Christian Computing Magazine - February 2014 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 26

February 2014

No. 2

5 cover story Here comes Seraphim!

Copy Editors Gina Hewitt Magen Cross

Cloud-based, Integrated Church Management meets a Modern User Experience By Steve Hewitt

3 Editorial

Corporate Home Office

Best Communication Tools for Churches? Two of the best in One Call Now!

Protected with Purpose

Ministry Leadership

Steve Hewitt - steve@CDPublishers.com

Mailing address:

Extinction List +1: Flappy Joins the Dodo By: Steven Sundermeier The Key to Keeping Your Volunteers

18 Church Windows Software

In Terms of The Church, Who is a Responsible Party?

Three Freemium Cloud Storage Options

22 Special Feature

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Higher Power With Kevin

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30 Digital Evangelism

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The Power And The Danger

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Is Your Church Reaching Its Budget?

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The Impact of Windows XP Support Ending

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February 2014

editorial

Best Communication Tools for Churches? Two of the best in One Call Now! I have already spoken at two NACBA events this year, and at both I shared my top five communication tools that churches need to concentrate on in 2014. Some might assume that I would suggest churches concentrate on Twitter or Facebook, but the opposite is true. While many of my friends and peers are writing blogs and e-books on how to jump on board the social media wagon, I will be writing several future articles in the months ahead, explaining why I think this is a big mistake. Communication IS very important for any church, but unfortunately the number of followers you have on Twitter, or the number of “likes” you have on Facebook doesn’t provide you any real information as to how many people you actually reach with your communications. In fact, I suspect the number is much lower than you would assume. And, while computers have helped to automate your mailings and a postal meter speeds up the process, the money you think you are saving is lost if no one opens your letter. So, here are my top five methods that churches should use to communicate and connect with their members and prospects. And, frankly, I believe number one is three times better than even my second choice. The number one best way to communicate and connect with your membership is through texting. Not group texting, but broadcast texting to specific groups within your church. Group texting is when you send out a text from your cell phone to several different people. Once one replies, the text goes back to everyone else in the group. This can be annoying. However, when you send out a broadcast Christian Computing® Magazine

Steve Hewitt - steve@CDPublishers.com text to specific groups or your entire membership using your ChMS and One Call Now, the text is seen by 98% of your group within the first three minutes! Text messages are great to remind people a few hours in advance of any meetings you might be holding. Or, it is a great way to inform people of any last minute changes. It is obviously the best way to share a prayer request with many people directly in just a few minutes, and a text message can have a link to a registration form, your church’s newsletter, etc. The second best way to communicate and connect with your membership is by using a voice message delivery system. This can also be provided by One Call Now, and will allow you to send an important voice announcement or reminder to any specific group. I will be providing a more complete review of One Call Now in an upcoming issue, but in this age of communication overload, I wanted to make it clear that in my opinion texting is the best, followed by voice messaging, and both are provided in one service through One Call Now. Find out more by visiting www.onecallnow.com or click on their ad in this issue. What is number three? It appears very non-tech, but with the right imagination, printer and font, it can be done. Sending a letter through the mail is my choice for the third best way to connect and communicate BUT it must appear to be hand addressed (including the return address) and it must have a real stamp on it! Because of the overload of junk mail, bills and mass mailings that use postal meters and such, when a letter arrives that appears to be hand February 2014

addressed, and doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have a company logo for the return address and has a real stamp, it gets opened first! Fourth is a combination of Internet sites where I think you need a presence. I used to believe it was important for churches to have a constant stream of new content at these locations, but now I lean towards encouraging you to have the information first time visitors will be looking for when considering visiting your church. These include location, contact information, worship and meeting times, and something to give them an idea about what to expect when they visit, and the opportunity to request more information. So, for my fourth communication and connection tool, I suggest the combination of a website, Facebook and a video on YouTube. You could certainly be located in more places, but for most people, if they are searching for information about your church, they will look in one of these three places. And, finally, my fifth and last choice for a communication and connection tool for churches is E-mail. It still works, especially if your membership is looking for something specific from you, such as your churchâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s newsletter, but it is not nearly as good as it used to be compared to texting! Hope this helps. Again, watch for more information and articles to come on this subject! Together We Serve Him,

Steve Hewitt steve@cdpublihsers.com

Christian ComputingÂŽ Magazine

February 2014

cover story

Here Comes Seraphim! Cloud-based, Integrated Church Management Meets a Modern User Experience

By Steve Hewitt

recently met Sam Batterman, the man behind an exciting new ChMS service named Seraphim Software! New products and services like those offered by Seraphim are exciting. They represent a new way of doing things, and, being new, they are based upon the concept of providing new services and features that other ChMS companies may have overlooked. Check out my interview with Sam and visit their website (www. seraphimsoftware.com) for more information about what they offer. Seraphim is a new company to many of our readers. Tell us what you do. Seraphim is a Christian-owned and operated Technology Company that brings high technology to churches in an elegant and easy to use manner at the best price possible. As we talk to customers we think that churches and congregants have changed so dramatically in the last ten years that the software that used to be sufficient for solving daily problems and empowering the back office is now inadequate. Seraphim was founded to bring Christian ComputingÂŽ Magazine

technologies that have helped businesses transform themselves over the last ten years, to churches and faith-based organizations. In doing this, we didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t start with a secular product, or even with an intent to cross over to related markets. We built Seraphim specifically for the churchâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s mission: reaching out to individuals, helping people and, most importantly, connecting people to God. We created software to not just make this process faster, but to turn this process into a cycle that runs both efficiently and effectively. February 2014

For what areas in a church does Seraphim provide solutions? Seraphim provides all of the typical back office functionality you have come to expect, including directory management, grouping, attendance tracking, event management, Safe Check In and donor/ tithe management. Seraphim takes this foundation and extends itself to include online communities (you can think of these as social networks), digital, shared Bible study tools, and volunteer and schedule management through our Ministry Planner feature. We support the back office with great vigor, but the real paradigm shift here is being able to empower volunteers and the back office through Seraphim. For example, the creation of an “Addiction Recovery Ministry”, “Men’s Accountability Community” or a “Mom’s with Preschoolers Ministry” takes only one minute. These aren’t just Facebook-like group pages, but rather communities that emphasize care and prayer and events throughout the week. How did Seraphim start out? I was working for Microsoft at the time and also helping with the teen ministry in our church, and while I was very busy with these major activities in my life (while being a father and a husband), I remember bemoaning the fact that the social networks, while cool, lacked the features needed to make church more social and pervasive in our lives throughout the week. Give me a little latitude to build some context on that last point. I think we have all seen how work has invaded time at home. It used to be that when you left work physically, with the exception of a pager or a rare phone call at home, that you could compartmentalize work and home life. In the nineties, when email and networks began to allow people to check and return emails over the weekend and on vacations, expectations changed as to when a message would and could be returned. The term “snail mail” was born as our expectations changed between the digital and analog world (US Mail). As mobile phones and smart phones came into our lives over a decade ago, any boundary between work and home essentially disappeared. Social networks have done this with people we’ve met through our lifetime as well. But no matter how many churches use Facebook, it is just not church. It’s become yet another place for outreach (like Google+, Twitter, Instagram, Vimeo, and the Christian Computing® Magazine

list goes on). This is when I decided to create something to help. The result was Seraphim, which started as a Social Network to connect teens to one another and teen workers through the week. Over the next few months this morphed into Safe Check In for Children’s Ministry, and then into Event Management and Attendance. Finally, Seraphim coalesced into a full-blown church management system. The integration and layering between all these functional areas took longer than I anticipated and it gave me a real appreciation for how different the church world is from the business world. I have written CRM (Customer Relationship Management) systems in my career, but while ChMS shares some ideas there, it has wholly unique concepts that are exclusive to the church. About two years ago, my business partner and I started looking for investors – people who shared the vision and would stand behind us and provide direction. God blessed us and opened doors that we could never have imagined. Leaving my job at Microsoft after being there for thirteen years to focus on Seraphim exclusively was never a scary proposition for me. It was clear to me that this was what I was intended for. God had been preparing the way for a very long time before this. One of the first things people notice about Seraphim is that it looks really modern, it’s not based on a fifteen-year old Windows 95 “look and feel.” Tell me about your decision to go this direction. Seraphim was designed with the simplified and minimalistic look that pervades software apps today on Windows and Apple products. We have taken every function and focused on making it super-fast, super flexible and user-friendly. As many designers would tell you, there’s nothing simple about making complex concepts and mechanisms intuitive and simple. It doesn’t just happen by accident. For every success there are a hundred mistakes. The look and speed of Seraphim is unique – especially for a web application. The design, colors and layout are bold and beautiful. We want our users to enjoy being in the environment as they work. In fact, during training sessions with customers, it is common for them to finish our sentences or to be “running ahead of us.” As we worked through the design, we tried to February 2014

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February 2014

only show what you need to see and use at any given moment, while making the application easy to navigate and simple to use. Since we are heavily integrated across our modules (or tiles), this takes time and patience. First designs are never where you end up. The journey is the reward and we learn a ton about how individuals use our software during this process. This interface approach also gave us an enormous luxury. We can expose the functions and navigation for each specific area without worrying about making everything work from a main menu like many other web or even office applications. This allows us to add features and enhancements super-fast without interfering with the main navigation metaphors of the program. In many ways, each tile feels like an “App” that allows a user to focus on that task quickly and easily.

How are you different than other church software? Seraphim is designed to maximize your outreach and create intimacy between members, regular attenders and visitors. Sharing between your ministry leadership team, church congregation and visitors becomes not just easy, but exciting, rewarding and valuable. Let’s face it, Ministry is complicated. There are dozens of ways to contact people and various events to register for, all vying for the same scarce resources whether they are rooms or AV equipment. Volunteers and staff rotate roles in complicated fashion and an increasingly growing demographic that demands technological and self service capabilities from their church. Building these features yourself or integrating different packages is prohibitively expensive and makes your church less nimble. Going with point solutions that don’t share the same core database of people is a black hole with endless updates to multiple databases Christian Computing® Magazine

dealing with people’s profiles. Seraphim connects the back office to the front door and gives you superior control over your information from any location. Seraphim is cloud based, so you don’t need expensive servers or special skills to install it and take care of it (that’s our job). There’s no limit to how many people can use the valuable information and the powerful tools that Seraphim delivers. Work from home, the office, the road – anywhere there’s an internet connection. Seraphim is also mobile, allowing you access to the information about the people in your congregation and giving you the ability to reach out to them in multiple ways. It’s always connected through the cloud so there are no more outdated lists. What are the characteristics of your customers? Our customers run the gamut, but many are tired of the limitations of older church software running on local servers, or limited in licensing and features. Many have a vibrant children’s ministry. Our Safe Check In capabilities are one of the first things that people comment about. While we have applicability to nearly any size church, I would say when a church begins to arrive at 100-500 people, complexities arise with schedules, time tables, volunteers and concerns about safety which causes a church to seek out solutions like Seraphim. What features are you especially excited about? One of the biggest complaints of church management systems is that it’s very difficult to get data and intelligence out of them. At Seraphim, we’ve worked hard to make information very easy to get to using brilliant dashboards that show everything from the composition of your membership and visitors, to the financial health of the church.

February 2014

Our generosity dashboard shows last week’s giving, where giving stands year to date, tithing to funds and by method, trends of giving and even the affluence of your church family in the form of a spatial map. In the example above, the three families on the left side are giving more than the twenty five families on the right side of the screen. This is done anonymously on purpose, and I can understand how this could be controversial as well, but understanding this kind of composition of affluence in your church is extremely important. Our reports are simple to use and yet flexible in their many forms. Choose a group, a detail of individuals or families and a report you want to run, then specify how you want it to look. Do you want a list or a directory? You can even specify mailing labels or name tags with attendance bar codes that work with Safe Check In. Change the headers as you want, sort by any field and toggle the fields you want to include in the report. Geographic and spatial information about your congregation is extremely important. You need this information to decide where to put that new branch of your church or where to add a community/life group, or even how to modify your bus routes to get to more visitors. Unlike many other systems, Seraphim has mapping built directly into the application. You can overlay bus routes and tactics for how to get to people that need the message you are called to deliver. We even include turn by turn directions to help your ministry teams focus on their mission. Here’s an example of our mapping technology being used to determine coverage for small groups. The “confetti” dots are all different kinds of Sunday school classes that are being mapped by their residential address and the black flags are homes that are open for small groups to meet in during the week. You can draw distance circles around each home (in the case, ten miles and five miles) to determine distance and clustering of groups. This Christian Computing® Magazine

kind of result allows you to focus on the solution to the problem rather than wrestle with data and formats between applications. This has been available to businesses for a very long time (at a very expensive price point, I might add), but for churches this is a pretty new concept.

What are some of the interesting things you’re discovering as customers adopt your platform with all its capabilities and expansiveness? The biggest surprise to me personally has been the area of corporate attendance. I like to call this issue “Roster meets Reality.” As we migrate churches from other very well know systems – some systems that have been around for twenty years – we are finding that most churches don’t have a tight grasp on this important number. Please understand, I’m not emphasizing numbers over relationships here and I’m not referring to Sunday School classes or small group attendance – that’s relatively easy, I’m talking about the main worship service. Yes, we have gross counts (as it has been done for hundreds of years), but I’m talking about explicitly who was here. For many churches, if you don’t attend a Sunday School class, they don’t know the frequency of your visit. You’re only captured in a large, impersonal number. Attendance is a major barometer for involvement at a church (for good or bad). People are still trying to solve this important problem – whether they are using kiosks for “Self-Check In” or attempting something else. I still think this area can have better solutions and we are working to make that happen. Additionally, February 2014

now with technology reaching past the barriers of weekend worship, there are new ways to measure involvement and help people faster. With your technology background, are there trends you see that will impact the church and church management system market like web sites, Facebook, Twitter and tablets have? Being a technology prognosticator is like being a weatherman – it’s a best guess and it could turn out very differently than you think it will. That being said, there are two major trends that we see that are very different than the past. The first is the prices of display screens (large and small) are falling faster than nearly any other technology area I have ever seen. Screens with 1080p resolution are plummeting right now in price, and their quality is going through the roof. A stop at a big box store like Best Buy makes me do a double take. These price drops mean that screens will be everywhere in our churches in the near future. The lobby, the nursery, children’s classrooms, hallways, fellowship halls – even outdoors. Combing these displays with intelligence has huge potential for the church. In my opinion, it will take a while before 4K displays make sense, but these lower resolution screens are still more brilliant and more stunning than most anything else you could spend your money on at that price point. The second, and perhaps most disruptive, is that devices are no longer a one-size fits all. Desktops, laptops, tablets, “phablets”, smart phones, smart glasses and smart watches are all vying for our time and attention. We use each of these devices for different tasks that map to their specific advantage. Piping information and intelligence to each of these devices, while leveraging each device’s unique distinctiveness and abilities, will be an enormous challenge for Church Management System companies and it’s one of the reasons we specifically state that we are starting in the ChMS market, but that’s just the start of Seraphim. Adding to this is the proliferation of cheap sensors and you have the making for a huge shake up for a market of companies that mostly operates on a ten-year old computer sitting on a secretary’s desk. What are your future plans? We have a lot of great ideas that we want to execute on (and we will), but right now we are listening 100% to our customers and making sure they are effective and well-equipped to solve the Christian Computing® Magazine

problems and complexities with ministry. We find in listening and partnering with our customers, we get the best advice and ideas we could ever hope to come up with. It’s best to not think of Seraphim as “just another church management vendor.” Church Management is the core of Seraphim, but it’s not the end of the solution – in the very near future you will see us providing interactive lobby kiosks and digital signage solutions as well – all integrated into one platform. How can people find out more about Seraphim? We’re excited to be a part of the technology community that enables the mission of the church and can’t wait to introduce you and your ministry team to Seraphim. Learn more at our web site: www.seraphimsoftware.com or send us email at info@seraphimsoftware.com or call us at 855.681.6160 to schedule a demonstration. Come visit our booth at NACBA this year in Orlando.

February 2014

protected with purpose

Extinction List +1 Flappy Joins the Dodo

By: Steven Sundermeier

s it just me, or is your February workload raging out of control? I imagine many of you can relate to my past week, where work, home, life(!) was busier and carried a heavier workload than usual. This brings me to the confession that it is mid-month and I find myself at my computer tonight with this monthly security column breathing down my neck. My mind instantly gravitates towards the phrase, “I cannot take this anymore”.

No, I am not referring to this column but rather to the words spoken by Dong Nguyen, the developer of the mobile game, Flappy Bird. Over the last few weeks, myself and my team at Thirtyseven4 have spent a lot of time and energy preparing for our official announcement and release of our much anticipated Tablet Security for Android products. Some of the preparation was directed at educating users of the growing security risks associated with mobile devices. As our final pieces were set into place, media outlets went into a frenzy regarding Nguyen’s decision to pull Flappy Bird from both Apple’s App Store and Google Play. For those of you who aren’t aware of the addictive game, Flappy Bird is a mobile game that was Christian Computing® Magazine

published in 2013. The main objective of the game is to direct a flying bird, who continually flies to the right, in between two pipes without colliding with them thus ending the game. Notorious for its simple design and 2D graphics yet difficult levels, Flappy Bird soared in popularity in the market stores and was downloaded by around 50 million users. It came as a surprise to everyone that on February 8, 2014, Nguyen posted on Twitter that he was removing his game app from the market stores. As with most Worldwide breaking news stories surrounding high-profiles celebrities, cybercriminals were quick to capitalize on this sudden announcement and popularity of Flappy Bird, knowing millions of users would be frantically scouring February 2014

online venues in hopes of copying the app prior to it being pulled. Given that, it didn’t take long for copycat Flappy Bird apps, similar in design and purpose, and malicious, fake Flappy Bird apps to pollute the Internet. One such threat is what Thirtyseven4 tagged as, Android.Smsreg.AF, and here is how it works. Android.Smsreg.AF is a fake Flappy Bird application that to the naked eye appears to look like the genuine app, however, is developed with the sole purpose of performing malicious activities.

One of the first giveaways that the downloaded Flappy bird program is bogus is that while playing the game, it begins to display the message, “Trial is expired, activation for fifteen thousand!” – This message does not appear in the original game (and makes no sense!).

Christian Computing® Magazine

February 2014

Unsuspecting users who download the fake app lose more than just the game. Once the application is loaded, it runs a service with the name ‘vn.adflex.sdk.AdFlexSDKService’, this service collects the following private information from the user’s device:

Smsreg.AF also performs an information data breach by relaying all the information previously noted to its server.

Phone

Core Technical Details on Android.Smsreg.AF:

EmailID

Acquires the following Permissions:

AndroidID VERSION.RELEASE

android.permission.ACCESS_NETWORK_STATE android.permission.INTERNET

Build

android.permission.WAKE_LOCK

Model

android.permission.SYSTEM_ALERT_WINDOW

Manufacturer IMEI Number Network type Additionally, as the user is engulfed in trying to master levels and avoid making contact with pipes, Android.Smsreg.AF is silently connecting to a predefined Command & Control (C&C server) to receive further orders, and after set time intervals, it begins to send chargeable and costly text messages to a premium service number reading, “Flappy Bird would like to send a message to 8748”.

android.permission.GET_TASKS android.permission.WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE android.permission.SEND_SMS android.permission.RECEIVE_SMS android.permission.READ_PHONE_STATE android.permission.VIBRATE android.permission.RECEIVE_BOOT_COMPLETED android.permission.ACCESS_WIFI_STATE android.permission.READ_EXTERNAL_STORAGE Running Services: vn.adflex.sdk.AdFlexSDKService

Apart from lightening a user’s wallet with the potentially costly message abuse, Android. Christian Computing® Magazine

vn.adflex.sdk.AdFlexBootUpReceiver February 2014

Code Snippet:

Android.Smsreg.AF runs a thread that it uses to send the sms activity to a particular number .

As you can see from the technical analysis above, users are getting more than they bargained for. And with malware written on mobile platforms now outnumbering the number of malware written to infect PC’s, the general rules of thumb are simple. (1) Don’t download any Apps unless you are doing so through the market stores or a trusted vendor’s website. (2) The need for Mobile Security protection is becoming a reality. Since we are blessed by our partnership with Christian Computing Magazine, any subscriber looking to obtain a free, 6 Month version of our new Tablet Security Solution for Android can do by contacting us at android@thirtyseven4.com.

ally said “In this world, you will have trouble,” John 16:33. But He also said He has overcome the world! Let’s not give up, or join Nguyen in lamenting, “I cannot take this anymore”. We can do it, we just can’t do it alone. I also caution you not to do your Mobile Security alone. As evidenced in Flappy Bird’s popularity, demise and recent malicious knock-offs—there are very real dangers lurking on the Mobile waters. Thirtyseven4 is not the only option, but we are an excellent one, and we would be blessed to keep you protected as cybercrime rides a new wave into the Mobile market. That being said, I will have to say that the sudden extinction of Flappy Bird is one of the weirdest turn of events I can remember or is it possible that Dong Nguyen is pulling a genius marketing move and we will see a Flappy Birds 2 one day soon? These are the thoughts that skitter through my brain sometimes. You too?

Take heart, my fellow techies. Although our days may be busy, Jesus never said this world would be a walk in the park. On the contrary, he actuChristian Computing® Magazine

February 2014

ministry leadership

The Key to Keeping Your Volunteers

By: Kaitlyn Grooms

olunteers can come and go pretty quickly in ministry. Most volunteers who keep coming back do so because they feel a sense of belonging and ownership to the congregation and to their position. When volunteers feel that responsibility, they work to the best of their ability and may encourage others to volunteer as well. However, poor planning and other issues can cause volunteers to become frustrated and leave their position. So what can you do to keep your volunteers coming back? The key to keeping your volunteers is having a strong, structured plan that supports your volunteers. Most people want a logical, prepared strategy to follow. If you don’t have a volunteer plan in place, you could create one based on the structure described in this article. If you already have a volunteer plan, make sure it’s solid and thorough. Here are a few things to keep in mind when creating or revising your volunteer plan. Christian Computing® Magazine

Construct a Plan Based on Your Needs • Define a Mission Statement – A mission statement helps identify an overall goal and vision that your volunteers should strive for. Distinguish a purpose for your volunteers. • Assess Your Needs – Determine how to use volunteers within your ministry. Differentiate between volunteer positions and paid staff positions to maintain pleasant associations between the two groups. • Describe Volunteer Positions – DescripFebruary 2014

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February 2014

tions of the positions allow interested volunteers to screen themselves. Each description should include a position title, a purpose, responsibilities, estimated time commitment, qualifications (if applicable), and benefits. Recruit and Train Selected Volunteers • Find Volunteers – You can find volunteers in a number of ways. Use current, committed volunteers to recruit others. Make announcements at your congregation’s services, meetings, and social gatherings. Send personal, hand-written letters. Just ask. • Select Volunteers – If you have a large volunteer pool, you can create a volunteer application to select volunteers. (You can search for an example online). You want to look for good organization and leadership skills, a positive attitude, flexibility, and a desire to serve. Be sure to put the right volunteer into the right position. • Let Your Volunteers Choose – Use online tools such as Access ACS to let your volunteers choose a position they want based on their skills, passion, and experience. This is a good way to get your volunteers involved right from the start and to make sure they are happy with their position. • Conduct a Volunteer Orientation – Introduce your selected volunteers to your staff and, if possible, give a tour of the setting they will work in. Focus on the procedures and policies of your church as well as the duties that any of the volunteers may perform. • Train Your Volunteers – Specific training helps volunteers understand the direction and skills they need to perform their duties. More training may be necessary after they begin, but you should start volunteers off with a strong outline of their responsibilities. Guide and Evaluate Volunteers • Assign a Supervisor – Volunteers will have questions about their duties that should be answered by a knowledgeable and supportive supervisor. If you have a smaller congregation, you may choose to be the supervisor. If you have a lot of volunteers to manage, you should assign multiple supervisors to Christian Computing® Magazine

specific groups of volunteers. • Communicate with Volunteers and Evaluate their Feedback – If you have a large group, supervisors should meet periodically to discuss what their volunteers are saying and suggesting. You should use this information to evaluate how well your program is functioning. Gather volunteer input regularly in order to improve your program and tend to volunteer needs. Set up a meeting time once a week or so to discuss problems and concerns. • Conduct Team-Building Exercises – Plan to meet with your volunteers for a relaxing, fun time at least once a month. Talk about things that are going well to keep spirits high. Reward and Encourage Volunteers • Avoid Volunteer Fatigue – Do not assume that your volunteers will always be available. Most volunteers help out periodically while a few may take on more work. Those who work harder tend to burn out. Because of this, they may criticize your program and advise others not to volunteer. If you see that some of your volunteers are becoming annoyed or unreceptive, or if you simply see a loss of satisfaction in their efforts, you should meet with them and discuss any problems before they leave. • Give Volunteers a Break – Plan a mini “vacation” for each volunteer periodically or after a certain amount of time. You may want to rotate volunteers to make sure that no one gets overwhelmed. • Show Your Appreciation – Saying “thank you” is an easy, personal way to show your appreciation. You may also consider giving very dedicated volunteers some type of reward, such as a t-shirt or a coffee mug. Always remember to treat every volunteer as more than a name. For more information on volunteers please download Raising Your Volunteer Numbers.

February 2014

church windows software

CHURCH WINDOWS SOFTWARE

In Terms of The Church, Who is a Responsible Party? By: Craig Chadwell

he IRS – yes, I’m starting out with every American’s “favorite” acronym this time of year – has added a new regulation that directly affects churches. This new requirement took effect January 1 and must be filed by March 1, 2014. Here’s the scoop: This new regulation states that any entity with a tax identification number must notify the IRS of changes to its “responsible party” within 60 days of the change using Form 8822-B to communicate that change. In terms of the church, who is a responsible party? • The IRS states the responsible party “is the person who has a level of control over, or entitlement to, the funds or assets in the entity that, as a practical matter,

Christian Computing® Magazine

enables the individual, directly or indirectly, to control, manage, or direct the entity and the disposition of its funds and assets.” • Another way to say it: It’s the person who controls payments made by the church. So when there is a change in the person controlling payments made by the church, the IRS must be notified of the change. When application was made for the tax identification number, Form SS-4 required informaFebruary 2014

tion which identified the responsible party. So if some time has passed since the church received its tax id number, chances are good that personnel has changed and you should be filing the form to report the latest change in responsible party. Because this is a relatively new requirement, IRS set January 1, 2014 as the implementation date. This form should be filed with the IRS by March 1, 2014. If the officers change later in the year or next year, the form would need to be filed again giving the IRS the new information. It needs to be filed, within 60 days, each time there is a change. This requirement includes occasions where there is a change in responsible party for temporary reasons such as leaves of absence. Although there is no penalty assessed for failing to file the form, if IRS mails any correspondence and the responsible party fails to receive it or respond to it, it could be costly. Failure to receive the notice will not relieve the church or responsible party of any penalties and interest on a tax deficiency. To get a copy of this form, go to www.irs.gov, click on Forms and Pubs (in the red highlighted heading), click on Current Forms & Pubs, type 8822-B into the Find box, then click on Find. Click on Form 8822-B to bring up the printable PDF for filing. If you prefer, here’s the direct link: http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/ f8822b.pdf.

• Complete boxes 8a through 9b. • All tax-exempt organizations should be filing returns with the IRS’ Ogden, UT address that is located at the bottom of the first page. So mail your completed form there. How simple was that?

The Church is people!

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

In completing the form: • Check the box that you are a tax-exempt organization and also the boxes for the forms filed by the church (or if the church has changed location). Christian Computing® Magazine

February 2014

the browser

Three Freemium Cloud Storage Options

By: Susan Codone

e all like free, right? Using cloud storage is becoming a necessity for both ease-of-access and backup assurance, and for those of us moving from office to home or church to home, being able to get to our files is key. Most of use one, or at most two, cloud file storage applications, but there are well over 20 applications from which we can choose. Not all of them are free, however. This article reviews three freemium services – applications offering a free account with a set storage size and paid subscriptions for accounts with more storage capacity. Dropbox is probably the most well-known, followed by Google Drive and Box.

Anecdotally, Dropbox is reported to have begun when its founder, Drew Houston, boarded a bus for a long trip but forgot his USB drive. Unable to use the time to work on his project as planned, he instead began to code a storage system that would eliminate the need for easilymisplaced USB drives. Still an MIT student, Houston continued working on the application Christian Computing® Magazine

and officially launched it in 2008. Dropbox has dreams of becoming much more than just a place to store files, but for now it offers great freemium services for cloud storage. Here’s what you need to know about Dropbox. You can store up to 2 GB of data free, and you can download the application to your desktop so that folders on your desktop synchronize February 2014

with your Dropbox folder in the cloud. And, Dropbox comes with mobile apps as well, making file retrieval and storage easy and accessible. Once you store above 2 GB, Dropbox will put you on the Pro or Business Plan, ranging from $9.95 to $15 per month per user. But the freemium (free) services for storage under 2 GB are unparalleled. I’ve been using Dropbox for several years and have always had a great experience. Google Drive is my second most favorite cloud storage application. Just like Dropbox, its freemium service allows users to synchronize local folders with your main Google Drive in the cloud. Even better, you can use Google docs to create content in Google Drive and easily share that content with others, making collaboration simple and useful. Google Drive offers 15 GB of free storage and begins charging for greater capacity. Google Drive provides storage for files across Google Drive, Gmail, and Google+ Photos (Picasa web albums). Users can also store other files in Google Drive, such as Word documents, but those cannot be used collaboratively as easily as documents created in Google Docs. Here’s what you need to know about Google Drive – be careful with your account information. The only negative experience I’ve had with Google Drive is synchronization interruptions. I changed my Google account password but cannot remember my Google catchphrase, and since Google seems to have no way to help me remember or reset my catchphrase, Google Drive no longer syncs from the cloud to my laptop. I can still easily access my files in the cloud, but it was nice when they synced to my laptop and phone, too. Maybe Google will solve this catchphrase issue soon. If Dropbox is cloud storage for the masses, Box is to go-to-service for organizations. Box focuses on enterprise storage, although Christian Computing® Magazine

it offers freemium services for up to 10 GB. For organizations with less than 10 users, a starter plan at $5 monthly per user is available, going up in price based upon file capacity. Box is helpful for organizations because it offers single-sign in capabilities, but Box doesn’t provide the same syncing services as Dropbox. So, if you are searching for a cloud storage application for personal use, I recommend Dropbox. If you want to do content creation and file storage in the same application, I recommend Google Drive. And if you or your church is looking for an enterprise-level file storage service, I recommend Box. Happy Browsing! Susan is an associate professor at Mercer University. In Mercer’s Technical Communication undergraduate degree, students can specialize in Ministry Media & Technology. Contact Susan anytime for more information at codone_s@mercer.edu.

February 2014

special feature

Is Your Church Reaching Its Budget?

Nancy Lawson - nlawson@ncsservices.org

ould it surprise you to learn that, of the churches recently surveyed by Giving Rocket, only 14 percent were meeting or exceeding budget? Knowing that churches rely entirely on donations to survive, not meeting the annual budget means critical mission work is in jeopardy of being underfunded. Fundraising for any non-profit organization has, and always will, present challenges because the root of its failures typically stems from poor communication. Conversely, successful communication is one of the key attributes of any organization, but especially churches. The most common synonym for “successful” is “accomplishment”. Is your church ‘accomplishing’, or exceeding its budget? If you answered “no” to this question, you must read this article. Historically and traditionally, churches have relied on one primary source of communication to promote giving in their organizations—offering envelopes. This mode of communication had such an impact that companies were created out of its need as far back as a century ago, and several are still in operation. How can this be, you might ask, given the ubiquitous influence of technology? Even the United States Postal Service is struggling because there is an obvious shift in communication preferences with the evolution of technology. Christian Computing® Magazine

First, let me remind you that churches are dealing with people, and people will always have a diverse set of preferences for how they do anything, including giving. Second, is your church doing everything it can to promote giving? Are you addressing it from the pulpit consistently? Are you communicating directly and regularly with your members? Do your members know all the ways your church benefits from these charitable gifts? After all, isn’t the church, the Body of Christ, biblically, ethically and morally February 2014

obligated to reveal this information? How many avenues of giving are provided to the members? Do you still rely solely on envelopes? What about online giving, text giving, kiosk giving or mobile giving? From the Pulpit There is no scientific correlation between preaching about stewardship and how much your church receives in donations. But just like anything else, if you never ask, you will probably never receive. Keep in mind, it’s not what you say so much as how you say it. While I am not employed with Giving Rocket, I am comfortable sharing with you that they provide a document titled ‘The Giving Talk’ to help you develop just the right words to share with your congregation motivating them to at least continue, if not increase, their giving. You can also seek out similar resources to accomplish the same.

Online Giving It’s refreshing to learn from the Atlas of Giving that, despite the economic struggles this country has been facing for many years, charitable giving increased 13.3 percent in 2013 over 2012. Much of this can be attributed to the adoption of online giving. In this cashless culture, and with the everincreasing security measures to make these types of software PCI Level I compliant, online giving is a significant venue for increasing contributions in your church. For the protection of your members, make sure the software you are using is PCI Level I com-

Communication Earlier, I mentioned the importance of communication. Don’t keep it a secret when your church is blessed with giving that supports a particular cause, or even helps it reach budget. Shout it from the mountain tops, along with praise and gratitude. People are motivated by many things, but none are as effective as praise. Don’t hesitate to send contribution statements at least quarterly. With all of the activities going on in each person’s life, we need to be reminded of the importance of financially supporting the church. While it is not technology-based, a monthly mailing program still addresses a certain sector of individuals that ‘prefer’ to give with an envelope. Even for the tech junkies, the monthly mailing program serves as a communication piece that reminds members to fulfill their spiritual obligation on a monthly basis. Christian Computing® Magazine

February 2014

pliant (provides the ultimate security), not just PCI compliant. Some benefits of online giving include reduced administrative effort, guest donations (no signup is required) and recurring donations. Online giving is also an excellent resource for reaching beyond your membership, in terms of charitable giving, as it opens the doors for businesses and ministry supporters from all over the world to contribute to the efforts of your church. Giving Kiosks Another communication resource to increase giving can be found in giving kiosks. Some will say that they don’t want ATM machines in their church. Churches that use giving kiosks realize that, if placed in a key area or areas of your church, it serves as a reminder, just like monthly envelope mailings or periodic contribution statements. These same kiosks can serve as check-in stations, event registrations and more, further increasing the value.

age from each of these categories (envelopes, online, text, kiosk, mobile), let’s assume that each represents one equal piece of the total giving/stewardship pie. Since there are five, mathematically, we can conclude that each piece of pie represents 20 percent of your total potential giving. So, theoretically, if your church is only providing one of these methods to its members, it’s only reaching 20 percent of its total stewardship potential; and, therefore, probably not exceeding its budget. As the Body of Christ, reach out to ALL of your members AND their preferences, so that when they are called to give, they have all available options in place to do it—at that moment— using their ‘preferred’ method of giving. Nancy Lawson is the Manager of Strategic Partner Sales at NCS Services, Inc. NCS Services’ suite of technology products and services provides cutting edge tools to increase financial resources, enhance member communications and reduce administrative activities. Contact Nancy at nlawson@ncsservices. org for additional information.

Mobile/Text Giving Statistics for 2013 show that more people purchased their Christmas presents online via a mobile device than any year prior. Some of us do everything on our cell phone or tablet—I certainly do! Don’t overlook this method of giving. It is so simple, Make the move… and the adoption rate is climbfrom Church Management Software… ing. A new method of giving that evolved several years ago is text to Church Ministry Software giving. Some companies charge your cell phone company, which Built by the Church, for the Church then shows up on your monthly bill. Others bill you through a sepa▪ Open Source (the code is free) rate invoicing process. The latter is ▪ Web-based much easier to setup. ▪ Church Sponsored “BTW, each day I am more In my opinion, we are very thankful that we are using ▪ Ministry Focused fortunate to live in a time in which BVCMS. The rate you are all of these options are available to adding features and improving help increase giving in the churchthe database blows my mind and es, especially in light of the declinI really appreciate all you do.” ing attendance that churches of ev- Jared Coe ery denomination are facing these days. The beauty of this group of stewardship resources is that you don’t have to settle for just one. In fact, there is data to suggest that World Class Hosting and Support ▪ 220+ Churches ▪ Active Development one is simply no longer enough. While it may be difficult to www.bvcms.com for more information and pricing interpret actual giving as a percentChristian Computing® Magazine

February 2014

higher power with kevin

The Future of Serious Bible Study Must Move Online Kevin A. Purcell - kevin@kevinpurcell.org

t’s time for Bible study software makers to go online with all their tools using the power of HTML 5 and modern browsers. Until they do, we offer a list of useful online Bible study sites to keep users going until this vision catches hold.

Digital Bible Study enthusiasts love powerful Bible study tools. Students can click an icon to launch a program that lets them enter a reference and return a handful of reference books that explain and interpret the passage. As students add to their collections, the number of references grows from half a dozen to hundreds. We can carry a theological library in a small computer that weighs less than Strong’s Concordance in physical form. But that’s just the simplest use of such powerful tools. Most programs will help us get to the original language, search the Hebrew or Greek based on arcane details of grammar and lexical forms. Many then offer up tools that help us present a Bible study or sermon ranging from timelines to maps to even video illustrations. What an amazing world we live in! Christian Computing® Magazine

It’s time to replace that power with something that will keep us as productive in the mobile future with smart phones, tablets and cheap computers that mostly run online. We can all enjoy a number of online Bible study tools. Two of my favorites include http://www. BibleGateway.com or http://www.MyStudyBible. com, which offer nice packages ready for a student, who needs or wants to study the Bible on the Internet. Logos users can log onto http://www.biblia. com and get access to their library online. These will bridge the gap and give us access to our libraries or a simple collection of tools until the software makers catch the vision of the mobile future. But those tools are not enough to do hard-core Bible study online. Many Digital Bible students invested hundreds February 2014

Too many older Android phones won’t run newer apps. None of them work on Windows Phone 8 or Windows 8 tablets. Nor do they work on Chromebooks, which sold better than most Windows laptops this past … reach out holiday season, (See my review … minister to people of the best one available today, the HP Chromebook 14 - http:// … create fellowship notebooks.com/2013/10/29/ hp-chromebook-14-review/ or … contribute to my unboxing video of the newyour community est Chromebook, the Toshiba PowerChurch Plus was Chromebook -http://notebooks. created for just that! com/2014/02/10/toshiba-chromebook-unboxing-video/). Some Bible apps work on Windows Phone 8 or Windows 8 Membership tablets, but after a brief stint usWe provide you with the tools to ing those devices, I quit since the increase administrative efficiency Bible software on the platform and streamline accounting tasks, Accounting still lags so far behind they’re freeing you up to perform the work nearly useless. People can run that matters. Windows Bible study software on Contributions Windows 8 tablets if they’re running the full version of Windows, Install on your PC or network, or access online. Events but the experience is not good Choose which fits your needs. Calendar when holding the tablet by the hand. Connecting a mouse makes it more palatable, but not enough. Check In For these reasons, it’s time for the powerful Bible study software makers to begin movCompletely ing into the mobile future and use We provide software tools, Integrated freeing you up to fulfill your mission. HTML 5 to create powerful online Bible study tools that work well in a touch environment and www.PowerChurch.com • 800.486.1800 run great on phones, tablets and or 3&6 &KXUFK([HFXWLYHB [ LQGG even thousands or tens of thousands of dollars $0 through the browser. in a digital library with powerful study tools. They We mentioned three sites above that let users run them on a Mac or PC. They enjoy accessing do some limited online Bible study. Here’s a few them offline no matter what kind of Internet conmore: nection is available. However, these powerful tools • http://www.biblestudytools.com/ that we enjoy through these offline programs won’t • http://www.studylight.org/ run on some of the tools people want to use these • http://www.biblestudy.org/ days. They’ve paid a lot of money and want to the • http://www.biblestudy.net/ same tools, but can’t access them on an iPad or • http://www.blueletterbible.org/study.cfm Samsung Android phone. Sure, plenty of companies • https://bible.org/ make useful apps for these devices, but they don’t • http://bible.faithlife.com run on all of them.

You want the freedom to

Christian Computing® Magazine

February 2014

the power and the danger

Virtual Reality

By Russ McGuire - russ.mcguire@gmail.com

t last month’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, the Oculus Rift “Crystal Cove” virtual reality gaming headset won “Best of Show.” This Kickstarter-funded product seems to be close to bringing to market a very effective solution for simulating reality with software and electronics. As the tech experts at our churches, over the coming years we are likely to be asked our opinion about virtual reality. How should we think about this cutting edge technology? What is virtual reality? According to Google, virtual reality is “the computer-generated simulation of a three-dimensional image or environment that can be interacted with in a seemingly real or physical way by a person using special electronic equipment, such as a helmet with a screen inside or gloves fitted with sensors.” For many of us, the ultimate vision for virtual reality comes from the Star Trek shows where the crew of the Starship Enterprise could enjoy time in the Holodeck interacting with a computer generated environChristian Computing® Magazine

ment that seemed incredibly real, including battles with computer generated enemies or interacting with characters from history or fictional literature. I doubt that we are getting very close to the Holodeck, but Oculus VR seems to be the first company to create a product that gives a realistic sense of being somewhere else. The company name comes from the Latin word for “eye.” The developer kit version of the Oculus Rift headset began shipping in March of 2013, with the consumer version rumored to be available late this year or early in 2015. February 2014

The Oculus Rift headset is worn like oversized ski goggles that also cover the ears. A seven inch OLED display inches from your eyeballs places you in the middle of a computer generated environment. The motion sensing and positioning tracking systems cause the software to respond to your every move. Lean out the window seemingly in front of you and the software and display respond as you’d expect. In the past, virtual reality headsets were a fraction of a second too slow in responding, and rapid movements (like turning your head) were too much for the systems to keep up with, creating an unrealistic (and stomach turning) blur. Oculus has overcome these challenges, creating a very realistic representation of a virtual world through their headset. How can virtual reality benefit Christians? On their website, Oculus says “VR has the potential to revolutionize the way that we live, learn, play, communicate, and much more.” While much of the focus in virtual reality has been on gaming, it’s not hard for us to imagine ways to leverage the technology in education, healthcare, telecommunications, and many forms of entertainment. Thanks to Star Trek, we can easily envision us-

ing this technology to virtually experience walking by the Sea of Galilee with Jesus, or sitting in the midst of the Areopagus as Paul gives his famous Mars Hill sermon. If you’d rather read of these events in Scripture than accepting a software developer’s interpretation of them, you could simply use VR to get a very real sense for “walking in the footsteps of Jesus,” without having to fly halfway around the world, deal with airport security, or fear potential terrorist attacks. I can also imagine this technology becoming a potential blessing to those that are home-bound. Especially for those that once traveled the world serving the Lord, being able to once again seemingly walk down the streets that they loved and interact with those whom God has given them to serve would bring endless joy and the potential for tremendous glory to God. What is dangerous about virtual reality? Everytime I see a product like this, I’m reminded of my mother’s constant admonition to move away from the TV screen. While I imagine there are very real health risks that need to be managed with this technology, I’m more concerned with the risks to our spiritual health. A recent blog post on the Oculus website is titled “Onward to the Metaverse!” In that post, the company founders say “One thing has remained constant: we’re as dedicated to delivering on that vision — the promise of the Metaverse — as the day we started.” So, what is the metaverse? According to Wikipedia “The Metaverse is a collective virtual shared space, created by the convergence of virtually enhanced physical reality and physically persistent virtual space,[1] including the sum of all virtual worlds, augmented reality, and the internet.” In many ways, the promise of virtual reality is the achievement of the postmodern promise. Postmodernism rejects truth as knowable and objective. The postmodern mantra is “that may be true for you, but it isn’t true for me.” VR enables each of us to create a “reality” that suits our desires while seem-

Is Facebook safe for your family?

http://cxfriends.com Christian Computing® Magazine

February 2014

ingly denying the reality that God created. even virtual reality, new technologies continue to “In the beginning, God created the heavens and advance our ability to know God and to serve Him, the earth.” In an article from 2006, Dr. Jason Lisle wherever we go. summarizes the impact of this truth: “The universe Russ McGuire is an executive for a Fortune 100 obeys certain rules—laws to which all things must company and the founder/co-founder of three techadhere. These laws are precise, and many of them are mathematical in nature. … Natural laws exist be- nology start-ups. His latest entrepreneurial venture is CXfriends (https://cxfriends.com), a social netcause the universe has a Creator God who is logical work for Christian families. and has imposed order on His universe.” We study these laws throughout our lives as physics, chemistry, mathematics, logic, and many other disciplines. But virtual reality enables developers to discard God’s natural laws and create worlds that violate God’s truth. Satan beckons us to deny God’s very existence and so immersing get your free demo ourselves in God-less “reality” may become a very real temptation to many. As Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 7:17 “Only let each person lead the life that the Manage your ministry with Lord has assigned to him, and to which God has called him” and in 1 Timothy 6:6-11 “Now there Track donations, Email Statements, is great gain in godliness with contentment, for we brought Manage: Small Groups, Classes, Attendance, nothing into the world, and we Visitor follow-up, Outreach and MORE! cannot take anything out of the world. But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content. But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into Keep children safe with a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destrucEasy check-in, secure check-out, tion. For the love of money is Syncs with Servant Keeper, a root of all kinds of evils. It is Name badges w/ allergies, notes, alerts, class info. through this craving that some Claim tickets for parents/guardians, run background checks have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs.” It is my hope and prayer that these articles on the power and Plan worship effortlessly with danger of technology will encourage you in your daily walk with Christ. Whether it is the Keeps your song library at your fingertips, printing press, radio, television, Quickly plan and schedule services and teams personal computers, the InterEasily track song usage and do reports net, the Cloud, smartphones, or

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February 2014

digital evangelism

Digital Evangelism for Websites Making Your Website Maintenance Easier (Part 1)

Michael L White - mlwhite@parsonplace.com

o continue our discussions of how to make the most of using websites for digital evangelism, I’d like to offer up a suggestion now for how to make your website maintenance easier while simultaneously improving your site’s SEO performance. Once implemented across your site, this innovation will make updating a breeze for your site’s color scheme, default font family, navigational menu, footer content, etc.

If you already have accumulated a lot of web pages to your site, it will require a significant time commitment to make this design change, but it will be well worth the time and effort in the long run. One tool that can help expedite this process, however, is the AceHTML editor (available in both freeware and pro versions) which I have used for several years, but I’ll explain more about that later in this article. By way of disclaimer, let me say first off that I am not an expert web designer or programmer Christian Computing® Magazine

by any stretch of the imagination. Nevertheless, I do consider myself an intermediate level programmer, meaning that I am able to borrow and implement code, such as CSS, Java scripts, Perl scripts, et al, alongside my own HTML code to make my sites more appealing and/or functional. Since I jumped into the fray of HTML programming in the early days (circa 1995), I have been designing and maintaining my own web sites and helping friends create their own sites for nearly two decades now. Over the years I have February 2014

learned a thing or two about simplifying the overall site maintenance task. I even wrote an article just over a decade ago describing how best to do this, though I made the mistake of submitting it to an article sharing site from which a bunch of plagiarists have stolen its content and substituted their own names for its authorship (I learned this simply by searching on the article’s title). While that is rather disheartening to me, since I have neither the finances nor the desire to pursue these crooks legally, I have decided to leave it in God’s hands. As my Heavenly Advocate, He will sort it all out in His own good time. To read my article in its entirety (updated with some minor modifications for this CCMAG article), you may point your browser to “Optimizing Your Web Site for the Search Engines Using CSS and Javascript” and read it from my website. You may also be interested in reading some of my other technical articles, which I’ve included on my tutorials page. To summarize my article on simplifying your Website’s maintenance, you must insert a single line of code for your external CSS file and for each external Java script file which corresponds to the top, bottom, left, and right segments on each web page of your site, where you could choose to insert your navigational menu and any other pertinent elements. The only page on your site where using these external Java script files would be problematic is on your start page. The reason for this is twofold. First, without a navigational menu on your start page, at least, the search engine spiders would have no links to follow for your site’s other pages (this would include, of course, a link to your sitemap page), and thus they would not index any of the other pages on your site. Secondly, those super-paranoid people who have disabled Java script functionality in their browsers would not be able to see your navigational menu at all, because their browser would not be able to display the contents of your external Java script files. Either of these problems alone is devastating to your site’s presence on the web, but both together will negate all but your site’s start page from even being visible or searchable! If it appeals to you to redesign your site to include these external CSS and Java script files for easier site maintenance and more effective SEO, you can use the AceHTML editor’s “Extended Christian Computing® Magazine

Search and Replace” feature on the Edit menu to make relatively short work of this. Other HTML editors may also offer this feature, but AceHTML is the editor I’ve used for many years now, so I’m naturally more familiar with it. Let me now explain how to use the AceHTML editor for this purpose, which includes, of course, shortening the process of changing the design of your site over to this new external Java script and CSS file code consolidation. If you don’t already have AceHTML installed on your computer, you can download the freeware or the Pro version from the Visicom Media site. While you’re at it, you might consider downloading their AceFTP companion software as well. As an affiliate of Visicom Media, I can highly recommend both the AceHTML Pro and the AceFTP Pro versions of this software, since I’ve used both for more than a decade. Once you have installed AceHTML onto your computer, start the software and open the first file you wish to edit for your new design change. When the “Extended Search and Replace” dialog appears, look at the lower portion of the dialog and, under the “Options” section, check the “Apply first to open files” checkbox. However, make certain you have opened only the files you wish to have AceHTML edit with this process and close all others. You can decide about the remaining checkboxes in that section according to your own preferences. Next, in the “Where” section of the dialog, choose whether you want AceHTML to search only in specified files, in entire directories, or in all opened documents. I recommend either the “Search in all opened documents” option or the “Specified files” option (in that order). Of course, if you choose the former option, you will first need to open all of the Web files that you want AceHTML to automatically edit for you using this search and replace feature. I believe this is the best way to see the immediate results of your extended search and replace process and to avoid editing of any unintended files, such as could happen if you choose an entire directory. The latter option of choosing “Specified files”, however, is a close second in my mind, because it accomplishes the same thing as using the open documents process, except without the immediate confirmation of viewing the selected open files. Therefore, if you choose this option I recommend February 2014

opening each file afterwards to ensure the edit was made according to your expectations. No matter which method you choose, however, the resulting search and replace dialog remains the same. If you choose the “Specified files” option, you will next need to click on the “Add” button in the “Apply to files:” section at the bottom right side of the dialog. Once you click on this button, a “File Manager” dialog will open where you can navigate to the directory where you have stored the next web file you wish to edit. After you select the file name and click on the “Ok” button, you will be returned to the search and replace dialog to repeat the step for the next file you wish to include in this process. After you have selected all of the files you wish to edit, they will appear as a list in the “Apply to files:” space at the bottom right corner of the search and replace dialog. Next, regardless of the search and replace method you’ve selected, click your mouse pointer in the “text to find:” area at the upper left corner of the search and replace dialog and type or paste the precise text from the location in your files where you wish to insert your new line of code. Read my aforementioned article for specifics about this. Naturally, this text should be identical in each of your web files. Now, copy this same text into the “replace with:” area underneath the “text to find:” area. The textual content in the “replace with:” area must be identical to the “text to find” area in order to retain the original content, since it will be replaced with itself plus your additional Christian Computing® Magazine

February 2014

line of code. Once you have done this, type or paste the new line of code either just before or just after the text you just entered into the “Replace with:” area, according to HTML coding standards and requirements. For demonstration purposes, let’s say you want to insert the following HTML-encoded text “<p>This is a test.</p>” just after the opening <BODY> tag in each of the files you have already opened in AceHTML or those you have specified using the “Apply to files:” section on the “Extended Search and Replace” dialog. To do this, insert your cursor immediately following the right angle bracket (“>”) of the <BODY> tag in the “Replace with:” space and use your ENTER key to insert a new line. Next, paste or type the text “<p>This is a test.</p>” and press the ENTER key again to insert another new line. Now, click on the Start button on the upper right side of the dialog and a confirmation dialog for the first edit will appear. After you’ve done this enough times that you can be absolutely certain of what you’re doing, you can check the “Replace without confirmation” checkbox to set AceHTML free to make all of your edits immediately and without further interaction from you. Until you get to that point, however, you may prefer to leave this box unchecked and confirm each edit as it arises in the process. If you happen to notice a typo in your textual or code content, you can click on the “Abort” button to cancel the process and return to the search and replace dialog to correct your error. If you decide that you don’t want to make this change to a particular file you’ve specified after all, you can click on the “Skip file” button to eliminate this file from being subjected to this edit. Finally, after all of your edits are complete, you will have the option of saving or printing the results. If you don’t wish to do either, simply click on the “Ok” button to return to the search and replace dialog where you can click on the “Close” button to close the dialog. Once you have done this, you can review all your open files to insure the edits were done as you expected. You can use the Ctrl+Alt+F5 keyboard combo to save Christian Computing® Magazine

all your open files at once. If you used the “specified files” method, you should open all of your files to check them for accuracy and to review them in the AceHTML internal browser before uploading them to your site. If you’re satisfied that the edits were made according to your expectations and that the Web files now display according to your wishes, you’re all set to upload your files to your site and make them live. Now, the next time you want to change your site’s overall color scheme (such as background and/or font name), add to or change an item on your navigational menu, update the copyright date notice in your footer, or some other change that affects the look and feel of your entire site, it will be much quicker and easier to make these changes in the pertinent external CSS and Java script files than having to change these code references on every page of your site every time you want to change your site’s overall appearance. In case you’re unfamiliar with how to write these external CSS and Java script files, I’ll cover the basics of that process in next month’s article. I hope you’ll return then to learn how to finish this very significant website design change. In the meantime, feel free to contact me to discuss this further. 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.

February 2014

ministry communication

Three Communication Problems with Preaching Sermons That Aren’t Your Own Yvon Prehn - yvon@effectivechurchcom.com

t is a constant struggle in church and ministry communications to find the right balance between using technology to aid in ministry and using technology to diminish ministry effectiveness. Few areas are more close to the heart of church communication than the preparation of the sermon and this is an area where technology can either provide incredible help or dangers to you and your spiritual health with the ability of pastors to preach sermons copied all or in part from the web. Let’s look at some of the communication problems in this practice. First a caveat and good alternative to using someone else’s sermons From the start, a caveat: I am totally, completely, and unequivocally opposed to the practice of using sermons created by someone else and even more so, using them without crediting the source. I have taken a long time to share this because I know many people will vehemently disagree with me, but as I see the church lose more and more spiritual authority and power, not only in the world at large, but also among its own members, it’s time for self-examination. Examining the proclamation of God’s Word is a good place to start. It is especially frustrating for this to be happening today when we have the extraordinary tools for sermon study and preparation that technology provides Christian Computing® Magazine

us. From the earliest days of CCMag, (and I’ve been around for all 25 years of it) I remember the excitement of the sponsors who created Bible Study Software. Some of the companies back then are no longer with us, but others such as Logos, just keep getting better and better. Much more could be said, but this isn’t an article on how to use the web to create sermons, and one of the best on this topic is Kevin Purcell’s article: Study, Write and Preach a Sermon from a Tablet. With all these tools available, it is possible to use technology to create sermons, but it is even easier to simply download and use them. Please bear with me while I share some communication problems if you download and preach without citation. February 2014

Problem #1: You don’t communicate your heart We all build upon another’s work, but it is very different to say, “so and so inspired me on this” and to add your own comments, than to preach the entire content of another person’s message including his or her illustrations and to leave your audience with the impression that it was your message. Your people won’t learn anything about your walk with the Lord, your struggles, and solutions. They might learn lots about the spiritual life of a pastor you admire, but they won’t learn much about you. In the many years I’ve read and listened to Christian writers and preachers, over time, even without the citation, I can tell if something is from Rick Warren, Andy Stanley, or Dallas Willard; C.S. Lewis, Augustine, or Wesley. Today, we’d call it their brand—it is what sets them apart in the body of Christ as we all work to build it up. I like to think of it as each person’s part in a great conversation that we share with our world about the seeking, sacrificial, reconciling love of God. No one writer or preacher can tell the whole story. Each voice is needed. God put you with your congregation for a reason—don’t rob your people of the spiritual lessons God is teaching you. Your voice will never become part of the great story if you only preach another’s words. Because your story takes years to develop—don’t waste them telling tales not your own. Problem #2: You communicate that it is acceptable for there to be a disconnect between your words and your life Years ago I was a ghost-writer for a number of Christian leaders, but I quit because as I got to know some of them, I realized that sometimes my work went far beyond correcting awkward expressions grammatical mistakes. For some, I was presenting to the world a completely different person in print than the one in real life. My writing, though it was intended to be helpful, created a false face that kept readers from seeing what the real leader was like and I decided not to do that anymore. If you only use sermons written by someone else, you are doing the same thing to yourself and your people will never get to know you. Your personal walk, your growing life with Jesus is far more important than the polish of your sermon. If you would rather preach a professional sermon than share the messy struggles of your life, sermon creation, and your understanding of the Word, you model the idea that how we look and sound is more important than what we truly are. Problem #3: You communicates spiritual laziness We are to grow in grace and self-control and every Christian Computing® Magazine

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action, no matter how small, carves a path in the direction of your life. If you get in the habit of using the material someone else prayed over, struggled with, and listened to the Lord to create, you won’t learn to do those things for yourself. It is spiritually lazy and you are communicating when you preach someone else’s sermons that shortcuts to spiritual growth are acceptable. There are no valid excuses for this. Because you are starting a church and have so much to do, or going through a particularly tough time, or “really busy” in other areas of life (even good ministry areas) none of these reasons matter. Life in ministry will never give you enough time to do all the study preparation you would like. You have to make time for it and that time will never come easily. You may have to give up TV or me time or a hobby. You may lose sleep. It may not be fun. In addition to personal spiritual laziness, one of the saddest things I’ve seen as a consequence of this habit is for a senior pastor to use an entire series and to require associate pastors to do the same thing when they preach part of the series. If the senior pastor does not acknowledge the source of the message, the associate probably won’t either. This is wrong for many reasons: it is leading another to be false and causing a brother to sin is a very serious offense; it is a lost opportunity to share spiritual skills of listening to the Lord with a young and growing preacher; it models sloth in study.

time with the Lord praying over your people and crafting your message for them you are failing as their shepherd. Use technology as to aid you in your growth as a disciple and teacher for Jesus, not as a crutch to cover spiritual laziness. For moderate amounts of ranting and raving and lots of how-tos on church communications, go to my Effective Church Communications website: http://www.effectivechurchcom.com

In conclusion It is time-consuming to develop a close walk with the Lord. It is a spiritual discipline to learn to listen to His voice, but once again, the Lord called you to a particular group of people because He wanted you to be their pastor or teacher. In addition, your people may not have the same needs as the group the message was first created for, they may not be in the same place spiritually or culturally and if you don’t spend Christian Computing® Magazine

February 2014

nick at church

The Impact of Windows XP Support Ending Nick Nicholaou - nick@mbsinc.com

icrosoft announced the date they will stop supporting Windows XP. The date they announced is April 8, 2014; and it’s almost here! There’s panic in the streets! If you have Windows XP computers, how will Microsoft’s announcement affect you? What do you need to do?

Microsoft’s Support Policy All companies choose a cutoff date to support older products. Here’s how Microsoft said it on their website: “Microsoft has provided support for Windows XP for the past 12 years. But now the time has come for us, along with our hardware and software partners, to invest our resources toward supporting more recent technologies so that we can continue to deliver great new experiences.” Let’s face it. Twelve years is a long time for any software solution! So their decision makes sense, and no one is upset with them over it. They announced that support for Windows XP will end on April 8, 2014. What does that mean? Again, quoting their website: “…after April 8, 2014, technical assistance for Windows XP will no longer be available, including automatic updates that help protect your PC. Microsoft will also stop providing Microsoft Security Essentials for download on Windows XP on this date.” Okay, so they won’t offer technical support or write patches for flaws after the cutoff date. They go further to say: “If you continue to use Windows XP after support Christian Computing® Magazine

ends, your computer will still work but it might become more vulnerable to security risks and viruses.” It’s this last statement that has folks panicking, and it’s very likely cash-flow and marketing driven. But there’s no need for panic… the sky is not falling. Should You Update or Replace Your Systems? The quick answer to this question is, “Yes!” Windows 7 (XP’s successor) has been in the marketplace for nearly four years now, and it is very stable. Windows 8.1 (Win 7’s successor) also looks good, but has some user interface challenges that most enterprise users (companies, corporations, etc) are avoiding. Windows 9 may be released before this year ends as Microsoft works hard to recapture the trust that was lost with Windows 8 and to recapture the cash flow they lost when their operating system sales dropped because of Windows 8. However, there are reasons to not replace a Windows XP system. Some applications won’t run on anything released after Windows XP. That limitation is extremely rare, but could be a reason to not move forward. I should mention, though, that as an IT engiFebruary 2014

neering firm we have not run into this issue. Oh sure; old versions of some apps won’t run on anything after XP, but any company wanting to stay in business has released subsequent versions of their solution. So, if you don’t have any applications that can only run on XP or older operating systems, you really should upgrade. If you have some applications that can only run on XP and older operating systems, you should look for a replacement for those applications so you can move forward. But YOU DON’T HAVE TO UPGRADE if you don’t want to! Really! How Can You Protect Your Systems? Microsoft writes patches to fill vulnerability gaps in its software that some bad guys want to use to exploit systems. But that is only one piece of your defense system. There are a few others that, if you have them in place and current, will help you going forward. • Firewall. Your systems, whether at the office or at home, should be protected by a firewall. At home your router/ modem provided by your Internet Service Provider (ISP) may be your firewall. If that’s true, contact your ISP and make certain it is protecting you appropriately (protection may not be turned on, for instance).

At work you probably have a piece of hardware (like a SonicWALL, our favorite firewall) or software protecting you. The key is to make certain that your subscriptions are current (the manufacturers constantly update these systems to protect you against newly created/ discovered threats). • Email SPAM Filter. Many threats come via email. They can be embedded in graphics (like photos, logos, etc) or in links. SPAM filters (like Barracuda, our favorite) block about 85% of all email because the email is identified as intended to harm the recipient. Thus good SPAM firewalls reduce the vulnerability of using email. • Practice Safe Internet Browsing. A couple of good browsing policies are: • Be cautious which links and websites you visit. If it looks suspicious, avoid it. • Never enter personal information on a site that is not secure. So, should you replace your Windows XP systems? Yes! It’s time! ;-) Do you have to replace them before April 8th? Probably not.

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Christian Computing® Magazine

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February 2014