Archive | Technology

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Get a FREE 3G iPhone, iPod Touch, or Mac computer

Posted on 14 June 2008 by Tim Schmoyer

By now you’ve probably heard all the sweet features coming out on the new iPhone 2.0 in July. It’s enough to make anyone drool! Fortunately, the prices are coming down, but most youth pastor salaries still don’t quite afford the luxuries of such toys. That’s why I’ve been working freebie sites to get a lot of these things for FREE instead.

Here’s what I’ve earned for free so far:

These freebie sites work because advertisers pay them for every trial customer they send their way. The freebie site then splits their income with you in form of cash or a free gift. And all the companies that participate are reputable companies with trial offers you might like to try out anyway, such as Blockbuster, Netflix, Stamps.com, Photostamps.com, Gamefly.com, etc., so it’s really a win-win situation for everyone. If, at the end of your trial, you decide that the service isn’t for you, you’re totally free to cancel it and move on without any further obligation. Either way, you still earn credit at the freebie site just for checking it out. (Check here for a list of some of the trial offers I’ve completed and my experience with each one.) Once you reach 100% credit for completing your trial offer, refer a couple other people to sign up for the freebie site under your unique referral link and get your free electronics or cash as they also complete trial offers!

In case you’d like to get free Apple products or cash, too, here’s how it works step-by-step.

FREE Play Station 3

  1. For a FREE PS3 or $425 cash, click this link: http://www.YourPS34free.com/index.php?ref=4727939
  2. Sign up and choose an account type (”referral” is the easiest).
  3. Complete just 1 offer and then refer other people to do the same under your referral link. (PS3 requires 8 referrals)
  4. After you refer enough people who also complete a trial offer, you receive your FREE PlayStation 3!

FREE iPhone, iPod Touch, or Mac computer

  1. Click this link: http://apple.v-bux.com/index.php?id=11517
  2. Sign up to create an account.
  3. Complete offers (like Blockbuster, Netflix or Stamps.com) to get 100% credit (usually about 2-5 offers) and then refer other people to do the same under your referral link.
  4. After you refer enough people who also reach 100% credit for trial offers, you receive your iPhone, iPod Touch, Mac, or cash for FREE!

Even if you only successfully refer 1 person, V-Bux still pays you a minimum of $80!

It honestly isn’t any more difficult than that. If you have any questions about the process, I’ve done it many times, so feel free to ask in the comments below. If you want some tips on how to earn referrals, check out these 10 ideas.

One important tip
Make sure your browser is set to accept all cookies while you go through the sign-up process both at the freebie site and when you complete offers. If you click an offer and don’t sign up for it on that visit, make sure you clear your cookies before going back to it again. Otherwise the tracking cookie might not register that you signed up for their service from the freebie site and you’ll have to request a manual credit, which can take several weeks to be approved.

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Guest post: 22 free software apps for youth ministry

Posted on 28 May 2008 by Tim Schmoyer

Dennis Poulette contributes the following list of free software that is useful for youth ministry. If you’re interested in becoming a guest blogger for Life In Student Ministry, check out this page.

Photos

  • Picasa - (Windows only) An online photo organizer from Google that allows you to do limited edits on your photos, organize them, and easily share them with others.
  • GIMP - (Windows/Mac/Linux) The GNU Image Manipulation Program is a powerful, free Photoshop alternative that allows you to edit photos and save them in a variety of formats.
  • irfanview - (Windows only) A graphic viewer that allows you to preview many different types of image, video, and audio files.

Music and Audio

  • Audacity - (Windows/Mac/Linux) This music editing software is great for adding sound effects, making long songs shorter, mixing different tracks together, and any other basic audio editing you might need to do.
  • Switch - (Windows/Mac) I use switch to convert music files from one type to another. You can output many different files to mp3 or wav formats.
  • iTunes - (Windows/Mac) Unless you have lived under a rock for a while, you already know that iTunes can manage large amounts of music and do all sorts of things to playback your audio files as well as add visualizations to your music.

Video

  • Handbrake - (Windows/Mac/Linux) Converts videos from DVD to MPEG-4 formats.
  • VLC Media Player - (Windows/Mac/Linux) A multimedia player for various audio and video formats that does not require external codecs or programs to work. It can be used to play just about any video format.
  • Download helper - (Windows/Mac/Linux) A Firefox extension that lets you save videos from most video sites on the internet, like Youtube, Google, and many others.
  • ffmpegX (Mac only) and SUPER (Windows only) both convert video into every and any format you could possibly ever need.

Office/Publishing

  • OpenOffice - (Window/Linux) An office software suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and more.
  • Taco HTML Edit - (Mac only) A full-featured HTML editor and PHP editor. It allows users to rapidly create their own web sites.

Security and Utilities

  • McAfee site advisor - (Windows/Mac/Linux) A Firefox and Internet Explorer plugin that tests websites and warns users about spyware, spam, viruses, and other online problems.
  • AVG Anti-virus - (Windows only) Provides users with basic anti-virus and anti-spyware protection.
  • Mozy backup - (Windows/Mac) The free version of this online backup offers 2 GB of online storage space, and it automatically backs up your important documents online and encrypts them.
  • Caffeine (Mac only) - Keeps your mac awake when activated, which prevents sleeping, screen savers, and screen dimming, perfect for when you are giving presentations.

Study

  • E-Sword - (Windows only) A free Bible software package with many versions, commentaries, and other books available to improve your study of the Bible.
  • Freemind - (Windows/Mac/Linux) A great mind mapping program that is useful for outlining books, organizing thoughts, and creating mind maps of anything you need.

Web/Email/RSS

  • FileZilla - (Windows/Mac/Linux) A fast and free FTP, FTPS and SFTP client.
  • Thunderbird - (Window/Mac/Linux) Mozilla’s alternative to Outlook, Thunderbird is very fast and efficient for email organization.
  • Burn - (Mac only) An application for burning CDs and DVDs.
  • NetNewsWire (Mac only) and FeedDemon (Windows only) are news reader that use a three-panel interface and downloads RSS and Atom feeds to keep you on top of all of your favorite news sites and blogs. Syncs with their online web reader, too.

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Dennis Poulette is a youth ministry professor with Youth Ministry International. He lives and works in Mexico City. You can follow his ministry at ymimexico.org.

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Talk with me and other youth workers LIVE this Friday

Posted on 07 May 2008 by Tim Schmoyer

If you’re a fan of the Life In Student Ministry Facebook page or if you follow me on Twitter, you saw me mention an open youth ministry round-table Skypecast discussion for Friday afternoon. About eight of you showed up! Despite some initial technical difficulties, the conversation actually went very well for a first-time attempt. In fact, we’re going to try it again this Friday and possibly make it a regular thing. We discussed several issues together that we’re currently facing in our ministries:

  • One-on-one discipleship plans
  • Handling ministry responsibilities on our day off
  • How to answer students’ tough questions about God
  • Summer ministry plans
  • Some of our favorite youth group games
  • And more

It was a fun and energizing time to just hang out, relax and talk about life and ministry. I’m looking forward to the conversation again this Friday at 1:00 PM Central Time. Plus, I’ll have a LIVE video feed running this time, too.

Joining Skypecasts is really quite simple. For details about how this works, visit my new Skypecast page. All you need to listen is a Windows computer and Skype (it’s FREE!). If you’d like to participate in the discussion, you’ll also need a working microphone.

This Friday at 1:00 PM Central Time, login to Skype and hang out with me and other youth workers online. In the meantime, add me to your Skype contacts: rockinyp Oh, and become a fan of my Facebook page so you don’t miss out on opportunities like this again in the future. I’ll be announcing featured guests through the Facebook page who are already lined up to join us in up-coming conversations.


[ Life In Student Ministry Skypecasts ]

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Facebook app: Daily bible studies for teens

Posted on 30 April 2008 by Tim Schmoyer

About a year ago many of you shared your ideas for naming a new international youth ministry by my friend Bill Scott (founder of the former radio ministry, Zjam). His new ministry, Xtreme Youth Alliance, is taking off all over the country, both on the radio and online.

Xtreme Bible Study Facebook App
Earlier this week I finished building a Facebook application for them that displays a new teen Bible study on Facebook profiles every day. It also shows up in the left sidebar in Facebook so every day when your kids login they can start with a fresh look at God’s Word. Check out the application and, if you like it, use the app’s Invite link to share it with your students.


Add the Xtreme Bible Study Facebook App

Xtreme Bible Study RSS Feed
Here’s the RSS feed that the Xtreme Bible Study app reads to get the new studies, in case you’d rather subscribe in your RSS reader: http://feeds.feedburner.com/xtremebiblestudy

Xtreme Bible Study Podcast
Also check out their daily 3-minute Xtreme Bible Study Podcast in iTunes. Teens can sync the Bible study with their iPods to listen to short daily Bible studies while riding the bus, working out in the gym, riding their bikes, etc.

Between Facebook and iPods, there’s seriously no way to make the Word of God more easily accessible to teens through mediums they actually use.

If you find these tools to be valuable. feel free to add the links to your youth group website, like I did.

Check out this page if you’d like me to build a Facebook application for your youth ministry.

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8 ways to enhance your PlugRug experience

Posted on 02 April 2008 by Tim Schmoyer

PlugRug.com is taking off! With several hundred visitors every day, it’s quickly becoming a great place to collaborate around some of the best ministry resources, tools and ideas on the web.

Here are some guidelines to help enhance your experience as a PlugRug user:

1. Make your submissions stand out by using an avatar.
The default “P” image tends to blend in to the crowd. Get noticed when you contribute to the PlugRug community by using a profile picture.

2. When submitting material, use a good title, brief description and accurate tags.
This will have a big affect on whether people choose to check out the story or not. Accurately describe what your recommended material is about and why you think others should check it out, too.

3. Leave comments.
This is perhaps one of the most valuable aspects of a social site like PlugRug. If you plug it, say why you like it and think it’s valuable. If you bury it, feel free to do the same.

4. Don’t be afraid to bury!
The point of PlugRug is to let the best stuff rise to the top. Without material that is “swept under the rug,” a lot of it may eventually rise to the top and that’s not helpful for anyone. Bury it rather than thinking, “Maybe someone else will like it and plug it instead.”

5. Subscribe to PlugRug’s RSS feeds.
There’s feeds for all published stories, all upcoming stories, upcoming and published stories for each specific category, which helps you stay up to date with all the latest recommended material for your ministry niche. There’s even feeds for individual users whose submissions you typically find to be valuable.

6. Avoid constantly submitting only your own material.
It actually works against you since people tend to ignore your site and your submissions after a while. Try adding the Plug Button to your site and let other people submit your material if they recommend it.

7. Link to the primary source, not to someone else’s post that links to the source.
Pretty self-explanatory. It’s annoying to go to one site just to have to click another link to finally see the story. Take us straight there.

8. You don’t have to visit PlugRug to submit a link.
At the bottom of your profile page there’s a bookmarklet you can add to your browser. Use this link in your browser to easily submit stories with a single click.

[Some of these tips based on 11 Digg Tips.]

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Turn digital pictures into PowerPoint backgrounds with some Photoshop tweaks

Posted on 26 March 2008 by Tim Schmoyer

We all use backgrounds images for PowerPoint and MediaShout, but unfortunately a lot of people don’t know anything better than to use an image with plain text titles. Not only is this sometimes difficult to read, but it almost annoying to look at. Here’s an example of how you can easily turn a digital photo into a slick background image.

For our example, we’ll use a picture my wife randomly took of some markers. Right-click here and “Save File As/Save Target As” if you want to play around with the original image. I’m using PhotoShop CS2 in the screenshots below, but these tools are also available in the slimmed down PhotoShop Elements (available for Windows and Mac) and other image editing applications.

Screen shot #1 and #2. Open the image you want to use as a PowerPoint or MediaShout background and change the image size to the screen resolution you’ll use with the projector. In my case, I’ll use the typical 1024×768, which is probably sufficient for 95% of the cases. (This helps keep your PowerPoint file size smaller so you’re not embedding an 8.0 megapixel image into your slide show.)

Screen shot #3. The text should stand out from the background image, not blend into it, so let’s lighten the image a little. There are various ways to do this, but in the example below I create a new layer, use the Paint Bucket tool to paint it white and then change the layer’s Opacity to 66% so the background layer beneath shows through a little.

Screen shot #4. Next, create another new layer, select the Type Tool and type your title on the image. Change the text color to be something that easily stands out. In my case, I’ll use black. You can change the font and size in the toolbar at the top.

Screen shot #5 and #6. To make the title stand out a bit from the rest of the text that will be displayed in PowerPoint, l’ll add a new layer style to the text layer. First I zoom in to 100% under the View menu so I can see the title at it’s full resolution as I manipulate it. Now let’s try Bevel and Emboss. (Play around with the other layer styles in the left column sometime, too.) In this image I’m using the Inner Bevel style with the Chisel Hard technique to add a bit of 2D perception to the title. Click OK when you’re finished setting the layer style the way you like it. (Hint: Simple is better. Don’t use too many styles together.)

Screen shot #7. Now save the image as a JPEG. In PhotoShop, go to File, Save As, and change the drop-down format menu to JPEG. Give the image a name, save it and use it as your new PowerPoint or MediaShout background!

Here’s my final image if you’d like to see it full-screen or even use it for an upcoming presentation.

The other advantage to this is that you don’t lose your special fonts styles when you transfer the presentation to a computer that doesn’t have the same fonts installed. Everything stays in-tact perfectly.

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My FREE $580 and another iPod Touch arrived! Now for PS3 and Wii

Posted on 03 March 2008 by Tim Schmoyer

Last December I posted about how to get an iPhone or $580 cash for free. Well, I did it and got my $580! Click the thumbnail to the right to see a full-size image of the PayPal transaction.

Here’s the timeline:

  1. December 14, 2007: I signed up at a freebie site under someone else’s referral link and signed up for a trial month of GameFly.com.
  2. December 17, 2007: My account is credited for doing the GameFly.com trial.
  3. December 18, 2007: I posted on my blog that I got my free iPod Touch and also posted my referral link for the free iPhone or $580.
  4. February 17, 2008: I had the 11 referrals I needed for $580 cash, so I submitted my account for approval.
  5. February 22, 2008: My account was approved and I placed the order for the $580.
  6. February 23, 2008: I wake up the very next morning to an email notification that the $580 was delivered to my PayPal account!

I got another FREE iPod Touch, too!
During this time I also completed another freebie site on the side and got the 32 GB iPod Touch. I already got the 16 GB iPod Touch for free from a different freebie site, but now that I have the 32 GB one, I’m probably going to sell the 16 GB iPod on eBay.

If you want to earn a free iPhone or iPod Touch (or almost any other Apple product), sign up under this referral link, complete a couple trial offers to reach 100% and then refer some people to do the same under your link.

Get a PlayStation 3 or a Wii!

Next I’m going to cash out on the PlayStation 3 and Wii sites. Obviously I have first-hand evidence that this is real and legit, not a rip-off scam or some pain-in-the-neck process. Here’s how you can get a FREE PlayStation 3 or Wii (or cash):

  1. For the Wii, click this link: http://80.macrobucks.com/?referral=4342
  2. For the PS3, click this link: http://www.YourPS34free.com/index.php?ref=4727939
  3. Sign up and choose an account type (”referral” is the easiest).
  4. Complete trial offers (only 1 offer for PS3; enough for 2.0 credits at Wii site) and then refer other people to do the same under your referral link. (PS3 requires 8 referrals, the Wii requires 3.)
  5. Receive your FREE PlayStation 3 or Wii!

It honestly isn’t any more difficult than that. If you have any questions about the process, I’ve done it many times, so feel free to ask in the comments below.

One important tip
Make sure your browser is set to accept all cookies while you go through the sign-up process both at the freebie site and when you complete offers. If you click an offer and don’t sign up for it on that visit, make sure you clear your cookies before going back to it again. Otherwise the tracking cookie might not register that you signed up for their service from the freebie site and you’ll have to request a manual credit, which can take several weeks.

My experience with offers I’ve completed so far

  • Stamps.com — This offer was painless and easy. I signed up for a free trial month of their service at a time when I was selling a lot of stuff on eBay. They gave me $5.00 of free postage just to try it out, but I liked it so much I voluntarily bought a lot more postage for my eBay items. To get credit for trying this offer, just sign up for the trial, download the free software (Windows only) and purchase some postage with the free $5.00 they give you.
  • Photostamps.com — Another painless and easy one that credited my freebie site instantly. All I had to do was order a sheet of stamps for $24.98 using a photo. Since my wife was getting ready to send Christmas cards at the time, I order a sheet of stamps using a picture of the two of us together for the cards. It was also nice because there was no trial involved that I had to remember to cancel later if I didn’t like the service.
  • GameFly.com — Since my free Xbox 360 Elite, Xbox Live subscription and Halo 3 arrived, I wanted more games to play on it. GameFly.com took a couple business days to credit my freebie account (as it said it would) and for $9.95 I enjoyed a month of unlimited video game rentals.
  • Blockbuster.com — This was a fun one. For $10.68 I got a month of unlimited movie rentals through their website, keeping up to 3 movies at a time and 4 in-store movie exchanges. Again, this offer took a couple days to credit my freebie account, but that was on-time for this offer.
  • Google SEO Supervisor — Figured I’d check this one out since a lot of my blog traffic comes from Google and I depend on the Google Ads here to cover the site’s expenses. It cost me $4.95 to get two trial weeks of access to their site’s members area to learn how to optimize everything for Google and Adsense.
  • Emusic — At first I signed up for the cheapest plan at $9.99 for 30 downloads per month since I didn’t expect to find much music there that would be of interest to me, but actually I quickly found many recent albums from bands I listened to in my teen years that are no longer on the radio. My 30 downloads went fast and there was still a lot more I wanted, so I upgraded to the $14.99 plan for 50 downloads. NOTE: When I first signed up, I could not log into emusic’s site nor did I receive a confirmation email, but by the next morning the email arrived and everything was good to go. I also did not receive credit for this offer, so today I submitted a “manual credit request” with a copy of my confirmation email. I should receive credit within 10 business days.
  • FreeCreditReport.com, Free Online Credit Report — Each of these worked the same way. For $1.00 I set up an account to check my credit report with the three big crediting agencies and monitor my credit for a trial period. I didn’t end up keeping any of the services, however.
  • Bargain Homes — I never got credit for completing this $1.00 trial period offer. I reported it to the freebie site, sent them the email confirmation Bargain Homes sent me for signing up and the guys at the freebie site were gracious enough to instead give me double credit for different offer I completed there.
  • RealtyTrac, Simply You, RealtyStore — All these sites work pretty much the same way. I paid $1.00 each for a trial period to access a members only section of their website, whether that be for personal care products or special real estate deals in my area (mostly foreclosures). My wife and I were looking to buy a house at that time, so I decided to give them a try. Didn’t find anything that compelled me to spend more than the $1.00 or keep the services past the trial period, though.

Freebies I’ve earned

How to earn referrals for your freebie site
Most people would love to earn some of these free prizes, but there’s three common excuses:

  1. It’s a scam!
  2. I’ll get hit with a ton of spam mail.
  3. Completing offers costs more than the prize itself!
  4. I don’t think I can get others to complete referrals for me.

For #1, check out the links above. I’ve done it several times and received several prizes, so I know it’s not a scam. Concerning #2, I have not received one single shred of spam as a result of completing these trial offers or freebie sites, not via email nor postal mail. These companies actually have pretty aggressive privacy statements. Number 3 also is not true. Read above about the offers I’ve tried. The most I ever paid for an offer was $24.98 for a sheet of photo stamps. Most offers cost between absolutely nothing and $15. And about #4, check out this post I wrote that gives 10 ideas for how to earn referrals for your freebie site. They work for me, anyway!

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Building online Christian community for your youth group (2 of 2)

Posted on 26 February 2008 by Tim Schmoyer

By guest blogger, Brandon Riley

Sell the Vision…
You can have the coolest website or forum that promotes online community, but if you fail to sell the vision to your community, it may be used only by the few that are fairly web-savvy. Helping your ministry see that these online tools are more than just ways of communicating, but are part of the culture and can be used as tools in the ministry will help them to understand the reason behind this new technology.

…To volunteers
When we first started building an online community for our students in August of 2007 I spoke with our volunteer leaders about the importance of being in the student’s world on the Internet. One thing I stressed was using their online profile information as a way into starting a conversation with them. We can in a sense be a student of students by knowing them better through the information they provide on these online profiles. Many students will (sometimes unfortunately) disclose more personal information on the Internet than they will in person.

…To students
In August of 2007 we started using a new online community platform that would allow us to also handle sign ups for our small groups, events, etc. It was a lot of work at first because we were changing the entire culture of doing things. We pushed it pretty hard in the beginning. We made a promotional video, sent home flyers, posted info on our website and had laptops in the back of our facility for students to sign up. We cast the vision as a way to stay connected with our ministry and a way to reach out to new people. One thing we did, which I think was the success to our strategy was that we forced our students to use it. We took one thing (small group sign-ups) and said, “If you want to be in a small group you need to be apart of our online community.” This worked for about 90% of our students over the course of 3-4 weeks.

Conclusion
I have found that people are sometimes skeptical when it comes to new technology or new ways of doing things. Giving them a clear understanding as to why you are using this or doing things a different way will help get them excited about these new opportunities. Don’t be afraid to stop using paper by going completely online. Yes there may be some road bumps, but in the end it will be revolutionary.

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Brandon Riley is the Technical Director of Student Ministries at Denton Bible Church in Texas and is also the Director of User Experience for Tuggle, a social network with built-in management tools for youth ministries.

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Building online Christian community for your youth group (1 of 2)

Posted on 25 February 2008 by Tim Schmoyer

By guest blogger, Brandon Riley

Just like any Christian community there has to be distinctives that make it “Christian.” Perhaps the same should be true with online “Christian” community. Is it enough to have Christians online in a Facebook group and therefore call it “community?”

As you think about building an online community for your youth group, perhaps you should be asking what makes it distinctively “Christian.” Sure the mere fact of encouraging people and asking how they are doing is good morale, but perhaps you will find this same type of morale among non-Christians as well.

As teenagers spend more and more time on the internet, how are we as youth workers going to reach them in this realm of life for them? There are four areas of focus that perhaps may be of great use in the online community as we strive to enhance “Christian” community that is already taking place in our churches.

1. Testimonies: Stories of life change and stories of being changed by God’s grace are some of the best un-tapped areas that online communities need to embrace. Often online profiles include favorite books and music but no place to include a story of life change. And granted if someone has not experienced life change and has no real testimony at this point in life, perhaps they will look at other profiles to see what this testimony thing is all about and perhaps they might even start to question where they stand with the almighty Creator.

2. Ongoing Dialog: While discussion happens at church and in small groups, the idea of discussing theology or prayer requests or culture ought to be something that Christians are in constant dialog over. As we seek to be a body of believers who not only come together once or twice a week, but are speaking and dialogging together perhaps even at midnight on the Internet about the theology behind the movie I Am Legend.

3. Involvement: Is your online group just an online group? Being on several social networks myself, I have been able to add myself to 15+ groups most of which I never look at or interact with. I simply exist within the group. Is your online community encouraging your students to sign up for things in your ministry such as small groups, praise band or the tech team? Is your online community a place for students to volunteer to go play Wii at a nursery home with the elderly?

4. New People: Does your online community welcome new people and make them feel like they are apart of something unique? Making your online community a place where members can feel welcomed and loved will be a distinctive they may not find in many online groups. Are you welcoming people as they join? Are the members starting dialog with them they
day they sign up? Perhaps students may connect online with others before even connecting in person due the walls that often come down in this relaxed environment.

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Brandon Riley is the Technical Director of Student Ministries at Denton Bible Church in Texas and is also the Director of User Experience for Tuggle, a social network with built-in management tools for youth ministries.

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Ideas for your church website

Posted on 14 February 2008 by Tim Schmoyer

Every couple weeks I get an email from someone asking me to check out their new church website. Most of the time they only want to show it off and receive a pat on the back for their hard work, but sometimes they ask for feedback, too. I’m certainly no church web-design expert, but I put together a list of what I think should encompass a good church website, not that a site should overwhelm visitors with everything on this list, but that this be a reference point for new ideas. If you’d like to evaluate your church’s website, here’s a tool to help you do so (found via churchrelevance.com)

What the website should do:

  • Welcome and attract new visitors
  • Be a tool for members to invite others
  • Communication vehicle for current members
  • Get people involved in ministry
  • Be a 24/7 info resource about our church
  • Be a center of spiritual resources for members throughout the week
  • Interact with members throughout the week about spiritual and life issues
  • Share the gospel with seekers
  • Be graphically and visually stimulating (good design = perceived credibility)

Audience:

  • Potential visitors between 18-45 years old (primary)
  • Regular attenders between 18-45 years old (secondary)

Possible information:

  • Service times
  • Driving directions/map
  • Building floor-plan
  • Nursery/childcare info
  • Staff directory
  • Info about the church
  • What we believe
  • Gospel presentation
  • What to expect (visitors)
  • Current ministry opportunities
  • Current news
  • FAQs
  • Calendar
  • Newsletters (email and print)
  • Weekly bulletins
  • Contact form
  • Denominational news
  • Missionary updates

Media

  • Sermon podcasts (video/audio)
  • Sermon archives
  • Sermon transcripts
  • File and document sharing/downloads
  • Event promotional tools (e-invites, postcards, flyers)
  • Photo galleries

Interaction

  • Pastor, director and missionary blogs (sermon teasers, additional sermon thoughts, family discussion questions, etc.)
  • Small group discussions
  • Scripture reading lists
  • “Ask the pastor”
  • Share prayer requests
  • Testimonies
  • Sermon Q&A
  • Polls/surveys

Miscellaneous

  • Online giving
  • Online registration for events/classes
  • Volunteer screening process

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About me: I am married to my beautiful wife, Dana, and together we live in Minnesota where I serve as the youth pastor at our local church. The opinions expressed here are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my church.
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