Blog

The Table in Outreach Magazine

We've had a few press mentions recently, including Outreach Magazine and Mission Frontiers.

The Table was featured in the March/April 2012 issue of Outreach magazine. We were one of five resources highlighted in a piece titled "What can technology do for you?" Check us out:

(Click to view a larger version)

We were also mentioned in an article in the May-June 2012 issue of Missions Frontiers magazine about the Global Great Commission Network, where we're adapting the Table for missions agencies.

Permanent link for this entry

Pioneer Press Puts the Table on the Front Page

St. Paul's Pioneer Press ran a front page story on the Table on Sunday. The story gives an overview of the Table and how it's making a difference in churches. The piece features three of our case study churches giving some great quotes and stories, including Angela Bengtson of Zion Lutheran Church in Buffalo, Minn., Jonathan Davis of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis and Kem Meyer of Granger Community Church in Granger, Ind. We also hear from our own Vice President Jason Wenell and VP of Development Josh Lewis.

Here are some highlights:

"The people in the pews are the church," [Wenell] said.

He and his colleagues aspire to digitally re-create the early Christian church consisting of friends breaking bread and sharing wine at their dinner tables - hence the project's name. ... As Wenell has put it, "We want to tip Christian churches from being top-down organizations to becoming organic movements."

...

"With a congregation our size, it is easy for people to get missed and to slide through the cracks here and there," said Davis

...

Lewis said the Table Project came to his spiritual rescue last March when his 1-year-old son, Jack, fought for every breath in an emergency room because of croup.

"That was very frightening," he recalled. "I posted a prayer request to the Table, and I soon began getting prayers from people I had never met, all via email notifications on my iPhone. This was a wonderful feeling, being surrounded in real time by a physically disparate community, in the midst of a personal crisis. It's something you have to experience to understand."

...

Granger is active on Facebook, as well, but "the atmosphere of privacy and intimacy in the Table is safer, more personal - people share things on the Table they wouldn't share on Facebook," Meyer said.

For example, "a woman posted a prayer request after losing a child, and six people she had never met before in her own church have connected with her for support through a grief you can only understand if you've been through it," she said.

We owe a big thanks to writer Julio Ojeda-Zapata and the Pioneer Press team for such a complimentary story, and to all the Table champions who spoke with Julio and shared their story. Check out the full article at the Pioneer Press.

Permanent link for this entry

Venture Beat & Washington Post Cover the Table

Last week we had a little bit of press as Venture Beat did a story on the Table, which was later plugged by a Washington Post blog.

Tech writer Jolie O'Dell interviewed our own Josh Lewis about the convergence of technology and religion that we have here on the Table.

"The biggest churches are the ones that it's easiest to hide in," said The Table [VP of Development] Josh Lewis. "My church has 4,000 or 5,000 people. You go in, you sit down, you listen to the sermon, then you drive home. You can get lost in the crowd so easily."

It's a problem tailor-made for a social media solution. But churches can be backwards on the tech front, and technologists -

Well, in Lewis' words, "I worked at Apple for six years, and there's a lot of... Well, it's hard to generalize, but the tech sector is not super religious. There's kind of a schism."

So it took a special group of tech folks to make a proper tool for religious organizations. ...

"Using something like this makes it harder to be a stranger and makes you feel more connected," said Lewis. "We're all about slaying anonymity and killing apathy."

The story was then picked up by the Washington Post blog, Ideas@Innovations, which started with a story on the Pope's first tweet and segued into the Table:

The Table was created to cut down on anonymity, according to an Oct. 11 report by Venture Beat's Jolie O'Dell. Attendees of larger churches can easily come and go without making community-building connections within the organization. The Table draws on the underlying principles of existing social media platforms, with a few tweaks in order to increase users' personal accountability.

Apparently religion is getting a digital upgrade, as evidenced by the Pope's tweet and the Table, which may lead to "even greater engagement by Christian Church attendees online." The story also points to Twitter's efforts to reach out to the religious community, with the company noting the high levels of engagement from religious users.

"Religious organizations have been relying on word-of-mouth marketing and relational marketing for forever, so they take to social media well," said Twitter's Claire Diaz-Oritz, author of Twitter for Good.

The Pope and Twitter are some nice company. We're stoked about the coverage and the opportunity to bring more churches to the Table. We hope we can be a part of helping Christians to engage more online—and offline.

Permanent link for this entry

Table on TechdotMN

Our own Jason Wenell appeared on TECHdotMN TV, a local video series exploring tech happenings in Minnesota. You can jump ahead to 2:34 in the video to watch:

"It's a community platform to help the church be the church." -Jason

Permanent link for this entry

Southwest Journal Covers the Table

This week the Southwest Journal in Minneapolis did a story on the Table. It's a great piece that features some of the churches using the Table and highlights our role as a social network for the local church.

Here are some highlights:

Those who use the site say it has become a vital tool, used by members to make unanticipated connections and by church leaders to connect with members in ways that might otherwise be impossible.

While none have given up Facebook or Twitter altogether, they say it is an important supplement to their online offerings because they can control who has access to the site, allowing more candid and relevant conversations to take place.

...

The idea, they said, was to take the church away from a one-day-a-week experience and to turn it into a living body where members are able to communicate, serve and pray for one another in real time.

...

“Serving and sharing resources — that’s what the Bible talks about,” Wenell said. “The Table Project is a real catalyst for that.”

Check out the full article for more.

Permanent link for this entry