ccmag2010_03

Founder & Editor-in-Chief Steve Hewitt - steve@ccmag.com VP of Operations Michael Hewitt - mike@ccmag.com

Applying Tomorrow’s Technology to Today’s Ministry Volume 22

March 2010

No. 3

9 cover story

John 13:35 Community A Unique Community Online Buying and Selling Service by Steve Hewitt

Copy Editor Gina Hewitt Corporate Home Office

3 editorial Have Steve Hewitt Speak at Your Next Event for FREE!

Steve Hewitt - steve@ccmag.com

4 Press Releases 7 CCMagNewsBrief 12 ACS ideas to impact

from ACS Technologies

14 tech talk Cool Windows 7 Stuff

Dr. J.D. (Doc) Watson - docwatson3228@qwest.net

16 accelerating the dynamic church Dynamic Churches Have Vision

from Fellowship Technologies

18 higher power with kevin Digital Devotionals

Kevin A. Purcell - kevin@kevinpurcell.org

The Inseparable Bond of Technology & Mission

25 the mobility revolution

Nick Nicholaou - nick@mbsinc.com

Launching Online: Choosing Platforms - A LAMP unto My Feet

28 church web strategy

By Russ McGuire - russ.mcguire@gmail.com

Church Website Communications Teams and Content Strategy Research Part 2

33 ministry communication

Connect Your Members & Build Your Volunteer Ministry

22 nick at church

Contributing Editors Dr. J.D. “Doc” Watson Terry Wilhite Yvon Prehn Nick Nicholaou Kevin A. Purcell C. Brian Smith Russ McGuire Drew Goodmanson Bradley Miller Michael Curylo

Drew Goodmanson - drew@monkdevelopment.com

Internet Evangelism Day and Its Communication Potential for Those with Limitations

Christian Computing® is a registered trademark of Christian Computing, Inc. Written materials submitted to Christian Computing® Magazine become the property of Christian Computing®, Inc. upon receipt and may not necessarily be returned. Christian Computing® Magazine reserves the right to make any changes to materials submitted for publication that are deemed necessary for editorial purposes. The content of this publication may not be copied in any way, shape or form without the express permission of Christian Computing®, Inc. Views expressed in the articles and reviews printed within are not necessarily the views of the editor, publisher, or employees of Christian Computing® Magazine, or Christian Computing, Inc.

Yvon Prehn - yvonprehn@aol.com

Articles that are highlighed are provided by our partners www.ccmag.com/2007_03/2007_03editorial.pdf

Christian Computing® Magazine

March 2010

editorial

Have Steve Hewitt Speak at Your Next Event for FREE! Steve Hewitt - steve@ccmag.com

love having the opportunity to share with Christian leaders the important trends in technology and how they need to merge with ministry needs. And, I appreciate the opportunity to speak at national events such as the CLA (this April), Shelby’s ISC (this June) and the NACBA (this July). However, I also love it when I have the opportunity to speak before regional and even local groups. However, the cost of travel and such makes it normally impossible to do so. However, now there is a way! Last week I had the joy of joining the Charlotte North Carolina’s local NACBA chapter meeting, and I was able to do so without any cost on my part or theirs! I joined their meeting via Skype. I did a 30 minute presentation using video through Skype, and then we had about 15-20 minutes for questions. Skype worked great, except I couldn’t share my PowerPoint presentation with them (they were stuck just looking at my face (grin)), and, while I was able to hear their questions live, I couldn’t see them. But there are even better video meeting solutions on the market, and most are free, allowing two-way video AND the opportunity to share a presentation. If I can work these into my schedule, I am happy to meet with any group via virtual connection, and I do not charge for such Christian Computing® Magazine

opportunities. I am driven to help as many church and ministry leaders as possible, learn how to use technology solutions to enhance their ministry. So, if you would like to have me join you for your next meeting, and FREE fits within your budget, drop me an email and we will see if we can work it out! Together We Serve Him,

Steve Hewitt

March 2010

Press Releases Announcing Merger: Logos Management Software and 360hubs Bringing together back office and front of the house management. Logos Management Software, Inc., a leading church database and accounting system today announced the completion of a merger with 360hubs, Inc., a developer of turnkey Web 2.0 collaboration software. The aggregation of resources created by the merger will allow funds and talent to be geared towards better serving the users. “Bringing the 360Hubs team into the Logos family was done to strengthen our product mix of both desktop and Web-based applications,” said Wes Haystead, President of Logos Management Software. “Looking to the future, we wanted to put together a top-quality group of developers who share a passion for effective ministry.” Bridging the two companies has resulted in a complimentary blending of resources that will bring an increased competitive bundling of technology services. Logos product updates are already underway which will be available in 2010. “The 360hubs team offers Logos the latest in social media strategy and web technology; we believe merging our aggressive, entrepreneurial spirit with the stability and longevity of Logos Management Software will provide the best platform on which to build a solid future.” said Tony Ferraro, president of 360Hubs. About Logos Management Software, Inc. Logos II keeps records and enables communication with an unlimited number of individuals, families, and groups. Its time-saving features are designed to help larger church organizations quickly and efficiently streamline their processes. The office system links to family/ individual (census) information and provides a flexible member profile, confidential contribution records and groups/attendance tracking. Logos II instantly updates and populates inputted information throughout the database alleviating the need for Christian Computing® Magazine

multiple data entries in multiple screens. For additional information, visit www.logoscms.com About 360hubs Established in 2005, 360Hubs is an award-winning developer of Web 2.0 business collaboration software with more than 60 modules. The company is a recipient of the 2008 AeA’s High Tech Innovation Finalist Award for “Best Internet Product” and the 2007 “Best of the Web” award from Building, Design + Construction Magazine. For additional information, visit www.360hubs.com

Icon Systems Announces Release of Parishioner’s Module

Icon Systems, Inc. is pleased to announce the release of our full blown Parishioner’s Module for IconCMO – Church Management Online. Parishioner’s Module now enables church members to log into a secure website to verify and update their personal information, view their giving patterns and print their own contribution statements. Each household is given a unique 8 digit user name and password similar to what a bank or brokerage firm gives to their customers. Church staff can simply send reminders to the congregation, asking them to login and review their personal profiles. This will ensure that giving information, mailing addresses and contact information is correct and that special events information such as birthdays, communions, confirmation, graduations, baptisms, etc. are complete. This leads to greater reliability of information as congregational members monitor their own profiles. The church database administrator can view changes made by the congregation by simply running a report. The database manager can define who has Read-Only, Read-Write or NoAccess. In addition to allowing access to their own membership information, members can also print their own contribution statements at any time, saving the church time in preparing the mailing and the cost of postage. Icon CMO is web-based church management software that provides March 2010

Press Releases organizations with systems for accounting, membership, contributions and communications. And all of these systems can be utilized from any computer with access to the Internet. About Icon Systems For more than 19 years, Icon Systems has been developing high-quality software exclusively for religious organizations. The two prominent offerings from Icon Systems are Revelations - a single user or network based church management software package - and IconCMO an Internet based online system. Icon Systems has a deep software engineering heritage that has enabled its products to achieve unprecedented performance, reliability and customer satisfaction. Icon Systems is located in Moorhead, MN and can be contacted at 1-800-596-4266 or on the Internet at www.iconcmo.com

LifeWay Launches Digital Church Initiative to Help Church Leaders Use Technology More Effectively TransactU™ by ServiceU Corporation Will Be Featured Among Services Offered For church leaders trying to navigate the digital age, the challenge can take on biblical proportions. While the psalmist looked to the hills in his hour of need, pastors, staff and lay leaders today find themselves looking to the “cloud” – that place in cyberspace where a host of new Web-based resources and services are found. It’s all part of the digital church, where multimedia and social networking are as common as hymnals and printed bulletins. And LifeWay Christian Resources is making it easier for church decision makers to access and download a wide range of resources through the new web portal, http://LifeWay.com/digitalchurch. “We launched Digital Church to provide solutions that will help churches be more effective in ministry,” said Tim Vineyard, LifeWay’s chief information officer. “Ministry leaders now have access, in one place, to a full range of digital resources. Digital Church services and solutions are easy to use and come from trusted resource providers.” The “cloud services” available through Digital Church include existing LifeWay resources such as WorshipMap Pro and SongMap, the groundbreaking online Christian Computing® Magazine

services that enable users to download and customize worship music; LifeWayLINK, the church Web-site service; and eMediaLINK, the solution for adding online video to ministry Web sites. It also features new services available through alliances between LifeWay and Fellowship Technologies and ServiceU. Among these new services are: • Church management software and advanced member management tools through Fellowship Technologies, which provides safe, secure options for churches to manage their sensitive membership data. Fellowship Technologies has state-of-the-art check in systems that are scalable for any size church. • TransactU™, software that equips churches to set up online giving and event registration. The software comes from ServiceU Corp., a worldclass software development company. ServiceU is one of the few companies in compliance with the Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standards as a Level 1 Service Provider – meaning customers can have the highest degree of confidence in the security of their credit card information when making online purchases or donations. Tim Whitehorn, founder and CEO of ServiceU, comments, “The LifeWay name carries a high degree of trust with churches nationwide. We are honored to work with LifeWay in helping churches utilize technology to further their mission.” “LifeWay’s vision for the Digital Church aligns perfectly with our mission to empower the local church through advanced technologies,” said Jeff Hook, chief executive officer of Fellowship Technologies. Other services and service providers will be added in the months ahead, said Vineyard, who added that Digital Church helps ministry leaders in a number of unique ways: It’s easy to access from any computer with a username and password; it’s highly secure and easy to navigate; and it’s trusted because it features well-known LifeWay resources and LifeWay-recommended services and service providers. The Digital Church initiative is part of a larger strategy for LifeWay, according to President and CEO Thom Rainer. In his address to trustees earlier this month, Rainer said LifeWay will maintain its historic March 2010

Press Releases biblical fidelity, but enhance its delivery systems to keep pace with the digital needs of the church. Rainer cast a vision for LifeWay for the next decade. “LifeWay will be the ministry leader in the digital world,” he told trustees. “When people think about digital Christian resources, they will look to LifeWay. A digital strategy is critical to our future.” Rainer stressed that more people are coming to LifeWay for digital content. Church and ministry leaders are going online to download hundreds of valuable resources from multiple areas of LifeWay.com including LifeWay Kids, LifeWay Women and others. “We want to provide the best content and delivery that makes a ministry difference to our constituents and customers,” he said. “With cutting-edge ministry resources and a tech-savvy business strategy, we are better positioned and aware of the opportunities that lay before us.” More information is available at LifeWay.com/ digitalchurch.

Fellowship Technologies to Be a Part of LifeWay Christian Resources’ Digital Church Fellowship Technologies is pleased to announce its partnership with LifeWay Christian Resources in the launching of its Digital Church initiative. This strategic alliance combines the leading web-based church management software, Fellowship One, and the trusted resources of LifeWay through its new web portal located at LifeWay.com/DigitalChurch. The Digital Church initiative is part of a larger strategy for LifeWay to enhance its delivery systems and keep up with the digital needs of the church, and Fellowship Technologies is proud to be included. “We are very excited to be a part of LifeWay’s Digital Church initiative,” said Jeff Hook, Chief Executive Officer of Fellowship Technologies. “It is an honor to have a world-class Christian organization such as LifeWay select Fellowship One as their recommended church management software. Their vision for the Digital Church aligns perfectly with our mission to empower the local church through advanced technology.” Through LifeWay’s Digital Church portal church Christian Computing® Magazine

leaders will have easy access to download a wide range of resources. “We launched Digital Church to provide solutions that will help churches be more effective in ministry,” said Tim Vineyard, LifeWay’s chief information officer. “Ministry leaders now have access, in one place, to a full range of digital resources. Digital Church services and solutions are easy to use and come from trusted resource providers.” As one of these trusted providers, Fellowship Technologies offers its flagship product, Fellowship One, a web-based church management software solution that helps dynamic churches of any size or denomination become more effective in ministry, more efficient in administration, with the essential information to make decisions. Fellowship One provides a unique 360-degree, single view of the family including individuals, their involvement and their needs so the church can personalize their care. More information is available at FellowshipTech.com/DigitalChurch. About LifeWay Christian Resources LifeWay is the publishing arm of the Southern Baptist Convention. It is one of the world’s largest providers of Christian products and services, including Bibles, church literature, books, music, audio and video recordings, church supplies and Internet services through LifeWay.com. Established in Nashville, Tenn. in 1891, the company owns and operates more than 150 LifeWay Christian Stores throughout the United States, as well as two of the largest Christian conference centers in the country. LifeWay is a religious nonprofit organization that receives no funding from the denomination and reinvests income above operating expenses in mission work and other ministries around the world. About Fellowship Technologies Fellowship Technologies was founded in 2004 with a mission to edify God and His Kingdom by empowering the church community through advanced technology. Their flagship product, Fellowship One, is a web-based church management software solution used by ministries around the world ranging in size from new church plants to mega-sized, multi-site, churches. For more information please visit http://www.FellowshipTech.com.

March 2010

Don’t Press the F1 Key? Microsoft is issuing a warning for those customers that are use WinXP. It appears a flaw has been found that would allow some clever programming (hacking) where someone outside can take over your computer if you use the F1 key to access help on your computer. The security hole was found in Internet Explorer and can only be used if a person is using WinXP. However, until it is fixed, Microsoft is worried that the “bad guys” will exploit this hole and people will be encouraged to hit the F1 key as a result of some instructions on a Web site. So, until it is fixed, don’t hit the F1 key when asked via a Web site! For more information, visit http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/print/9164038/Microsoft_Don_t_press_F1_key_in_Windows_XP?taxonomyName=Spam%2C+Malware+and+Vulnerabilities&taxonomyI d=85 Our Troops Gain Access to Social Media Sites, While Israel Deals with Social Media Security Issues The US Pentagon has reversed their previous decision to block troops from using social media sites, and has now allowed US military computers to open access to around 10 social networking sites such as MySpace and YouTube. In the past, restrictions were really based more upon the concern for bandwidth and usage, as much as security. Commanders can still initiate temporary limits to access the Internet in order to safeguard operations security during an upcoming military action. For more information visit: http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-02-27/pentagon-willallow-troops-broad-access-to-social-media-sites.html. To show the importance of concern with soldiers using social networking sites, Israel announced that they had to cancel a scheduled raid on the Web Bank after one of their soldiers posted details of the operation on Facebook. He simply updated his status, stating that on the next day, they would be cleaning up a specific section of the West Bank, and he hoped to be home the following day. He even mentioned the combat unit and the time of the planned operation. While it is unclear if he realized the importance of the information he was posting, or the potential damage it could cause, luckily some of those that were his Facebook friends realized the danger and reported it in time to have the raid canceled. For more information, visit http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2010/03/israel-cancels-raid-after-soldier-posts-details-on-facebook/1 Good News for Hard Drives, Bad News for XP Users Hard drives are about to make a giant leap forward! For a very long time, hard drives have been designed to be formatted into 512 byte sectors. This worked fine back in the day when 512 bytes was a lot of data. However, today, such small sectors are slowing down hard drives. Starting early next year, all hard drives will use an “advanced format” that will change the way data is stored, and will use sectors formatted to 4k. This will make hard drives faster, and waste less space. There is only ONE problem. These new drives will NOT work with computers still running WinXP. Since Vista was not popular, there are still many people using XP. You can still use XP on your computer, of course, but when your hard drive goes out, or if you would have wanted to add an additional hard drive for storage or backup, you will be out of luck next year. So, stock up on hard drives, or consider making the move to Win7! We have a great Webinar on the CCMag.com site on “Win7, Get It, or Forget It?” which should help you determine your best choice! For more information visit http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/ pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8557144.stm?ad=1 FCC Presents Their National Broadband Plan to Congress Over a year ago, part of the stimulus bill was set aside to increase broadband Internet access for US citizens. The

Christian Computing® Magazine

March 2010

FCC was given the task to determine the best way to spend the money and increase the speed of Internet access in areas that were falling behind the rest of the nation. However, there were and are many problems. First, the US is far behind many other countries in the area of connection speed, ranking somewhere behind at least 25 other countries. However, once the FCC received applications from companies seeking funds to increase broadband in a specific area, it was always protested by existing ISP companies who claimed they had an initial investment in the area and government interference would kill their investments. In addition, the FCC has presented a plan to increase the speed of wireless Internet access, but at the cost of decreasing broadcast TV airwaves. While more and more people are accessing TV via the Internet, it appears you cannot reduce one while increasing the other, and match consumers use at the same time (for example, when everyone DOES watch TV, such as the SuperBowl, we presently couldn’t all watch via the Internet). We have a problem.

1. Cloud Computing in on the increase 2. Netbook sales are on the increase 3. CD and DVD sales are on the decrease as people want to download or stream these via the Internet 4. Broadcast TV watchers are on the decrease and more and more watch via the Internet 5. And, fast broadband may be vital for economic growth. So, it appears clear that the FCC and our government has a hard row ahead of them, particularly in a time when it seems our government can’t seem to move forward on any legislation due to gridlock. For more information, visit http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2010-03-17-fcc17_ST_N. htm?loc=interstitialskip Lifelock Settles With FTC and Agrees To Pay $12 Million in Damages Remember these claims? Lifelock claimed that if you became one of their customers, they would prevent identity theft “from ever happening to you, Guaranteed!” Their claims simply were not true. Actually, they only prevented new accounts from being opened if someone stole your ID. But this only accounted for 17% of ID theft cases. Lifelock could do nothing if one of your present accounts were stolen and a thief abused your accounts with new charges. In addition, their method of protecting against new accounts was challenged by the top credit bureaus. In addition, the FTC accuses Lifelock of not taking necessary precautions to protect the valuable data they had on their own customers. If you have been a Lifelock customer, you should receive a letter informing you on the procedure you can follow to recoup some of the money you spent on Lifelock’s protection. There IS no easy fix, and you should live as if your personal ID information has already been stolen and watch your accounts, use good security measures that are provided by banks (such as Bank America’s texted secondary password whenever you do online banking). For more information, visit http://chicagopressrelease.com/press-releases/ftc-lifelock-claims-misleading-customers Are You Ready to Die, Technically? Most of us make some sort of preparations for our death. We might have life insurance or a will. But, are you prepared technically? While most want to keep their personal lives, personal, if you were to die, would your spouse or family members know HOW to get into your Facebook account to shut it down? What about your email? How about your passwords or PIN (Personal Identification Numbers) for your cell phone? There is a story in the news this week about a woman who tried to shut off her father’s cell phone account with Verizon after her father died last June. However, Verizon refused to shut down the account and continued to bill her, even after she sent them a copy of the death certificate. Because she didn’t have his PIN! Verizon finally disconnected the phone account, this LAST week, and it only happened at this point because the media became involved. Write down all of your account information, including passwords, etc., and leave them in your will or with someone you can trust. For more information, visit http://www. tampabay.com/features/consumer/pinellas-womans-verizon-fight-shows-why-pins-should-be-shared/1076677

Christian Computing® Magazine

March 2010

cover story

John 13:35 Community A Unique Community Online Buying and Selling Service

by Steve Hewitt

love unique new services, specific to church and Christian needs. Recently, I ran across something exciting, the John 13:35 Community service. It is a church or ministry online service allowing for the membership or community to sell and buy from each other in a safe environment! I am sure most of you know there are some national online services that do this, and yes, they have the ability for you to narrow your search down to your city or region. But, these sites are also very unsafe. Most offer “adult” services and others are havens for those seeking to steal a potential buyer’s money without providing the product. John 13:35 Community provides your church, ministry, community and/or non-profit the opportunity to have a safe place for people to donate or sell items. I interviewed Karen Sherwood, the founder of John 13:35 Community and I encourage you to read the rest of this article to learn more about this unique service. Describe a John 13:35 Community. What does it do? A John 13:35 Community facilitates the match that needs to take place in a church when “Member A” wants to donate or sell an item or service to “Member B” in their own congregation. It operates in a closed secure community for reasons of safety when members meet face-to-face to exchange goods and services. In the past, the challenge has been that “Member B” may need this item or service but four things stand in the way: • They don’t know it’s there • They don’t know the people who have it • They may not be able to pay for it Christian Computing® Magazine

• Finding the means to transport it can be difficult as in the case of a large piece of furniture This program matches these two people and helps them get in touch with people in their own congregation to help transport large items. Can you take us through it step by step? Of course: 1. The admin at Church ABC in Billings, Montana signs up for a subscription to give the program a test run from the website www.john1335inc.com. 2. The program takes them to the community set-up page where, as the community admin, they input the church contact information and select a name for their new community. 3. They click continue and the program takes them to a payment page where they select the level they’d like to join. PayPal conducts the transaction on the backend and they’re given a transaction number for their records. They’re also given 60 days to evaluate the program. 4. They’re taken to the Dashboard where everything happens. March 2010

5. They watch the “Setting up your New Community” Video. 6. They set up their own branding – church logo and colors. 7. They set up their individual user profile. 8. They check in their account info tab and see when their subscription expires. They also find the cancel my subscription button here. At any point before their trial 60 days are up they can cancel and obtain a full refund. When it’s used, their subscription is cancelled immediately and they have until day end to go in and out of the community. The credit generally shows up on their credit card statement within 1-2 business days. 9. They then go into their categories module where they can add and delete different donation classifications such as furniture or clothes, gardening or toys, for the purposes of search. 10. They look in the user module where they have access to all users and donation content 11. They go to the reports menu and view the live data – user, donation and transaction data – they have available to them. 12. They go into the PayPal utility if they want to offer that to their congregation. 13. They input the email addresses of those members of their congregation they want to be the base membership in their community. These people will be sent email that grandfathers them in without requiring three recommendations. They will most likely be people on their board, their leadership and their staff – people they can trust. 14. They begin to introduce the program to the congregation verbally from the pulpit, promoting it in the bulletin and reinforcing it over time until their members begin using it naturally. 15. Parishioners begin to become members and donate items and services they no longer use or simply want to give to someone in need. 16. Other parishioners search for these same items and services. 17. They can take advantage of extensive FAQs and responsive support (a couple hours during normal business hours). 18. They can make donations of items and services, or sell items, and advertise services they charge for like piano lessons or tutoring. 19. They can search for items and services to buy or obtain free of charge. 20. They can make cash donations to support causes their church supports. 21. Each community has its own individual free-form text blog they can use for communication, organizing mission trip needs, organizing meals for a new mother, meeting ongoing needs for a family who just lost a loved one; publishing articles…the possibilities are endless Christian Computing® Magazine

How long have you been in operation? We’ve been 12 months in operation and two-plus years in conceptual design and development. During the last two years we’ve conducted focus groups, market research, met with church leadership and support staff. Our goal was to produce an application that served churches in their mission rather than the other way around. What does that mean? Churches are not in the business of technology. They’re in the business of making a difference in people’s lives. Meeting people’s needs in Jesus’ name; whether they are spiritual needs or physical needs. That’s what they’re called to do. But technology can either obstruct this process or if it’s designed correctly, serve this process. It can facilitate and deepen relationships. It can assist senior leadership in discerning the deeper needs in people’s lives so they minister more effectively. It can help people mobilize themselves in a very short period of time – do what they’re called to do and what they really want to do. Technology should be a doorway not a doorstop. If you’re trying to minister and your computer keeps locking up or you don’t know how to do something, you need to stop and take the time to fix it so you can accomplish your mission. This is very frustrating. So, we set out to make it simple and make it work. But it had to be safe. The result is that it doesn’t run on a church server and you don’t need an in-house IT professional to use it because there’s no application maintenance, downed servers or glitches that stand in the way of ministry. And it’s secure. We do it all and you use it to facilitate relationships, strengthen connections and make a difference in struggling people’s lives by identifying and meeting their basic life needs. The things churches do best. Being in the middle of a great recession, many people are losing their jobs, their homes, and their ability to provide for themselves. But this doesn’t mean they stop having needs. This is where the church, people step in as members of the greater Body of Christ and meets these needs by sharing what they’ve been given. What is a Private Community Network? It’s a completely new concept. I’ve been in the world of churches and worked in the world of technology for 20 years and there isn’t a product like this that empowers people to reach into each other’s lives and give things to meet basic needs without feeling invasive or feeling like they’re prying. People in difficult situations are not apt to go to a church meeting and raise their hand and say, “Hey, I’m failing. I just lost my job and I can’t feed my family”. It just doesn’t happen. People are also not apt to walk up to a person who’s just been evicted from his home because he couldn’t pay his rent and call this out with them. It’s embarrassing for most people. As a result, people do the best they can on their own, to preserve their own sense of dignity. In a Private Community Network, people can search for things they need in the privacy of their own homes; things that people in their own church community have graciously given to meet needs like time, money, stuff — the basic things we need to live – food, clothing, furniture, a roof over our heads, etc. March 2010

Your company continually leads with security, security, security? Why? We’ve all heard of situations where people meet after talking online to buy or sell something and something terrible happens. A Private Community Network directly addresses this issue because it’s exactly that. Private. It isn’t open to the public. It’s open to anyone in the church, members and attendees but they need to apply and be recommended by three (3) current members. This way someone knows everyone. Leadership can be confident with two, not just one level of robust security: 1-User name and password, and, 2-membership by referral only. This is a basic level of trust you don’t find in an application like a classified site that’s open to the public. What is a subscription based application? This is the cool part. We run the application enabling your congregation to connect in this safe, private community and you pay a monthly fee to use it. There isn’t a monthly or annual contracts requirement. You simply sign up for one month, you get 30 additional free days to evaluate the program giving you a total of 60 days. Your church leadership has time to give it a test run and find out if it’s right for your Church. If it’s not, obtain a full refund by cancelling in one simple click on a visible, accessible button. There is no fee for cancelling. If you’re happy with the program, don’t do anything and your card will be charged monthly until you tell us to stop. How did you decide what platform to operate on? We chose the Linux Platform because it’s open source and we believe that to be where technology is going. We also decided it needed to be web based so churches didn’t have the burden of maintenance. So far this has worked well for us. Why did you start to make everything people donate free of charge to someone who needs it? Two reasons: 1- The body of Christ is called to outwardly love each other (John 13:35) and as Christ says in Matthew 25:35-36 “for I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’ 2- The second one is very practical – people have things they no longer need and people need things they no longer have. Was there any personal experience that pushed you into developing this product? I recently downsized from a 2200 square foot home to a condo. After raising kids and enjoying a large home with a larger yard, I decided it was time. But I had a challenge. My home sold very quickly and closed a week earlier than expected. I had a living room and two bedrooms full of furniture and a full garage. I wanted to give all of this to someone who needed it but I didn’t know anyone. The challenge was that I needed to do it quick. So, I asked everyone I knew and my real-estate agent through a person in her small group knew someone who was the foster parent of a young woman in South Dakota fleeing a domestic violence situation with a four month old and an 18 month old. She had nothing but the clothes on her back and was arriving shortly. Her family was frantically trying to put a living situation together for her and they took everything I had. What a blessing to me. It doesn’t often happen that way but we believe it should …

Christian Computing® Magazine

March 2010

ACS

ACS ideas to impact

Connect Your Members & Build Your Volunteer Ministry

from ACS Technologies

he reality of today’s ministry is that volunteers are not in abundance in most churches. Church leaders struggle to get the majority of their members involved as volunteers and find it difficult to retain volunteers once they are involved. But even with these difficulties, there are numerous ways to utilize volunteer management software to build volunteer programs into a strong, vibrant ministry. Doing so will allow the church to continually develop members — both spiritually and personally — by connecting them to opportunities that fit their interests and abilities. The following article has been excerpted from the ACS ministry guide Raising Your Volunteer Numbers. Connect Your Members & Build Your Volunteer Ministry The reality of today’s ministry is that volunteers are not in abundance in most churches. Church leaders struggle to get the majority of their members involved as volunteers and find it difficult to retain volunteers once they are involved. But even with these difficulties, there are numerous ways to utilize volunteer management software to build volunteer programs into a strong, vibrant ministry. Doing so will allow the church to continually develop members — both spiritually and personally — by connecting them to opportunities that fit their interests and abilities. The following article has been excerpted from the ACS ministry guide Raising Your Volunteer Numbers.

• Approve all change requests and keep control over all data changes

Get Your Members Connected The members of every church possess a wide variety of knowledge and skills that can be utilized for volunteer ministry. Therefore, it is imperative to gather and organize information about members in order to match them with appropriate volunteer positions. Volunteer management software solutions provide the ability to:

Use the Web to Increase Awareness Awareness is vital when it comes to getting the right people involved in what the church is doing. The announcements and bulletins catch some people, but church leaders cannot help but wonder if there are capable and available people in the congregation who are not serving because they just do not know what is going on. Because of this, there needs to be a way to make volunteers aware of opportunities and make it convenient for them to sign up. Consider using the church Web site to post opportunities online. There are professionally designed Web pages that anyone can manage, even without advanced technological skills. Staff can simply go online and sign in anytime and anywhere to post information as necessary. By using this kind of solution, each leader can manage the section that informs members of his or her ministry. These sites also allow the organization to create private pages to post information for leaders only.

• Allow members to go online and submit changes to their own information • Input information easily as new members join the church

Email Possibilities Sending out email is also a great way to increase awareness. By using a church management system that offers Web-

Christian Computing® Magazine

March 2010

based features, ministry leaders can access member information and email addresses to send out individual or group email. When sending an email, a leader can simply place a link to the posting site so all members have to do is click the link to view more information about the opportunity. With one more click, people can sign up since the church already has their information. After receiving their registration, the ministry leader can call each member or send them a more personal email thanking them for signing up and giving instructions to them on when and where to arrive. When mass emails are in order, many organizations use an outside source to handle them. Because of the complexity of large group email delivery and processing, companies that specialize in this offer to do the following: • Make sure every mass email you send contains all of the right elements • Advise churches on the latest permission guidelines and best practices • Eliminate opt-out requests from members or visitors This way, churches never see a bounce message, only a detailed report of who bounced and what kind it was. They also help by: • Handling formatting issues • Protecting against duplicates • Ensuring database lists are safe, secure, and accurate Volunteers can be sorted into groups according to interests and qualifications, and automatic emails can be sent out to individual groups. Members can manage their own preferences, allowing them to help keep the church up to date with changing email addresses and interests. Ensure Volunteer Ministry Success Taking an organized approach and using the proper tools can help to overcome the difficulties faced in the pursuit of effective volunteer ministry. By applying them, churches will find themselves leading motivated and committed people who are making the most impact toward the growth of the church. For more practical advice and creative solutions to building a strong volunteer ministry, download the ACS ministry guide Raising Your Volunteer Numbers or email betty@acstechnologies.com.

Christian Computing® Magazine

March 2010

tech talk

Cool Windows 7 Stuff

Dr. J.D. (Doc) Watson - docwatson3228@qwest.net

esides fixing a lot of things that needed fixing in the horrific Vista operating system, Windows 7 has added even more to make it a truly desirable OS. While the look hasn’t changed all that much, there are many enhancements and tweaks under the hood. Here are just a few quickies, which we’ll add to next month. New Keyboard Shortcuts First things first: a quick review. Here is the list of Windows shortcut keys that applied to Windows versions prior to Win7 (and still do with a few new twists in some cases). Now for the new tricks in Windows 7.

dow. Win7, however, goes a step (actually two steps) better. A similar preview appears, but this one includes the close window “x” icon within the preview, as well as a full-size “peek” at the window, which changes as you point at other taskbar buttons. You can also press Win+T to scroll along previews in the taskbar.

New Mouse Minimize Trick This is just plain cute. If Legacy Windows Shortcut Keys you have several windows open Keystroke Action Display Start menu  and want to minimize everyOpen Run dialog box thing except the most important +R Minimize all open windows +M Undo minimize all open windows one, just grab the top of the SHIFT++M Display Help and Support Center +F1 window and shake it a little Open Windows Explorer  +E bit. This scares everybody else Open Find files or Folders utility +F Minimize all open windows and display the desktop away. I told you it was cute. +D New Preview Feature In Vista, hovering over a minimized taskbar button displays a preview of the winChristian Computing® Magazine

CTRL++F +TAB CTRL++TAB

+Break

Open Find Computer utility Cycle through taskbar buttons Moves focus from Start, to the Quick Launch toolbar, to the System Tray (use Right or Left Arrow to move focus to items on the Quick Launch toolbar and the System Tray) Open System Properties dialog box

March 2010

New Twist in Alt+Tab Ever since the early days of Windows, I have used the Alt+Tab feature to switch between open applications. Well, Win7 has the coolest addition to this ever. It reminds me of what I have seen various Linux distros do. Open three or four windows, hold down Alt, and then press Tab (but don’t release Alt). A small preview for each window appears on the screen in a cascade layout. Keep pressing Tab to watch the emphasis change to each window. As always, release Tab when you see the one you want. New Window Resizing For years we’ve had to carefully position the mouse pointer at the edge of a window, hold down the left button, and drag the edge of the window just to resize it. Not anymore—ah, progress. Try this. Just drag a window to the top of the screen to maximize it. Now grab the same window and drag it to the left or right of the screen to resize it to half of the screen size. Now press and hold down the W key in conjunction with each of the Arrow keys. Cool, huh?

isn’t open—by right-clicking on the application’s icon in the taskbar. It also enables you to access a favorite play list quickly without opening your media player. Jumplists can also be found integrated into the Start Menu.

New Way to Preview Your MP3 Files With its new smaller preview player, opening and listening to your MP3s is a lot New JumpLists JumpLists is a new feature that gives you slicker. It displays album art, basic music functionality, and a link to the full-blown Windows the option to view a list of recently accessed files by application—even when the application Media Player. Yea, I know, this is a shameless attempt to ape the preview feature of Mac OS X, but that’s New Windows 7 Shortcut Keys showbiz. Keystroke Action Display gadgets in front of other windows There’s much to appreciate +G Cycle through taskbar buttons for preview +T and enjoy in Windows 7. I’ll ++ (plus key) Zoom in, where appropriate throw some more stuff your Zoom out, where appropriate +- (minus key) Maximize the current window way next time. +Up Arrow

+Down Arrow +Left Arrow +Right Arrow +Home

Minimize the current window Snap to the left hand side of the screen Snap to the right hand side of the screen Minimize/ restore everything except the current window

Christian Computing® Magazine

March 2010

accelerating the dynamic church

Dynamic Churches Have Vision

Accelerating Dynamic Church® fromThe Fellowship Technologies

astor and author Andy Stanley once famously said, “An idea is what could be; but a vision is what should be.” Following the life of Nehemiah and the vision God gave him, Stanley points out this impactful truth in his book “Visioneering”. This kind of revelation is what’s talked about in the book of Proverbs when Solomon wrote, “Where there is no revelation, the people cast off restraint.”

Vision matters to churches that want to reach their communities and develop fully devoted disciples. That’s why we believe that dynamic churches have strong leadership teams with a clear vision of where they are headed. Though strong leadership can exist in a single leader, we have observed that a team committed to a vision will carry that vision and keep it in front of the people. In this way, every ministry area benefits from the team approach to leadership. The approach that yields the most results is based on a simple model: Vision, Goals, Strategies and Actions. Vision The vision is a unique representation of the specific DNA of a church’s culture. As a result, the vision of the church should not be the same as any other local churches. It’s this diversity in a community that fosters churches of varying styles, denominations and sizes all reaching different people groups. An example of a specific vision for a church might look like, “Our church will actively serve our local community through acts of service, partnering with the local government and providing resources to the needy.” When a church lacks vision, it often results in a church that stops growing or declines. Dynamic churches, however, will re-evaluate how they execute on their vision when something is not working, where as static churches focus on maintaining the status quo. Christian Computing® Magazine

Goals Having a vision means that the focus of effort needs to be applied in ways that allow it to be accomplished. This is where goals define the objectives. Goals are time-based and can be measured. If they don’t meet both criteria, they’re not goals, just ideas. Goals for the above sample vision might be: • “Have 50 people providing free volunteer services for the elderly, single parents and disabled people by the end of the year.” • “Provide free volunteer staff for city-wide events, including the annual July 4th parade, Arbor Days event and Christmas parade to help give back to the city.” • “Our men’s, women’s and youth ministries will organize teams of volunteers and find at least four service opportunities per month to serve people in need.” A dynamic church’s leaders will make sure that all goals align directly with the vision. These leaders understand that placing goals without metrics, inspection and accountability will lead to ministry silos – where each ministry is self-focused and misses the over-arching vision and mission of the church. The best dynamic church leaders will build goals with mileMarch 2010

stones; that is, measurement “check points” along the timeline of the goal to ensure that the right time, energy & resources are being applied to reach the goal. Strategies Once vision and goals are set, strategies are devised to reach the goals. A strategy defines a plan of action. Typically, there are multiple strategies required to reach a goal. Some example strategies for the current example might be: • “Deploy an email & phone call campaign to determine the number of service organizations in the city. Reach out to known senior citizen centers, civic organizations and local mission organizations and offer organized support from the church.” • “Provide online registration via the church website for volunteering on different teams and varying service projects.” • Develop a print, web & video campaign to promote internal awareness among church members; develop an external campaign using some of the same resources to provide community awareness.” Dynamic church leaders realize that once goals are set, knowing how to reach those goals is a key part of accomplishing the vision. More than the other steps, this is one many leaders gloss over in their desire to start putting action steps into place. However, a rush to action will often lead to motion, but no progress. Actions The final step in implementing vision is to define the specific action steps necessary to execute strategy and realize objectives. A critical aspect is to spread the work of the ministry across staff and volunteers. Most strong dynamic church leaders will actually give far more work to a staff member than they can possibly handle as a motivator to include volunteers in getting the work accomplished. Examples of action steps might include: • “Promote service opportunities through announcement videos during weekend services and on the church website.” • “Develop promotional information packet of various Christian Computing® Magazine

services opportunities. Promote all registration of events through online forms or via email to the church.” • “Coordinate recurring service efforts with local organizations. Find weekly, monthly, quarterly and seasonal opportunities.” • “Create an advisory group that includes at least four leaders in the community and local government leadership within 30 days.” Action steps matter because they provide many of the metrics for measuring progress towards reaching a goal. The actions are not dependent upon a staff member doing all of them, but rather making sure the work gets done. Without defining the actions, it is difficult to set realistic expectations or timelines for implementing initiatives. How’s Your Vision? At the beginning of a new year, leaders often cast new vision. Has your church cast a vision, set goals, applied strategies and defined action steps to accomplish that vision? How can your church leaders refine the vision to match the unique identity of the church? Be a strong, dynamic leader and apply these principles to accelerate your church growth! March 2010

higher power with kevin

Digital Devotionals

Kevin A. Purcell - kevin@kevinpurcell.org o you do your daily devotions? Jesus said, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” (Matthew 4:4, ESV) Sadly

we cannot literally hear his words in this world, but we can read them. Doing what most Christians call a “quiet time” (I prefer personal worship) is something that helps us adhere to the teaching of Psalm 1. Verse 1-2 says, “How happy is the man who does not follow the advice of the wicked, or take the path of sinners, or join

a group of mockers! Instead, his delight is in the LORD’s instruction, and he meditates on it day and night.” (Psalm 1:1-2, HCSB) Do you meditate or delight or live on the word of God? If you don’t let me recommend you begin to do so. And if you do, great! Maybe you would like to learn how you can do so digitally. Doing devotions for many is best done while sitting with a cup of coffee and a well-worn, leatherbound Bible. I must admit there is a feeling that you cannot get any other way. Using my leather covered Kindle is close, but not quite the same. However, I also have to admit that if I am only willing to do my daily Bible reading and devotions in this way, I likely won’t do them. So for a long time I have relied on a computer, smart phone, or PDA to help me do my devotions. The reminder that many Bible study programs give you when you start them helps. For me, seeing the icon for my favorite Bible study app on my iPhone convicts me of the need to do my Bible reading and thus have my personal worship time. Christian Computing® Magazine

Most disciple makers will tell a growing believer to include three things in personal worship time (PWT). 1. Prayer 2. Bible Reading 3. Journaling Prayer If you are like me, it is hard to stay focused while praying. What I began doing a long time ago was actually writing my prayers. I have terrible handwriting and I can actually type more efficiently than I can write freehand. So, I used to keep my prayers in Word documents. It seems simplistic, but it was effective. I created March 2010

a directory or folder under My Documents for this. In that folder, I had a folder for each year. At the beginning of a new year I created a new folder. In that folder, I saved a Word document numbered with by the month. The file was called 01-January-2010. doc. In each Word document, I had a new page for each day. At the end of January, I had 31 pages. Two other programs that many of you might already have are Microsoft OneNote or Evernote. They are designed around the concept of a digital notebook. They are great for keeping all kinds of information. OneNote is useful for writing in your natural handwriting if you have a Tablet PC or an art Tablet. Or you can just type into it. In OneNote the best strategy would be to set up a special Notebook just for devotions. Then have a tab across the top for each area of devotions â&#x20AC;&#x201C; prayer, Bible, and journaling. In each tab you can set it up according to dates or topics in the prayer tab, book of the Bible in the Bible reading tab, and again date or topic in the journaling tab. You may find a better way. Evernote could be set up with a special notebook which would be listed in the left hand column, much like Windows Explorer. Inside it you could create a similar structure. One you have things set up in Word, OneNote, Evernote, or some other similar tool, just record your prayer requests and date them. Go back and record answers or results as well. The great thing about doing it in a program like OneNote or Evernote (http://www.evernote.com) is you can now search your notes. You can keep content for many years and look back to see your Christian growth during that time. A third alternative for digital devotions is to use programs designed for this. Many Bible study programs have prayer request tracking built Christian ComputingÂŽ Magazine

March 2010

in. For example, Logos (http://www.logos.com) has added this feature to version 4.0b and higher. Another program that has prayer requests built in is e-Sword (http://www.e-sword.net), a free program I have mentioned before and recommend highly to those not wishing to pay for a Bible study application. Check your Bible Study program to see if you have it built in as well. There are many programs devoted solely to recording and tracking prayer requests, but I have not used any of them, so I cannot recommend one. If you have used one or have created one, feel free to share with us via the comments section below this article on the Internet version. If you have an iPhone, be sure to check out Laridian’s (http://www.laridian.com) prayer request tracking app called Prayer Partner. It is the best iPhone prayer app available. I’m not going into detail here because that is beyond the purpose of this article but you can read about it on my website at http://www. kevinpurcell.org/archives/601. Bible Reading If you find yourself doing all the talking in your conversations with friends or family, you may have fewer people willing to talk to you. I wonder if God

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gets impatient with us in prayer when we do this to Him. Of course I know the answer to that is a big NO, since 1 Corinthians 13 says love is patient. But if I were him, I would. We have to listen to God. Bible reading is the only perfectly reliable way to do this. Sure, God can speak through people, our thoughts during prayer, and our circumstances (see Henry Blackaby’s Experiencing God study - http://bit.ly/d2E9c8). So Bible reading must be part of our PWT. Every good Bible study application will have some kind of customizable, Bible reading plan that you can create and follow. The best way to do this is set up something that is manageable for you. Many people try to begin this discipline by reading the Bible through in a year. As a pastor, I do not recommend this to people who are just starting out. Instead begin by reading through one of the Gospels in manageable chunks. The key is creating a good habit that you will keep doing. If your Bible study program does not have a way for you to create a customized bible reading schedule, then get a new one. Currently I am using an iPhone app to do my daily Bible reading. I have it set up to read a portion of the Old Testament, New Testament, Psalms, and Proverbs all in one day. I track it there and

March 2010

often read it there, but I usually look at the listed Bible reading and open my Bible on my Kindle (for that book look and feel mentioned above). But you can just read through the Gospel of John in one or two months. Or maybe you should start with reading all the Gospels and Acts in half a year. If you do not have a Bible study app that lets you create a customized reading plan, it surely has some kind of daily Bible reading plan built into it. Learn how to utilize it and read the Bible. If you are sure you are not going to follow it, then don’t set that goal. You could start by just reading on weekdays. But do it more than two or three times a week. And your goal is to eventually make it a daily habit. Another alternative is using an online Bible study tool. There are many good ones. YouVersion has a ton of daily Bible reading plans and you can not only read them on a PC or Mac from the Internet, but also via their iPhone or Android app. (http:// www.youversion.com) A final mention: there are services that will send you the Bible reading for the day via email or text message. And there are daily Bible reading plans that you can follow on Twitter and Facebook, too. One example is the One Year Bible reading schedule via Twitter at http://twitter.com/One_Year_Bible. You can access their Bible reading plan via the above mentioned media by going to http://oneyearbibleonline.com. Journaling An often overlooked discipline is journaling. You keep track of your own spiritual growth, your thoughts about what God is telling you through your prayer time and Bible reading, or just keep track of the day’s events from a Spiritual perspective. The best argument for journaling is keeping up with how you have grown as a believer. It also focuses your thoughts by forcing you to organize them into a written format. Keeping prayer requests and journaling can utilize the same techniques mentioned above. You could use Word, OneNote, Evernote, or some specially designed journaling software. Many Bible software applications have built in, the ability to create documents that are not necessarily Christian Computing® Magazine

tied to the Bible text. For example, in Bibleworks you can use the Editor tab which is right next to the Notes tab in the right hand side of the program. There you can create any kind of document. You may want to create a journal there based on the calendar or topics. Since many of the things you are journaling about will be based on what you have learned from your Bible reading for that day, you may want to just attach them to a verse or chapter via the notes tool of your Bible software application. We’ve looked at just a few of the ways that you can use digital resources for doing your PWT. How do you do your daily devotions using a computer or smartphone? Help us learn by commenting below this article in the online version. As always you can reach me via my web site at http://www.kevinpurcell.org and via Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/kapurcell. I also want to inform you that starting this month I will be joining the team at Notebooks.com (http://www.notebooks.com) sharing news, reviews, and how-to articles related to mobile computing in general. Hope to interact with you here and there.

March 2010

nick at church

The Inseparable Bond of Technology & Mission

Nick Nicholaou - nick@mbsinc.com

n a recent conference about technology in church ministry, Pastor Rick Warren of Saddleback Church (Lake Forest, CA) said, “Every time there is an advance in technology, The Kingdom advances.” Technology has a huge impact on our mission— not the ‘what’ of our mission, but the ‘how’. Some Perspective Most of us know the Gutenberg Bible was the first book printed on a printing press. Invented by Johannes Gutenberg around 1440, the printing press ushered in a technological revolution that sparked the Protestant Reformation! I was surprised to learn recently that it was also used to print Martin Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses. Apparently someone took Luther’s Theses to Gutenberg who printed them, helping his words and impact spread across Europe. Radio and television reached further than any previous method. Billy Graham was the first evangelist to use television to reach a national audience. ABC Television said his 1951 Hour of Decision program reached a national audience of seven million viewers! According to the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, that’s more than had heard all of his sermons combined! Pastors began using faxes to reach many in the 1980s. Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, CA, was the first church to use the Internet to reach their communities and beyond. Now most churches are on the Internet in some form. Is Technology Changing The Church’s Mission? In Matthew 28:19-20 Jesus gave us The Great Commission that nearly every Christian church or minChristian Computing® Magazine

istry mission flows from: “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them inthe name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” (NIV) Advances in technology do not change our base mission to fulfill Jesus’ command. As many have said, the message does not change, but the way we communicate it does! And there are some great tools available and even more coming that will definitely impact how we fulfill our mission. Current Technology Trends Many today have access to— and have become comfortable with— the Internet. Email and social websites have made it possible to communicate with many very easily. In 2009 it was said that the largest user group on Facebook was the 50-54 year old, and Facebook declared itself the sixth largest nation on earth! They now have more than 400 million active users, over 70% of whom are outside of the U.S. Churches are among the 1.5 million business who now have Facebook pages in addition to (or instead of!) websites. But today’s younger generations don’t like talking on phones or using email. They prefer text messaging, and consider those other communication tools as those they need to use at work or for school. March 2010

Twitter was discovered accidently by a group of programmers and has become a new major communication phenomenon. Twitter is built on the concept of text messaging technology which limits each message to 160 characters. Because it uses some of those 160 characters to deal with transmission protocols, Twitter limits their messages to 140 characters. Though one cannot say a lot in 140 characters, one highly regarded secular communicator said it’s a great way to start a conversation. Mobile Computing The trends of text messaging and Twitter point in the direction of things to come; namely, mobile computing. Some in the information technology (IT) field are predicting that notebook computer sales will slow to a trickle in the next couple of years as smartphones (cellular phones with the ability to access the Internet and run applications like the iPhone, Blackberry, and Droid) become more and more prevalent. What does this mean for the church and how it fulfills its mission? • Mobile applications and information will become key. Some churches are already redesigning their websites to recognize when they’re being accessed by a smartphone and then reformat themselves to fit the smaller screen. • Many church management software companies are designing smartphone applications that can access a given church’s database to do congregant lookups, post attendance, and more. • Some churches are beginning to take advantage of their congregants’ use of cell phones… here are three examples: • Inviting congregants to text questions during sermons, some of which are given to the speaker to respond to during the message! Or inviting them to respond to a poll whose results show in bar or pie chart format on a screen in real time! Christian Computing® Magazine

• Using cell phones to text a parent when their child needs their attention in the nursery. • Sending text messages to members who have opted in to their communication system. They are sending prayer requests, meeting reminders, volunteer commitment reminders, and more! One of my favorite mobile applications is the YouVersion Bible published by LifeChurch.tv. It runs on many smartphone platforms and has almost every popular translation— and it’s free! (While speaking to a graduating seminary class recently I told them I rarely March 2010

use a printed Bible thanks to the great resources available on my phone and computer. I think some gasped!) Cloud Computing Because of the increasingly widespread use of smartphones and their processing power, cloud computing is growing in popularity. Though I don’t believe it’s quite reliable enough yet (it should be in the next year or two), this concept will enable those with smartphones to do anything on their little mobile devices they previously needed a notebook computer for! Cloud computing is the concept of centralized data and applications available via the Internet. They might be on a ‘public’ system like Google, or they might be on a church’s servers. Some smartphones are even coming out now with little projection systems built into them to help display a larger image! It’s About Communication Ministry has always been about communication. Whether we are sharing The Gospel, learning of someone’s need, or organizing a group of believers so they can focus on accomplishing ministry, communication has been necessary. With the growing strength of

Christian Computing® Magazine

mobile computing, we will have many new ways to share, to serve, to lead, and to follow. The Church can begin planning for this next wave of technology that will help advance The Kingdom. In Pastor Rick Warren’s message to the church technologists at that conference, he said technology… “is the front line of evangelism. Churches will be larger in future generations, and one benefit of technology is to make the big church personal.” Whether you’re leading a big church or a small church, an established church or a church plant, use every technology tool available to increase your ability to communicate and reach more for Jesus. Nick Nicholaou is president of MBS, a consulting firm specializing in church and ministry computer networks, operational policies, and CPA services. You can reach Nick via email (nick@mbsinc.com) and may want to check out his firm’s website (www.mbsinc.com) and his blog at http://ministry-it.blogspot.com.

March 2010

launching online

Choosing Platforms – A LAMP unto My Feet By Russ McGuire - russ.mcguire@gmail.com

ast month I began a new series on “Launching Online” – capturing the decisions faced and lessons learned in launching a new online ministry/business, Hschooler.net. Last month we talked about the decisions we faced in choosing how to host the service. But before we could finalize our hosting setup, we needed to make some important decisions about our development platform – what operating system, database, and primary programming language we would use in launching our service. We needed to make sure that the hosting provider we chose supports this platform and that we signed up for the right package. Choosing Your Religion I was tempted to title this article “choosing your religion,” but decided that would be too misleading. Obviously, those of us reading Christian Computing aren’t in the process of choosing our religion. In fact, I never was, it was God who chose me (Ephesians 1:3-6 ESV). So, why would I title an article to Christian technologists “choosing your religion?” Because we all know that some technology topics become so called “religious wars” and operating systems/platforms is one of those topics. That being said, I’m not out to “convert” anyone, but I hope and pray the following discussion is helpful for you. When it comes to operating systems, the “combatants” in the religious wars have changed over time, but the nature of the battles hasn’t. Christian Computing® Magazine

When I first started my career, some of my first major projects were on VAX (Virtual Address eXtension) computers made by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) running the VMS (Virtual Memory System) operating system. VMS was a very graceful, reliable operating system for mid-range and mini-computer systems. We used VAX/ VMS systems both at the defense contractor that I worked for in college as well as to run mission critical telecom systems as I entered the full-time workforce. Since DEC had vertically integrated their business, optimizing the hardware, operating system, and core software to work together, the end result was a high-performance, dependable solution. In those days, the religious wars were between those that favored the vertically integrated VAX/VMS platform and those that favored the more “open” Unix platform. Unix had been invented at Bell Labs, but was widely licensed to run on systems from a large number of manufacturers including Hewlett Packard, Apollo Computers, Sun Microsystems, and many others. Because Bell Labs had widely shared the source code for the operating system, many contributors around the world helped improve the software and different variants emerged with different strengths. The result was a richer, more varied platform, but one lacking the simplicity and grace of VMS. March 2010

Christian Computing速 Magazine

March 2010

As you have undoubtedly guessed, Unix won that religious war. In time, DEC, as well as IBM and even Microsoft (sort of) joined the Unix nation. However, it wasn’t long before civil war broke out. Bell Labs’ parent, AT&T, saw the opportunity to commercialize Unix, which meant they had to regain control. They chose to partner with Sun Microsystems, a company that had been birthed from strong contributions to the Unix operating system. The other manufacturers decided they’d better get organized to counteract this threat and formed the Open Software Foundation (OSF) in 1988. This consortium released the OSF/1 version of Unix to compete with the AT&T/ Sun version of Unix. AT&T formed Unix International (UI) and Unix Software Labs (USL) to position against the OSF. I recall the battles being pretty fiercely fought between the two camps as they battled for the hearts, minds, and wallets of IT decision makers. However, by the mid-1990s, it was clear that their real “enemy” wasn’t the other Unix camp. Their real “enemy” was Microsoft. Bill Gates’ company had already won the desktop before Unix could seriously mount a challenge, and now was moving strongly into the Unix stronghold of the data center. Between 1993 and 1996 all the disparate Unix armies joined together into a merged Unix camp called The Open Group. Today, the religious battles are largely fought between proponents of Microsoft products and those that embrace open source solutions. I’ll address open source in more depth in a future column. However, the general model can be understood in terms similar to the battle between VMS and Unix. VMS was a vertically integrated environment controlled by a single company. Similarly, Microsoft offers Windows Server 2008 (the core operating system, descended from Windows NT), Windows Internet Information Services (IIS) (the web server software), Microsoft SQL Server (the database server), and a rich array of developer tools through the Microsoft Developers Network (e.g. ASP.NET). Open source, on the other hand, is wide open. There are lots of choices and lots of variants, developed by a fairly loose-knit collection of contributors. Microsoft vs. LAMP Over the past 15 years, the open source community has largely focused on a collection of independent components that have become the basis for most non-Microsoft web implementations. Known as LAMP, this platform is comprised of Linux (a freely developed variant of Unix – as the operating system), Apache (for the web server), MySQL (for the database), and PHP (or some choose Perl or Python for the software development language). Christian Computing® Magazine

I first used LAMP as my platform when I launched Seek First Networks, LLC in 2000 and was struck by the simplicity and ease of using the tools. The fact that all of the software is literally free is another strong contributor to my favoring LAMP. Microsoft, of course, operates to maximize shareholder returns meaning they charge a fair price for each of the equivalent components in their solution. Those component prices can add up, and as your business grows, so does the price tag. I also greatly appreciate the vast wealth of other (free) open source projects that have been developed to work on the LAMP platform, so as we consider additional capabilities for Hschooler.net, we can often find a great starting point in an existing open source project that we can easily modify to meet our needs. Before leaving the topic, I must note that we did consider some alternative variants to the full LAMP stack and we may return to some of them in time. Our first consideration was to move to Ruby on Rails (RoR) instead of PHP for the application framework. RoR is great for developing flexible and user friendly web environments. In the end, our greater comfort with PHP and the wealth of existing open source projects in the PHP realm led us away from RoR. We also looked at nginx instead of Apache for the web server. Given our concerns about scalability, nginx is very attractive and we may return to it. However, we struggled to get software that was designed for apache to quickly run on nginx, so we set it aside for our initial launch. We did not seriously consider alternatives to Linux or MySQL, although there are some concerns today with the future of MySQL now that the company that created MySQL is owned by Oracle. My sense is that swapping out MySQL for a different open source database package will not be a huge issue if we are faced with it in the future. And so we chose Linux (we specifically chose the “Lenny” release of the Debian variant of Linux), Apache, MySQL, and PHP as our core development platform for Hschooler.net. A different platform may be the best choice for your ministry based on your experience, preferences, existing resources, and software needs. Russ McGuire is an executive for a Fortune 100 company and the founder/co-founder of three technology start-ups. His latest entrepreneurial venture is Hschooler.net (http:// hschooler.net), a social network for Christian families (especially homeschoolers) which is being built and run by three homeschooled students under Russ’ direction.

March 2010

church web strategy

Church Website Communications Teams and Content Strategy Research Part 2 Drew Goodmanson - drew@monkdevelopment.com

n the last issue of Christian Computing Magazine, we shared results from a recently completed Monk Development research study, Church Website Communications Teams and Content Strategy. (http://www.ccmag.com/2010_02/ ccmag2010_02dgoodmanson.pdf) In the article, we touched on the makeup of various church communications teams. We discussed the sizes of the teams, different roles and responsibilities, and how tasks were assigned to full-time, part-time, volunteer, and outsourced church communications team members. As we continue to release findings about church website communications teams and church website content this month, we will discuss targeting nonChristian website users, search engine optimization in large churches, whether churches are effective with sharing the gospel on their church website, various methods of optimization to bring in greater un-churched website traffic, usage of church video, church mobile websites, and giving online. Targeting Non-Christians Online In our recent study, the un-churched are reached effectively through “I’m New” related sections, recovery groups, care fellowships, un-churched sensitive text, and position papers or doctrine. As Christian Computing® Magazine

referenced in previous articles, “I’m New” content indicates website content and areas that are directed towards new visitors, which often includes information about service times, driving directions, doctrinal statements, church staff, worship style, and what to expect. As previously published at ChurchWebsiteGuide.com, (http://www. churchwebsiteguide.com/church-websites/topvisited-church-website-content-churches-over-1000members/), “I’m New” content is the second most viewed content for churches larger than 1000 members at 24% of monthly church website traffic. The only content that gets more traffic is homepages, at 28%. A table with the content most accessed by large churches March 2010

Church Website, 1000+ Members, Top Content Accessed Homepage I’m New/Information Media Total Events Media-Sermons Media-Other Media-Articles Giving Blog Gospel

Average % Pageviews 28.23% 14.09% 17.72% 7.87% 7.37% 2.31% 1.84% .30% .12% .05%

1000 members and greater is included below. Search Engine Optimization in Large Churches As for search engine optimization in our seven member large church study, three churches have a modest in-house presence, three are looking for it, and one (Redeemer Presbyterian Church, New York City) is actively ignoring it. From congregational studies we’ve conducted, over 17% of new visitors found their church first online. We believe that this will be a growing trend as people continue to turn to search engines as the primary vehicle for getting their questions answered. Search Engine Optimization and ranking for keyword terms important to your church becomes more important as people turn increasingly to Search Engine Result Pages (SERP’s) for answers. SEO for Churches, More than just the Church’s Name The director of communications from Willow Creek Community church mentioned how new people have come to his church, drawn to after-school tutoring programs or 12-step and or other such addiction programs. People looking for addiction programs in Chicago are able to locate his church through a Google search for “addiction programs chicago” with a bit of carefully planned search engine optimization.

competitive analysis on other websites that are ranking ahead of your church on a Google search engine results page at a later time, but keeping track of the competitors who are outranking you in Google SERP’s is a great way to start thinking about a SEO strategy that will help your church website rank higher.

Church Web Optimizer for Church Websites A great place to start thinking about some SEO strategies for your church website is at http://www.churchweboptimizer. com/mediafiles/church-web-optimizer, listed you’ll find some of the major capabilities that our research has shown churches need to be thinking about so as to be as effective as possible in communicating to the un-churched through their church website. Some of the topics include: • Search Engine Optimization • Local Search Listing Optimization • Google Analytics • Church Research • Strategy • Directory Submissions • Forum Involvement • Trends and Technology • Yearly Benchmark Reports

Search Engine Optimization involves Links and Content Doing well in the links category depends on the quality and quantity of inbound links you have, whereas content is how much copy you have, targeted on the keywords that are important to your church. We will discuss keyword Christian Computing® Magazine

March 2010

Redeemer Presbyterian Church- A Deliberately Non-Optimized Church Website? Redeemer’s staff members are actively ignoring optimization of their website because their ministry philosophy involves drawing as little attention to themselves as possible so as to drive down what they call Christian-tourism. In essence, Redeemer is trying to keep more seats open for the lost on the street that may randomly walk in, as opposed to helping Christians find their particular church. Christians looking for churches in New York City find out about Redeemer from many different sources, while Redeemer’s size and multiple services all across Manhattan seem to indicate that Christians are not having a hard time finding them, despite Redeemer’s “anti-Christian-tourism” stance. The Gospel According to 50+ Church Analytics Church Website Guide’s (http:// www.churchwebsiteguide.com) aggregated analytics data on over 50 churches indicates that when evaluating gospel related content against all the other available content on all church websites, only 1% of all the visits generated by all collective church websites is gospel centric. Gospel content also had about 1 minute of average time on page logged per visit. So while every visit is different, our data indicates that the average gospel reader is only going to give your gospel message a minute or less for evaluation. Perhaps of some encouragement is the fact that the average bounce rate on Gospel messages is about 44%, which while not the best bounce rate, it is certainly not the worst. A 70% bounce rate would indicate a failed message. Finally, the exit % on Gospel messages is also decently low; it appears that while most people give a gospel message only a minute to look it over, when people leave the page, around 60% of them are not leaving the website immediately. Success for Churches With Video The director of communications at Central Christian Church found that a lot of people were watching a lot of the videos being pushed out to the congregation, and it was having a great impact in Christian Computing® Magazine

terms of people understanding the message being brought to them. Much like Second Presbyterian Church discovered, Central Christian Church finds that their most effective and engaging content is a set of video series about changed people, their stories, and their testimonies, which in turn changes other church members’ lives in a real and tangible way. Church Website Content- Could Less Be More? Park Community Church has what they term an event-driven philosophy. This means they have been deliberately trying to pare down the size of their church website by asking their ministries to think less about putting static information up, billboard style, on their church website, and more about actively trying to get people to connect with the church in a more engaging next step through events. For the most part, instead of relying on advertising on the church website, the average church ministry person is encouraged to personally seek out and invite people to connect with their ministry. This strategy has a two-fold benefit of reducing church website content upkeep and clutter, and also pushing congregation members to be more intentional about connecting people to ministries. March 2010

Going With Mobile Church “How to have more time for ministry!” Websites In terms of mobile topDo you want to save time, get more done and have fewer headaches? Then Donarius Church ics, seven churches want to go Management Software will make it easy for you with mobile sites eventually, to track your members, contributions, pledges Starting at $59.97 one church is in the process of and more. Imagine what you can do with the for the base version with building a mobile site, and an25% off for small churches extra time! Donarius will also: other one has had their mobile Download a free demo at: • Print your tax receipts site up and running for some www.donarius.com • Show the giving pattern of your members time now. There seems to be • Print your church directories 1-888-479-4636 a consensus that the ability to • Send personalized letters, emails and text Nuverb Systems Inc. messages to keep your members informed minister to people anywhere “Software tailored for you” and anytime they have reception is one of the greatest opfor ministries, churches, and businesses, we’d love to portunities made available to ministries today. connect with you. Giving A more thorough report may be in the works later, but the quick answers to the aforementioned title are that all churches surveyed have online giving capability, very few allow credit cards, and one has an ATM like paying device in the lobby along with the basket and online giving.

The 12 Topics Include: • A Look Into The Near and Distant Future of Online Ministry • How Interactive Media Values Can Transform Your Ministry • How to Successfully Raise Funds Online

Church Communications Team Director Advice The seven church communications team directors in our large church study had a significant amount of wisdom in terms of advice for churches both small and large, a large portion of these anecdotes and experiences will be shared in a future article.

• Online Ministry Opportunities, Challenges, and Lessons

Christian Leadership Alliance National Conference 2010 Christian Leadership Alliance (CLA) is an association that serves more than 9,000 members working in more than 4,500 organizations worldwide. The former Christian Management Association and the former Christian Stewardship Association joined together in April 2008 to create Christian Leadership Alliance—the nation’s leading resource for enhancing the organizational effectiveness of churches and para-church ministries. The Monk Development team will be hosting the Ministry Internet and Technology Summit at this year’s Christian Leadership Alliance National Conference here in San Diego, California at Town and Country Resort & Conference Center, Monday, April 19—Wednesday, April 21, 2010 Come see us at our booth, and stop by one of the twelve workshops about internet and technology

• The Three “I”’s in Internet

Christian Computing® Magazine

• The Case for Online Kingdom Excellence • Delivering Income Solutions through Data Strategies • Lost in Translation

• More Tools In Your Website and Social Media Communications Belt • Information Technology: What’s Hot and What’s Not • Ministry Growth through Email Communication Best Practices • Ministry IT Round Table If you’d like to know more about our participation at this event, you can email info@monkdevelopment.com or check out CLA’s conference homepage here: http://www.christianleadershipalliance.org/conference/2010/ Hope to see you at CLA 2010!

March 2010

Christian Computing速 Magazine

March 2010

ministry communication

Internet Evangelism Day and Its Communication Potential for Those with Limitations Yvon Prehn - yvonprehn@aol.com

hat is the one medium that anyone can use to communicate the gospel? Whether you are ill or disabled, bed-ridden or weak, what will allow you to be obedient to share the gospel as long as you are able? Obviously that tool is the Internet, which we often think of it as a tool for the young and with-it. We forget it is also an extraordinary resource for those who may be limited physically or in other ways. Let’s explore why and how it can be a resource without limitations in your church... Our Situation: The longer we live the more limitations we have It’s obvious that none of us, over the age of 50ish, have the physical strength we had when we were 20 (and some of us never had much at 20). Regardless, as many of us decline in physical strength, our desire to serve our Lord and to share his message of salvation with our world does not decrease, but grows. In reality somewhere along the way, problems set in. In my circle of friends at church there are folks with all kinds of physical limitations from diet restrictions to severe allergies to trouble walking, making it hard to do things like go on mission trips or even serve as much as they would like with the outreach ministries at our church or in the community. Does that mean their days of outreach are over? Not at all! In fact, having to be at home and to sit still most of the time can be tremendous asset for Internet evangelism. In a bit I’ll talk about a day that helps focus on Internet evangelism and equips us for it, but before I do that I want to talk about: Christian Computing® Magazine

The potential of baby boomers & elders as an outreach force online Again, a common thought in many churches is that the “younger generation” is the generation that uses the Internet, social media, etc. Many churches mistakenly think younger people are the only ones doing ministry online. Though we applaud and encourage everyone who does online ministry, younger people aren’t the only ones using the Internet. Many Boomers and Elders are online. Many of the Boomers helped invent the Internet and the technology that runs on it. Many Elders got online so they could talk to their grandkids. These age groups are also perfect for Internet Evangelism. This kind of evangelism takes time and commitment and these two groups have many skills that prepare them for this kind of online evangelism that are often overlooked, for example: March 2010

• Most of them can spell quite well, a skill that is important if you are going to be sharing with another language speaker whose grasp of English becomes confused with misspellings. • Many of them can touch type, another skill not always mastered by thumb typing text messages. This is useful skill for Internet exchanges that are over a few phrases long. • Many have a life-long depth of Biblical knowledge which gives them the ability to dialog in-depth with a person who has serious questions about the Christian faith. • Many have cut back in work hours and are available to spend extended time in prayer and interaction online with a spiritual seeker. They may also be available for online live chat at hours that may be inconvenient for people working full-time. These skills are valid and useful no matter what physical condition a person may be in. I’ve recently talked to a number of people who are experiencing various physical issues and feeling like they don’t have as much to offer the Lord that they did in the past. I’ve been assuring them of new areas of ministry may just be beginning and Internet evangelism may be one of them. All that may be true, but how do we equip and train people to do ministry online? Fortunately, coming up on Sunday, April 25 is Internet Evangelism Day and it can provide an abundance of materials to help your church become skilled in training people in, promoting, and doing online evangelism and ministry (since it is an educational website as well as a day). Their website is: www.Internetevangelismday.com and this is how they describe their ministry: What is Internet Evangelism Day? It consists of two inter-related resources: a) a year-round online resource guide explaining all aspects of digital evangelism. b) a focus day for churches and other groups held on the last Sunday of April each year. Ready-made free Christian Computing® Magazine

downloads (PowerPoint, video clips, drama scripts and music) enable any church to create a short program to explain the Internet’s potential, on that day, or indeed at any time. They continue by assuring people that, Internet ministry is: Not just for techies! Many believe that technical ability must be needed to do web outreach. This is completely untrue! There are many ways that you can share your faith online, including: • start a blog (a sort of online diary-style site) or small website, using a ready-made site creation system that needs little technical knowledge • ‘talk’ to people in online ‘chat rooms’ • volunteer (see below) as an email mentor for larger outreach ministries who need mature Christians to advise inquirers who have contacted them • build relationships in social networking systems such as Facebook, discussion groups or bulletin boards, or online virtual reality and game environments such as Second Life.

March 2010

On my website www.effectivechurchcom. com I’m going to be doing a series of how-to articles to help teach the skills above to regular people (right after all the EASTER follow-up material is put on it—which I have A LOT of). I just did an informal survey on what people wanted to learn and many people want help with their websites. I feel more confident than ever to help people learn this as I am in the process of almost finishing a huge project redoing my site from free WordPress.com site to a selfhosted WordPress.org site. To do it, I bit the bullet and did it all myself. All as in ALL....setting up the hosting, template modifications, CSS, php, html, rotating feature, all the graphics, and everything associated with all of it, doing the training movies, podcasts, PDFs, screen shot tutorials—ALL. There is still much to do and learn, but it is functional. I thought I was going to die—prayer (lots from friends and supporters on-line), fasting, and screaming in tears for Jesus’ honestly has been a huge part of it, but I did not feel that I could in integrity tell people they can and should do something I did not do. I can now honestly say that as a 61-year-old former English and History major, the wife of a bi-vocational pastor who does all his secretarial and communication work, who was once told never to have anything to do with computers because her mind was not the least bit technical, if I can do this, any of you can do it! What’s important in sharing this is not that I think I will live through the experience, but that having learned what I have, I can affirm with excitement that Christian Computing® Magazine

with tools like Internet Evangelism Day, no matter what limitation you may have in your life, you can be part of the literal fulfilment of Acts 1:8. You can share the gospel from your hometown to the “uttermost parts of the earth.” For more information for Internet Evangelism Day and for Internet ministry all year, go to: www.Internetevangelismday.com. Check out my new website for church communicators: www.effectivechurchcom.com.

March 2010