GC11 Report – Light & Life Communications

13. Jul, 2011 Categories: Delegate Info by andrea.anibal 1 Comment

Communication & Technology

Submitted by Jason Archer, Executive Director of Communication

There have been some significant changes happening in our World Ministries Center (WMC) in the past twelve months. I want to update you on a few of these changes as they relate to communication, technology and a stronger partnership between the WMC and the local church.

The Board of Bishops invited me to help be a part of leading our denomination into the 21st century. I began March 1, 2010, with a season of listening. From there, our team began to develop a strategy that could help the FMC innovate and refocus on the local church. In the past twelve months, we’ve effectively changed the structure of our team and the purpose of Light & Life Communications. Our history has been written in the publishing world. Our future lies in partnership with pastors, missionaries, leadership and community.

New vision

Our vision is simple: Creative, Coherent, Compelling, in the context of Community.

We’re morphing from a publishing house into a group of people creating and facilitating the movement of the Holy Spirit through His people who call themselves the Free Methodist Church. Our new communications team embraces four bold anchor points:

We’re creative, exciting. We’re more than print, more than Web.
We’re coherent. We’re communicating one message using many channels: Web, print, mobile, tablet and a wide variety of social networks like Facebook and Twitter.
We’re compelling. We’re meaningful. We’re all about kingdom. And we’ve got a story to tell.
We’re community. Our communications are no longer top-down or in pockets and isolated outlets. Now we’re talking together, like a family should.

For more info on individual staff members, visit www.llcomm.org/staff.

Finding Our Stride

Spring 2011 is a season of new life. This spring also reflected the state of Light & Life Communications. Since January 2011, we have added three full-time staff members and are grafting them into the vision/strategy/culture we are building. The vision is becoming clearer. The strategy is beginning to be implemented and tweaked along the way. Progress is slow but right and true. My fall 2010 BOA report outlined a few challenges the team was working on throughout the winter:

Fix what is broken
Get up to speed
Innovate.

Fix what is broken

Example: Budget

The multimedia area of FM Communications had a budget of about $150k. About half of the budget was funded by a $45k interdepartmental transfer from FMWM and a $30k gap where the department had to raise funds from outside FMCNA. What we found was we had two full-time people working on video and the lion’s share of their time and productivity were not directly related to FMC – USA vision. This was a broken system. We wish to see a healthier model: Simply fund a department, pay and resource its staff, and set them free to work. In previous years, the department was over budget between $40-100k.

>> What We Did

With prayer, sacrifice, hard work, and Dale Hill and his amazing Administration & Finance team, the FM Communications budget finished 2010 in the black.

Get Up to Speed

Examples: E-mail and Phone Systems

Our e-mail system and the technology infrastructure to support e-mail was woefully out of date. The phone system in the WMC was antiquated and inefficient from a cost/benefit analysis perspective. Our IT support staff from Computers in Ministry implemented a cloud-based collaboration suite from Microsoft which has allowed us to save dollars and provide world-class e-mail and collaboration tools to WMC staff and beyond. After doing a cost/benefit analysis of the phone system, we realized that with the right strategy and partner, we could save money and provide 21st century telephony services to a global staff. We are now seeing both of these realized.

>> What We Did

This fall we integrated a VoIP phone system which can potentially globalize the denomination. Today I have a phone in my office in Michigan and an iPhone. When you dial my direct line, the number will ring in Indianapolis, Michigan and on my iPhone. The Board of Bishops will be implementing these tools in their home offices. Today, I could call Dustin Weber in Jordan and simply dial a 3-digit extension. It’s the beginning of bringing us together.

>> One More Thing

Light & Life is also getting up to speed with learning how to work as a virtual team. Of the nine staff members on the team, six are off-site. We have begun to create culture, internal policy and rules in “wet cement” as we are in uncharted territory. We use tools like WebEx for video conferencing in realtime, Basecamp for project management and time-tracking, and Skype for on-demand audio/video chat. We are also enjoying the new phone system as it allows both on-site and off-site staff the same accessibility and tools.

Innovate

Examples: iPad and Mobile Devices

According to a recent study by Bernstein Research on Wall Street, the iPad is the fastest-growing piece of consumer technology in history. Mobile devices are growing faster than ever before – both inside and outside the U.S. The cost of entry into these emerging knowledge markets is minimal, and the opportunity for growth it affords the denomination is exponential. Now is the time to add this frontier to our traditional communication methods like print, Web and e-mail.

>> What We Did

I’m pleased to report that we contracted with the organization SubSplash to build the first iPad, iPhone and Android apps for the denomination. These free apps were released the first week in July. Key features are “find a church,” “news” and “events,” and we will be adding mobile giving in as a future upgrade. The app feeds content from the new fmcusa.org, allowing all of the stories of our denomination to be seen by a greater audience. The additional benefit of our partnership with SubSplash is at the local church level. The platform we use for the apps will allow any FM church to have an “app within an app.” For a low cost-to-entry point and monthly fee, any church can have its content on iPad, iPhone and Android as part of a larger strategic partnership with Light & Life as well as the app development company. These apps, the new website, and the new magazine [LLM], will all be released at General Confence.

>> One More Thing

We are also in process of migrating all content from FMC – USA sites into one Content Management System (CMS) for a unified brand, unified identity, and unified content to give us a stronger and integrated voice. I’ve spoken about this to the Board of Administration. The big picture is that all FMC content will be coming together with a 1.0 version released during General Conference. The big payoffs will be not only a unified brand, connection to social networks, ease of use, community-based content, and full mobile/tablet optimization, but integration with online giving through our new financial systems.

Goals Accomplished from March-July 2011

Roll out new FMCNA Web site
Deploy first FM iPad app
Deploy first FM iPhone app
Deploy first FM Android app
Publish and deliver first edition of new FM magazine in English and Spanish

Recent Updates

200 Formal IT help desk requests fulfilled
100 Informal IT Requests (those not officially filed through the helpdesk)
10 New/Upgraded Computers

Publishing

Wrote, edited, and published two quarters of Evangel on time and at budget
Lenten book for Jeff Johnson title “Living Faith”
2007 French Book of Discipline “Livre de Discipline”
For Marston Historical: “B.T. and Ellen Roberts and the First Free Methodists” abridgement
NPH gave permission for us to reproduce/reprint “Exploring Our Christian Faith” for use in ordination classes
Reprinted several books to restock materials WPH warehouses and distributes for us (Healing Grace, Belonging Adventures in Church Membership, Spanish Book of Discipline, CLC materials and various others)
Gave permission for non FM group to reprint the 1910 Free Methodist Hymnal titled by them “The Holiness Hymnal” copies may be seen in historical
Published “The Newton Editorials,” a collection of 15 years worth of Light & Life magazine editorials by previous senior editor Doug Newton

Hired Peter Shackelford, Web/Interactive Media
Hired Michael Metts, Photographer & Content Strategist
Hired Jeff FInley, Lead Writer
Forged strategic partnership with Upper Room Technologies to build integrated denominational website

We thank you for your support and ask you to pray with us, that Light & Life Communications would continue to be a dynamic group of people committed to facilitating the Holy Spirit’s movement through the FMC and into the world.

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