Widen the Path to Christ
You can’t tell people what to think, but you can tell them what to think about. – Frank Preston (Media2Movements)
1. Read
Widen the Path to Christ
After identifying your persona and the name of the road seekers are taking to Christ in your context, you will want to create content that will widen and enhance their path to Him. What roadblocks do your people group have? What kinds of content will help them overcome those roadblocks?
What photos, memes, short messages, gifs, videos, testimonies, articles, etc. can you share that will begin the process of turning your audience in the direction of Christ and increasing their intensity towards Him?
Consider your overarching objective for the platform. For example, will it be polemic and attacking or more positive proclamation? Will you provoke questions, challenge worldviews, or push back on preconceived notions of Christianity? You will want to decide how aggressive your content will be for your particular brand.
Brainstorm Content Ideas
If you are a part of a team, consider having a content meeting and think through the Biblical themes you want to share with your audience. The following themes may help you get started:
- Testimonies and stories from locals. (In the end, user created content by locals might be the most powerful content you can find.)
- Who is Jesus?
- “One Another” commands in the Bible
- Misconceptions about Christians & Christianity
- Baptism
- What is Church, really?
Take one theme at a time and then brainstorm how to convey your message through your content. Mentor Link has a few multi-media resources, including 40 Days with Jesus and 7 Days of Grace available in multiple languages and could be used to create campaigns on your social media outlet.
Gather Photos & Create Content
As you begin to create the themes around which you want to center your early content, you may also consider taking a lot of photos and videos to save as “stock” for content. For simple, free design tools to overlay text, verses, and your logo on the photos you find try Canva or FotoJet.
Free Images:
- Free Bible Images
- Pixabay
- This article suggests the best websites offering free photos to use
Call to Action
Each time you post your content, it is important that you decide what you want people to do with it. Do you want them to comment, to message you privately, to fill out a contact form, to visit a particular website, to watch a video, etc? Referencing your critical path, how will your online content help you move offline to meet face-to-face with a seeker? What information do you need to collect about the seeker? How will you collect it?
Organize & Schedule Content
You will want to choose a convenient place to organize your ideas, your in-progress content pieces and your completed works. Trello is a free multi-user application that helps you keep all your content ideas and different campaign series organized. Check out all the creative ways you can use Trello. Once your content is ready to post, you will want to create a “content calendar” to schedule your posts. You can start simple with Google Sheets or a printed calendar, or you can check out this website with more ideas. Ultimately, it is important that you choose a collaborative application that allows multiple people to access it and contribute to it at the same time.
Maintain DNA
Remember as you develop content, you want to infuse it with the same DNA that your field team will be pursuing in their face-to-face meetings. You want to give the seeker a consistent message from their first interaction with your media to their ongoing interactions with their coach. The DNA you sow in seekers through your content will influence the DNA you end up with as you move forward in face-to-face discipleship.
2. Fill Out Workbook
Before marking this unit as complete, be sure to finish the corresponding questions in your workbook.