17 Mar
There are three days left in the UpThemes massive MightyDeals bundle. You get 13 premium themes + 2 plugins for $49.00. The best part is there is lifetime support and upgrades included in this deal. There’s no reason to pass this deal up if you are planning on using WordPress for any future site. Included are an array of themes that would benefit youth groups, music artists, team collaboration, personal blogs, and much more.
8 Mar
Here’s a couple good hints to make your church site even more awesome. I see a lot of church sites that don’t incorporate a browser favicon (url bar and tab icon) and an iPhone/iPad home screen bookmark icon. Excellence is in the details. Place these lines of code between the <head> tags for awesomeness.
<!--Displays as an icon in the browser tabs and URL bar --> <link rel="shortcut icon" href="http://yourdomain.com/images/image.png">
<!--Sets the icon for iPad and iPhone home screens when your page is bookmarked --> <link rel="apple-touch-icon" href="http://yourdomain.com/images/image.png">
26 Apr
Here a little techie thought for personal reflection or to use in a cool youth lesson. In programming there are a couple types of logic that are used to produce results – Sequential and Combinational Logic. (more…)
23 Mar
When I was a younger we visited churches across the United States. I remember one church in particular that we attended in the mid 90′s that was still using office equipment from the late 70′s. No joke! With my interest peaked in computers, I always asked why they had not upgraded to newer equipment. The answer I got was, “Why change it if it works?” Works is a relative term to the individual.
This image reminded me of that office scenario – the green monochrome screens, the decades old stained, mildewed keyboards, and the sound of dot matrix printers spooling paper up and buzzing line by line. Don’t forget the perforated rip sound when the job was done, and the peeling off of the paper track with the little equidistant holes, not to mention the LPT and serial cable spaghetti bowl.
Imagine trying to cram this 1980′s hard drive beast into your cellphone for extra storage. It’s quite the dichotomy for sure.
What if there was a photo that depicted your current methods and mindset with the imperative of the Gospel, modern innovation, the direction of the church, and the culture around you? Would you need an upgrade?
Here are my questions for those methodologically obsolete. Why upgrade your methods and your mindset if you’re comfortable doing what you’re doing? Why teach your team new concepts if they’re hitting status quo? Why expand your mind and learn new things on a weekly basis? Why use social media for your church? Why upgrade your God-forsaken website made with Frontpage? Why stretch yourself to find more creative ways to share the Gospel?
The answer: you might just find a more efficient, effective, economical, engaging, evangelistic and exhilarating experience around the corner. Jesus was a mindset and method changer. Work smarter, not harder for the Kingdom.
(Photo via http://www.dump.com/2010/03/20/20gb-in-1980-vs-32gb-in-2010-pic/)
22 Mar
I was speaking with a pastor today who asked if I knew where to find multilingual media resources for churches. I did some research and came up with nothing significant. The sermon media and religious short-film industry is primarily English. Many churches today have multilingual services throughout the week including Spanish, Portuguese, Korean, Chinese and many more. With the ever expanding diversity of the US, worship/sermon media creators should expand their scope to multilingual formats. This is not only a good business move, but also casts a wider net to impact congregations who don’t speak English.
Here are a few ways I see how this can be accomplished:
By creating a multilingual-friendly environment in their marketplace, worship media companies would be in lock-step with the trending direction of American diversity, especially within the church.
Worship House Media has a collection of Spanish videos.
16 Feb
If you don’t have experience in video ministry and are planning to install multiple projectors or screens of any kind in your church read further. A common mistake among those starting out cold turkey with video equipment is to take a primary video feed and split it between two screens without amplification. When you split a cable into two cables, the signal does not remain 100% strength on each. It splits the strength of the signal and divides it between the two. The screens will display your video feed, however the picture will be dimmed to 50% of the original output. (more…)
