Christian Computing Magazine - November 2013 by Now - Ministry Tech Magazine

Founder & Editor-in-Chief Steve Hewitt - steve@ccmag.com Managing Editor Kevin Cross - kevin@ccmag.com

Applying Tomorrow’s Technology to Today’s Ministry Volume 25

November 2013

No. 11

4 cover story

Support products and Services Overview!

Copy Editors Gina Hewitt Magen Cross

By Steve Hewitt

3 Editorial 17

Contributing Editors Yvon Prehn Nick Nicholaou Kevin A. Purcell Russ McGuire Michael L White

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Thank God for Technology

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By: Steve Hewitt

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November 2013

editorial

Thank God for Technology Steve Hewitt - steve@CDPublishers.com

I know on Thanksgiving people like to reflect on all of the great things they are thankful for, and I’m sure there are more things to be thankful for than most of us could list in one day. I have been watching a new trend with many of my friends on Facebook. They have been posting a different thing they are thankful for each day. While everything they have been listing is great, I haven’t seen anyone mention being thankful for technology! I am VERY grateful for technology. I love the way it has enriched my life and made many things easier. I love all of the information available through Google. I love the ability to look up anything on YouTube and watch a video that others have posted on how to do whatever it is I am trying to learn to do! I love the way computing has gone mobile, so wherever I am, I am connected to my email (which I live by). And I love Facebook, and the ability to keep me in touch with family and my grandchildren. And, when working with churches, I am SO grateful for the many companies that provide technology solutions to help with administration, communication and ministry. When I think back to what it was like to pastor before we had computers, cell phones, texting, ChMS, email, etc., it makes me grateful for all of the wonderChristian Computing® Magazine

ful tools we have available to us today. Sure, some of these tools, like online giving, weren’t needed 25 years ago, but now that our society has changed due to technology, it is nice to know the church has many technology solutions to help us stay current. I am grateful to each and every company that has dedicated itself to providing technology tools and solutions for the church and ministry. May God bless each of you! And, I am thankful for pastors and church leaders who have taken the time to stay current in using such tools. Bravo! I thank the Lord for you and your willingness to use new tools to enhance or expand your ministry! Together We Serve Him,

Steve Hewitt steve@cdpublihsers.com

November 2013

cover story

Support products and Services Overview!

By Steve Hewitt

ast month we published our annual ChMS Overview. Each year we ask our ChMS sponsors to share a little about the company/products, what they have accomplished during the last year, and what they have coming up in the future. This month we want to start a new tradition! We have asked all of our other sponsors who provide fantastic products and services to do the same! We wanted to hear from each and gain a better understanding of what they have been doing and what they are up to in the near future! Enjoy. AmericanChurch Inc. AmericanChurch, Inc (ACI) is a national provider of products and services for church and religious organizations. ACI started in 1903 as a manufacturer of church offering envelopes, and has expanded over time to become a leading provider of complete solutions that help create vibrant and engaged communities. Products and services include electronic giving (online giving), church websites, offering envelopes, envelope mailing services and consultative workshops. • Online Giving provides a convenient way for your members to make financial contributions while relieving staff from having to access member account information. This web-based offertory solution allows members to contribute from any location at any time and is simple for staff to manage. • Easy Church Websites provide you with the elements people need from a church website. With a powerful suite of tools to manage content, email accounts, calendars, Christian Computing® Magazine

Easy

CHURCH WEBSITES FROM

Now your church can have a beautiful and welcoming website that is simple to maintain with our Websites for Ministry.

▶ Engage current members ▶ Educate everyone about the faith ▶ Attract visitors to your parish ▶ Welcome newcomers and returning members

Call for a free demo: 800-446-3035 November 2013

e-newsletters and more, any approved staff or volunteer is able to update and work on it – it’s that easy! • Choose from a variety of Church Offering Envelopes and let them tell your story while coordinating your message with your church brand and mission. When moved to give, members and guests turn to an envelope that contains the specific information you desire them to see. For more information regarding ACI products, please visit the website at www.americanchurch.com or contact us at 800-446-3035. CXfriends.com CXfriends is the Facebook alternative for Christian families. Online social networks have powerfully transformed how we stay connected with longtime friends, how we share our lives with those we care about today, and how we meet people with common passions and interests. However, we are often reminded of the dangers these networks represent to

our families. From worldly, lust-inducing ads and photos, to invasions of our privacy, to inappropriate contact from strangers, as Christian parents we are worried about whether this is really a safe place for our children to “learn” and “develop.” Because of these concerns, Christian Homeschool Network, LLC has created CXfriends, a safer and friendlier online social network for all Christian families. Developed and operated by Christian homeschooled students working alongside and under the direction of a Fortune 100 business executive, CXfriends seeks to provide the features you’ve come to expect from online social networks, but with families as the core organizing model, and with parents setting safe boundaries for their families. You wouldn’t let your kids drive solo on the interstate without first spending many hours alongside them, showing them how to drive safely, observing them in safe environments, providing them coaching, and then easing them onto more challenging (and more rewarding) roads and highways. CXfriends provides the same opportunity for parents to prepare their children to fully enjoy the online world. Parents can set tight boundaries on what their kids can do and who they can share content with in CXfriends. As parents observe demonstrated maturity and discernment, the boundaries can be slowly pulled back until the young adult has complete freedom. Unlike other social networks, in CXfriends, the family is at the core. A parent creates a family account and then adds all the family members. The family has its own private discussion group for sharing comments, news, and calendar reminders. With parent’s approval, family members can venture into the broader CXfriends world with discussion groups, prayer requests, book/movie/music reviews, photos, chat, etc. As your network of friends grows, you can easily see what each is up to in the activity stream, where you can comment and encourage each other. A full premium account costs only $10 per year for the entire family. You can learn more at https://cxfriends.com/family.php

Is Facebook safe for your family?

http://cxfriends.com Christian Computing® Magazine

November 2013

Effective Church Communications The Effective Church Communications ministry provides “simple, practical training in print and digital communications to help churches fully fulfill the Great Commission.” What I mean by “simple and practical” is that I work hard to make everything I teach on the site something any church can do with a limited budget and time. I don’t expect anyone to have design, marketing, or technology training. I realize most people doing church communications cram that work into already full days. To help simplify their work, all my templates and samples are created with either MS Word or MS Publisher. I love pushing the envelope in what you can do with these programs and this last year I’ve shown people how to create website banners, graphics, book covers and more with MS Publisher and ebooks (including Kindle publication) with MS Word. As often as possible I recommend sources in areas such as clipart, photos, advanced image editing, video and website creation that are free because I know church budgets are tight. I’ve greatly expanded my YouTube channel and there and on the website have added many video how-tos and reviews of websites that provide resources for church communicators. The release of Camtasia 8, the program that I use to create training videos, greatly expands what I can do with them as well as shrinking the final file size significantly. With it I plan to create new versions of training videos that can be downloaded as well as streamed. I’m currently planning a series on how pastors and anyone in the church with little or no budget can create their own websites and blogs. Church leaders, business administrators, and pastors come to my site asking questions about strategy, organization, and management practices in church communications. To answer: I’m working on a system of podcasts that will take the large amount of writing I’ve done in this area and put it into another option in podcast format on the website. I personally answer all email questions (yvon@effectivechurchcom.com) and sometimes do expanded articles about the topics. Finally, I’ve recently implemented a new email update system for the site that is RSS-driven which means it automatically creates a short notification that goes out to subscribers with when new mateChristian Computing® Magazine

rial is on the site, please go to http://www.effectivechurchcom.com if you’d like to receive them. Gateway Churches Embrace Teaching Online In 2012, Gateway Learning & Development began offering online teaching solutions to churches and authors. Today, with churches rapidly embracing online teaching, Gateway has grown to a full-service e-learning technology and services company serving churches, Christian schools and businesses, faith-based organizations, and authors. Through Gateway’s Solomontm cloud-based, learning management platform, churches and faithbased organizations now have access to affordable, easy-to-use learning management tools previously only available to large corporations with sizable training budgets. Developed from the ground up with the needs of churches and ministries in mind, Solomontm makes it easy to convert and deliver sermons, group studies, volunteer training, study guides and more as online learning resources and seamlessly integrates with most church management systems. November 2013

Rick Gibson, president of Gateway, says, “We believe it is critically important for ministries to serve people where they live out their lives. Today, more than ever, people’s lives are online. According to Barna research, 70 percent of practicing Christian Millennials read Scripture on a screen, and 54 percent are also heavy users of online videos pertaining to faith.” In addition to online learning technologies, Gateway also provides a complete line of services for creating quality, effective online training courses. With two certified instructional designers on staff and complete recording and video facilities, Gateway can produce a wide variety of courses to meet almost any need. “A couple of courses we are particularly proud of are: ‘The Five Languages of Appreciation in the Workplace’ by Dr. Gary Chapman and Dr. Paul White, and ‘Fire in the Workplace’ by Rick Boxx for Integrity Resource Center,” Kipton Blue, CEO of Gateway, says. “Both projects have played key roles in these ministries and provided them with opportunities to train hundreds of people.” Boxx, founder of Integrity Resource Center, and Dr. White are impressed with Gateway’s qual-

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ity of work. “The team at Gateway has done a remarkable job guiding our video training course,” Boxx says. “Their production quality, interactive questions and exercises have made the course very appealing.” Dr. White says, “Gateway has done an outstanding job creating our online training resources. I look forward to continuing to work with the Gateway team.” Blue believes all ministries can benefit from providing online training resources. “Almost everything a ministry teaches can be repurposed as online learning,” Blue says. “Gateway is truly committed to helping churches, ministries and faith-based organizations deliver teaching and training to where people live.” Visit www. gatewayidg.com for more information. Liturgical Publications Preparing for a Print and Online Future for Church Communication For most of our forty-one year history, Liturgical Publications Inc (LPi) has been first and foremost a church bulletin publisher. That changed in 2011 with the launch of our online giving service, WeShare. WeShare not only diversified our product line, but helped open our eyes to the larger communication needs of the Church. For decades, beyond the priest on the pulpit, the church bulletin has been the staple of church communication. With the advent of the internet and social media, that has changed. At LPi, we very much believe in the power of print. Print is still how the vast majority of parishioners consume information, but now in the 21st century it is no longer the only way churches communicate. The Internet has now surpassed television as the number one form of consumer communication and there are now more mobile phones and tablets accessing the Internet globally than there are PCs and laptops. The next generation of parishioners is clearly growing up online. They’re more comfortable texting than using a pen. They don’t write letters; they post on Facebook and tweet. And they don’t write checks and stuff them in envelopes; they bank online. We see the future not just in print and church management systems, but also in parishioner engagement. The key to any vibrant church is a November 2013

healthy engaged parishioner base. At LPi, we’ve busy creating church communication solutions that promote stewardship, help parishioners connect with one and other and find ways to share their time, talent and treasure within their parish.

new features for communicating in and across groups within your church and your school. And who knows, you just might see an e-bulletin service being launched one of these days! To find out more visit www.4lpi.com.

What’s on tap for 2014? Our customers will see our online donation system, WeShare expand further into the event management world with new features for soliciting volunteers and communicating events socially while continuing to improve our event signup and ticket sales functionality. Our website product, WeConnect, which today is one of the few mobile aware church website builders, will gain even more functionality like multiple blogs, security levels, and expanded customization capability while still remaining the simplest church website solution around. If you can use Microsoft Word, you can use WeConnect. We know that simplicity and ease of use is paramount. Our social media and email communication service, WeGather, is in the process of getting a facelift. It will soon be 100% mobile and tablet aware with

Ministry Business Services A few years ago we felt the Lord’s leading about providing hosted services for The Church. As we always try to do, we worked through the issues strategically, and over the last two years we have seen many turn to us! Here’s an update… Hosted Servers/Services Currently Available We are currently hosting Exchange, VoIP PBX, and SQL servers, and SPAM filtering for more than eighty Christian churches and ministries nationwide! That is growth at a rate much faster than we projected and which tells us we’re meeting the need well and that God is blessing. Our concept is a little different than most. We host unique servers for each client in our private cloud environment rather than adding their data to a larger whole, or forest (tech term). That means security and privacy are very high. Also, our datacenter is one of the best— if not the best— on the planet in that it exceeds all datacenter ratings with four power sources and 28 internet trunk connections. We have not experienced any downtime in the 2+ years we have been there. On the Horizon The only thing we cannot yet host in The Cloud is a file server replacement. We have been working hard on that for some time, and are almost there! Our hosted file server solution will work just like Dropbox does in that it synchronizes files in the background to a folder on the local hard drive of Windows and Mac systems, but has much better security than Dropbox does. It is a true IT solution in that regard. It also has simple-to-use

Christian Computing® Magazine

November 2013

Why put your servers in our private cloud? • Eliminate the distraction & hassle of hosting your own servers • Reduce IT staff costs • Gain 100% up-time • We’re in the most advanced datacenter on the planet – located in the USA • Low monthly fees based on charity licensing • Excellent domestic support We can save you money because we only host Christian churches & ministries!

With Cloud technology, your servers can be located off-site. MBS has extensive church and ministry IT expertise – let us host your servers in our datacenter! Serving you and your team would be an honor! Call or email us today to learn more!

714.840.5900 cloud@mbsinc.com

Nick Nicholaou, President

“. . . freeing those in ministry from business distractions.” Phone: 714.840.5900 • www.mbsinc.com • info@mbsinc.com

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mobile apps for iOS and Android devices. This will replace the need for file servers and local backup systems. You can learn more about our services by going to www.mbsinc.com or by calling us at 714-8405900. As always, our services are exclusively available to Christian churches and ministries, and are priced reasonably. And our goal is simple: to free those in ministry from business distractions.

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Ministry e-space 2013 has been an incredible year for Cool Solutions Group and its founder, Tim Cool. We migrated our SaaS servers to a series of micro servers, which has allowed us to process data much more efficiently and effectively. This has been a huge benefit to our subscribers. But what is so great…is the development of V2.0 of ministrEspace. Our developers are in the midst of a complete code re-write of our platform that will not only increase performance, but will make the system more nimble while also incorporating many enhancements that the market has been seekChristian Computing® Magazine

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ing. This is going to be a huge WIN for our clients when this releases late 2013. Another milestone was installing several of our COOL SPACE solutions to assist churches integrate their HVAC systems with ministrEspace. One such client, Living Hope Baptist Church in Bowling Green, KY, saw a 25% reduction in their utility costs in the first 9 months of integration with an expected payback of about 1 year. That is a home run. Not only are the more effective with their personnel and management of the facility, they are going to continue to see a significant reduction in energy consumption….which allows the

church to reallocate those funds back into ministry. COOL!!! Recently, Tim Cool published a book through Rainer Publishing entitled “Why Church Buildings Matter: The Story of your Space”. This e-book became the #1 Best-Seller on Amazon for Church Administration. In this book, Tim Cool offers a unique perspective on the importance of church buildings. These buildings are vastly more important than most understand. The church campus and the story of the people in the church go hand-inhand and are interwoven into each other. We cannot neglect the power of story and how our church facilities communicate a story. In this book, several key questions about church facilities are answered: How does church space support the story of the people? How does the church space prime the heart, minds, and emotions of your guests? How does your facility bring people into the story of the church? Church facilities will not save a person from a life of sin and frustration. But the lack of attention to the church campus can indeed be the road block to reaching those people that need to hear the gospel message the most. Don’t minimize their impact. This book will reveal how to maximize your church facility to share the greatest story ever told, the gospel. More information is available at ministrEspace.com. NCS Services 2013 has been a monumental year for NCS Services. Earlier this year, we moved into our new office space which has helped us continue on our mission of helping churches grow through use of our suite of products and services. In addition, we have rolled out several new products and services such as kiosks and text giving.

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November 2013

It has always been our goal to offer an affordable product with superior customer service to our customers and 2013 was no different. We have rolled out our Customer Relationship Manager program, which provides all of our customers with their own dedicated point of contact whose only job is to serve the customer and help churches grow their over-all contributions. Our tried and true methods have seen churches reporting increases in donations upwards of 15%. With the year drawing to a close, 2014 looks to be even more exciting here at NCS Services. We will be launching our new and improved website, restructured pricing bundles and an array of new products and services. Every day we continue to learn from our customers and customize our products and services to meet their needs. Currently NCS Services is looking into a partnership that could provide us the ability to offer church management software to our customers, thereby enhancing our already stellar offering of products and services. From offering envelopes to cutting edge technology, NCS Services has the solution for churches of all sizes and continues to develop product offerings to stay ahead of the rapidly changing market. With the coming holiday season, it is extremely important to take the time to be thankful for all that we have and to consider those less fortunate. We, as a company, are doing our part and have several special programs to help collect donations. Visit us at www.ncsservices.org to find out more information about how we can help your church and how we, as a community, can help those that need it most.

tions or postponements, a change of venue or other news that has to get to staff, volunteers, families and other members right away. Our churches also use the service for regular ministry communications, including prayer chains, volunteer recruitment and coordination, stewardship, outreach and dozens of other uses.

One Call Now

Is There a “Mobile” Version of One Call Now? One Call Now features TWO mobile apps. One is our convenient group leaders’ app, which provides full functionality for the One Call Now service from anywhere. Our newest app, MyCallNow, gives congregants and others in the community a powerful, mobile tool for managing all of their One Call Now contacts and messages. My Call Now is a free app that lets users simply tap to add entries to calendars or pass along messages to others. It also makes it easy for church members to update their contact information in the church, freeing up staff time and reducing the number of messages sent to wrong numbers or email addresses. Visit www.onecallnow.com/religious to learn more.

What is One Call Now? One Call Now is a simple but powerful church communication service that makes it easy for pastors, administrators and other leaders to send important voice, text, email and social media notifications and to receive prompt feedback from their congregations. The service is accessible from a computer, phone and our through our mobile app for church leaders. How do Churches use One Call Now? Churches use our service for both day-to-day and emergency notifications. These include announcements about severe weather, event cancellaChristian Computing® Magazine

What makes One Call Now “simple”? Traditionally, churches have used old-fashioned hardware phone dialers that tie up lines and send calls one-by-one. This is clunky and time-consuming. It also ties up staff time with cumbersome administrative tasks. One Call Now is 100% online, or cloud-based, to allow easy access, roster management and notifications sent from any device … to any device. This includes computers, tablets, smart phones and landlines. Messages can be scheduled for immediate or future delivery, and senders can see real-time results showing who received the messages and when. There is no additional hardware or elaborate training, and there is outstanding 24/7 support. Does One Call Now “Talk” to My Church Database Software? One Call Now integrates with virtually any church management software in a variety of ways. A church can simply upload a file online to create a secure, One Call Now roster in minutes. This roster can be further divided into sub-groups that mirror ministries or other functions in their church. There are more automated ways to update rosters, too, including our convenient Self-Update tool.

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November 2013

ServiceU A Simple, Inexpensive Way to Support Your Staff During the Holidays Every year about this time, churches gear up for their busiest season. Staff meetings revolve around how to increase attendance at special events, how to reach the community during the holiday season, how to manage the extra parking requirements, and how to capture visitors’ attention and contact information in the hopes of their return. While the staff racks their brains for new ideas for these challenges, they’re also wondering how they’re going to manage the increased workload through the end of the year and all the extra holiday tasks they’ll have at home. Maybe it’s time to look at the challenges from their perspective. Maybe it’s time to provide staff the support they need to not only launch a successful holiday season, but also enjoy it. What if that support is simpler than anyone imagines? Ticketing software addresses the holiday experience for both attendees AND staff, even if you

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don’t host paid events. Maybe you’re just trying to level out attendance over several holiday services and only need the software for one week. Online ticketing software is a tool that is so much more versatile and helpful than its name implies. Imagine being able to offer attendees the ability to purchase entrance to an event online. That means they get a choice of payment methods and the convenience of purchasing any time, day or night. That just scratches the surface of the benefits of ticketing for attendees and how it completely changes the effect of your events, but it doesn’t even start to address how it helps staff. ACTIVE Faith has a story about how Phoenix First Assembly of God tried ticketing on a spectacular annual event, A Celebration of Christmas. The addition of ServiceU Ticketing software affected multiple areas of operation and quality they didn’t expect. In fact, the event manager believes the product enabled them to take their event to a whole new level. The simplicity of the box office allowed them to reduce administrative staff from 4 to 1. The church was able to shift staff to positions that

November 2013

ministered to guests, which is part of how they increased the quality of the event. Download ACTIVE Faith’s free case study, Phoenix First Increases Community Connection with New Ticketing Process. You will discover advantages to ticketing that you never imagined or knew you needed. ACTIVE Faith’s ServiceU Ticketing could become one of the best Christmas gifts you ever gave your staff. StreamingChurch.tv This year, JSL Solutions, (home of MYFlock. com websites, and StreamingChurch.tv streaming video), has now released ChurchAppLive.com. This is a customizable church app that engages, enlightens, and entertains your church members. Now with ChurchAppLive.com, your church app will be available in minutes! You have both customization and deployment options for your church app. Customization options include the ability to define app content, choose app button artwork, the app background, upload your own custom church logo as well as the ability to enable and disable a plethora of features on the app from your app admin panel. The is app also has interactive features with daily devotionals, church check ins, polls and teaching challenges as well as push notifications. ChurchAppLive comes with your monthly subscription to StreamingChurch.tv for no extra charge or separately for only $29.00 per month. We can also brand your app for the major app stores for a small fee. Go to ChurchAppLive.com for more information or call us, 866-852-6648 ChurchAppLive and the parent company JSL Solutions, is a faith based company that works exclusively with churches and ministries. We are all involved in our local churches as pastors, board members, ministry leaders and we understand how churches operate. This makes us different from other companies. We believe our mission and values reflect this in the way we serve others. Our mission is to become one of the most innovative and preferred technology partners for churches and ministries. We will reach this goal through stable and continuous growth based on our customer focus, our expertise, reliability, and resources. Christian Computing® Magazine

Our values are to maintain a high level of professional integrity. To provide quality & value added services. To have a work culture, which supports contribution, excellence and learning. ThirtySeven4 Born out of a desire to better connect security protection solutions with excellent customer support and service, Thirtyseven4 provides aggressive antivirus protection to home-users, churches, schools and businesses throughout the U.S. In addition to businesses and home-users, we are currently serving over a thousand schools in the K-12 market and hundreds of churches across the Country, including Willowcreek Community Church and Calvary Chapel of Fort Lauderdale. “Aren’t all antivirus products about the same?” You may ask? Absolutely not. Thirtyseven4 scans and secures deeper into your network than other companies with our Rootkit and native boot scans. Thirtyseven4 also includes malware detection and removal, eliminating the November 2013

ChromeBooks and MS Exchange. In addition to providing great security products , Thirtyseven4 believes strongly in serving the Lord through the gifts He has entrusted us with. From the inception of our business, Thirtyseven4 allocated that a fixed percentage of each sale would benefit Remember Nhu, a charity organization protecting young girls from the sex trade. Our proudest moment as a company comes from our privilege in financially supporting over 50 children in the Remember Nhu organization. 50 young lives are changed (forever!) because Thirtyseven4 cared enough to make a difference. The world of cyber-crime continues to progress, but so does the offense of Thirtyseven4. We will continue to equip our Thirtyseven4 solutions with the latest technologies staying steps ahead of the virus authors. For more information visit www.thirtyseven4.com. Who’s Where

need for 3rd party removal tools required by other products. And if you prefer to speak with a person rather than a machine, you’ll like Thirtyseven4. We provide free Support to our customers, and we are here (in our Ohio office) when you call, ready to help. “Super impressed with ALL dealings” is a recent customer quote: the feeling is shared by many. We are different, and people sense that. Fair and honest pricing, live (friendly) support, and we truly care about our customers. In the past year we released our Thirtyseven4 Endpoint Security solution which enhanced our protection suite to now include additional features such as Application Control (preventing unauthorized applications from installing), Content Filtering (blocking websites), Email and Web Security, Device Control, Firewall and Intrusion Detection/Prevention. The Thirtyseven4 Endpoint Security Console is designed to manage and control virus protection across a network of any size with virtually any combination of Windows and Mac operating systems. We also provide security products for Mobile Devices, Christian Computing® Magazine

Who’s Where is a division of Points North, which was established in 1994. It was developed in 2004 at the request of the YMCA Retirement Fund and since then, we have partnered with other non-profit organizations like the YWCA Retirement Fund. In 2009, Who’s Where was enhanced to provide a solution for faith-based organizations. At that time, the Diocese of Duluth, MN, was looking for a solution to assist in administering eligibility and invoicing for their employee benefit plans. They were converting from a defined benefit retirement plan to a defined contribution plan and needed payroll data from their outlying locations to validate eligibility and obtain employee and employer contributions. The locations were using a variety of payroll processing solutions (e.g., QuickBooks, outsourcing vendor, etc.) and the Diocese wanted to minimize the amount of change required at their locations. Historically, obtaining payroll data had been a challenging manual process for both the Diocese and the locations. Who’s Where was a perfect fit, as the YMCA and YWCA situations were very similar—multiple locations using multiple payroll solutions feeding into one consolidated database. Diocesan locations simply upload a simple payroll November 2013

file and immediate access and reporting is available to the Diocese. Not only does this provide the centralized database for reporting, but it also provides a consolidated remittance file for plan providers. The benefits of this are many—reduced administrative fees, increased efficiency (no need to manually consolidate files), and expanded options (opens the doors to plan providers who may not accept files from individual locations or whose fees to do so would be uneconomical). This solution continues to be the system of choice for many non-profits across the country. Over the last year, additional reporting capabilities have been added to Who’s Where to mitigate the increased payroll and health care reporting that is being required of large faith-based organizations. No longer can organizations count on manual, error-prone processes to provide data on employee hours, health care premiums, etc. This data must be timely and accurate in order to avoid fines and remain in compliance with the new regulations. With Who’s Where, these reports are available real time. While there may be several payroll solutions that can be implemented (usually requiring a 12-18 month rollout), this solution provides faith-based organizations with centralized employee payroll data without requiring them to standardize or centralize payroll—a win/win situation. Contact Who’s Where at 888-561-2072 or visit www. whoswhere.org.

Christian Computing® Magazine

November 2013

special feature

Shelby Financials Online By: Steve Hewitt

helby is up to something new, and I think their customers are going to love it! When many people first began to hear about programs running in “the cloud” there was some natural concern. But, as more and more services move into the cloud, people are starting to appreciate the many advantages. Shelby has released their new “Shelby Financial Online” and I thought our readers would like more information on what they have done! Could you explain Shelby Financials Online? “Shelby Financials Online is the latest version of our financial suite. SFO is a web-based financial package hosted in the cloud,” says Mark White, Director of Business Development. What modules are available at this time? “Our first phase includes General Ledger, Accounts Payable, Payroll and Bank Account Management. In the upcoming months we will release Fixed Assets, Purchase Order, and Accounts Receivable.” I know that SFO is a team project, but can you tell us from a team perspective, how long you have been working on it, what has been your main focus and how it will benefit Shelby customers? “The development process for this product began over two years ago with a period of market research and planning for a product we knew wouldn’t be released until sometime in 2013. Our focus was twofold. Having as much experience as we have with financial software we knew it had to be rock solid Christian Computing® Magazine

from an accounting standpoint. We also knew our clients wanted a new user interface to reduce training time and increase the ease of use.” Can you explain to us the sales model for SFO and maybe some of the interactions you have had with the SFO team over the last couple of years? “I will answer the second question first,” said Alfred Johnson, Shelby’s Sales Manager. “Shelby Financials Online has been from the beginning a team effort. The process began with input from our marketing and sales staff, as well as our support and training departments. We also consulted many existing customers as well as others outside of Shelby who provided invaluable input.” “Our sales model is pretty simple, we have two. Our first launch is a monthly subscription type, known as a SaaS model, where the data is hosted in Shelby’s private cloud. In coming months we will have a model that can be locally installed on the customer’s servers, but is also available from anywhere November 2013

using a browser. Both allow the client to choose individual modules or feature sets to fit their needs” From the Training perspective what has been the main goal for the SFO product? “Those who work in church and organizational offices doing accounting work want several things. They want good tools that make them efficient and proficient and they also want to be able to follow generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP). SFO is GAAP Compliant,” states Ron Chandler, Director of Customer Development. “By way of current technology, SFO provides all the steps in accounting that are auditable, and the end result gives them the reports they need to run their organization and their church. SFO does all of this in the context of a secure cloud environment. It is reliable and dependable, and in the end easy to use, we want to train people to that end.” SFO is so intuitive. Are customers going to need any training at all? Bill Ballou, Training manager answers, “Though we have worked hard to make the user experience more intuitive and more efficient there will always be a need for training. As it has always been our approach, we will offer several training plans to help create an efficient and smooth transition. For those who are already strong users of v.5, we will have a concentrated series of online training sessions that will help them move in this transition. This will be adequate for many users. For others this will be a wonderful opportunity to reimagine and rethink what they are doing with our financials and take advantage of the many powerful and innovative things that we have added to Christian Computing® Magazine

November 2013

this software. What we hope to do is have consultants come alongside your team to cast a vision so that your financials track along with the mission of your ministry. We are very excited about the possibilities that lie ahead.” Are SFO customers going to be able to talk to a live person for help and what other means of support are there? “Absolutely, even though this is a cloud-based application, customers will still have the same types of service that they are used to. We will be available via toll free phone calls, and we have support techs ready. Customers can also contact us through email and our live online chat system. One unique tool we offer to all customers is the ability to join the Community. The Community contains an online knowledge base that customers can join by way of our website. There is a resource center on the Community that also provides help videos and online documentation. Customers can even interact with each other through the online forums. Whichever resource you choose, our Shelby Support Team is here, trained, and ready to serve,” replied Steve Pruitt, Director of Customer Support.

Christian Computing® Magazine

Can you give us an example of a concept that you helped introduce that was suggested by current v.5 customers? “We all sat down and discussed ways we could improve the v.5 product and one of the first things that came to my mind is a situation that all of our customers find themselves in from time to time. You are working Accounts Receivable, invoice processing, entering 20, 30, even 50 invoices, and you realize you have the wrong bank account selected at the home base. In Shelby Financials Online we have added a new button, change bank account. Now you can select invoices you need to change, click the button, and it will change it to any bank account that you wish. This is just one of many enhancements that we have added to SFO based on customer feedback. I am sure you will find many surprises as you look around the new product,” comments Edward Eoff, Support Account Manager. Be looking for the announcement of additional modules in the coming months.

November 2013

protected with purpose

Churches under Increased International Cyber Attacks By: Steven Sundermeier

f you own a T.V. and have tuned in during the last few months, you’ve most likely seen the most recent commercials by AT&T. They portray an adult man dressed in a coat and tie surrounded by a group of grade-school children. The premise of the commercial is to get an explanation as to why ‘more is better than less’ from the perspective of a small child. The slogan for these commercials is “It’s not complicated ‘more’ is better,” and this is in reference to AT&T providing “more” 4G coverage across the United States. In a culture driven by greed and discontentment, I’d imagine many people would agree to the accuracy of AT&T’s campaign that “more is better.” So, let’s say we replaced the children in the commercial with cybercriminals, virus writers and hackers (yes, the contrast is dramatic). And let’s also say that we asked them the same question: “Is more is better than less?” Because these groups are driven by financial gain (extorting your money, credit card fraud, etc.) and stealing large data collections (email addresses, bank accounts, passwords, etc), I’d also imagine that the answer would be easy for them. Having “more” is a false carrot that many race continually through life chasing after. Cyber criminals are no different, but be forewarned that their “more” is not merely defined as the largest venue, or Christian Computing® Magazine

most profitable. They may hit a lot closer to home than you are prepared for. If you think these malicious groups are only after big enterprises (financial institutes, Fortune 100 companies, etc.) you may have to re-think you perceptions. The reality is that while big businesses may be the ultimate target, it is actually small businesses and especially churches across the country that my security company [Thirtyseven4] is seeing as the new primary targets. In keeping with the same slogan “more is better”, some may rationalize that this would make sense - hacking more churches may add up to be more rewarding than hacking a single big organization. But, this would leave the question, what benefit would these attackers gain by collecting nursery or child care records or email November 2013

lists of church members, etc. The truth is that all this stuff would be Make the move… of little value to them. So why are churches the new hot target? from Church Management Software… What our Thirtyseven4 Labs to Church Ministry Software are finding, and what other security-related research on this topic has Built by the Church, for the Church backed up is that international cybercriminals are adopting a concept ▪ Open Source (the code is free) referred to as “human shield.” The ▪ Web-based term human shield in this context ▪ Church Sponsored “BTW, each day I am more is in reference to someone or some thankful that we are using ▪ Ministry Focused group breaching the computer BVCMS. The rate you are security policy of lower profile adding features and improving churches (and small businesses) the database blows my mind and and taking over their computers I really appreciate all you do.” with the purpose to target the high- Jared Coe level organizations named above. Basically, they break into churches knowing that they are less likely to have up-to-date antivirus software, more likely to have outdated Software updates (ie. Java, Windows, World Class Hosting and Support ▪ 220+ Churches ▪ Active Development Adobe, etc), lacking any multiwww.bvcms.com for more information and pricing layered Endpoint Security, etc. and once they’ve penetrated these ness/church safe online. networks they hide behind them. By hiding behind • Before connecting staff, students or the churches, they not only mask their attacks, but also general public online, make sure you have a misdirect security officials to the wrong people. In detailed Cyber Security Plan completed and addition, with churches less likely to keep track of implemented. If this seems like a difficult their Internet traffic, officials find it a daunting task task, you can visit sba.gov, the U.S. Small to track the exact origin of the attack. Business Administration website and click So what can churches do to protect themselves? into their Learning Center where there is Below are a few Cyber Security tips we have helpful and clear information regarding cyber compiled that will help Churches and Small Busisecurity and small businesses with training nesses avoid becoming a “human shield”: videos available. • Think outside the box. In a number of re• It all starts with educating employee’s and ported cases where a church was the victim staff! As been the case for years, the weakest of human shielding, the attack began with link in computer security is the human elemalware being planted physically via a ment. Human error accounts for the majorremovable drive or device. It is important to ity of data breaches within organizations. realize data leaks like this can occur and that Helping staff understand the importance of networks need more than just client/gateway strong passwords, being aware of phishing protection, they need a robust device control scams, social networking site dangers, etc. is feature as well. This is feature we have inthe main ingredient of a healthy network. A cluded in our Thirtyseven4 Endpoint Secugreat resource with additional information rity solutions due to this increasing threat. is staysafeonline.org, a site powered by the • In terms of protection, it is very important to National Cyber Security Alliance. On the have a multi-layered and proactive antivirus site are excellent tips for staying safe online, solution is in place. As important as it is to teaching online safety and keeping your busiChristian Computing® Magazine

November 2013

have installed, it is equally important to keep it up-to-date. Thirtyseven4 is now blocking 70% of infections proactively with proactive security checks and measures, we’ve included in our products. Conventional scanners and appliances are no longer enough. • As mentioned in last’s month’s article regarding CyptoLocker, backing up data and keeping regular backups of critical data is vital. Stolen and encrypted data can have a crippling affect on a church or business. “More is better”? Personally, the AT&T commercials make me cringe, especially if I have one of our small children watching it with me. Our world is already greedy enough without a commercial in which school-children are teaching us the acceptance of selfishness. But beyond Biblical teachings on contentment, AT&T’s commercials also contradict a recent theme in virus activity. Cyber criminals are not going for the “more is better” big dogs of business, but instead they are trying to sneak up on many of us by infiltrating our soft-spots, if you will. Churches are sacred ground, but we also have to work to keep them secure ground as well, technologically speaking. Informing our staffs and congregations on basic safety tips, as well as equipping the church with current, aggressive antivirus protection is a great place to start. Security measures come in all types of forms: education of safe practices, common sense and on-theoffensive thinking, and also implementing and keeping current with quality antivirus protection options. If we are discussing online safety measures, HERE I will agree that “more is better.”

Christian Computing® Magazine

November 2013

ministry leadership

Preparing for the Next Generation Churchgoer

From: ACS Technologies

ere at ACS Technologies, we understand that today, churches are doing ministry much differently than they did 5, 10, and 20 years ago. As the world has changed, so have we.

We’re looking ahead to provide for the needs of your next-generation churchgoer. And while we are looking forward, we certainly aren’t forgetting the needs of your church’s less tech-savvy members. Let’s learn how Jane, a traditional churchgoer, and Amy, a tech-savvy churchgoer, do church differently. 1. Jane balances a checkbook; Amy has trouble locating hers. Checks are quickly becoming a thing of the past. We pay all of our bills online and are anxious for a way to set up a recurring online gift to satisfy our tithe. And while Jane finds comfort in writing those purchases in the back of her checkbook, even she has transitioned to paying her bills online. The next-generation ACS solution: Online Giving. Setting up online giving in Realm is free and easy. It allows your churchgoers to set up one-time or recurring online gifts using a credit/debit card or an electronic check. You can even allow churchgoers without a login to give online to your church. This Christian Computing® Magazine

year alone, more than 240 churches have signed up for our latest online giving solution, and we’ve processed more than $4.5 million in contributions. Online giving is a hot topic and can benefit your church tremendously. 2. Jane receives the upcoming church bulletin via snail mail; Amy receives an online version in her email once a week. Amy checks her email as it comes in – using her phone, her work computer, or her tablet at her house. When she receives an email on her phone, she can respond immediately – whether in a coffee shop, a meeting, or on the road. Don’t mail Amy paper – it just ends up in the recycling. The next-generation ACS solution: Mobile, mobile, mobile! Realm is 100% mobile. What does that mean? As a staff person, you can pull out your tablet or phone and do anything in Realm that you can do on your desktop computer. Staff people can look up an individual’s contact information, post contributions, check in a child for Sunday November 2013

School, or mark attendance – all from their mobile device. Churchgoers can set up their annual pledge, give online, and browse groups. Everything is at their fingertips and no paper is necessary! 3. Jane participates in a prayer chain where she calls other members of the church; Amy created a Facebook group for a church class and they posted prayer requests. Facebook is how Amy finds out about everything – world events, what time rehearsal meets tonight, or how her sister’s family is doing. This is her primary source of all things social. The next-generation ACS solution: Social Engagement The City is the solution for achieving ultimate engagement through social media at your church. When they have an active account in The City, churchgoers can post prayer requests to their group members. Staff people can communicate announcements. Group leaders can create events, and individuals can sign up to bring items. Your churchgoers grow closer and are more informed using this online social tool, which will benefit their spiritual growth. We encourage you to look into the benefits of using a completely web-based software tool to manage your church – the two webbased solutions ACS Technologies currently offers are Realm and The City. You may be surprised by the effect these two tools can have on the involvement of both younger and older generations at your church.

Christian Computing® Magazine

November 2013

church windows software

CHURCH WINDOWS SOFTWARE

Top 10 Reasons You Could Receive a “Nastygram” from the IRS

By: Craig Chadwell

lthough we can’t give specific tax advice to your church, we can make you aware of the most common reasons that the IRS sends out notices regarding payroll.

Two particularly useful publications for the church payroll administrator are IRS Publication 517, Social Security and Other Information for Members of the Clergy and Religious Workers and Publication 15-B, Employer’s Tax Guide to Fringe Benefits. Common reasons are: 1. Failure to make payroll tax deposits on time. Since January 1, 2011, taxpayers have been required to make deposits electronically using the Electronic Federal Tax Payment System (EFTPS). Penalties can add up quickly for delinquent deposits. 2. Errors on Form 941 or failing to file Form 941 on time. Form 941, generally, is due the last day of the month following the end of Christian Computing® Magazine

each quarter. If all deposits have been made, then the employer has an additional ten days to file the return. 3. Submitting W-2s that don’t agree with the 941s that were filed. The total of the taxable wages reported on Form 941 should agree to the total of the federally taxable wages of the W-2s. If an employer is audited, these are the items that most often surface and result in additional tax assessments: 1. Misclassifying an employee as an independent contractor. Determination of the proper status depends upon all the facts and cirNovember 2013

cumstances of each situation but fall into three categories. 1. Behavioral – How much control does church have in dictating how, when, where and what the individual does? 2. Financial - Can the individual experience a financial gain or loss related to this work? Who provides tools and supplies? 3. Type of Relationship - Is there a written contract? Are benefits such as pension, vacation or insurance provided? Failing to collect and retain Forms W-9 from independent contractors. A W-9, which provides the church with the name, address, tax identification number and, most importantly, a signed statement that the provider is not subject to backup withholding tax is best collected before any payments are made. The current statutory rate for backup withholding is 25% of the amount due to the contractor and is reported to IRS on form 945. Failing to issue Form 1099 to independent contractors. The church is required to issue Form 1099-MISC to independent contractors who are paid $600 or more. A frequent misconception is that amounts below $600 are not taxable to the recipient. Failure to submit 1099s with complete information can make the church subject to significant penalties. Excluding expense reimbursements from taxable earnings but not maintaining an accountable plan. An accountable plan requires that the employer maintain documentation for the expenses that were reimbursed and that the timing between expenses and reimbursements falls within the guidelines established by IRS. Not including the fair market value of gift cards, prizes and awards in taxable earnings. There are certain prizes and

awards that can be excluded if they are considered of small value (e.g. a Thanksgiving turkey) but, gift cards are always taxable. 6. Not including taxable fringe benefits. An example of this could be payments on life insurance premiums on a policy where the employer is not the beneficiary. 7. Excluding travel and commuting reimbursements. Only qualified transportation benefits can be excluded from the employee’s wages.

The Church is people!

Christian Computing® Magazine

You’ve been called to minister to the people of your church. Let Church Windows manage the information so you can minister to your people.

CHURCH WINDOWS DESKTOP & WEB contain integrated: .FNCFSTIJQ t 4DIFEVMFS t %POBUJPOT "DDPVOUJOH t "DDPVOUT 3FDFJWBCMF t 1BZSPMM

November 2013

higher power with kevin

Study, Write and Preach a Sermon from a Tablet Kevin A. Purcell - kevin@kevinpurcell.org

ith the advance in mobile technology and, following mobile tech, mobile Bible study apps, it’s now possible to study the Bible, write a sermon and preach all from a tablet like the iPad or maybe a Nexus 7 or 10. No matter which tablet you use, this will work for you. Studying the Bible Fire up your favorite Bible study app and study the text you plan to preach using the app. We don’t have the space here to talk about all the steps of studying a text and learning the basic meaning of the passage using a tablet. We also don’t have time to share which Bible study app works best. As for studying the Bible, I recommend two books. • How to Read the Bible for All It’s Worth, Gordon Fee and Douglas Stuart - http://goo. gl/hVk50b Christian Computing® Magazine

• Biblical Preaching, Haddon Robinson http://goo.gl/rWURv9 Those two books will prepare people to preach better than any other book out there. They take the expository approach and use inductive Bible study techniques, which are the best approaches to Bible study and preaching. All Bible apps that come with good original language tools and offer a full selection of great resources and commentaries will work. Here’s a quick overview of study steps: November 2013

1. Read the passage in context repeatedly 2. Make careful observations keeping the information in your notes in the app 3. Ask interpretive questions and find the answers in the reference works within that app using… • Bible dictionaries to look up key words, people and places as well as find out about a book and it’s authors • Language tools that help you search for a Hebrew or Greek word to understand how that word is used in the book and Bible as a whole • Write out your conclusions about the passages overall meaning • Consult commentaries to confirm your own findings – it’s important to do this step last, after the above and not before because you’ll learn more about the text’s meaning discovering it yourself 4. Formulate a preaching approach using one of several sermon outline forms like… • An idea completed where you introduce part of an idea and use the rest of the sermon to complete it using the text to form the completed idea and how it matters. • An idea proven where you state an idea and then craft an argument that proves its truth and show how it matters getting the argument from the text. • An idea replaced where you present an unbiblical idea contrary to a text’s idea and then use the text to say why it’s false and how it matters. • There are many more. Writing the Sermon At this point you have a choice to make. Will I write my full sermon manuscript or outline using the Bible app as the container or a word processor as the container? In other words, where will you actually do the writing? Some Bible apps make this easy, like Olive Tree’s Bible app, which lets a user create a full document within the app. Many other apps offer similar capability. Be sure the app offers the ability to put the text in one pane on the screen and the notes in another on the screen. You can use another alternative to two paned apps. Carry a smartphone and a tablet. Use the Christian Computing® Magazine

smartphone to read the Bible and references and then write using the tablet. I don’t like writing in the app. I want to format my sermon notes with formatted colored text for the main points, quotes and Bible passages. I also use bullet points for lists of ideas instead of writing out my manuscript. Most Bible app notes won’t let the user add much formatting. Apple Pages works great on the iPad and QuickOffice, now owned by Google, works well on both iPad and Android. Windows Surface or other Windows 8 tablets offer Microsoft Word. All of these options let users sync up their documents to online storage and a computer. Write the sermon as you would on your computer using the tablet. To do this use the built-in software keyboard or pick up a nice Bluetooth keyboard. The Windows tablets offer great keyboards covers but many third-party suppliers offer great Android and iOS compatible Bluetooth keyboards. We like the Logitech Tablet Keyboard (here’s the iPad version: http://bit.ly/logmobilekb). It costs $70 retail but look around and you can find it cheaper (Amazon has it for under $45 http://amzn. to/1bewXyD). Some people like to take this second step of writing the sermon and combine it with the third step, presenting the sermon. They do this buy writing out their sermon in a presentation application like Keynote on iPad, QuickOffice on Android or PowerPoint on Windows tablets. While I don’t like to do this, I mention it because some write out their notes in the presentation app’s presenter notes and add images and words to the slides of the presentation as they go. The third step is preaching with the tablet as the source for slides in a presentation or as the source of their speaker notes. For those who present using the iPad or Android tablet will have to connect to an external display. Then the preacher can use a presentation app to hold their speaker notes and display the slides to their audience. How do we make the connection to the screen? The options include a direct wired connection or an indirect wireless connection. iPad owners must connect a dongle to their iPad that will then connect to a VGA, DVI or HDMI cable. Most Android tablets offer similar connections and some include HDMI out ports. Plug the cable directly into the TV or projector. This forces the preacher to stand close to the projector or TV monitor. November 2013

To keep from standing close to the projector or TV, use a wireless device like the Apple TV for iPad owners or a Google TV or Chromecast for Android. Plug the device into the screen/projector and connect to the device from the tablet using a Wi-Fi connection. We won’t go into details about how to do this, but a simple Google search will help you find steps for connecting and presenting. Finally, let’s talk about making the actual presentation. Presentations are more interesting when the preacher isn’t just reading a manuscript. That’s why I use bullet point notes. The hearer likes the eye contact that results from a preacher not reading his sermon. Presentation software also makes a sermon more interesting because it adds visual imagery to the presentation so that it becomes a multimedia presentation. I wrote my doctoral dissertation on this topic so check out the full text of my dissertation for more on creating interesting imagebased presentations instead of text-dominated presentations. (http://bit.ly/kap-dmin-diss for my full text dissertation). The keys to making a good presentation include:

ONE staff, many needs.

logoscms.com/tour

• Don’t put your full outline on screen alone. • Use a picture or video to illustrate each main idea. • Use short phrases instead of full sentences. For example: • Use “Mercy not Ritual” on top of a picture of a cross instead of … • “Jesus requires that we offer people mercy instead of performing rituals” on a boring blue background. • When it fits, pick a single illustration that can tie the whole sermon together and Christian Computing® Magazine

consider props to add interest. • Use a big enough screen for the back row and front row alike. • Use a bright enough screen for the room with lights on. Some churches use a worship presentation service or software, like MediaShout or Proclaim. Both of these offer an iPad-based presentation remote control that lets you also include some notes on the screen of the tablet wirelessly connected to the computer running the worship presentation software. I’ve not used these remotes, so I can’t recommend them. We use MediaShout and used Proclaim in the past, but with another person running them. This leads me to the final tip. Get a volunteer to run the presentation on the computer in the back of the room where they won’t distract anyone. Train these volunteers to follow you as you speak so you don’t need to control the presentation yourself. Get someone who’s good at focusing and won’t become easily distracted by the computer.

November 2013

the power and the danger

23andMe

By Russ McGuire - russ.mcguire@gmail.com

recently attended a seminar on technology advances across a number of disciplines. One of the sessions was on “Digital Biology.” The presenter described DNA as the programming language of life. As a coder, that description appealed to me. As a Christian, his application of the analogy offended me. In Acts 3:15, Peter refers to Jesus as “the Author of life,” and in Psalm 139, the psalmist praises God for forming his inward parts, knitting him together, making him in secret, and seeing his unformed substance. As a technologist, the analogy of God as the Programmer, uniquely rolling the DNA code for each of us, works powerfully. However, the presenter, while acknowledging our unique and impressive design, did not honor the Designer and instead outlined the opportunity for scientists to read DNA, write DNA, and hack DNA. According to their website, “23andMe is a DNA analysis service providing information and tools for individuals to learn about and explore their DNA.” You provide a spit sample to 23andMe and they analyze your DNA for you. Earlier this year, 23andMe lowered the price for their service to $99, making it an affordable option for the masses. Who knows, you may even receive a 23andMe kit as a gift this Christmas. As Christians who love technology and data, a service like 23andMe may be very appealing. Through Christian Computing® Magazine

a Biblical grid, how should we view these “advances” for ourselves and for those in our congregations and ministries who are likely to ask our opinion as DNA services become mainstream? What is DNA Analysis? In 1987, President Reagan’s budget included funding for the Human Genome Project within the US Department of Energy (DOE). Over the years the project was jointly managed by the DOE and the National Institute of Health (NIH). The project resulted in a complete mapping of the human genome in 2001. (A genome is the entirety of an organism’s hereditary information coded within its DNA.) According to the presentation I heard, this initial DNA sequencing effort cost $3.7B. Each human’s DNA sequence is unique. Today, sequencing an entire genome for an individual has been reduced from 13 years to about a week, and from $3.7B to about $2000. Next year the cost is expected November 2013

to fall to be about the same as the cost of a chest X-ray, and by 2016 it will cost less than a pizza. Within the entire DNA sequence, scientists have worked to identify specific genes, stretches of DNA that determine genetic traits … reach out including hair color, eye color, … minister to people etc. A DNA Analysis service like 23andMe doesn’t need to sequence … create fellowship a person’s entire DNA to identify indicators of information of interest … contribute to to consumers. 23andMe focuses your community primarily on health and ancestry PowerChurch Plus was information. created for just that! Some genes or mutations of genes can indicate increased likelihood to develop specific medical conditions ranging from male patMembership tern baldness to cancer. The preWe provide you with the tools to senter shared how he has changed increase administrative efficiency his lifestyle to reduce his likelihood and streamline accounting tasks, Accounting of developing a vision problem freeing you up to perform the work that his DNA analysis indicated he that matters. was at high risk to develop. Most Contributions famously, earlier this year the actress Angelina Jolie had a prevenInstall on your PC or network, or access online. Events tive double mastectomy because Choose which fits your needs. Calendar her DNA analysis indicated she had an 87% risk of developing breast cancer. Check In 23andMe also advertises that they can identify conditions that you may be a carrier for, even if Completely We provide software tools, you don’t develop the condition Integrated freeing you up to fulfill your mission. yourself. This knowledge may lead some to choose to not have children. www.PowerChurch.com • 800.486.1800 Ravgen is a company founded in 2000 to develop (from their website) 3&6 &KXUFK([HFXWLYHB [ LQGG “a fetal DNA based sequencing method to allow for testing is also promoted as a paternity testing $0 method, safe, noninvasive, and accurate prenatal diagnosis of which again can be helpful to mothers trying to detergenetic disorders, such as Downs syndrome, early in mine whether to keep the baby or not. pregnancy.” Such tests are obviously designed to help parents decide whether or not to abort their babies. What is good about DNA Analysis? 23andMe also promotes the benefit of using their The past couple of centuries have seen tremendous test to find out about your ancestry. They will tell you advances in medical diagnostic technology. Today, we what percent of your ancestors come from different regularly trust in X-rays, MRIs, blood and urine tests, parts of the world. 23andMe also encourages you to EKGs, etc. to accurately diagnose medical conditions share your DNA information so that you can find relathat require treatment. DNA Analysis has the potential tives you didn’t even know about. They currently have to continue this positive trend, providing informa400,000 members in their database. Prenatal DNA tion that can help us take action to avoid or lessen the

You want the freedom to

Christian Computing® Magazine

November 2013

Act of 2008 (GINA) prohibits the use of genetic information in health insurance and employment decisions. However, life insurance comget your free demo panies typically take a blood sample from which they can perform DNA analysis to determine your risk of early death. How much information about yourself do you want in how many places? (Interesting fact: Anne Wojcicki, 23andMe’s founder Manage your ministry with is married to Google’s Sergey Brin.) The biggest issue I have with “Digital Biology” is reflected in Track donations, Email Statements, the presenter’s attitude towards Manage: Small Groups, Classes, Attendance, authoring life – writing DNA and Visitor follow-up, Outreach and MORE! “hacking” DNA to create new life forms. Ever since Satan and his angels rebelled and were cast out of heaven, his deceitful appeal to Eve, and to the builders of the tower of Keep children safe with Babel, and honestly to each of us is that we can be like God. Writing and “hacking” life itself is only the Easy check-in, secure check-out, latest example. Syncs with Servant Keeper, Proverbs 3:4-5 commends us to “Trust in the Lord with all your Name badges w/ allergies, notes, alerts, class info. heart, and do not lean on your own Claim tickets for parents/guardians, run background checks understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.” It is my hope and prayer that Plan worship effortlessly with these articles on the power and danger of technology will encourage you in your daily walk with Christ. Keeps your song library at your fingertips, Whether it is the printing press, Quickly plan and schedule services and teams radio, television, personal computEasily track song usage and do reports ers, the Internet, the Cloud, smartphones, or even DNA analysis, new impact of medical conditions. 23andMe also promotes technologies continue to advance our ability to know God and to serve Him, wherever we go. the ability to identify how you’ll respond to certain medications. Russ McGuire is an executive for a Fortune 100 company and the founder/co-founder of three technolWhat is dangerous about DNA Analysis? ogy start-ups. His latest entrepreneurial venture is DNA Analysis is a new and developing discipline. Some have taken radical actions assuming that science CXfriends (https://cxfriends.com), a social network for can accurately predict the future. I would rather trust in Christian families which is being built and run by four a sovereign God, through whatever trials He may have homeschooled students under Russ’ direction. planned for my eternal good. A common theme in my articles is concern with privacy. The Genetic Information Nondescrimination

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November 2013

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Digital Evangelism for Websites

How to Embed Pop-up Scriptures into Your Web Pages Michael L White - mlwhite@parsonplace.com

ne of the most effective methods for doing digital evangelism is writing content for the Web. For the next few issues, I want to focus on doing digital evangelism via Websites and introduce a number of ideas for making the most of this opportunity. One thing that makes Web pages even more interactive and engaging is the use of Scripture references which visitors can read on-site in a pop-up box. This eliminates the need for visitors to leave your site or otherwise pause from reading your content to look up for themselves any Scripture references you’ve used to support your points. I’ve discovered a few of these services which are both relatively easy to implement and free to use. Sharing God’s Word via the Web just got easier and more fun! The first I’ll discuss is called RefTagger by Bible Logos Software. To see how it works on a Web page, you can visit one of my most popular pages entitled “Crowns of Reward in Heaven” at Christian Computing® Magazine

www.parsonplace.com/crowns.html. Surprisingly (to me, at least), according to the monthly stats for my Website for October 2013, this is the fifth most viewed page on my site (out of more than 300 pages), and the phrase “crowns in heaven” is the fifth most frequently searched-for keyword phrase (out of 253 different phrases) which brought search traffic to my site during October. In fact, it has remained in the top ten pages and keywords on my site for the past year or so. I think this is due partly to public interest in the subject and partly due to effective SEO (search engine optimization). I cover the topic of SEO briefly in the first chapter of my book Digital Evangelism: You Can Do It, Too! I also plan to write more about SEO in a November 2013

future article for this series in CCMAG. Because I use a number of Scripture verses to reinforce my assertions about various topics from the Bible, I’ve enclosed the RefTagger code within a HTML Script tag just before the closing Body tag on just three of my Web pages where I use numerous Scripture references, including the “Crowns of Reward in Heaven” Web page. The other two pages are “Chronology of Events at the End of the Age” (www.parsonplace.com/endchron. html) and “The Rapture Explained: A Doctrinal Abstract” (www.parsonplace.com/rapture.html). You can also click on this link – www.parsonplace. com/articles.html – to browse my collection of inspirational articles and find these pages listed as the first three items on the bulleted list on that page. Each of the Web pages containing these articles has the RefTagger code embedded in it. I expect to add this Scripture pop-up functionality to more of my site’s pages over time. In addition to the script code used to display the pop-up Scripture references, the HTML code of each of these pages also includes a block of code for RefTagger which displays the Bible version customization box with which the visitor can Christian Computing® Magazine

choose the Bible version of his or her preference. This is especially handy for your visitors to change the Bible version used on your site to compare how various versions of a Bible verse read. You can place this code wherever you prefer on your Web page following the opening Body tag. For best results, it should probably be placed somewhere near the top of your page or just before the use of your first Scripture reference. Visit the Bible Logos Software Web site at www.logos. com/RefTagger to learn how to implement this functionality on your Website. After using RefTagger for a while, I have come across another site with a different service called NETBibleTagger by Bible. org. NETBibleTagger provides practically the same functionality as RefTagger but with one major drawback. NETBibleTagger limits you to only one version of the Bible, called the NET Bible. I really dislike being restricted to using only this one version of the Bible, so I contacted their tech support to ask if they have any plans for including multiple versions of the Bible in the future. The response was: “We would like to do this, but we don’t have the license/rights to use any other translations in this way. Sadly, I can’t speculate on when this would change.” That’s disappointing news for me, so until they obtain a license to use multiple versions of the Bible and incorporate this functionality into their Bible tagger code, I will stick with using RefTagger or another similar service with more versions available. Nevertheless, for comparison purposes only, I have created a duplicate page of my “Crowns of Reward in Heaven” Web page using the NETBibleTagger code just to demonstrate how the same content looks using NETBibleTagger. Just go to www.parsonplace.com/crowns2.html to see it in action. You may visit the NETBibleTagger Website at labs.bible.org/NETBibleTagger to get the code and read the instructions for inserting it into your Web pages. While researching and writing this article, I November 2013

discovered a couple of other services which provide the same or similar functionality as RefTagger and NETBibleTagger. They are VerseClick (by Study Lamp Software) and ScriptTagger (by BlueLetterBible.org). You can see these services in action using the same duplicated page on my site as referenced earlier at www. parsonplace.com/crowns3.html (using VerseClick) and www.parsonplace.com/crowns4.html (using ScriptTagger), respectively. Like NETBibleTagger, VerseClick offers only one version of the Bible – the King James Version – while ScriptTagger offers multiple versions which may be customized individually within the code by the webmaster but without direct user input. Each one of these four services has its own pros and cons, but I’ve decided that RefTagger is the most suitable for what I want to offer, although I like ScriptTagger as a close second option. It’s up to you, of course, which one of these services you prefer. I hope you’ve found this information helpful. I look forward to sharing another recommendation with you in my next article. Michael L. White is the founder and Managing Editor of Parson Place Press, an independent Christian publishing house in Mobile, Alabama. His book Digital Evangelism: You Can Do It, Too! (Parson Place Press, 2011) is available wherever books are sold. Visit his Website at books.parsonplace.com for a list of his other books and articles.

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November 2013

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The resurgence of long-form journalism and what it means to church communicators Yvon Prehn - yvon@effectivechurchcom.com

t’s never wise to make categorical statements about what always works and what doesn’t in communication. Times change; tastes change. The purpose of a communication project determines its construction. Though we know the previous statements are true, in the church overall we tend to fall for patently false assertions. One of the most pervasive current ones is: “nobody reads long material.” along with the advice that all church communications on the web and otherwise need to be short and catchy. This is simply not true and here’s why. . . A current trend confirms the obvious—longer can be useful There always has been and always will be a need for church communications of various lengths. Obviously the notice for the Men’s Workday at church will be shorter than the transcription of lessons about the Trinity. Though putting out communications of different lengths, depending on the content of the message Christian Computing® Magazine

is obvious in print, where most church communicators have a problem is with the idea that everything on websites needs to be short or people won’t read it. The overwhelming advice for web-based communications is towards condensing material, with of course the ultimate result being Twitter, which attempts in 140 characters to summarize all of life. There is nothing wrong with Twitter and other shortNovember 2013

form blogs and messaging aps—busy people find short summaries useful. Twitter is fascinating, instructive, and often inspirational; aps like SnapChat make some messages mercifully short-lived. But people can’t live on short summaries alone and even Twitter often links to longer content. Recognizing this need for more information, one of the founders of Twitter (and Blogger), Ev Williams, has recently become involved in a new long-form journalism project on the web. As part of explaining his reasons for doing this, he said: We love tweets as much as the next person (probably more), but sometimes we long for something meatier. Now that we’ve made sharing information virtually effortless, how do we increase the depth of understanding, while also creating a level playing field that encourages great ideas coming from anywhere? http://mashable. com/2013/05/28/medium-ev-williams/ His answer was to start the long-form journalism web publication Medium. This publication in turn recently acquired Matter, which is a long-form journalism site for science writing. Epic Magazine is a long-form project that describes itself as: “GREAT NON-FICTION. FREE ONLINE. RE-MASTERED FOR THE WEB” and its tag line is: “As fun as fiction, but full of facts.” In part because one of the founding writers is the man who wrote the Argo, which was the source of the movie of the same name, the quality of the writing on the site is superb. I have a video link below that will take you to an overview of each of these. In addition to these sites, the most recent entry into this field is Business Insider, whose new editor of the long-form division describes his goal in this way: “The Internet has brought us a deluge of information — who, what, when — but if you really want to enhance people’s understanding, there’s no substitute for a powerful narrative that carries a reader along, teases out the subtleties of a story and hopefully gets at a larger truth.” http://www.usatoday. com/story/money/columnist/rieder/2013/11/06/ business-insider-makes-a-foray-into-long-formjournalism/3453405/ Christian Computing® Magazine

New devices support the need for long-form content Tablets, IPads, Kindles, and smart phones have drastically changed how we consume content and many attribute the growing popularity of long-form content in part to these devices, as these recent studies suggest: Data from the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism reinforce the notion that lots of people like to read in-depth journalism on mobile devices. In a study called “Future of Mobile News” last October, Pew found that 73% of tablet owners access long-form content either regularly or sometimes; 19% do so each day. The same overall total was true for phones, with 11% regular consumers Those readers have healthy appetites. About 60% of the tablet users who access long-form read two to three articles in a sitting, and another 17% read four or more. Often, the report found, they devour articles that they hadn’t initially planned to read. http://www.usatoday.com/ story/money/columnist/2013/06/05/rem-riederlongform/2389995/ The implications of this trend for church communications People might be in a hurry, but they still have empty hearts and we need to work on meeting them in our communications. More and more this means meeting them on your church website. Don’t constrain the content of your website to short, snappy lists, catchy descriptions and summaries. To make that information accessible in long-form we need to work on information design, which is about how we structure our content, if we want to make it easily accessible to and understandable to our congregations. As the video link below will show you, what November 2013

was important in print in the past is important again: linelength, hierarchies of type face, size and style are once again understood as essential for long-form material to be readable. In the past many sites simply dumped in long form content (past writings from church history, etc.) but only the most dedicated teachers would slog through them. In response, most people ignored this content or dumbed down theological concepts to brief, incomplete summaries. What the secular sites show us is that you can take longer content and with changes in information design make it accessible. This won’t be easy to do and I’ll be working on some systems to make it easier for churches offices to implement. What is available now is challenging and too complex for me to recommend, but I’ll share more when I get this figured out. After I finished writing this article, I realized that simply listing the sites and commenting on them and about the format challenges below isn’t enough—you really need to SEE what I’m talking about, so I created a very short video tour of the sites and format innovations on them. I also briefly show you some of the information design changes that make longform journalism readable. Here is the link to the video: http://www.youtube.com/

Christian Computing® Magazine

November 2013

nick at church

Those Mobile Devices We Love & Hate Nick Nicholaou - nick@mbsinc.com

he mobile devices we use— smartphones, tablets, and notebook computers— are an integral part of our everyday life. They make us more efficient and productive, for which we’re grateful, and some of their apps are even fun and entertaining! Unmanaged, however, they can take over our lives and make us want to escape them. So, then, how do we manage them so they retain their status as a blessing? Back in The Day… There was a day some of us remember when personal computers didn’t exist. When the concept of the personal computer began to emerge in the early 1980s, I remember asking, “Who would want their own computer!!? And who could afford that!?” I had no idea… Now the personal desktop computer has evolved into the notebook (an updated term for laptop) computer. The kitchen princess wall phone has evolved into the smartphone. And my paperback book has evolved into a tablet. And it is, as they say, all good! I love all this technology! On my vacation breaks I still work on and use these techno-wonders, much to my family’s amazement! I really do love ‘em! Christian Computing® Magazine

Setting Up Boundaries Okay, true confession time. I usually sleep with my smartphone at my bedside, and often sleep with my iPad under my pillow. That way if I wake up with an idea or can’t sleep, they’re right there with me! My wife thinks I’m weird and wonders if she should be concerned. Here’s the deal. I look at using technology two ways, or better said, put using technology into two compartments: work and personal. I try to limit my work usage to work hours and my personal usage into non-work hours. The work-related boundaries are very important: • When at work, I need to be a good employee. November 2013

That means focusing on work rather than on personal matters and being very efficient and productive. It means not doing Facebook, YouTube, etc. at work unless I’m on a break. • I also need to confine my work-related usage to work hours so that I get the rest and refreshment I need. The Lord, knowing how we were made and what our limitations are prescribed a day of rest in the Ten Commandments to help us stay healthy. Time that is truly off from work is also essential to the relationships I have with my family, friends, and neighbors.

see them in my Inbox when managing personal email, so they don’t pressure me! And because I do these in my smartphone and tablet too, I really do get to take time off. I love technology and all of my techno-toys. I work in a field that would probably be my hobby if it wasn’t my job, so that means I really enjoy what I do! And I do it for Christian churches and ministries, so it has even more meaning. Win-Win-Win! Maybe that’s why I sleep with my iPad and next to my smartphone…

Blurring the Boundaries When I’m off work I do my best to ignore work-related email. But they come into my Outlook Inbox, and that’s the same place I go to read my personal email. It is challenging to not respond to work-related email. But to help me, here’s a little trick I use: • I’ve created a folder in Outlook called Cabinet. I think of it like a filing cabinet with drawers. In, or below that folder I’ve created additional folders (filing cabinet drawers) for work, personal, and other types of email. • When an email hits my Inbox I quickly do one of three things: 1. Respond (including the original email) and then delete the original email, 2. Move it to another folder (drag and drop), like to my work folder, or 3. Delete it if it’s something I don’t care about and that I will not be responding to. 4. That means my Inbox is usually empty, which helps me to not feel pressured to respond to work-related email when I’m off of work! I don’t Christian Computing® Magazine

November 2013