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Prayer Video: Will You Pray?

We've created a one-minute video you can use to promote the Table's Prayer Wall to your church. It's a top-notch video dramatizing how powerful it is to know that people are praying for you.

We're now making this video available publicly and there are several ways you can share it with your congregation:

1) Show It On Sunday Morning
Download the video and show it to your congregation during your worship services. It's a short video and powerfully communicates how the Table can impact lives.

You could go a step further and follow up the video with some personal stories of how the Table is impacting your church. We hear lots of stories about the Prayer Wall so there are surely some in your church as well.

2) Share It
Share the video through all your online communication channels. Either download it and create a custom version to share or use the generic version we've uploaded (see details below). Embed the video on your website, share it on Facebook, feature it on YouTube, talk it up on Twitter, plug it in your email newsletter. This is the kind of video people will share, so it's an opportunity to spread the word about your church and the power of prayer.

Here's some sample text you can use to spread the word:

Long form text:

Version 1:
You get that dreaded phone call and you're off to the hospital. While you sit in uncomfortable chairs waiting for more bad news, you feel so alone. But your phone chimes and you've got email—people are praying for you. On the way to the hospital you posted a quick request on the Table's Prayer Wall. You're not alone. That's the power of prayer. Watch this video to see how it works with the Table: [link/embed video]

Version 2:
Prayer changes lives and can deepen and strengthen our community. Will you pray? When you post a simple prayer request to the Table, emails are automatically sent to people in our church who are waiting to pray for you. When they click that ‘Pray Now' button, an email comes back to you—instant encouragement when you need it most. Watch this video to see it in action: [link/embed video]

Version 3:
The Bible tells us to be devoted to prayer, that our prayers are powerful and effective, to pray without end. Jesus asked his disciples to pray with him in his most desperate hour. The Bible tells us that God is attentive to our prayers.

So let's pray! When you post a prayer request to the Prayer Wall on the Table, it closes the loop on the old school prayer chain. People willing to pray are instantly notified, and when they pray you're notified as well, giving you the encouragement you need. Watch this video to see it in action: [link/embed video]

Short form text:

Version 1:
How can we pray for you? Post your needs to the Table. Here's what that kind of encouragement can look like: [link/embed video]

Version 2:
Will you pray? We have requests on the Table that need prayer. Watch this video & see how prayer can impact lives: [link/embed video]

Version 3:
The Table's Prayer Wall is an amazing way we can support and encourage one another. Watch this video to see it in action: [link/embed video]

Get the Video
We've made two versions of the video available.

1) Generic Table Version: This version is meant to be used as is and closes by pointing people to the tableproject.org. If you want to share this video immediately, this is the one to use. You can download the video and then upload it yourself, or just share or embed the versions we've uploaded to several video sites. Notice that this version won't point people specifically to your church's Table, so you might want to add your church's Table url (yourchurch.tableproject.org) to any description or comment text when you share it.

Download: Generic Prayer Video (ZIP, 70 MB)
YouTube / Vimeo / Facebook

2) Customizable Version: This version is meant to be customized by adding your church's logo and Table url at the end. This will require some video editing skills, but the bonus here is that the video can point people directly to your church. If you have the time and skills, we strongly recommend going this route as it will drive people to your church (and that's really the point, right?).

Download: Customizable Prayer Video (ZIP, 380 MB)

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Roadmap to the Table

If you're considering the Table for your church we've put together a roadmap that can get you from thinking about it to enjoying community with your congregation.

It's a four step process:

1) Getting Started: Everything from why you need the Table to building your launch team to getting your leadership on board.

2) Pre-Launch: This is where you grease the wheels to a successful launch by getting staff and groups going.

3) Church Wide Launch: Time to go big and roll out the Table to your entire church with plenty of hoopla.

4) Keep the Ball Rolling: Just because you launched doesn't mean you're done. There's still plenty of work to do. Build on that early momentum and keep people engaged.

In addition to loads of tips and ideas at each step along the way, we point to more than 50 helpful resources, including blog posts, videos, FAQs, PDFs and more.

It's not just a roadmap, it's a treasure map. And the prize is a church community that's more engaged, more connected and more active.

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Quicknote High Fives

Quicknotes are mini messages you can send through the Table. People can receive them via email, text message and on the Table. The idea is to facilitate quick conversations and introductions (you're limited to 140 characters). If you want longer conversations, that's what email is for. Watch this video for more on how to send a quicknote.

One easy way for Table champions to encourage activity is to send a quicknote high five. Whenever you see someone new jump on the Table or someone create a new group or post a Serve item for the first time, send them a quicknote to say thanks. You an also offer to help if they have any questions.

A quicknote high five is a nice gesture, it reinforces activity on the Table and it also demonstrates how quicknotes work. You encourage people to keep using the Table, you interact more and you get to say thanks. Wins all around.

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Decision Checklist for Setting Up the Table

Below is a checklist of items a church needs to make decisions about when they set up the Table. Hopefully seeing the list ahead of time will give you a chance to think through some of the issues and make your launch process faster and smoother.

Settings
These are software settings within the Table that control how it functions and how people interact with it:

Campuses
Does your church have more than one campus? If so then you can opt for multiple campuses. If you decide to set up campuses later you can always add them down the road, but you'll want them set up before you invite people to the Table.
We recommend: Since most activity happens church-wide, we've seen minimal success with campuses. If you do decide to use them, hiding the campus tabs can be a good solution. For campuses with their own culture, an entirely separate Table account is often better.

Sign Up Type
You can set how people are able to join your church's Table. You can have an open sign up where anyone can join and start using your church's Table. For increased security you can require approval, which means new sign ups will need to be approved by a SuperAdmin before they can access your Table. Approval with secret code is the third option, which enables you to give your members a code they can use to bypass the manual approval. This lets people get on faster, but still ensures a level of additional security.
We recommend: Open sign up for the week or two after launch, then switching to approval with secret code. This gets people on quickly when you first launch, but then ensures more security moving forward.

Content Approval
Will you require content in the Church tab to be approved before it's posted or can anyone post anything live? Your setup here will depend on how much trust you have in your congregation and how much time you can devote to approving content. (Note: The ability to flag content provides an added level of security even if you don't require content approval.)
We recommend: Don't manually approve content. It's more work and it's a hindrance to lively community. Trust your people enough to let them post content and rely on flagging to warn you of anything inappropriate.

Group Creation Approval
How much control do you want over groups that are created? You can opt to pre-approve all groups, approve no groups and just let anyone create a group, or for a middle-ground solution you can opt to only approve groups that are shown in the groups directory. This lets people get started with their groups but still gives your church a chance to decide what's seen in the groups directory. (Note: You can also denote which groups are "official" church groups in the directory, which will help distinguish church-approved ministries from informal groups.)

Manually Approve Staff Roles:
You decide if members can assign church staff roles to themselves or if they need to request a role which is then approved by an Admin.
We recommend: Manually approve staff roles. It's generally easier to keep control of these.

Teen Settings
There are a number of privacy settings for teens, including the exact ages that define a teenager, who can interact with teens and at what age teens can be given more power on the Table (creating teen-only groups, joining regular Table groups, see adult profiles, etc.).

Design Checklist
These are the visual elements of the Table that you can customize:

• Church Logo: We recommend 400 pixels wide by 100 pixels high--larger images will be scaled down.
• Colors: You can select a main color, accent color and link color, using standard hex codes or picking colors from your logo.
• Welcome Video: You have the option of adding a welcome video that will greet your users when they first sign up. You can create your own video or just use our default intro video. Learn more about how to create a welcome video.
• Selection & Order of Apps: You can decide what apps appear in the Church tab and what order they appear in. Just drag and drop to move them around. Click on an app and click the ‘X' in the upper right corner to remove it. Click ‘Add Apps' to browse our selection of more than 100 apps and add your own. Some common choices include adding an RSS feed for your church's blog, adding your sermon podcast and adding video content.

How You're Going to Use It
These items don't require a decision when you set up the Table, but you'll need to think about them pretty early in your launch planning, so we thought we'd include them here:

• Who will you promote to SuperAdmin and Admin?
• How will you use the tip bar?
• Will you set up the F1 integration?
• Do you want to use a Table helper account?
• Do you need to tweak the Serve App guidelines?

We hope that helps as you move toward launching the Table. We have a lot of other launch tips and even a webinar devoted to how to launch the Table. We're here to help—let us know what we can do.

Downloads
You can also get a copy of this checklist as a Google Doc so you can customize it with any additions and keep track of your progress:

• Table Decision Checklist (Google Doc: If you have a free Google Account, click on ‘File: Make a copy' to save your own version of the checklist and then customize it as needed.)

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Get Your Message Out

You can specifically target messages to your church on the Table. No more lobbing messages to your entire congregation and hoping the right people in the crowd catch it. Target the exact people you need to reach.

• Got a message about the men's lunch next week? Hit up the men and don't distract the women.
• Need to reach the youth group? You can target based on age.
• Start a new small group by reaching out to people in a specific area.

These messages appear in the "tip bar," which is the yellow bar below the menu and above the content, where SuperAdmins can post targeted messages. These are short messages that can link to other content.

Here's how to set them up:

• In the SuperAdmin Manage screen, go to the "Promote" tab and the "Broadcast a Message" section.
• Click "Create New" on the right side.
• At the top you can create a new message, including the text of the message (no HTML allowed), an optional url for the message to link to, and the start and end dates for the message.
• Then you can target the message. You can throw out general announcements to your entire church, like a service cancellation, a new event or tips on using the Table. Or you can more finely target your message based on gender, age, location and interest. You can even send messages just to your staff.

Some Examples:

• A general message for your entire church: Don't forget to bring your donations for the Haiti Scholarship Drive on Sunday.
• A targeted message for people in their 20s: Good movies, good conversation. Join our young adult ministry for our movie night.
• A targeted message for men within a certain ZIP code: Join us for the men's bike ride in the Como Park neighborhood on Saturday.
• A targeted message based on interest: A new knitting group is getting started. Join us on Sunday to find out more.
• A targeted message for your staff: Don't forget that timesheets are due on Friday.
• A general message about how to use the Table: Getting too many emails from the Table? Here's how to change your preferences.

We'll also add general Table announcements to your tip bar, so even if you don't program any messages, one will show up. We try to keep our announcements minimal so your church's messages will be seen more often.

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Posting Guidelines for the Serve App

We added a slick new feature to the Serve App you might have missed: You can now add your own custom posting guidelines.

You can give users specific directions about how to use (and not use) the Serve App. They show up on the bottom of the Post page, just as users are deciding which type of Serve item they're going to post.

We've provided some default text, but it's completely editable. Just click on the arrow to the right of the Serve App header and click "Edit Settings." Then you can tweak the default guidelines or add your own.

Now you can give clear guidelines about how your church uses the Serve App. Maybe you'll point people to your discussion board for job help or items for sale. Or encourage people to "share" their skills as well as their stuff. It's up to you. If you need more ideas, you can always point people to 100 ways to use the Serve App.

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The Why & How of Flagging Content

One of the flaws of social networks is people. They're notoriously troublesome. Of course that's also what puts the social in social networks and makes them so wonderfully fun. Social networks give power to the people and that can create some delightful results: a new ministry launched, volunteers recruited and people lifted up in prayer in their time of need. Of course it can also create some not-so-delightful results: gossip, rudeness and spam.

That's why you have the ability to flag content on the Table.

Every piece of user-submitted content on the Table, including prayers, Serve items, discussion topics, photos and comments, can all be flagged. If you see something that shouldn't be there, you can flag it.

Here's what happens when something gets flagged:

• It's automatically removed. No questions asked.
• It goes into the content queue for an Admin at your church to review it.
• The Admin will review the content and decide whether or not it should stay removed. This is a decision made by your church based on their own parameters, not us here at the Table. We let local churches do the content policing.
• If they opt to keep the content removed, it can be deleted. If they decide the content is actually OK, they can restore it to the Table.

Content flagging is an added level of security that keeps the conversations, interactions and community safe for everyone. Churches can also choose to require that any content posted is approved by an Admin before it goes live, but that often creates a lot of work and slows down the community interaction. Flagging is a way to keep the content flowing and the community happening, but still have a way to police inappropriate content if it pops up.

How do I flag content?

• Click the "Flag" text or the flag icon next to any piece of content.
• Explain why you think something needs to be flagged. It might be as simple as "This is gossip," or "This is an item for sale."
• Click ‘flag' and your church's Admin will take care of it.

People are the heart of your church and the heart of any social network. That means things can get a little messy, but that's OK. Features like content flagging are designed to keep it from getting out of hand. That means less of the troublesome downside, and more of the wonderfully fun upside.

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Creating a Table Helper Account

Sometimes being a Table champion is lonely work. Getting an online community up and running is not easy and sometimes you feel like you're talking to yourself. You're commenting on your own discussion topics, staring down "0" prayers on the Prayer Wall and sharing a basement full of stuff with nobody. You want to encourage people to be more active on the Table, but you're worried about annoying people.

There are lots of things you can do to encourage more involvement on the Table, but there's one thing you can do that might take some of the pressure off. You can create an administrative account on the Table, separate from your own account, that you use to handle a lot of the admin tasks. It can be a generic presence for your church and be the dedicated account for posting general material from your church (events, sermon notes, etc.). You can name it Table Helper and use a Table logo or your church logo for the profile picture.

There are some pros and cons to this approach, but it might be a solution that works for you.

Pros:

• One of the main benefits is that it gives the appearance of more activity on the Table. When the Table Helper posts a prayer request or poses a question on the discussion board, you can use your own account to pray for the request or answer the question. Sometimes people are more likely to be active when they see other people being active.
• Especially when you're setting up and pre-populating groups it might be a little weird to have a woman set up the men's ministry group (or pick your awkward situation). Without a Table Helper account you could always delegate the group owner job and remove yourself from the group. Or you could use the Table Helper to lend a hand without scaring people off.
• It gives you a break from harassing people. Shooting people a reminder to update their profile photo is a great idea. But after awhile you might start to feel like you're nagging. Using the Table Helper can take some of that pressure off.
• Being the official account for your church, Table Helper can lend an air of authority. People in your church may not realize that you're the Table champion, but a specific Table Helper account is more official and people might be more likely to listen.
• You can list your church's Facebook, Twitter and blog accounts in the Table Helper's profile, giving people another way to find them.

Cons:

• The biggest hesitation we have about a Table Helper account is that it's less personal. The Table is all about creating community, and it's hard to create community with a faceless, nameless member. Being the Table champion may be an added burden, but your interactions with people are a chance to introduce yourself and build community. Using a generic account almost discourages community.
• Using Table Helper means one more account to manage and one more password to remember. If you're logged in with your personal account and need to do some Table Helper business you'll have to log out and log back in. That can be a pain after a while and doesn't exactly save you time.
• Having a single official account might create confusion, especially if you have multiple Admins using the account. Suddenly you're wondering who did what as the Table Helper. And if you add multiple Table Helper accounts to keep things separate, then it gets even more complicated.

As you can tell, we're a little divided on this one. There are definitely some pros and cons. We'll leave it up to you to decide if this is an approach that will work for your church or not.

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Webinar: How To Get Leadership Buy-In

So you love the Table but you're not sure how to get your church on board. We can help. In our recent Round Table webinar we explored how to get leadership buy-in. We'll outline the strategic benefits of the Table and show you how to pitch the Table to your church leadership. We'll talk about getting the right people in the meeting, the main points to communicate and common questions that church leaders ask.

Watch: How To Get Leadership Buy-In (40:21)

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New Videos for SuperAdmins

We recently created three new videos to help SuperAdmins get started.

How to Customize Your Table (1:44)

How to Invite People to Your Table (2:06)

How to Pre-populate Groups on Your Table (3:17)

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