2July 2011Christian Computing® Magazine

Founder & Editor-in-ChiefSteve Hewitt - steve@ccmag.com

Contributing EditorsLauren HunterYvon Prehn Nick Nicholaou Kevin A. Purcell Russ McGuireBradley MillerMichael L WhiteChad Gleaves

Copy EditorGina Hewitt

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© Copyright 2011 by Christian Computing®, Inc.

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

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www.ccmag.com/2007_03/2007_03editorial.pdf

Applying Tomorrow’s Technology to Today’s MinistryVolume 23 July 2011 No. 7

7 cover story

Christian Computing Hall of Fame By Steve Hewitt

3 editorialHall of Fame Testimonies

Steve Hewitt - steve@ccmag.com4 press releases

10 who reads christian computing magazine

11 acs ideas to impactEvents from Start to Finish: What You Don’t Do WIll Hurt You!

from ACS Technologies 13 accelerating the dynamic church

High Touch, High Tech Ministryfrom Fellowship Technologies

15 parishsoft’s catholic connectionLittle contest delivers big results

from ParishSOFT18 logos cms

Creating a Leadership Cultureby Tony Ferraro

21 higher power with kevinAdventures into Android Bible Software and Apps

Kevin A. Purcell - kevin@kevinpurcell.org23 nick at church

Changing the Username on a MacNick Nicholaou - nick@mbsinc.com

25 your church on facebookWays to Spread Your Church Facebook Messags Virally

Chad Gleaves - chadgleaves@gmail.com28 digital evangelism

Not Your Father’s EvangelismMichael L White - mlwhite@parsonplacepress.com

30 big ministry - small resourcesFlying Under the Radar

By Bradley Miller - bradley.w.miller@gmail.com30 the power and the danger

Skype MeBy Russ McGuire - russ.mcguire@gmail.com

32 ministry communicationAn Introduction: Making Your Words Available on Kindle, Nook, iPhones, etc

Yvon Prehn - yvon@effectivechurchcom.com

July 2011Christian Computing® Magazine 3

Steve Hewitt - steve@ccmag.com

Hall of Fame Testimonies!

In this issue, we are releasing a brief overview of our first five inductees into the Christian Computing Hall of Fame. In the upcoming months, we will publish an article specific to each one of them, covering their lives and their contributions to ministry using technology. We would love to hear from many of our readers who either knew any of these men personally, or were blessed in some way by their contributions. I am very excited about this project. Although, I know of all five of these first inductees, I have already learned new things about some of them that have been a blessing to me. And, in doing a little research on them, I have been introduced to some other people that played a part in helping them accomplish their goals. None of us get where we are without the help of others and our Lord. I believe we will all be a bit inspired as we highlight those that have contributed so much to helping all of us utilize technology for ministry. If you would like to provide a word of testimony about any of the inductees in this month’s cover story, please drop me an email at steve@ccmag.com. Don’t forget, if you would like to nominate someone for our nominating committee to consider in January, when we induct five more people into our Christian Computing Hall of Fame, simply visit http://www.ccmag.com/page/index.php?pageid=32 to make your nomination!

Together We Serve Him,

Steve HewittEditor-in-Chiefsteve@ccmag.com

editorial

4July 2011Christian Computing® Magazine

Press Re leasesRDS Advantage© and RDS Connect© An-nounce A Comprehensive Inventory Man-agement System In these lean economic times, more and more churches are understanding how important it is to have good records of their physical assets. Natural disasters and losses from theft and poor inventory controls have increased the need for secure records of church property. For proof for insurance values and backup for financial statements of assets prudent administrators want good controls. The RDS church management system introduces complete applications that include scanned barcode inventory updates, loan and maintenance informa-tion, acquisition costs, member borrowings, building/room locations and memorials. Comprehensive re-ports show dollar and unit details, automated e-mail, mailings and lists based upon inventory data.

In the event of a natural disaster, a physical • inventory proves to insurers your contents and valuesProvides a dollar value of contents• Record maintenance schedules, condition of • equipment, serial numbers, maintenance policies

and warrantiesTrack insurance policies and costs and expira-• tionsTrack gifts of items that have been given in honor • or othersRecord the cost and date of acquisition of items• Track items borrowed or disposed of• Record loans and loan information• Know when items are missing• Print barcode labels with descriptions and loca-• tionsTake inventory with scanner, then update the • database

An inexpensive barcode scanner is provided that measures just 1.26” x 2.44” and weighs only an ounce with its battery. Data collection is fast with 100 scans per second, with enough RAM to acquire over 10,000 scans with timestamps. Connect the scanner to a computer with a USB cable to update your inventory database. RDS is entering its 29th year serving churches across the country. It’s ministry-oriented team em-phasizes excellent customer support and solid appli-cations covering all aspects of ministry and church management.

RDS Advantage and RDS Connect Cloud-hosted

5July 2011Christian Computing® Magazine

Press Re leasesSystems www.rdsadvantage.com, www.rdscon-nect.net800.337.6328

As with all new features added to RDS church sys-tems, there is no additional cost

faithHighway Releases New Feature Up-grades to Sermon Connect

faithHighway, a web design and software as a service company, announces the release of new features to their award-winning sermon streaming product: Sermon Connect. faithHighway heard what their customers, who already use Sermon Connect, wanted and responded to their requests for integrated third party media sources such as Vimeo and YouTube.

Sermon Connect now gives users the capability of utilizing faithHighway’s interface while incor-porating the video infrastructure through Vimeo or YouTube for on-demand video streaming. Sermon Connect also includes the ability to integrate live streaming through Ustream and Lives-tream! Now, churches looking to integrate their on-demand media with live streaming can do so in one, seamless, easy-to-integrate system. With a few short clicks, they can have HD videos, live streaming, as well the standard Sermon Connect features such as audio archives, downloads, etc. The new features of Sermon Connect include:

HD Video – Replace the standard video player in • Sermon Connect with full HD videosLive Streaming – Create a Live Streaming media • item and easily integrate this into your websiteSeamless Upgrade – Upgrades have already been • applied to all current Sermon Connect accounts

To learn more about the fea-tures of Sermon Connect, visit www.SermonConnect.com

About faithHighway The goal of faithHighway is to equip local churches and ministries with powerful, top-notch tools that they can use to reach their com-munity in affordable and cost effec-tive ways. As the nation’s leader in church solutions, faithHighway has served thousands of churches, from church plants to large congrega-tions, for over a decade by providing cutting-edge custom church websites, robust award winning media centers, powerful outreach evangelism televi-sion commercials, logo design, and full media placement services to the church market, including TV, radio, direct mail, billboards, online adver-tising, and other marketing mediums. http://www.faithhighway.com

6July 2011Christian Computing® Magazine

Press Re leasesChurch Community Builder (CCB) Adds Volunteer Scheduling Capabilities to Its Powerful, Socially Driven Church Manage-ment Software (ChMS)

Church Community Builder (http://www.church-communitybuilder.com), the original web-based church management software (ChMS), began their journey in 1999 by developing tools to help a church invite people to serve in ways which aligned with their unique gifts and passions. After many years of refinements, enhancements and new features, CCB brings their Volunteer Management benefits full circle by adding the ability to schedule volunteers for weekly church services.“Volunteers are the muscle of any charitable organi-zation, especially churches,” states Steve Caton, VP of Sales and Marketing. “They are the people who execute the ideas, plans and strategies intended to bring to life the collective vision shared by a com-munity’s leadership.” However, Caton points out, “The challenge with volunteers is that you aren’t paying them. So it’s impossible to force them to do anything they don’t want to do. We can spend hours building relationships, helping others discover their strengths, passions and interests, only to watch them disappear when a call is made for volunteers.”CCB believes volunteers are absolutely necessary in fulfilling the mission of the local church. Here are just a few ways CCB can now support a volunteer-driven church:

The weekend services have an organized and de-• fined schedule ... instead of volunteers’ personal serving preferences.Volunteers set their own availability using a mas-• ter schedule ... no more awkward conversations and last-minute cancellations.Volunteers indicate when they will be away ... in • advance.Serving confirmations are displayed on a master • schedule ... no surprises.Volunteers feel a greater sense of community as • they serve.

“As we serve over 1,600 churches in 15 differ-ent countries, we see consistent patterns which lead to success in mobilizing volunteers,” says Caton. “When you can make it easier for your volunteers to serve on their terms, you will actually discover more people are interested in volunteering. And, when we have more people willing to serve in our ministries, it ultimately helps the church make a greater im-pact.” For detailed and up-to-date information, visit CCB’s website at http://www.churchcommuni-tybuilder.com/scheduling, call 866-242-1199, or become a fan on their Facebook Fan Page.

About Church Community Builder Birthed in 1999, Church Community Builder (CCB) made available the first ever web-based church management software to offer churches a flexible and affordable way to manage every aspect of church. Today, CCB is actively serving over 1,600 churches in 15 different countries, including church plants, mega churches, and multi-site churches with over 10,000 attendees. CCB believes that technol-ogy is only helpful when it is well aligned with the systems and processes which support your strategies. If you desire to be more efficient with how you “do church” so you can be more effective with people, you are invited to take a good hard look at what CCB has to offer. Visit http://www.churchcommuni-tybuilder.com to learn more.

July 2011Christian Computing® Magazine 7

Our nominating committee has voted and the first five people have been selected to be the first inductees into our Christian Computing Hall of Fame. We appreciate everyone that made suggestions as to who should

be included, and, while I have been around a long time in this industry, I am learn-ing about some fantastic people who helped lay the ground work for churches us-ing technology, even before I entered the scene back in 1988!

Christian Computing

By Steve Hewitt

Hall of Fame

cover story

These are our first five, but remember, we will be voting on five more in January 2012. If you would like to bring someone to the attention of the nominating committee, simply visit http://www.ccmag.com/page/index.php?pageid=32 and make your nomination! We will make the announcement here in this article, providing a brief look at the person’s accomplishments that merited their induction. However, over the next five months, we will have specific articles dedicated to each one. As you read through the five inductees, I would really appreciate it if you would drop me an email with any comments or personal experiences you might have that relate to any of the current inductees. I am looking for comments and testimonials for use in the articles dedicated to each one of them personally. Email me at steve@ccmag.com.

Here are our first five inductees!

Cornelius “Neil” Houk Neil published one of the first newsletters related to using computers in the church. I believe his first news-letter, titled Church Bytes, went out in 1987. Neil pub-lished a host of different books, including PC Church Book, First Church Learns DOS, and the Church Bytes Software Guide for Church Administration and Fi-nance. Some of his first books include Pastor Goode and His Marvelous Micro, which was a fictional ac-count of a church that installs a computer in the church office and learns to use it in support of the church’s ministry, written in 1986. Neil died at age 74 on Sept 2, 2007. After attending the U.S. Coast Guard Academy, and graduating with a B.S. in Chemistry from the University of Chicago in 1955 he attended the San Francisco Theological Seminary where he earned a Masters in Divinity and a Doctorate of Theology. He taught at Pikeville College

8July 2011Christian Computing® Magazine

(Kentucky) and Beirut College for Women (Beirut, Lebanon) where he also served as Acting President. Neil was Associate Pastor at Southfield Presbyterian Church (Michigan) and served on the Interfaith Action Council and the Southfield Human Relations Council. He was Dean of the Chapel and Assistant Professor of Religion at Carroll College in Waukesha, Wisconsin and served on the board of the Waukesha Mental Health Association. And Neil was a member of the Society of Biblical Literature and published numerous articles on the Old Testament.

Larry Pierce Larry created the Online Bible in 1987 with the receipt of the KJV text from Public Brand Software. Initially it was a DOS program, and then converted to Visual Basic to use the 16 and 32 bit versions of Del-phi. It was ported to the Mac and the Pocket PC. The program was sold on floppies and later on DVD’s but a web site is maintained where most of the material can be freely downloaded. Larry expanded the reach of the Online Bible by establishing distributors in the UK, Holland, France, South Africa and New Zealand. The Holland group has developed most of the European material for the program. The program never was shareware and could be freely used by anyone. In 2009 the program was converted to Unicode and a text box was created to allow the program to run under WINE on Linux and Mac. The Online Bible has no real organization but is primar-ily run by volunteers. Each group in the various countries is autonomous. Larry works closely with Answers In Genesis and they host his website and allow them to publish their material. Of course, the Online Bible had to include popular translations that re-quired a royalty fee at distribution. But Larry never asked for any funds for his Online Bible. Larry is a member of the First Baptist Church in Waterloo, Ontario.

Walt (Walter) P. Wilson Many people know Walt for his many years as a contributing editor in Christian Computing Magazine. Walt was the author of a very important book, impacting the church in a vital

time as ministries sought to grasp the impact of the Internet. The book, The Internet Church was published and distributed by Thomas Nelson/Word Publishing Company in 2004. Walt has a long history of working with technology based companies. Prior to selling his interest in the company, Mr. Wilson was co-founder, Chairman and CEO of Exclaim Technologies, Inc., an Applications Service Provider in the business-to-business Internet market. Before that, he was a senior vice president and corporate officer of the consulting group of Computer Sciences Corp., a $16billion, US global corporation with 600 offices worldwide, employ-ing over 100 thousand people. He has over 40 years as an operating executive having served in a variety of management positions with three Fortune 50 compa-nies. Prior to CSC, he was an early employee of Apple Computer, serving as the first Managing Director of US Operations as the company grew from start up to $5 bil-lion in revenues. Before joining Apple he was Western Regional Manager with a division of Fairchild, the semiconductor pioneer. He has spent most of his career with Silicon Valley based companies. Walt served over ten years in international business consulting with CSC and was responsible for the development of new mar-kets in Asia, including Japan, Korea, China, Singapore

July 2011Christian Computing® Magazine 9

and South East Asia, with executive offices in Tokyo and San Francisco. He directed major projects focus-ing on emerging digital technologies, Internet strategy development, corporate transformation, merger/acquisi-tion and the strategic use of information technology for new levels of global competitiveness. Walt has served on the boards of several Silicon Valley companies and with Bob Buford’s Leadership Network in Dallas, a strategy development organization for the growth of the Christian Church. He was also Chairman of the National Advisory Board for Chris-tianity. Walt currently serves full time as founder and chairman of Global Media Outreach, the largest Inter-net ministry in Christianity bringing tens of millions to Christ every year.

Ernie Hamilton Ernie was the Founder of Shelby Systems, Inc. As a pioneer in the field of church management software, Ernie Hamilton developed a strong background in fund accounting while establishing the data processing center at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Ft. Worth, Texas in the 1970’s. In 1976 Ernie Hamilton left the Seminary to begin Shelby Systems. In talking to those that remember the days when Ernie started Shelby, he spent long hours with Frank Canady, the present President and CEO of Shelby Systems, Inc., programming and coding. Ernie loved coding on the IBM mid-ranged hardware that he knew best. However, in those early years of Shelby, he did it all. He loved selling and training. He even survived a typhoon while training a customer in Guam. Ernie Hamilton died in a private plane accident in November of 1998. His legacy not only includes being a pioneer in Church Management Software, but in the way he managed Shelby. His life was committed to helping churches use technology to increase and en-hance ministry. But his life was also centered on using Shelby to bless the lives of everyone involved with the company. Many people, burned out and hurt by min-istry, just starting out and needing help to get through seminary, or facing serious health issues, all found strength and support by working for Shelby and joining Ernie’s “family”.

Craig Rairdin While working as a programmer for Rockwell International in 1988, Craig Rairdin spent his nights and weekends writing the program that would become QuickVerse. Originally intended only as a tool for his pastor and him to use for personal Bible study, Craig

was inspired to begin selling it from home by the suc-cess of another Cedar Rapids, IA software entrepreneur, Bob Parsons. Bob was selling his MoneyCounts ac-counting program out of his basement and Craig was using it to keep track of his church’s finances. After a few months on his own, Craig took his program to Bob’s company, Parsons Technology. There he became Vice President and was responsible for Parsons Tech-nology’s Church Software Division. During his ten years at Parsons Technology, Craig oversaw the development of Membership Plus church management software and a variety of other Bible study and church office products. These included an interac-tive Bible atlas, a self-pronouncing Bible, eBooks that included video and 360-degree “photo bubbles”, and an online library of reference books accessed over the Internet (at a time — 1996 — when people were only just beginning to use the Web). He was also a founder of the Bible Software Industry Standards Group and the author of the STEP standard that promoted a common binary eBook format between all Christian software publishers. In 1998, Craig and co-workers Jeff Wheeler and Jim VanDuzer realized that mobile devices such as the Palm Pilot and Windows CE were the next frontier, so they founded Laridian to develop software for mobile phones and PDAs. Craig wrote the first version of PocketBible for Windows CE. Within just a few years, Laridian’s mobile Bible software products were outsell-ing their desktop-bound competitors.

There you have it, our first five inductees. I hope to hear from many of you via email, sharing testimonies about how these men and/or their ministries impacted your lives. We will use some of these in the upcoming articles that will be dedicated to provide more informa-tion about their lives and ministry. These articles will be published in Christian Computing Magazine, and will be held in the library of a special community that will be established on the www.ccmag.com site.

10July 2011Christian Computing® Magazine

Who Reads Christian Computing Magazine?

(Each month, we will feature a reader, with the information found from their profile at www.ccmag.com)

who reads ccmag

WHO:

Dr. Buddy Bell

BIO: Since 1977, Dr. Buddy Bell has been serving pastors and families in the local church. Dr. Bell is known as a Pastor’s Friend and International Trainer of Champions. Because of his faithfulness and commitment to serve, God has anointed him to teach on the Ministry of Helps.

In 1986, Dr. Buddy Bell founded Ministry of Helps International, Inc. (MOHI) in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He is the president of Ministry of Helps International as well as a successful author and international teacher. His focus is the much-needed message of the Ministry of Helps. His insights into this Bible ministry have enabled countless people to find and fulfill their place in the Body of Christ.

Dr. Buddy Bell has traveled to over 3,000 churches, teaching and helping church staffs and congregations to work together with far greater effectiveness by awakening them to the power and plan of the Holy Spirit for accomplishing the work of the ministry. Dr. Bell has trained thousands of ushers and greeters thru the Serve Workshop and has held hundreds of Team Workshops around the world. Now with the help of live broadcasting , video and audio podcasts and video conferencing on the internet Dr. Bell is fulfilling the

vision of being on thousands of church staffs around the world. www.sayitbetterlive.com

Buddy has joined one community:

IT Directors - This community •is designed to provide support for those serving as IT Directors for churches or ministers. This might not be your title, but if you have to deal with IT issues, this is the community to join!

TitleTraveling Minister

To Learn MoreIf you would like to learn more

about Dr. Buddy Bell, check out the following links.www.BuddyBellMinistries.com www.SayItBetterLive.com - Live Broadcasting for under $40 a month.www.BuddyBellCards.com - A must for every church!“Technology will never replace Ministries, but minis-tries with great technology combined with prayer and powerful tools will replace ministries that refuse to adapt to a web First Culture.”

ContactsIt doesn’t look as though Dr. Bell has made any con-tacts in our online community. If you have something in common with Dr. Bell, or would like to get to know him, send him a contact request!

July 2011Christian Computing® Magazine 11

from ACS Technologies

Special events are hugely valuable components of your ministry—they’re certainly among the most visible. But if your events are poorly managed, they can stress out your staff and have a negative impact on your church

and your visitors.

Events from Start to Finish: What You Don’t Do Will Hurt You!

Get started this summer on organizing the best events yet. They can help transform your church and impact your community. This excerpt is taken from the ministry guide “Events from Start to Fin-ish,” which outlines in detail how to organize and manage successful church events, starting with an event team and moving through task lists, the gath-ering of resources and, finally, with the execution of the event.

Here’s a step-by-step outline for knockout events:

Start by creating a team. The event team will 1. consist of church staff, leaders and members who can serve in planning the event and making it happen. If you have used volunteer manage-ment software to identify the special skills of your volunteer base, you can select people for your team who are ideally suited to the tasks you know will need to be executed. Bring your team together for an initial brain-2. storming session. Whether you’re organizing VBS, a fundraiser, special worship services, an outreach event, or anything eels, you want to get your team together to discuss the goals,

approaches, mindset and the specific group of people you’re trying to reach out to with the event you’re planning.Make sure you understand your target and com-3. munity. You may want to provide your team with information that might help them in the planning process. The U.S. Census bureau, your local chamber of commerce, or an online service that does demographics research all may help you understand your community better.Consider calendars carefully. Not only will 4. you want to consult your church-wide calendar to assure you’ve picked a good date for your event, but be sure to choose a date that works well for your team and for your target group. An integrated calendar system for your church will make it easier to coordinate facilities, staff calendars, community calendars and more.Make a list of tasks for the event. Get the full 5. lowdown on creating and sharing task lists for events by downloading Events from Start to Fin-ish.Gather your resources. Once you’ve made your 6. list, you’re ready to activate your team to pull together your facilities needs, materials, equip-

ACSACS ideas to impact

12July 2011Christian Computing® Magazine

ment, and any additional volun-teers that you’ll need. Make a list for each team mem-7. ber and create deadlines for each task. You may want to use your church website to publicly track lists, timelines and tasks. Make sure that you’ve reserved any church resources that you plan to use on the day of your event.Publicize your event. Be strate-8. gic about how you market your event. Use an honest appeal, and use your email lists, newsletters, Web site, wherever you will reach your target audience.Create an execute a well-9. thought out attendance plan. After the event, bring your event 10. team and volunteers together to evaluate how everything went. Get input from everyone involved, what worked well as well as what didn’t. And don’t forget to recognize your volun-teers. Solidify the experience by making sure your volunteers and event team feel valued and appreciated. Be sure to connect with each volunteer personally in order to encourage them to help out again next time.

These tools and strategies can help you use events to reach out into your community, to strengthen your relationships with your mem-bers, and to reach the goals of your ministry. Remember: A thorough plan, detailed task lists, thoughtful publicity, detailed attendance and follow-up after your event will help assure that your event is a success. To get more detailed informa-tion about how your church can throw the best events yet, download the free ministry guide, “Events from Start to Finish.”

July 2011Christian Computing® Magazine 13

Accelerating The Dynamic Church®

from Fellowship Technologies

Technology is impersonal. Ironically, this truth keeps many church leaders from using technology in practical ways to enable their staff to minister more efficiently, more effectively and more personally.

High Touch, High Tech

Every pastor wants to spend time reaching, connecting and fully engaging with their mem-bers and community, but that takes time and ulti-mately each pastor is limited by a finite schedule. So, the church hires more staff, equips more vol-unteers and raises-up more lay leaders. All good things, to be sure, but it only buys so many more hours for ministry. The total solution involves a process that is repeatable and scalable, to equip high-touch people with high-tech tools.

THE RIGHT TOOLS

In most countries, the vast majority of people are connected through technology; specifically, wireless, mobile devices. It makes sense, then, to use mobile and web-based technologies as our primary tools for connecting with an on-the-go society. When information about your members and visitors is in the hands of your pastors via their cell phones or any Internet-connected device, you immediately clear the first hurdle of technol-

ogy: access. Pastors are, by their very nature, high-touch people who are constantly connecting and interacting with people. This kind of practi-cal technology doesn’t require a pastor to carry around a specific laptop or force him to go to the church office and use a computer with installed software. The second hurdle is to make the technology user-friendly. Many technology companies devel-op software that is useful for administration, but not very friendly for ministry. Powerful technol-ogy gives pastors and their support staff answers to the questions they’re not yet asking, prompt-ing them to constantly evaluate their systems and processes for effective ministry.

THE RIGHT PROCESSES

No single technology does everything, and even the best high-tech solutions are only as good as the way they’re used by your people. Creating, documenting and continually improv-ing processes are hallmarks of effective church-es.

Ministry

accelerating the dynamic church

14July 2011Christian Computing® Magazine

Creating a new process can be simple, yet very powerful. To start, draw three bubbles on a white board, along with a word or phrase that describes an outcome you desire. Get your staff to talk about easy, reproducible ways to achieve that outcome. Capture all of those ideas on the white board and sift the results down to the three sim-plest steps. Write those steps in the three bubbles. For example, if your church wants to improve the first-time visitor experience on Sundays, coming up with great ideas will produce a long list of possibilities. Pick the three most repeat-able and effective options and place them in the three bubbles. Congratula-tions – you’ve got a new process for achieving consistency! Processes don’t need to be com-plex to be powerful. When com-bined with the right technology, the right processes give your staff the ability to be high-touch and high-tech.

Technology is impersonal. What you do with the technology doesn’t have to be.

July 2011Christian Computing® Magazine 15

from ParishSOFT

When we launched a contest for “best customer success story” this spring, we were thrilled when staff from 10 different parishes submit-ted entries about how technology has helped their ministries, admin-

istration, and finances. We were jumping for joy by the time a total of 3,476 votes were cast. And we learned a few very important things:

Little Contest Delivers Big Results and

If people can get this excited about a contest • (though granted the prize was a shiny new iPad2), just imagine how churches could use similar ideas to engage members into a deeper relationship with each other, the Church, and with Christ. Social media has vast potential to take your • evangelization and ministry viral – in a good way. Church staff and church entities gain great • strength when they connect with a support network of church professionals from their communities, regions, or dioceses (or dis-tricts, synods, eparchies, etc.).

Great stories, great ideas to inspire your church If you’ve ever experienced delight over a successful ministry—whether your church was full on a Sunday morning or the amazing teens in your youth group all showed up to help build a Habitat house—then you can relate to what a powerful experience it was for ParishSOFT’s staff to hear their testimonials. Their stories tell of cost reductions, mem-

bership census overhauls, a pastor accessing family information while in the supermarket, an alert that kept youth safe at a retreat, success-ful capital campaigns, and much more. We felt that “successful ministry delight” to hear how faith-filled church staff are using technology to better connect with their members, manage their churches in creative and efficient ways, and help their members connect with God. And our mis-sion became clear: we needed to get our contest entries in front of other churches so everyone could learn from and be inspired by these stories.

Voting goes viral We publicized the stories using Constant Contact’s survey tool (which handles responses, voting and reporting), our newsletter and web-site, and our Facebook page. Once the two-week voting period was opened to the public, we posted the live survey results on parishsoft.com. That was when things got a little crazy. Voters made their mark steadily at first, with the lead changing hands several times during the first few days. And then a strange thing hap-pened: the 220-family St. Mary parish in rural

models what networking and social media can do for your church

ParishSOFT

ParishSOFT’s Catholic Connection

16July 2011Christian Computing® Magazine

Red Oak, Iowa, pulled way ahead, by more than 100 votes, with their story about how Online Giving increased their offertory by what amounted to an extra week of tithes per month (read their story). When the vote count hit the thousands, quite frankly we got a

bit worried. Had our survey been hacked? No—we checked. In fact, the spike in our www.parishsoft.com traffic was evidence that most voters were viewing the stories on our website before linking to the voting form. And the form itself was set to allow only one vote per computer.

No church can stand alone: we need each other!

It turns out, a wonderful thing had happened: St. Mary, know-ing they were competing with larger parishes, asked their Diocese of Des Moines contact Roni Argetsinger for help, and the result was a great blog post, which put their story in the diocesan news and on the www.dmdiocese.org home page for all 82 parishes in the diocese to see. Once St. Mary supporters spread the word about the contest on Facebook, tapping the friends of friends net-works, it seemed much of Iowa (no strangers to the voting pro-cess) was turning out to support St. Mary. Meanwhile, back on the east coast, the 1,342-family Our Lady of Perpetual Help parish in Elli-cott City, Maryland, saw Iowa’s lead by way of real time results on parishsoft.com and decided to kick their parish communications into high gear. They sent parish-ioners a special Con-stant Contact email about the contest—easy to do because they maintain current email addresses as part of their regular recensus process, which updates all parishioner registration and contact information. Busi-

Lisa Sallach and Fr. Ken Gross in the office of St. Mary parish, Red

Oak, IA

From left: Bill Glover, Lisa Sliker and Fr. Eric Arnold from Our Lady of Perpetual

Help, Ellicott City, MD.

July 2011Christian Computing® Magazine 17

ness managers from all 161 parishes and missions in the Arch-diocese of Baltimore also got the message. And, like in Iowa, they tapped the power of so-cial media from Face-book pages, both parish and personal. The votes rolled in. “It just goes to show that no parish, no matter how big or small, can stand alone. We need our archdio-cese!” said Lisa Sliker, parish administrator at Our Lady of Perpetual Help (read her story).

Everyone learned something Our contest turned out to be much more than a way to share best practices and win a prize. It gave parishes a chance to spread their message and encourage voters in really creative ways using technology. It got entire dioceses to cheer for the home team. It inspired parish staff to pick up the phone to call us or other church offices to ask for guidance in implementing a new tip they picked up in a contest story they’d read. And as a whole, the teaming of parishes and dioceses makes a powerful statement: Where churches and their hierarchical organizations are sharing a common software platform and data, you’ll find church and parent organization staff who have formed productive, collaborative, trust-ing relationships with each other. They’re work-ing together as a team, and they aren’t shy about networking and reaching out to other organiza-tions and churches. Whatever your creed, this is how we do it, folks! We work together, rather than stand alone. We use the tools of our time to get people excited about ministries and engaged with each other and with Christ. And we learn from each other—con-stantly—to become better servants Publicize your next church event in your church’s private Connected Community site, available from www.faithinteractive.com. Or post it on Facebook and ask for RSVPs using a Web

form. There are 750 million Facebook users out there who just might love to attend your church picnic or your next prayer group meeting. You may need to haul out the extra tables and chairs.

Contest results When the polls closed on June 22, Our Lady of Perpetual Help had scored the most votes with 1,827 (52.5%). They’re planning to pay their iPad2 prize forward by awarding it to a lucky parishioner who participates in an upcoming campaign. To learn how they’ve improved census data for their parish, saved thousands of dollars, and given their priest the on-the-go parishioner information he needs to make ministry more mo-bile, be sure to read their story. St. Mary’s Church finished second with 1,273 votes (36.6%) for their great success story about Online Giving. Both first and second place fin-ishers will receive free registration to our Users’ Conference, November 7-9, 2011, in Anaheim, California, where we’ll dedicate three faith-filled days to learning how to build a more engaged church. For more information, or to share your own story with us, please visit www.parishsoft.com, or email info@parishsoft.com.

18July 2011Christian Computing® Magazine

by Tony Ferraro

Churches possess an interesting dilemma compared to most organizations. Most churches have a paid staff that represents a small fraction of their overall staffing requirements. Volunteers fill the other roles. As such,

most church staffers act as “doers” in the office and “leaders” on Sunday and as they interact with volunteers they manage. While all organizations must think carefully about their passion and process for leadership development, churches have an even greater burden to be focused on it.

Creating a Leadership

Last month in this series on church management, we focused on vision casting to staff and the congregation and ministry execution processes and modeling. This edition will focus on Leadership. While there are many great self-development books concerning improving your leadership strengths, this article will focus on “Leadership Culture”. Creating a great leadership team starts with developing a “Leadership Culture” in your organization that is consistent with your vision for leadership. A “Leadership Culture” is the part of your organizational culture that either fosters and empowers others to lead to the fullness of their strengths or detracts them from doing so. In either case, a leadership cul-ture exists. The question is, “Are you fostering or detracting from leadership?” Having a clear understanding of your leadership culture is imperative. Whether you are leading a department or the whole organization, a strong leadership culture will em-power your organizational members to use their best skills to improve the organization, solve problems and accomplish organizational goals. If your organization maintains a weak leadership culture, it will be stifled and succumb to limits of the person ultimately in charge. John Maxwell argues this concept as the “Law of the Lid” in his book, “The 21 Irrefut-able Laws of Leadership.” His suggestion is that the leader that fails to empower others creates a “Lid” or limit on the organizational leadership strength. The “cap”, effectively is

Culture

LOGOS

LOGOS CMS

the leader’s own leadership limits. If you desire to maximize the ability of your organization to solve problems and improve process, i.e. deliver care and ministry, you must be concerned with your leadership culture.

Earmarks of a “strong” leadership culture include:Leaders within the organization and most employees take • “ownership” of problems they encounter. In other words, when they see a problem, they do something about it as if it were their own problem. If the best thing to do is “hand it off,” taking ownership means that they insure they hand it to competent hands, they request a commit-ment to resolve the issue from the person to whom they hand it, and they follow up in a timely manner to insure that it was resolved.Leaders within the organization and most employees • approach issues with a sense of urgency. A strong leader-ship culture will produce people that take care of things with immediacy rather than procrastination. People un-derstand that it is better to handle it now, no matter how much of a bother it might be, realizing that not handling it now may mean that the problem and its effect get big-ger over time.Problems are handled with the greatest level of care and • consideration. A strong leadership culture will produce team members that respond to problems as if the prob-

July 2011Christian Computing® Magazine 19

lem was affecting them directly. They ask the question, “How would I want someone to respond to me?” “If this were my daughter or my father or me, how would I want it handled?” Responding with an attitude of care will resolve most issues in the church, even if the answer is wrong. Most people simply want to know they have been listened to and that they are not alone in solving the issue, even if the pro-posed solution fails.A strong leadership cul-• ture will produce team-work. Leaders know that they cannot survive alone. They know that a strand of three chords is stronger than the thick-est single chord. Strong leaders are not afraid to invite others into the process of problem solving and leadership. They believe that getting to the right answer will always trump getting the “credit”.

Creating a strong leader-ship culture begins with hav-ing a vision for it. Where the head goes; so goes the body. If the leader of the depart-ment or the church does not have a strong desire to see others lead within the organi-zation that they oversee, the leadership culture will remain weak. A vision for leadership requires a strong desire to see others take responsibility. Of course, most people will read this and think, “I wish someone on my staff would ‘take responsibility’.” The reality is, however, while most of us “wish” for that, we fail to “allow” others to actually do it. Having a vision for others to take responsibility also means letting go of it ourselves, a little bit, which we will dive deeper into momentarily. Additionally, practices must be put in place to develop leaders. An organization without leadership development

practices does not have a strong leadership culture. In the church, leadership development practices falls on two levels. First, the organization must develop professional develop-ment plans. Additionally, the church must also develop spiri-tual development plans for its staff members. One without the other in the church is a glass half empty. Professional development plans include things like encouraging staff members to improve their public speaking ability by participating in Toastmasters or some event like it. It also means developing long-term, i.e. 9 to 18 month, projects for them to develop, manage, report on, and execute.

20July 2011Christian Computing® Magazine

Multi-phase projects that are long term encourage vision development, dedication, personal project buy-in, cross-departmental collaboration building, planning, time management, budgeting and many other skills required to improve as a leader. Additionally, professional development plans encourage continued education. Continued education may come in a traditional scholastic setting, i.e. college or semi-nary, or it may come through conference and seminar attendance, scholastic reading, online research, participation in professional groups or many other creative environ-ments where the individual is provided an opportunity to improve their “job skill” or “professional acumen”. Most organizations make the mistake of failing to pour into their staff professionally and challenging them to grow. The reason this is overlooked is simple. We typically hire someone to do a job. We select an employee that we believe can do the job. The problem is we fail to look beyond our immediate needs and circumstances. We expect our organization to grow and invest little to insure that our human infrastructure is also growing in skill and experience to support it. The second element of leadership growth that is often overlooked in a church setting but of equal importance is providing a spiritual development plan for the staff. Many will argue that every Christian should be concerned with their own spiritual growth plan. While that is true, given that church leadership is ultimately responsible for the spiritual well being and development of all of those that attend the church and given that those individuals are often put in the care of members of the church staff, it is imperative that the spiritual growth of staff members be equally developed. This is truer considering we generally expect our staff and key leaders to be in a better spiri-tual place than our congregants as they are often providing care to them. Spiritual development plans can look very simple. Briefly, they begin by ask-ing our key team members where they are with their walk with God and where they would like to be. Then by working with them to develop a plan that helps them get where they want to be, based on closing the gaps that currently exist for them. A plan for their growth may include an annual silent retreat, regular staff devotion, encourag-ing them to lead from time to time in the departmental devotion, pursuing books, and other resources in areas they desire to grow and so forth. Spiritual development plans should be a part of any human resource development initiative in the church. If it is overlooked, you are running your organization no dif-ferently than the world. Finally, you must be willing to empower leaders. This is the one area where most organizations fail. Empowerment means there is a tolerance for mistakes. We often find conflict here with allowing others to take responsibility because our fears are that their failed responsibility will lead to bigger problems; so, “I should probably just get it done myself”. Much like a parent must be willing to see their small child fall down when learn-ing to walk, a leader must be willing to forgive bad judgment when others have been empowered. Tolerance is not apathy. The child must eventually learn to walk without falling down, so too must the empowered employee. But, if the lower level leader can perform at even 85% of the capacity of the ultimate leader, they should be fully empowered. This will allow their strengths and giftedness to contribute to the organi-zation, particularly in areas of their leaders’ weaknesses, much like the Body of Christ, and extend the functional reach of the organization’s or department’s leader. Every organization has a “Leadership Culture”. The question is whether yours is helping or hurting you. Ensuring that it helps you is accomplished by being intention-al about developing it. Next month, we will take a deeper dive into Leadership Style and Management Structure building. Until then, take some time to evaluate where your organization is in relation to your goals for the organization’s overall Leadership Culture.

July 2011Christian Computing® Magazine 21

Adventures into Android

Kevin A. Purcell - kevin@kevinpurcell.org

I’ve been venturing into the waters of Android over the last few months and of course had to look at Bible apps. Below is based on a post I made on my personal

website (http://www.kevinpurcell.org/archives/1281). In case you are not a regular reader of my website – shame on you – I wanted to reproduce it with some alterations thanks to the help of Craig Rairdin of Laridian who made

a thoughtful comment on the blog post. He is also one of our inaugural inductees into the Christian Computing Magazine’s Hall of Fame. Hit the link above and be sure to read his full comment below the post. Read on for the updated version:

Bible Software and Apps

higher power with kevin

Now that I have been using an Android Phone and Tablet, I have finally been able to test and use Android Bible software and apps. The phone I have is the HTC Thunderbolt, a fast Verizon LTE phone that has a beau-tiful 4.3” screen but unfortunately is still stuck running Android 2.2 also called FroYo (short for Frozen Yogurt) instead of the latest update called Gingerbread or An-droid 2.3. On the tablet side, I am using an ASUS Eee Pad Transformer. It is running the latest version of Honey-comb 3.1 and while I’ve only had it a few days, I am really enjoying the tablet and Android in general. As my readers know, I’ve jumped from the Windows side to Apple for my computing needs. In the mobile realm I’ve gone the other way – somewhat away from Apple to Android the more Windows-like mobile OS. I say that because it is more open than Apple’s iOS and takes a little more effort to learn but once you do you have a

power and customizability. At this point, I’ve mostly used Olive Tree’s Bible Reader (http://bit.ly/ocIHMg), YouVersion’s Bible (http://bit.ly/mWgEZ1), and app called DailyBible (http://bit.ly/oFhLIR). I’m running the beta version of Logos (http://bit.ly/o0p95F) and a very early pre-re-lease of Laridian’s PocketBible (http://bit.ly/ogUoDV). Those last two are in the very early stages so it is not really fair to compare them to OliveTree and the others, which have been running on Android from its earliest days. OliveTree has a larger development team, so they can afford a little more diversification. While all of these are good apps, they have one thing in common. They lag behind their iPad/iPhone counterparts running on iOS in features and sometimes in stability. Let’s take Olive Tree Bible Reader as an example. The iOS version is rock solid and has a lot of

22July 2011Christian Computing® Magazine

great features. It has split screen capability and markup features like book bookmarks and notes. The most recent stable Android version only recently added some of these features, but not all of the iOS features are present yet. Logos has a good iOS app. They haven’t even re-leased an Android version yet, but do have a public beta (see link above). Their beta is little more than a book reader. You cannot compare translations, there is no Passage Guide or Word Study Guide and like the iOS version it has no note taking feature, bookmarking or highlighting. Laridian’s Android app is an alpha, not even a beta. I downloaded it and they have a great start, but it is definitely missing most of the great features of the iPhone version. Why are iOS apps so far ahead of Android? 1. iOS is ahead of Android. The operating system was released before Android. 2. Android apps don’t sell as well as iOS apps. De-velopers are not making as much money on the Android platform as they are on the iOS side. 3. Android is not as stable. Honeycomb which is the nickname for the latest version of the Android tablet platform is just not as stable as iOS is on the iPad. Some other significant issues I learned from devel-oper Craig Rairdin. He commented on my aforemen-tioned post about this subject saying that there are some additional reasons for the disparity for many Android and iOS developers who work on one app and try to make them run on both platforms natively. 1. Apple keeps moving the goal posts which is to say their constant updating of the OS – the methods developers use to get apps running on the OS changes as well as the legal ways developers can make money through their apps. I can see how this must be frustrat-ing. Imagine if in the middle of the Super Bowl the NFL made a first down 20 yards instead of 10 and said touchdowns now only count five points instead of six? Or what if the state passed a law saying that the speed limit was 63 instead of 65 and that the limit was in effect whether the signs had changed or not? That’s not exactly what Apple does, but it helps you see the problem. The change in how Apple handles in app purchases and book apps were drastic differences in the rules making it harder on book apps like Laridian’s and the others’ than say games or apps that turn the phone’s camera flash into a flashlight. 2. iOS is more stable despite how frustrating as Apple makes it because of the above change to the rules. Rairdin believes that coding tools are more stable

and easier to use on the iOS side. I won’t go into the techni-cal reasons for this since you can read his remarks. 3. Apple’s changes slows down Android development for small teams. If a developer is working on an Android Bible app, when Apple makes a change that breaks the iOS app, he or she needs to stop everything to fix the iOS app leaving Android development to wait. 4. Apps that run great on older Android phones might not run on newer versions of the OS and vice versa. This is one of the most frustrating things with Android. Instead of the OS maker controlling when a user gets the update, the phone carriers control it. For example Sprint phones might get an update but AT&T phones might not. Or Verizon phones might get it but Sprint doesn’t. At least with an iPhone, everyone has access at once. I hope Google fixes some of these issues so that the apps are more equal in feature set. Right now it seems that from both an app and operating system standpoint Android is just a little bit behind iOS in general. That is too bad, because from a hardware perspective there are plenty of great Android devices that are as good if not better than the iPad 2. I really like my ASUS Eee Pad Transformer. I also really like my HTC Thunderbolt although I’d suggest waiting for the upcoming Droid Bionic if you want a truly great Android smart phone. Android has some incredible features like openness and much better navigation software. You also have more options for apps because of the Amazon App Store. On the tablet side Honeycomb 3.1 is better than Honeycomb 3.0. I just hope 3.2 will be that much of an improvement and that ASUS pushes it out soon after

July 2011Christian Computing® Magazine 23

Ever wanted to change the username on a Mac? We need to do it fairly often, and though it’s not as simple as one would think, it is easy if you know the

steps.

Nick Nicholaou - nick@mbsinc.com

Changing the Username on a Mac

nick at church

Why Change a Username? Many Mac users set up their church or ministry owned Macs with usernames that are completely differ-ent than the usernames they use on their network. This is especially exasperating when the Mac is transferred to a different user who wants to continue having access to the previous user’s home folder (similar to the My Documents folder on a Windows computer). To make life easier on the user, we recommend set-ting Macs up with the same username and password on their Mac as is used on the network. Following are the steps in Mac OSX 10.5 or later. Caution: be careful to follow these steps exactly to en-sure your data is still good.

Step 1: Enable the Root User The ‘root’ user is the highest-level authority user on a Mac in OSX. Logging in as root is disabled by default to help protect the system. Before renaming the user’s account that you want to rename— or creating a new user you want to access an already existing home folder, enable the ability to login as the root user. Here are the steps: 1. Click on the Apple symbol on the Apple menu and click on System Preferences, then click on Ac-counts. 2. Click on Login Options, and then click on Edit or Join the Network Account Server option. 3. Click the Open Directory Utility option.

4. With the Directory Utility open, click the Edit option up on the Apple menu bar. (If the lock is closed, or locked, in the lower left corner of the Directory Util-ity, click on it to unlock it and supply the existing user’s password to do so.) 5. Select Enable Root User. If this is the first time you’re doing this, it will ask you to enter and verify a password for the root user. Make sure it’s a strong pass-word and one you’ll remember! 6. Restart the Mac and login as root with the pass-word you entered in the previous step.

Step 2: Change the Username 1. Open Finder and go to the ‘Users’ folder at the root of the hard drive. 2. Select the home folder of the username you want to change, and rename it like you would any other file or folder name. Note: the new name must be all lowercase alpha characters with no spaces. 3. Open the Accounts section of System Preferences again and create a new account whose Account Name matches the home folder’s name you changed in the previous step. When you enter the Full Name, it must be different than any other account’s Full Name on the Mac. 4. The Mac will let you know that a folder already exists in the Users folder that matches the Account Name. It will ask you if you want to use that folder with this new account; click OK. This makes sure the rights

24July 2011Christian Computing® Magazine

for all the contents of that folder are corrected to match the new username. 5. Close the windows, and restart the system. 6. Login as the new username and make sure you can access all of your files and folders. It may ask you to en-ter the old password to update the Keychain.

Step 3: Disable the Root User— Don’t Skip This One! This step is very important to protect the Mac from being easily hacked by those who might see it on a public WiFi network, etc. You can disable the root user by repeating the first four items in Step 1, and then selecting Disable Root User. Well, that wasn’t so bad, was it? And now the user will be able to login with the same username and pass-word on the Mac and the network.

Nick Nicholaou is president of MBS, a consulting firm specializing in church and ministry IT and CPA ser-vices. You can reach Nick via email (nick@mbsinc.com) and may want to check out his firm’s website (www.mbsinc.com) and his blog at http://ministry-it.blogspot.com.

July 2011Christian Computing® Magazine 25

You’ve heard that, with its more than 500 mil-lion users, Facebook is now the 3rd largest “country” in the world! What does that mean?

It means, the second you log in to Facebook you have just entered one of the LARGEST mission fields in the history of the planet! Spreading your message has never been so important. Getting your message to go VIRAL is the best way to reach the WORLD with your message.

Chad Gleaves - chadgleaves@gmail.com

Ways to Spread Your Church Facebook Message Virally

your church on facebook

Virally? What do we mean when we saying viral? We mean passing on the message from one person to another, multiplying exponentially after each exposure and finally leading to epidemic proportions. (Well, at least 100 NEW people!) Just like anything else, success does not come over-night (unless your Justin Bieber). It all boils down to publishing content consistently that your congregation will appreciate, enjoy and ultimately help in bringing them closer to Christ. Let’s begin with the Basics: Daily Posts The fundamental rule in Social Media engagement is to always be “UPDATING”. People are always on the lookout for what is new, so make it a point to post daily or better yet as often as you can. No matter what your topic or theme may be, keep it clear, simple and interest-ing. If you do that, your followers will quickly respond and even re-post it. Try an inspirational verse or saying for the day... Guaranteed “Like” magnet! Pictures Photos and humor will bring more attention than

anything else on Facebook. Just make sure that you don’t post personal or distasterful pictures and always ask permission before posting pictures of your congre-gations as some people have good reasons not to have their picture on Facebook. (Even people in the Witness Protection Program have to go to Church!) Videos Oh, the questions I get on this one! Do I need a fancy camera and lapel mic with a camera man and a production team ready to edit the video with 3d graphics and lower thirds? NO. Most Laptops have a built in cam-era and mic that is good enough to do daily devotional videos for your congregation. The KEY here is to make it easy, simple and part of your daily or weekly routine. If your spending more than 10 or 15 minutes, your tak-ing too long! Simple steps: 1. Keep it below two minutes and one is even better! 2. Use whatever camera you have or buy a $39 dol-lar usb webcam at walmart 3. Use jing from techsmith.com (free) to record your desktop or your face. 4. Upload to screencast.com (a free service provided by jing) 5. Switch back and forth from your face to your

26July 2011Christian Computing® Magazine

desktop for an incredible cool effect that people will wonder if you put HOURS in your production! 6. Just do it. Record, upload and post to Facebook ...Today! The great thing about this process is that there is NO editing and No setup. This is a very quick way to get a daily video out the door for your congregation.

Send A Note If you think that a Note is the same as the regular status update, you are wrong. Using the Notes is recommended for posting longer messages as it does not have a maximum character limit. More-over, notes can be easily retrieved unlike a status update which may be difficult to locate especially when there are numerous posts made in a single day. (I usually have several hundred!) So, if one of your followers would like to read a certain post again, all they have to do is go over your notes tab and quickly find “the eloquent masterpiece’s you have written”. You can see the Notes application on the left side of your Facebook Home Page. From there, you can write your message and start tagging people. Tagging Tagging is a feature in Facebook that allows users to refer and identify people in Photos, Videos and Notes. It is a way of linking and sharing information to a targeted audience. This function how-ever has its limits such that Facebook only allows a maximum of 50 tags for both Photos and Videos and 30 tags for Notes. For the more advanced users, there’s always a work around for this. (Yes, Ive got connections.) Like/Share/Re-post The good old reliable Like, Share and Re-Post are your most convenient allies in Facebook. These 3 gestures are displayed on Live Feed and your friends and congregation who think the same will most likely duplicate it. Personally I’m very glad there isn’t a Dis-Like button

Questions and Polls Posting of Questions and Polls is a sure way of catching peo-ple’s attention. Who doesn’t like giving their opinion. Questions spark people’s interest and will ignite healthy discussions along the way. Facebook provided some template questionnaires, other-wise you can make your own. Take full advantage of this feature to analyze and evaluate issues, interests, feedbacks or even sermon research. Friends can be invited to take the poll and you can also link the poll to an Event. (OK, that’s about as complicated as I’m going to get.) Guest Poster Once in a while, it is a refreshing twist for your followers to see a post from a “Guest Poster/Pastor”. You can invite an upcom-ing speaker to post a few times to introduce himself and prepare your congregation for him coming. Ask some members of your group to contribute to your Facebook Page’s content. Use this strategy at random so that it will not be predictable. Remember to give “teasers” prior to the event date to build-up excitement on your Page. Events Creating an Event is another way to circulate your message across your followers and even beyond your Church members as

July 2011Christian Computing® Magazine 27

Events are displayed on a person’s Facebook profile and News Feeds. Keeping your Event public will also allow non-followers to see it (and all its contents) and may add themselves to the guest list. Inviting non-Facebook users is also possible as long as you have their e-mail addresses. Twitter If you have a Twitter account, you can use it alongside Facebook to spread information. Before, Twitter was primarily used as a messenger to invite Twitter followers to view Updates/Postings on Facebook Pages. Lately, Facebook users have been allowed to post status updates from Twitter to Facebook using the Twitter App. Contest Have you noticed the surge of Facebook contests? You too could use the same for your Church’s Facebook Page. Stick to fun, simple and interest-ing themes like photo contests, art contests, t-shirt/poster design contests, best “quotation”, “passage”, or “tips”, guessing games (ex. how many golf balls are in a fishbowl), and bring-in-a-friend (referral) to name a few. Now, to the More Advanced Stuffs: Word of Mouth and Discussion Boards Facebook’s Discussion Board is an avenue for inter-relating and making connections between and among people on Facebook. A Public Discussion Board is generally provided in a Facebook Fan Page. However, it takes a few steps to set-up a Private Discussion Board (if you prefer it that way). It is basically a chat room where people talk about certain topics or a way to catch-up on each other. Newsletter Newsletters automatically send the most recent up-dates or feeds from a Page to its followers. Most often, these Newsletters are sent via e-mail. They work to in-crease readership and engagement as well as encourage participation in discussions. There are several Newslet-ter Applications available on Facebook and it’s up to you to choose which among fit your requirements. Meme A more contemporary viral phenomenon dubbed as “Meme” has also taken Facebook by the storm. Memes are unique ideas that are created and transmitted among people within a culture to be specifically imitated. Face-

book had its memorable share of Memes in the past year such as “25 Things” (Make a list of 25 random things about yourself), “Cartoon Character” (Sometime in November 2010, users were asked to use Cartoon Char-acter for their Profile Picture as a campaign to end child abuse) and “Doppelganger Week” (Posting a picture of yourself beside a celebrity that resembles you, some sort of a look-a-like game). If you happen to have an idea or a concept similar to this that would advance your cause, by all means spread it! These techniques might overwhelm you at first but as a friend of mine always says “Do it once and you can do it again, better”. In other words, Practice makes perfect. To conclude: getting people to like and follow your Church’s Facebook Page is pretty manageable, however, keeping people interested, connected and really grasping its mission is a totally different ballgame. If you play the social media game right, your message will be spread across the world fulfilling our great commission.

Chad is an educator who shows you how to create a Facebook fan page your CHURCH will actually use! Claim your FREE training, Visit http://GetYourChurch-FanPage.com

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28July 2011Christian Computing® Magazine

We hear the phrase “not your father’s this or that” a lot these days, pertaining to how different certain things are in our time compared to how they were

in our parents’ time. The title of this article, “Not Your Father’s Evangelism,” therefore applies to the differences in the ways

we can do evangelism today as opposed to previous generations.

Michael L White - mlwhite@parsonplacepress.com

Not Your Father’s Evangelismdigital evangelism

Our fathers might have travelled from town to town, state to state, and/or nation to nation to preach the Gospel wherever permitted or invited. They might have used a local church facility, put up a huge tent in a vacant lot in town, or rented a civic center to conduct their daily or nightly meetings. They drew crowds through local church announcements, local media advertizing, and word of mouth on the street. They were – and many continue to be – very effective using this method. Furthermore, this method has not lost its effectiveness nor been totally replaced by a better model just yet. Rather, the ways we can do evangelism today are simply added as individual alternatives to the “traditional” way (or some might say the “legacy” way) of sharing the Gospel. Now, we can cast the Net (a.k.a. the Internet) for Christ more broadly and catch more souls for Jesus in more difficult to reach places than ever before. The Internet is quickly overtaking the television as the preferred means of communication, since every individual can respond personally and interact with In-ternet communications; as opposed to forcibly remain-ing one-sided while watching television alone. The Internet permits both one-on-one evangelism and mass evangelism simultaneously. What a concept! Truly, this

is not your father’s evangelism! For generations, the Church has struggled to moti-vate new evangelists to go forth and preach, teach, and baptize in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (Matthew 28:19). Timidity has usually been the num-ber one culprit for hindering outreach with the Gospel. Such excuses as “I just don’t know what to say” or “I’m not good at doing that” or “I need time to build a relationship before I can talk about my faith with some-one” delay or postpone indefinitely Christian faith-sharing. What they are really saying is that they’re afraid of being rejected, mocked, and scorned for shar-ing their personal faith in Jesus Christ. Meanwhile, lost souls fall into the pit of everlasting Hell by the millions on a daily basis. There’s simply not enough time to wait any longer! If you knew your unsaved friend with whom you’ve been building a relationship for the past ten years would die in a car crash just two days from now, would that motivate you to expedite your intention to share the saving Gospel of Jesus Christ with him to-day? What if you died in a car crash just two days from now? Who would step up and share the Gospel with your friend after you’re gone? Since none of us knows the future, how do any of us know whether that tragedy

July 2011Christian Computing® Magazine 29

gelism is the right method of evangelism for you. It is an approach whose time has come. That time is now, and the fact that you are reading this article means that you are the one to do it. So, what’s stopping you? Start engaging those lost souls right now!

Michael L. White is a full-time pastor, part-time mili-tary chaplain, and part-time independent Christian publisher and author living in the Mobile, Alabama area. His book Digital Evangelism: You Can Do It, Too! (Parson Place Press, April 2011) has been recent-ly revised and expanded for a second edition.

awaits any one of us? As Jesus said, “... your time is always ready” (John 7:6 NKJV). I like to say it this way: “Just be ready for Jesus when He gets ready for you.” Perhaps one of the greatest benefits to Internet communication is the ability to interact with total strangers anywhere in the world in a far less threatening way than face-to-face conversation. No longer do the timid need the excuse of “I just don’t know what to say,” because you are not under as much pressure to give an immediate response to a chal-lenging question. You can take a few seconds to consider your answer before you type a response in a chat room or in an instant message, and if you’re re-sponding to an email or Web-based fo-rum comment, you can take all the time you need to write and edit a carefully thought-out reply. You can take the time to look up and accurately quote fitting Scripture passages that support your theological or doctrinal position. You can calmly address doubters, debaters, and flamers without losing your cool or your sense of humor or your ability to reason. It’s quite empowering! The Internet may be considered the backbone of digital communications – and therefore of digital evangelism – since it is the primary means by which digital technologies propagate their messages. Granted, there are a lot of messages competing for attention today, but let’s not abandon our effort to share the message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ simply because the devil is offer-ing a multitude of messages compared to our lone message, which is “repent of your sins and accept Jesus Christ’s offer to save your soul from eter-nal damnation, and then live for Him forever.” It really is as simple as that! Do you want to save a soul or two or even more? Do you want to wear the soul-winner’s crown through-out eternity as your reward for faithful witnessing and sharing of the Gospel of Jesus Christ? Read 1 Thes-salonians 2:19; Proverbs 11:30; Daniel 12:3. Do you want to utilize your computer, hand-held device, or other digital tool for the glory of God? If you answered “yes” to either of these questions, then digital evan-

30July 2011Christian Computing® Magazine

Flying Under the Radar

Bradley Miller - bradley.w.miller@gmail.com

I was recently talking to a co-worker who was sharing a story about a man at his church that he had known from childhood. I don’t know all the details, but the tragedy

of the story was that the man had recently experienced a loss and then later went on to take his own life. My friend didn’t know the particulars or when he had stopped coming to their church exactly, but he knew that they had reached out to his wife after this. I was particularly moved by this thought, as

I’m involved with a new church plant in the Independence, Missouri area.

The church we have been attending (and have grown so much) has partnered with a church planter who started a Kansas City, Kansas offering and now we have been lead to join him. One of the core beliefs that reflect in our churches is that commitment to the individual. (Not to say that my co-workers church doesn’t, but the unfortunate circumstances allowed me introspection on this topic.) Jesus pointed out many times in his teaching his view of every single individu-al who was lost. He said to leave the 99 to find the one in the flock that had strayed. I look at large churches as well as small churches and wonder if we are all do-ing everything that we can to make sure that we’re not losing anyone. That’s a tall order, but I think through the Holy Spirit and some assistance from technology here and there, we can do a lot better job. My first and foremost tool is going to be the ab-solute need for prayer and discernment. We can have all the technology in the world but if we are oblivious to people and so blinded that we need help first and

foremost from God in this endeavor, - then I would be terribly remiss in writing for a magazine called “Chris-tian Computing.” I believe that at anytime and in any place we can be the seed planter or waterer. We might be called to tend or we might be there to harvest – it’s all up to God’s timing. The research that I have read (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number) says that people can keep track of maybe 150 people in total. Of those people very few are close personal connections. I can see how churches with varying sized congregations can have dynamics and how people can be there one week and then gone the next without ever blipping onto someone’s radar. When I was growing up I remem-ber a few fond times when my grandmother’s church pastor or “our pastor” would show up and check how everything was going with our family. We never re-ally got too involved with any particular church at any particular time and it was probably due to a small part of that interconnectedness with others that at-

big ministry - small resources

July 2011Christian Computing® Magazine 31

tended. At the church we attend now I recently wrote a letter to the pastors giving them my fond memories and thoughts of their service and how they had helped me in my Christian walk – one of those keys was the welcome feeling and the way they connected me into the congregation. That same warm and welcoming en-vironment extended out to my girlfriend, fiancée, and ultimately my wife (all in the same). To track people at our new church plant I began to examine many avenues for tracking people. Keep-ing with the theme of this column I explored various options to get the best option for our church plant and potentially share it with others needing similar systems. One particular system looked promising and was an open source system, and was free, but it required Mi-crosoft based components – such as a Microsoft Server and Microsoft SQL Server. I abandoned that option because the server costs and licensing to run that particular system would have made it cost prohibitive. There are a wide variety of other systems available as hosted services (including the one I initially looked at) but the costs would continually be a factor. I ultimate-ly settled on a little open source based system called “Church Info” (http://www.churchdb.org). From their website: “ChurchInfo is a free church database pro-gram to help churches track members, families, groups, pledges and payments. Our feature set is comparable to expensive church management software packages. Our users are supported by an open-source community of people who volunteer their time and energy to make this technology available to all churches.” It runs on the conventional LAMP (Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP) stack, but could run as a WAMP (Window) or MAMP (Mac OSX) stack as well. I chose to shoehorn it onto my current web host that way it can be available “in the cloud” for our other members and pastors to use as needed. Again, I feel like a guinea pig at times when it comes to the technology front. I truly like to try it out before diving into it and giving it a glowing review in a publication. I think that this software will accom-modate what we need it to do and contributing to the code maintainers can easily rectify any shortcomings or issues. It might not be expensive in terms of cost, but the service it will provide in helping us keep track of our sheep will be immeasurable. Someday, when we are standing before God, I know that he will look upon us and our hearts for serving others with our time, talent and treasure and truly say, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” The fact that I get to be a technol-ogy geek and serve God in this capacity is truly amaz-

ing and yet very humbling. I do not know it all, and I look to many sources to continue learning and grow-ing. I hope that you too will continue in those areas of growth. Next month I will dive into the setup and how the system is actually working within our new church plant.

James 5:19-20 (NIV) - My brothers and sisters, if one of you should wander from the truth and someone should bring that person back, remember this: Whoever turns a sinner from the error of their way will save them from death and cover over a multitude of sins.

SIDE NOTE: In the past I have recommended Google Apps for churches to use for documents, email and calendaring. Apparently Google has been changing their policies and now they exclude religious organiza-tions as well as churches under a plethora of building names. Essentially they are cutting off any religion based offering from having their services for free. Other non-profit non-religious/non-political/etc… of-fering can continue to apply and use the Google Apps editions. The church I was at is currently still using Google Apps under the non-profit side of things. I don’t know if they are being “grand-fathered” in or if we are simply flying below the radar for now. The Google Apps program will allow access for free but with limited features (the key missing component be-ing the room reservations and email capabilities) for up to 10 users. This still might be a good way to com-municate and share documents. I believe that the faith based community (yes, I’m looking at you) could step up to fill this gap that Google has created and perhaps offer it also for free. ogy is not thing that will change everything, but not using every resource that you have available is just unfathomable. We are called to spread the gospel message and be witnesses to all the Earth. It’s pretty hard to reach someone around the world or down the street if you don’t try to meet them where they are . . . and some-times it’s just a click away. Don’t let the enormity of your problem prevent you from either asking for what is available. Then when you have those offerings, ask God to bless and multiply it.

32July 2011Christian Computing® Magazine

Upfront, let me confess that I’ve never used Skype. I don’t even have it installed, so despite the title of this article, don’t bother trying to Skype me.That

being said, I continue to be fascinated by the company and recognize the incredible power the application can bring in

taking the Gospel to the farthest corners of the world. Lately, the company has been in the news, so it seems like a good time to review what Skype is and how Christian ministries can use it to the glory of God.

Skype Me

By Russ McGuire - russ.mcguire@gmail.com

the power and the danger

Who is Skype? Skype is the largest telephone company in the world. Skype, the application, is a tool for making cheap or free voice and video calls around the world. Skype has an interesting history. The company was launched in 2003 by the devel-opers behind the very popular KaZaA peer-to-peer file sharing service. KaZaA faced numerous lawsuits over its enabling of people to acquire copyright protected mu-sic and video content without paying for it. The found-ers seemed to exhibit a lack of respect for intellectual property rights and the laws protecting them. Skype was envisioned as a way to leverage similar peer-to-peer Internet protocols to enable people to legal-ly make telephone calls without having to pay expensive international long distance charges to telephone compa-nies. The service quickly became popular and reached 100 million users by 2006. In late 2005 eBay acquired Skype for $3.1 billion. EBay believed that buyers and sellers on eBay’s site would use Skype to discuss products, increasing cus-

tomer confidence in making purchases, driving up sales prices and enabling the sale of higher dollar items. The acquisition didn’t go well and in 2007, eBay took a $1.4 billion write down on their books related to the deal. Despite the management challenges, Skype contin-ued to grow, and last year about a quarter of all inter-national telephone call minutes were on Skype. Given that the synergies with their core business had never materialized, eBay sold 70% of Skype to a collection of investors for $2 billion in November 2009. According to Wikipedia, in 2010 Skype had a billion user accounts. On May 10 of this year, Microsoft agreed to ac-quire Skype for $8.5B (which provides a nice payout to eBay for their remaining 30%). In keeping with the company’s founding legacy of questionable integrity, the company let go many of their top executives in June to avoid having to share the wealth with them when the Microsoft deal finally goes through. Bottom line – I would never represent the company as being founded on strong Christian values, nor would I consider them to be operated by Biblical principles.

July 2011Christian Computing® Magazine 33

But, they sure do have a cool product!

What is Skype? Skype is an application that provides a voice and video calling service over the Internet. It roughly falls into the Voice over IP (VoIP) category, although Skype has tended not to use the most common stan-dard VoIP protocols, instead using proprietary protocols. The original Skype model en-abled two people who each had the Skype software on their computer to call each other for free anywhere in the world. In 2004, the company introduced SkypeOut, which allows Skype users to call from their computer to any telephone number. The pricing for SkypeOut was generally much lower than the pricing for a telephone-to-telephone international long distance call. In 2005, SkypeIn was introduced, giving Skype users (for a fee) a tele-phone number that people can dial from any phone to get to them. In 2006, video calling was added to the Skype client software. Also, in 2006 the first WiFi-based Skype phones were introduced so Skype users could make calls without sitting in front of their computer. In 2007, the company partnered with the British mobile operator 3 to introduce the Skypephone, a mobile phone that supported free Skype calls. Today, here’s how Skype de-scribes their service: Skype is for doing things together, whenever you’re apart. Skype’s text, voice and video make it simple to share experiences with the people that matter to you, wherever they are.

With Skype, you can share a story, celebrate a birthday, learn a language, hold a meeting, work with colleagues – just about anything you need to do together every day. You can use Skype on whatever works best for you - on your phone or computer or a TV with Skype on it. It is free to start using Skype

- to speak, see and instant message other people on Skype for example. You can even try out group video, with the latest version of Skype. If you pay a little, you can do more things, in more ways, with more people – like call phones, access WiFi or send texts. You can pay as you go or buy a subscription, whatever works for you. And in the world of business, this means you can bring your entire ecosystem of workers, partners and customers together to get things done

How Does Skype Bring Power to the Kingdom? Not long ago, I arrived at a coffee shop early for a

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“Software tailored for you”

34July 2011Christian Computing® Magazine

Bible study. I was surprised that early in the morning to find a young lady there with her laptop open. Apparent-ly, she was using the free WiFi to carry on a video conversation with a friend who apparently was in another part of the world where timezones dictated 6am as the best time to stay connected. Obviously, many missionaries have similarly discovered how Skype can help them stay connected to family, friends, and supporters back home, and with other missionaries elsewhere in their country or around the world. For those of us who stay in our comfort-able homes and support those called by God to take the Gospel to the farthest corners of the world, it’s been amazing to see how technology has advanced our ability to be part of this kingdom work. Only a couple of decades ago, it would take weeks for a letter from the field to reach us. More recently, e-mail has provided virtually instanta-neous updates and enabled us to partic-ipate in timely prayer requests. Today, through technologies like Skype, we can now literally see into the mission field and provide encouragement to these servants of God.

Why I Don’t Use Skype When Skype first came out, a technically adept friend warned me about the security holes that Skype opens in your computer. Given the ownership and management changes over the years, and especially with Microsoft’s upcoming ownership, it’s likely that most of these issues have been or will be resolved. But, to be honest, I just don’t have a burning need for Skype. My home telephone service includes free long distance and I have plenty of minutes on my cellphone that I don’t use each month. E-mail works great for my purposes with my friends around the world and for the missionaries my family supports. Someday, that may change, in which case I’ll carefully evaluate whether Skype is for me and I’ll work hard on getting the right privacy settings (this link is scary). Or better yet, I might encourage my friends to try a safer alternative. It is my hope and prayer that these articles on the power and danger of technology will encourage you in

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PCS-11301-ChurchExecutive_4.75x7.25.indd 1 7/14/11 10:23 AMyour daily walk with Christ. Whether it is the printing press, radio, television, personal computers, the Internet, mobility, or Skype, new technologies continue to ad-vance our ability to know God and to serve Him, wher-ever we go.

Russ McGuire is an executive for a Fortune 100 compa-ny and the founder/co-founder of three technology start-ups. His latest entrepreneurial venture is Hschooler.net (http://hschooler.net), a social network for Christian families (especially homeschoolers) which is being built and run by three homeschooled students under Russ’ direction.

July 2011Christian Computing® Magazine 35

An Introduction: Making Your Words

Yvon Prehn - yvon@effectivechurchcom.com

Seismic changes are in process in how people take in information today. In addition to print and computer screens, we can access content on digital devices

of every size and resolution. Though many of us consume information through various systems, in the church we are more than consumers of content. We have been entrusted with the words of eternal life and a current challenge for

church communicators is how to share our message with the new digital devices? Read on and I’ll begin to share what I’ve learned.

Available on Kindle, Nook, iPhones, iPods, etc.

There are many solutions suitable to a variety of projects This is the start of a series of articles on this topic because I am testing a number of sources and oddly enough for a process that ends up with immediate access to information, a number of these systems can take weeks (or months) from the time you start digital conversion until your materials are available. Even though this article will not tell you everything, it will begin the process on some exciting new ways to share your message What seems to take the most time—in whatever format you want to share—is for your message to end up on www.amazon.com. Amazon is the default place where many people search for content today. And every conversion process or online publisher promises you that they will get your content on Amazon, in both their online store for on-demand books and in their Kindle book-store. Though books I’ve written in the past that were published by major Christian publishers have been and still are on Amazon, I’ve been waiting for months for other sources to get my books on the site. I was going to wait until I got the final results from these companies to begin sharing what I’ve learned, but I’ve realized that even though I don’t have the final solutions, I have enough experience to share what I’ve learned so far. Additional articles will follow this one with more details and specific instructions on how to make the most of these resources.

First Steps—Print to PDF –not as simple as it seems I’m assuming you have systems for print worked out.

The next step for many churches is to put their materials in PDF format. This is very easy to do and enables churches to make material available to read on the computer screen. Here is the challenge—just because you created it and people can read it on the computer screen does not mean they are going to read it if the layout is dif-ficult to read on the computer screen. One of the biggest challenges with PDF is that a layout that works well on paper, such as how you would layout informa-tion for your church newsletter, doesn’t always work well on the computer screen. This happens because, unless you have a very large, high-resolution monitor, it’s difficult to read the whole page with text and images mixed together at one time. If the printing is in columns, as most church newsletters are, you must scroll up and down, up and down to read the page. If you don’t use columns and print across the page, the lines are too long for comfortable read-ing. The solution is a new layout for PDF communication that uses one column for the primary content and out-dents the headers and section dividers. This allows your eye to easily skim and read the

ministry communication

36July 2011Christian Computing® Magazine

text with one continuous scrolling motion. To see the differences in layout and how this works, I’m making this video, The best page layouts for print, e-books, pdfs and the web, a Webinar On Demand, FREE for a limited time for CCMAG readers. It is normally only avail-able for members of Effective Church Commu-nications. To go to the video and PDF handouts that go with it, click here: http://www.effec-tivechurchcom.com/2010/05/video-the-best-page-layouts-for-print-e-books-pdfs-and-the-web/ This is the layout I have used for download-able ebooks I’ve created in the past and sold through http://www.lulu.com/yvonprehn. It also works well for reading on a computer screen for people to download the file and print it out. The layout is useful for instruction booklets where you illustrate how to use forms and similar actions where you have large images printed in a book. Here is another sample I am making avail-able for you, normally just for ECC MEMBERS, it is an ebook on planning. It shows the layout and how it integrates with instructions on how to use forms. Click on the following link to download the free book:

http://www.effectivechurchcom.com/2011/01/planning-book-pdf-download-special-edition/

How to get material on a mobile phone or an e-reader such as Kindle or Nook? Everything changes again when you go to these digital formats. What works for full-page, lots of illustration pages, does not work on a small screen. For a small screen, large images are impossible to view, as are pages that have arrows and directions that use graphics. For the small screen what works best is text only that has been formatted into clear sections with bold headers. That sounds simple, but you simply tell people to download your MS Word file and have it readable on any small screen de-vice. It needs to be formatted in a way that makes it work for that particular system and there are a variety of different systems for different phones and e-readers. A tremendous amount of material is floating around on the web on how to do this; there are people and places that will charge lots of money to convert your materials; there are sites that will do it for you for lots of money. But you don’t have to spend anything! Below is the link to a great company: Smashwords will take your properly formatted MS Word document and turn it into an ebook that is readable and available through many of the digital book channels. I’ll go into the nuts and bolts of manuscript and cover creation in the next article in this series, or you can be brave and charge ahead and try it. Below are links to my channel on the Smashwords site and then what they did with my materials when they automatically put them on the iTunes or the Barnes and Noble

Nook site. The books I have on them now are free, allowing you to simply download and test the systems. I don’t have a Kindle link because, contrary to what they first said, Smashwords does not seem to interface with Amazon.com. I am in the process of another system to get my books in Kindle format, but the process was not complete by the deadline for this article. By next month, I’ll be able to fill you in on all of that process. Go to these and have fun exploring:

http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/yvonprehn

http://itunes.apple.com/us/book/church-connection-cards-special/id436273925?mt=11

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/yvon-prehn

As stated earlier, this is the start of a series of articles on this topic. There is a lot to share and I’m looking forward to helping you share the words of eternal life in many more formats. If you have questions, comments or experiences in this area, please put them on the Church Communications Print and Digital Community at this link below:http://community.ccmag.com/CCMAG/CCMAG/Directory/CommunityDetails/Default.aspx?CommunityKey=f4d8233c-102d-4603-9e55-fd9e4eb03544___________________________For lots more information and instructions on church communica-tions creation in every channel go to Yvon Prehn’s training website for church communicators: http://www.effectivechurchcom.com