Catholic Tech Talk

I was recently interviewed by KARE11 (local NBC affiliate) for a story on how churches are using social media to connect with church-goers.

You’ve probably heard about the potential benefits for your parish.  You’ve read about it here.  You’ve heard me say it.  Even some Bishops are tweeting.  The Facebook thing looks great.  Google+ looks interesting.  So you and the Pastor decide to give it a go.  You set up all the accounts, do your customization, you tweet, you [...]

The other day a friend of mine posted a link to an article where a Pinterest user had come to some point where she felt uncomfortable with using the service and violating copyrights.  The writer was a not only a photographer, but a lawyer.  After reading the article, my friend (who has been an artist [...]

I screwed up on Twitter, but thankfully, I was able to ‘start over’.

Over the Christmas holiday, I had the opportunity to go back to my old church, St. Bernard, here in Wauwatosa, WI.  They have a new priest, Father Mike Barrett.  I hadn’t met Father Mike before, but I greatly enjoyed his homily and was struck in how he conducted mass.  His approach to mass got me [...]

We often say that Church needs to utilize Social Media to better connect with the youth of today as well as reach out to anyone interested in learning more.  Well, I couldn’t of found a better example of leveraging Social Media this week than Busted Halo’s Sacraments 101 series on YouTube.  This series does two [...]

Editor’s Note:  This blog post originally appeared in Lisa Hendey’s CatholicMom.com site.  It highlight’s a wonderful example of New Media in a Church.  Its a great model for every church to consider!  – Joe   I recently came across a tech blog announcement about the hiring of Thomas Sanjurjo as “Electronic Outreach Director” at Nativity [...]

Among the top questions I’m asked when speaking with parishes about private social networks is “Why not just use Facebook”. Public networks like Facebook are extremely popular to say the least. Setting up a company or personal page is easy and free. The ability to reach people and share information is direct and simple. Parishes [...]

I just went on a walk, played Tumbling Tower, and Blind Man’s Bluff with my wife and daughters. We made silly jokes and laughed hard enough to make our bodies ache. It was totally unplugged and it was a blast! The rest of my day was spent building a website, setting up a client’s Facebook [...]

Editor’s Note: This guest post by Frank Eybsen is just as useful and relevant for Church Ministries as it is for business.

As I talk with Catholics working in parishes, Catholic schools, and diocesan offices about social media, people often tell me that they don’t “get” Twitter and how it can be used. This is a short video explaining how I personally use Twitter in my work on behalf of the Church.

Social networking services have added a great many benefit for individuals and organizations. But like anything, these benefits haven’t come without their share of problems and issues for some.

One of my favorite hymns (especially at Christmas) is “Go Tell It On The Mountain”.  In the olden days, going to a high place and yelling good news was a way to be heard over a large distance.  Compare this to everyone standing in a crowd and just yelling.  You’d never really be heard.  It’s [...]

Yesterday, I fired up an account at Tumblr.com to use in conjunction with this site. You can follow our Tumblog at http://catholictechtalk.tumblr.com. It’ll be used as a microblog to capture things on the go. Then I thought, hey! … we need a LinkedIn GROUP. So, now we have that as well – so visit and [...]

Twitter was abuzz last week with word that a Chicago parish had warned parishioners against using Facebook, MySpace, and other social media tools. According to the parish bulletin Facebook and other social media violate a person’s privacy as it encourages young people a message to ‘Publicize yourself!’ The problem with this is that one’s pictures, [...]

This weekend I had the opportunity to watch a Twitter meme blossom right before my eyes. On Friday afternoon, in response to a fellow Catholic who had asked “Can someone give me the link to the Catholic Rules For Twitter? I never read it and apparently missed the rule that joking isn’t allowed,” I replied [...]

For those members of the ‘digital generation’, it’s hard to fathom, but there are still many who don’t quite understand this whole ‘social media thing’.

CNS (Catholic News Service) published some of the findings of a Diocesan survey regarding use of Social Media – Survey says dioceses getting the hang of new media, but slowly.