Today is the final day to take the State of the Church Online | Member Community and Social Networks survey. We’ve had a tremendous response to the survey with a definite surge of respondents taking it over the last week. Currently we’re hovering just under 300 respondents and I personally hope to we break 300 before the day is over.

With this milestone we’ll move into the next stage of this research where we’ll be reaching out to church leaders to conduct interviews. We hope through the interviews to better understand how these types of solutions have created an impact in churches and communities of all shapes and sizes. If you are a church leader who’s community has been significantly impacted by your member community or social network and you would like to share your experiences to help others who are considering investing in a tool, please contact us at research@unconventionalmethod.com.

Over the coming weeks we will be analyzing the data from the survey and beginning to produce the multiple deliverables for this project. So be sure the check back in soon for an update and information about how you can access the findings from this research.

We received this email the other day:

I started the survey on “The State of the Church” and got about halfway through.  I got interrupted and had to leave it.  When I tried to resume, I got an error message telling me that the session timed out.

Is there any way that I can resume it, or do I have to start over?

Users taking the State of the Church Online | Member Community and Social Networks survey have noted that if they get distracted from taking the survey, their session times out and they can not resume where they left off. That’s no good! Wnat to read what we did about it? More after the jump… Continue reading »

Project Page

http://www.unconventionalmethod.com/project-pages/state-of-the-church-online/

Project Overview

In the last few years a number of new private church community networks have been introduced into the market in addition to the development of numerous social networking sites. In January 2009, Unconventional Method partnered with Drew Goodmanson of Monk Development to design research to explore what churches are doing effectively online in this area and help shape the understanding of how churches can use the internet to gather, disciple and build community. From January 27 through February 21, over 500 people participated in an exploratory survey examining what churches are doing with social and community networks.

In Phase II of the project, we will be expanding on many of the issues raised in our initial research. Through a more in‐depth survey and targeted phone interviews, we hope to develop a better understand how pervasive the use of these web applications is and how churches are approaching community and social networks.

We will gather data on usage, experiences, satisfaction, behavior, preferences, perceptions, and demographics. We will go beyond traditional metrics in order determine how these tools promote activities that are central to being Christian and being the church. Our aim is to both help bring clarity and guidance for churches to pursue excellence online while providing market intelligence that will help the developers of these applications improve their sales and products.

In the last few years a number of new private church community networks have been introduced into the market in addition to the development of numerous social networking sites. Continue reading »

BAM Survey 2007: Taking the Pulse of the Movement represents the first annual report on the state of the global Business as Mission movement. While there is some information available on Business as Mission, very few, if any, research surveys have focused on measuring the extent or impact of the movement. This foundational study was designed to find answers to some key questions related specifically to the perspectives and practices of Business as Mission around the world. Continue reading »

In 2007 EC Group International set out to develop the first ever survey on Business as Mission with the goal of identifying how the BAM movement has addressed a number of its historic challenges as well as uncovering new ones that merit further research. The goal was to identify developments and trends in the Business as Mission movement. The survey was designed to be preliminary research across Business as Mission broadly and was not intended to be representative of all issues, components, geographies, or interest groups. Continue reading »