Please check in…

For a year, I wrote about my hobby; now I'm going to take a crack at writing about my work. I am the Parish Administrator at St. Peter's Episcopal Church in Redwood City (in Silicon Valley), California. None of the folks I work with know I've started this blog, and I'm not sure what they'd think about it. My intent isn't to use "Publish or Parish" as an outlet to whine about my job; I'm going to rigidly adhere to the somewhat crass phrase "Don't sh!t where you eat." My purpose is to tell you about solutions I've found to challenges that have mostly been the result of my coming into being a Parish Administrator knowing next-to-nothing about the Episcopal Church, and to spread the word about any little hints and tricks I've found that have helped me on the job.

One of the first things I decided I wanted to take on that wasn't in my job description was maintenance of the church's Facebook wall. It hadn't been updated in months, and I know firsthand what a great tool Facebook is for getting the word out on the cheap (I've produced a few plays for community theater). I started by putting this sign together:

It lives in a matching blue-stained wood frame and is one of the first things you see when you walk in the door at St. Peter's. I can't honestly say it's made a huge difference in our number of check-in's, but we've gained a few more "Likes" since it's been on display. 

The above graphic has also served as filler in our monthly newsletter, The Keys of St. Peter (it renders well in black and white). I may redo the layout to include a QR code one of these days. I'd be curious to hear what you've done to encourage people to "Like" your Facebook page; comments are welcome and appreciated (and moderated; after doing a daily blog for a year I know what sort of spam to expect)!