WFX Awards » Solomon Awards » Best New Media Usage

Nominee: First Methodist Mansfield

URL: www.firstmethodistmansfield.org

Size: 801-2000 seats

Description:

GPS (Grow, Pray, Study) was launched in February of 2010 as a daily devotional guide with the simple goal of helping people take their weekend worship experience to a higher level by helping them grow in their love of God, love of neighbor and commitment to serve the world. After assessing the needs of our community, GPS was designed to provide complementary resources delivered in a variety of formats to meet our community in the different spaces that they live.

Today, GPS continues with the mission of, providing resources for growing disciples. Those resources include four components.  First, our GPS daily devotion guide which includes five days of scripture readings and reflection questions. Second, a weekly GPS for Families section which is designed to help parents share with their kids what they are learning in their daily readings. Third, our GPS podcast which is recorded weekly and serves as a supplemental teaching for those using the guide for their daily devotional resource. Fourth, our GPS blog which includes resources and other writings that fulfill our mission to help people grow in their faith.

The GPS daily devotional guide is available in several different formats for convenience and accessibility.  On the website (growpraystudy.org), our daily readings are published on our Wordpress blog. A weeks worth of readings are entered as a batch and set to publish daily.  Once the blog is published an e-mail is generated.  This is the way that most people connect with GPS.  Our e-mail is generated by connecting websites RSS feed to mailchimp.com. As each daily reading is posted to the blog, e-mails are automatically generated and sent to subscribers.  Once the daily e-mail is sent, the feed is then posted on the GPS Facebook page (facebook.com/growpraystudy).  This page also allows for people to post comments and engage with the community.  We also offer a downloadable .pdf file on our GPS website, as well as on our main website.  Finally, we have a weekly podcast that supplements the guide that is available on our Facebook page, GPS website, church website and through iTunes. Through the use of low cost and free resources we have been able to touch over 800 people with our daily e-mails, over 2000 in our weekend worship, 300 through Facebook and many more listening to the podcast each week.