhance and be trained in the use of their talents and knowledge!

So that's why!

Who are the excluded?

But now a second question remains before we get to how. That question is: Who are we excluding - either deliberately or accidentally? Here are the kinds of people, in our churches, who I think are generally excluded from participating:

• Elderly
• Home confined & isolated
• Disabled
• Homeless
• Unemployed
• Poor - financially and technologically
• Disinterested and self-excluded

Part 2 will be tomorrow and that will be about ways in which I have tickled. Thank you.

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