This is the continuation of an article sent out in our May 2008 Ezine. I am going to talk about some ways I have used RSS to broadcast my message with the click of a button, and yes I do it without the thump-thumping sound I did in my college days.

Step 1 – Building a Launch pad:

Nasa has found that the best place to launch the space shuttle is on a launch pad in Florida. I don't question them, they are the experts. I just sit back and watch it launch.

The first thing to do is decide where to setup your launch pad. This will be the single place where you distribute your message. From this point I will show you how to have your message duplicated and distributed automatically for you.

Ok, you knew it was coming. Here is my sales pitch. I won't try to hide it. SermonShout.com is a launch pad. There are others and I will be brave enough to report those others to you at the end of this article. I am just partial to my launch pad. I know what it can do and I know what it will be capable of doing in the future. End of sales pitch. :)

Once you have a place to launch your message from you will upload your sermon audio files and move to the next step.

Step 2 – Charting your course.

Before Nasa ever moves the shuttle out on the launch pad they have an elaborate course plotted out. Where they will go, how long it will take, what they will do, and so forth. We do not need to take it to their level, but we do need to decide where our message will travel.

The Internet is a very large place and it is easy to end up standing on your little meteorite that is flying though cyberspace while all the long you are screaming your message at the top of your lungs to only find out that very few people are hearing you. Thus we need to be focused on who we want to hear our message. Once we decide who needs to hear it then we can determine where to find them online.

I know the best place to find my wife every morning and I have a number that will reach her without fail. We have to duplicate this with our desired group of listeners. If your target audience is your local church members then determine where you could reach them at. This may be as simple as your church website and their email address.

Determine your other target audiences and then determine the best places to reach them. I found there are a lot of people reading blogs on the Internet so I wanted to reach this group of people with my message. I started a blog and began reaching lots of people through it. You can narrow these locations down as far as you want. I chose BuildYourHouseOnTheRock.WordPress.com as my first blog. Now after applying the principles I am teaching you here I can push one button and also hit blogger.com, vox.com, email recipients, and others.

Step 3 – Plug it in and launch.

After you have determined who you want to reach and how to reach them it is time to make all the connections. You may be thinking, “But i'm not a computer wiz”. Don't worry this is not technical. If you can sign up for a website then you have the skills to make this step happen.

Once you have your launch pad loaded and ready to go you are ready to “feed” your message to the people and places you determined in step 2. I like using examples so here is one:

Let's say I have my sermons loaded on Sermon Shout and I have picked the following locations for my messages.

Wordpress.com – a personal blog I share with friends

My church website – Members visit this site

MySpace – I use this to keep in touch with the youth in my church

an email list of my church members

Using a free account that I setup with FeedBurner.com I startup my distribution system this way.

Feed Burner reads my feed that I create with my Sermon Shout account. I use Feed Burner because they can translate my Sermon Shout feed into many different formats and I do not have to deal with all the technical aspects of RSS formating. Once I setup my account with Feed Burner I add my Sermon Shout feed and setup all the options I want it to have.

Now Feed Burner has done a lot of work for me. I can generate links for people to sign up via email, see how many people have listened to my sermons, and lots more.

Next I go to my WordPress.com blog and add a page, using FeedBurner, for people to sign up and automatically receive new sermons via email. I also add this to my church website and MySpace. I then add the FeedBurner feed to the main page of my blog so users can click on one of my sermons to listen.

After I have this setup I go back and add more items to my Sermon Shout channel. They will automatically be added to my Feed Burner account, my blog, MySpace, and any others that I setup using this method.

Now after a little work I have a complete distribution system setup for my messages and with the push of a button I can now reach the masses with my message and even without the thump-thumping sound I heard that Sunday morning. Now you can duplicate this same system with very little effort and reach more people very easily.

If you want to learn more about broadcasting your sermons on the Internet and get all the details visit us at www.SermonShout.com.