Featured Articles
Web 2.0 with Zack Hubert
Worship Leader: As you dream about it what's next with technology for the church? Zack Hubert: Sure, let me answer that by telling you a little bit about the story of
The City, because this is directly related to, to where I think the church and technology come together.
I was a brand new pastor of technology at Mars Hill Church in Seattle. And came into the environment super excited. It's a very technically advanced church, a lot going on. But experiencing what the technology looked like behind the scenes, there were so many things that were brought in, you know, as software platforms from the business world.
They were just built with different principles and design in mind. But it was like there was a little bit of a Frankenstein had been built, and I know this is what just about every church out there has to do, is they have to try and cobble together some sort of technological monster to try and serve their needs.
And so in the midst of that, a good friend of mine, a guy named Pastor Dave Kraft, had encouraged me to just go on a prayer retreat, just me and my Bible, off in a secluded nature setting. And just spend time with The Word. So in doing that, of course that's where The City comes from, [Matthew] 5:14, "You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden."
Maybe that's the best way to, to describe it. Kind of put a fork in the road with the direction that The City's gone, versus maybe more traditional social networking. What I mean by that is social networking has always existed, right? The, the network of relationships, how people are connected, the interaction, it's the definition of community. It's just, you know, now in, in this time we, we try and describe relationships as being disconnected, non-personal entities instead of the real relationship, real connection that they actually are.
Worship Leader: What is the difference between the City and traditional social networks like Facebook? Zack Hubert: MySpace was one of the first big social networks that hit the scene. And it's very aptly named because it's about an individual connecting with, you know, potentially thousands of other friends. It's very individually oriented. And I think that that, in a lot of ways, is how people still think of social networking-I'm just this individual and I've got connections with various people that I may or may not know. They may have a real name, a real picture, or maybe an avatar.
And I think that it is missing the point a little bit of what the community actually looks like. And so Facebook, of course 200 million people on the Facebook platform, incredibly successful from an adoption standpoint. People get Facebook. Facebook started out in college campuses, and so it was founded around people in actual relationships. You know, they'd see each other in class, they'd see each other at the same parties. And a lot of the features are still built with the concept of the college student in mind. But The City different. Our, our purpose and our goal is to serve the church, and to be an aid to ministry.
Worship Leader: So is The City basically a way for churches to social network or is it more? Zack Hubert: The City is community building software. In its shortest form, that's how we choose to describe it. Because it's about building communities. The catalyst for taking the real community that you've already got and resourcing it throughout the week, and also enabling you to build new communities. So yes, The City is a hosted Web service, and we wanted to make it so a church of any size would be able to benefit from The City, and benefit from the tools. So requiring a church to have a whole technology department, or even just one tech person just doesn't make sense.
And so that's why we chose to host it. It also enables us to be really quick with building out new features, and really focusing on innovation. And so that, that's another paradigm shift from a traditional boxed product model.
Worship Leader: How does The City serve the worship leader? Or will it serve the worship leader? Zack Hubert: We've got two folks here on staff that are worship leaders in their churches. And they use it for everything from finding a new bassist, or finding musical instruments, to finding volunteers easily, you can find new band members, you can find skilled musicians all within the context of your local community church. Part of the functionality of The City is intended for enabling the sharing of goods, or the sharing of skills.
They also use it as their primary means of communicating-here's our set list, here's what we got coming up in the, in the coming weeks. Here are things I want you guys to be reading or praying about as we head into the Easter season. It takes the community, which is the band or worship team, and extends it throughout the week between practices. It also enables folks that are leaders of worship leaders to better organize the whole theological ministry, which is worship at a church or a large organization.
Worship Leader: How do you pay for the use of The City? Zack Hubert: The pricing model is a subscription based model. And it scales on the size of your organization. And it's paid quarterly and the. The big picture behind pricing is we really want the, The City to be about the Church. And so that means one message. You know, if you're on FaceBook, you're getting hit by thousands of messages, thousands of brands.
You know, you've got a clothing company advertising in the sidebar. You've got, you know, a hundred different groups that the person may be in that's in their news feed. It's just, a barrage of messages. ... And so at this point we've decided that we don't want to do an advertising model. Because an advertising model would mean that the Church no longer has the only message on the platform. And so by removing the advertising model, a subscription model is what makes the most sense. It's really up front, you know, here's how much this costs.
Worship Leader: If a church subscribes, what do they get? Zack Hubert: Let me, let me paint a picture of what we anticipate most churches will need. In the end, churches have three distinct technological needs. And I, I'm generalizing, of course, but these are the three major categories. One, is they need public facing website that communicates content, primarily. This would be a media site. Things like, streamed sermons, or the driving directions to get to the church. You know, very informational site that's really meant to just be out there to the public.
The second distinct need is the back office accounting of the church. Things like a general ledger, or things that are really geared towards the running of the business side of a church.
And then finally there is the building of community. Which is where community software really has its strength.
Worship Leader: So, The City includes some management capabilities? Zack Hubert: There are, there's a whole church management software meant to be used by the back office of the church to keep track of membership rosters, and donors, and those sorts of things. The City has a lot of those capabilities, but I describe The City instead of being church management software, it's church movement software. Because the most important thing that The City can do, is helping the people be on movement within their cities, within their neighborhoods-in each others' lives. And so it's a very different proposition than, I think, typical technology offers.
Our bull's eye is on community. We have features that reach into some of the accounting space, and we have some features that reach into the public space. But by and large our focus is on community. Because we want to help the church move its people on the mission that they're on. And again, we don't define that mission. They, you know, we, we just resource the church on whatever mission they're on.
Worship Leader: Why should a church consider bringing their website beyond simply being a source of information? Zack Hubert: I'm a bit of a community-phile, you know? I'm certainly a technologist, that's where my background, eight years at Amazon does come into play. But my heart is as a churchman. And my desire through that is to see people grow closer together and closer to Christ. And I think that happens when people, face to face, encounter each other and encounter the Word spoken, taught, sung etc. And I think that is not an information principal. I think it is much more, more complex than that. It's not just information, it's the living Word. And so I've got just a real heart for people being an active, vital community together.
That's why The City is not just an informational site for people to post facts, you know? It's about helping organize community. We recently did a "Green and Clean" last year, which basically means cleaning up graffiti and all that kind of stuff in downtown Seattle. They had, like, 250 people show up. It was organized just through The City. And it took all of 15 or 20 minutes of administrative effort, and they had the largest volunteer event in that area of downtown Seattle.
And that's because it's about movement. It's about churches in movement together. Church movement software, not church management software. And so it's far less about the information as it is about the community.
Zack Hubert has spent 8 years with Amazon.com, has an MAT from Fuller Theological Seminary and is a technology pastor and a key developer of "The City," a community internet platform originally designed for Mars Hill in Seattle. Blog: onthecity.org/blog Twitter: twitter.com/pastorzack
This is an excerpt from Worship Leader magazine. To read more articles like this - click here to subscribe.
