Recently I connected with Brad Russell, Founder and Senior Editor of FaithVillage.com. We talked about how FaithVillage helps churches engage their congregations around online community and content.
TONY: Where did the idea for FaithVillage come from?
BRAD: The FaithVillage journey began about 5 years ago. It was born from a deep observation of how social media technology and digital publishing was changing the way people get information and connect. We wanted to know what we could do to leverage these new technologies for church leaders and individual spiritual growth. The more we observed the opportunities this technology provided, the more we saw the need for an online gathering space where people of faith could connect and share resources.
TONY: Is your customer the church leader or the Christ-follower attending the church?
BRAD: Our site is designed to serve churches and individual Christ-followers. It is both an open and closed platform. The user on the closed side would be the church and church leaders. Churches can launch their own community-building and content publishing platform on the site. The believer’s side is open so that people can connect across the Internet.
TONY: How does FaithVillage engage people?
BRAD: FaithVillage is a social network for sharing faith experiences. So, it’s all about engagement around sharing art, faith, and life. We have built a content publishing platform that now has over 700 writers and bloggers who are sharing their best ideas and ministry experiences. People can contribute content, comment and engage, and use the site as a resource. You can connect with Christian friends, public and private groups, upload photos and much more.
TONY: How is this different than Facebook?
BRAD: Facebook is great but has some drawbacks when the goal is engaging people on spiritual levels and moving the metrics most important to church leaders. Our friend circles on Facebook are so diverse that we find ourselves self-editing when it comes to spiritual conversations. Facebook also provides such a huge volume of information that it is difficult to cut through the clutter. The commercial distractions of advertising are a disadvantage. Most importantly, there is no way for a church to centrally manage a network of small groups inside Facebook. Our environment for faith conversations is simpler, cleaner and free from distractions. It provides the control and features that church leaders need to be effective. We like to say “sacred conversations deserve sacred space.”
TONY: How do you keep so much content focused and uncluttered?
BRAD: We realized that we wanted to serve up a wide-variety of content but we wanted it to be accessible to the user. We do this by curating content around a topic then we place it into a building in the virtual neighborhood that is FaithVillage. Each themed building hosts articles, blogs, podcasts, and videos around a specific topic. We do the hard work of scanning 700 blogs and writers to find their best stuff so our users can easily find and enjoy the content they are looking for.
TONY: Can you share some unique features of FaithVillage?
BRAD: On the content side any user can upload video, audio files and network their blog into site RSS feeds. Another unique feature is that any piece of content can be shared to external channels, like Facebook and Twitter, and also shared inside the site to our own social platform. Social platforms without content often find it hard to keep church members engaged with them, so in FaithVillage we keep people coming back with fresh inspirational content every week. On the social side, features such as file sharing, event scheduling and content share tools create powerful online collaboration space for small groups and ministry teams of all kinds.
TONY: How can our readers bring their content to FaithVillage?
BRAD: Anyone can register on site here. The Visitor’s Center on our site has pages dedicated to churches and contributors. They can fill out a simple application to learn more or become a contributor.
TONY: What’s on the horizon for FaithVillage?
BRAD: We are excited to be launching a mobile app later this year. It will be a free application where users can easily access all of the great content on FaithVillage from their mobile devices.
Faith Village is free. Congregations can access it 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
This is a sponsored post from FaithVillage, one of my strategic partners.
