Tag Archives: church

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Nextdoor: The New Social Network You Must Check Out

If you’re a pastor of a church, social media can be a frustrating thing. You want to use social media to connect with people who might be looking for a good church, so you create a Facebook page.  You put out the word, and people start “liking” your church page – but they don’t even live in your city, let alone your neighborhood!  But instead, it’s your grandma, your high school best friend, 2 weird people from your email address book, and 3 spam accounts that want you to buy Oakley sunglasses.

If only there was some way to connect naturally with people right in your neighborhood!  Some way to know what what going on in their lives, without stopping by 500 homes every week.

Then, someone created NextDoor.

It’s a social network that is geographically based by your address, not relationally based.  You actually get to know your neighbors, people who live right in your neighborhood.

On Nextdoor, people:

  • Share things they saw in the neighborhood
  • Post events (garage sales, etc.)
  • Warn about theft or vandalism
  • Share news that’s relevant to the community.
  • Post about lost or found pets
  • Ask about good places to Trick or Treat
  • And other things neighbors do…

Here’s why you should check out NextDoor:

1.  Geographic connections.

Facebook is great, but it’s not easy to find people who are geographically connected.  They may be connected by relationships, but it’s not a place where people come to connect with people who live two streets over.  Besides, if you’re like me, you have too many FB friends to even see most things they post!

Nextdoor allows you to talk with people and stay up with what’s going on in your neighborhood, instead of lunch photos from that girl you went to high school with.

nextdoor screenshot

2. Early adopters & relational people.

For right now, those who are on Nextdoor are people who are very open to trying something new.  They aren’t the last guy holding out from joining something new.  As Guy P told me this past week when he visited our church (from Nextdoor), “I knew you were pretty savvy. You’re on Nextdoor, after all!”  They’re also people who are tired of the phenomenon of 1/3 of Americans not knowing their neighbors.  These are people you ought to get to know.

3. Ground floor influence.

I am now a Neighborhood Lead on my Nextdoor network, because I was one of the earliest adopters, and because I invited so many people.  They make it easy to invite geographically, since they (at the time of this writing) pay for you to send postcard invites to 50 people at a time in your neighborhood.  (You never have to touch the postcards, but you can customize the message with your name.)

For me, this was a no-brainer: Get to know my neighbors better, and let someone else pay for it?  Yes, please.

I am planning to use Nextdoor more intentionally in the next few months.  But without any particular plan, we’ve had 2 men start attending church from it in the past few months.

4. Very little noise.

Facebook and Twitter have been noisy for a while.  And they are getting noisier, with all the ads and commercialization.  Nextdoor is like a quieter room – you don’t have to talk with a megaphone to be heard.

In fact, on our Nextdoor, we will sometimes go for a few days with no posts at all.  Which is fine with me.  No one is feeling pressure to fill up the empty space, which makes your message stand out more.

5. No Farmville.

Right now, Nextdoor is simple.  No apps, games, and ads.  Maybe someday they’ll complicate it, but for right now, it’s uncluttered.

6. News about what’s going on in your community.

Oklahoma City is using Nextdoor to put out information about community events that are geographically based.  Law enforcement in OKC is using it to share ideas about safety.

I use it to share graphics about what is coming up at our church, specifically events like Trunk or Treat, or Easter. I’ve used it to invite people to join in on one of our discipleship campaigns by downloading my free discipleship tool.

If you’d like to check to see if Nextdoor is available in your area, or if you can launch a Nextdoor for your neighborhood, CLICK HERE.  (For a limited time, if you recruit enough neighbors to launch a neighborhood Nextdoor network in an area where it is not available, you get a $25 Amazon gift card.)

In the comments, I’d like to hear:

What social networks are you currently involved in?  What are their negatives?  Is it hard to break through?

Are you on Nextdoor currently?  How are you using it?

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How Living In the Urgent Can Kill Your Creativity

Hey pastors! As one of you for the last 21 years, I know all about pastoral stress… and how it can damage your ministry and your creativity.

frustration with how to disciple new believers

If you haven’t read Stephen Covey’s excellent book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People,” you’re missing out.  Out of the many helpful things in the book, here’s one I have found most useful:  Covey’s distinction between URGENT things and IMPORTANT things.

  • Urgent things shout at you – flashing lights, ringing phones.
  • Important things will not – maintenance, relationships, planning.
  • Urgent and Important things must be done or things will fall apart immediately.
  • Important, not Urgent things must be done or things will fall apart eventually.
  • Urgent and Important things are like filling up with gas when you’re on empty.
  • Important things are like changing the oil after 3,000 miles.

He draws a matrix like this:

Quadrant 2 graphic

As you can see, Quadrant 1 is Urgent & Important.  Quadrant 2 is Important, but not Urgent.

Now, think about your life in terms of this diagram.

I think of Sunday as a Quadrant 1 day.   If you don’t lead worship, don’t preach… if you fail to do whatever your core activities are, there will be an immediate negative effect.  Some activities eventually change quadrants.  For instance, sermon prep is a Quadrant 2 activity on Tuesday, but Saturday night… it’s moved up.

Here’s why it’s better to do activities while they’re still in Quadrant 2:

1. Living in Quadrant 1 is exhausting.

Living your whole life in Quadrant 1 means you’ll be like Mario, leaping from crisis to crisis, barely escaping destruction at each turn, always inches from disaster.

It means not being able to sleep because of the stress of upcoming deadlines.

That’s exhausting.  Better to live in Quadrant 2, where you do important things before they move into Quadrant 1.

2. Relaxed thinking is better than crisis thinking.

You do better quality thinking when you’re relaxed.  Research is clear: You make better quality decisions when your stress is lower.

In his ground-breaking book Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, Malcolm Gladwell tells of a study where college students were brought to a snack table, and offered a choice between healthy snacks (fruit, etc) and unhealthy snacks (cookies, cupcakes).  Half of the students were given a phone number to memorize and repeat back after the snack.  Those students were much more likely to choose the unhealthy snack.  Why?  They defaulted, under even that mild stress, to choosing what was immediately rewarding, instead of what was smarter.

3. Creativity flows better when you are not in urgent mode.

Ever think that your creativity goes up right before the deadline?  It doesn’t.  Your desperation does.  You may produce, but it’s not your creativity that gets your sermon finished!  It’s shame, and the potential embarrassment of having nothing to say.

It’s not more creative, it’s just… finished.

Instead, take time and focus early in the week to get in a creative flow.  (I’ll be writing more on this soon.)  You may not think of yourself as a particularly creative person, but I bet that you’re more creative when you aren’t “under the gun.”

4. Creativity is useless when you have no time left to execute.

In Quadrant 2, when you think of a really creative way to present a sermon, you can do it.  You can find that prop, create that Powerpoint, locate that great historical story, find that song that complements, think of that person whose testimony should be shared.

But in Quadrant 1, even if you think of it, you often don’t have enough time to do anything about it. I’ve been there too many times, finishing up a sermon on Sunday morning, when I realized – “You know what would be GREAT?!… ah, never mind, I don’t have time to do that this morning!”

Don’t do it.  Commit to living in the Important, not Urgent.

One final thought:

“What if I’m already overwhelmed?  How do I get into Quadrant 2 when Quadrant 1 is already so full?”

I’m glad you asked.  You can’t just stop doing Quadrant 1 activities.  Everything would fall apart, because they really ARE important!  There are only 2 places that you can find time to do Quadrant 2 activities at first: Quadrants 3 & 4.

Here’s what that might look like:

  • Turn off the phone.
  • Block Netflix.
  • Shut off talk radio.
  • Turn off the TV.
  • Use Stayfocusd to keep off Facebook.
  • Get off Youtube.
  • Turn off your wireless access altogether for 3 hours.

And do something Quadrant 2.  Like this:

  • Prepare for NEXT week’s message.
  • Prep for a series that’s a month away on your sermon calendar.
  • Invest in a key relationship.
  • Learn something new.
  • Make a discipleship plan PDF (or download mine!)
  • Do that item you’ve been putting off.
  • Check your calendar for tomorrow.
  • Schedule lunch with someone.
  • Pray.

I think you’ll find that if you’ll do this for a week, Quadrant 1 will be slightly smaller, and Quadrant 2 will be slightly larger.

Now, imagine 6 months from now, if you did that every day!