In case you haven’t had a chance to try it out yet, here are about 100 invites to Google+. It’s like Facebook, only much cleaner. It’s easy to add “circles” to follow your friends. The “hangouts” are great if you’d like to try group video chat. Check out this brief video demonstrating some of the Google+ features.

I get pretty excited about the potential of new tools like this being used for ministry purposes. Can’t wait to see how this unfolds. Check out the video highlighting the new features in the Google+ Project.

Your church needs a website. It’s that simple. This media-driven world may be a bewildering place, and a church website may seem complicated and expensive. But still, every church needs a website. Here’s why.

1. A church website brings people to your church. If someone wants to find a church in your area, how are they going to find it? If your first answer is, “check the Yellow Pages” you’re wrong. Most people go straight to Google.
2. A church website connects people. Fellowship takes place even when people aren’t physically together. Church websites give members a way to interact and fellowship throughout the week. This kind of interaction helps build unity.
3. A church website organizes church events. Church websites help people stay up to date with your church’s events—from softball games to Sunday services.
4. A church website answers questions about the church. People have all kinds of questions about churches. Music? Nursery? Denomination? Bible version? How can you answer all these questions? Two words:  church website.
5. A church website is the church’s testimony. Within seconds of accessing your church website, a person forms opinions about your church—for better or worse. A good website is a great way to communicate a good testimony.
6. A church website broadcasts your message globally. Instantly—without buying a ticket, experiencing jet lag, or eating airline food, your church can reach as far as Europe, Asia, or Africa. Regardless of its size, your church can spread its message worldwide.
7. A church website saves you money on advertising. Any pastor wants the biggest bang for the buck when it comes to church marketing. Church websites are way more visible and far less expensive than any other form of church advertising.
8. A church website stores your media. A church website gives you a digital media library. Storing sermon recordings online is a great way to increase the longevity and reach of sermons.
9. A church website increases your church’s income. People pay their bills online, invest their money online, and read their bank statements online. Can they also give to their church online? With a church website, yes.
10. A church website gives your church the relevance necessary to communicate today. This generation has witnessed the launch of the digital age. Creating a church website is the primary means of jumping on the information superhighway and reaching our generation for Christ.

Sharefaith church websites are an unprecedented way for churches to get online. Sharefaith has developed the world’s easiest, quickest, cheapest, most professional, and full-featured church websites. Sharefaith believes that every church in the world deserves an awesome website. Our dream is now a reality. This reality is yours—a full-featured, professional, easy, and free website for Sharefaith members.

If there was ever a time to get a church website, now is the time.

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This is a sponsored guest post from the team at Sharefaith, one of my ministry partners on TonyMorganLive.com.

Media. That one word entails a world of sensations, experiences, visions, apparitions, stuffed email inboxes, exabytes (yeah, that’s a word) of information, old cell phones, new smartphones, trillions of dollars, mesmerizing messages, absolute bewilderment—a seismic cultural shift. It’s all about media. In today’s info-torrential and media-saturated world, don’t think that the church has gone unchanged. It’s changed — in a big way.

Here we are  smack-dab in the middle of 2011. It’s the age of the Millennials, an 80-million member generation that is more plugged into tech and tuned out to God than any other generation in American history. The world is online; nearly two billion people now have Internet access. A shocking five billion people in the world are cell phone users, tribespersons of Nokia, Apple, Droid, or any of the many other cellular iterations. Amidst the glow of iPads, the buzz of mobile the phones, flash of advertisements, and the ubiquity of WiFi hotspots, the church must somehow get its message across.

Part of reaching this generation is speaking their language—communicating in a way that is understandable and powerful. Churches must embrace technology, redeeming it for relevance and authenticity. In a word, churches need an affordable, professional, and accessible place for all their media needs.

Sounds like a tall order. If you could have your wildest pastoral media dream, what would it be? Blow-you-away awesome graphics for everything (ideally created by an übertalented graphic designer who loves Jesus). Video backgrounds for worship. Church welcome videos. Rocking PowerPoint sermons. Bulletins for every Sunday. Flyers galore. Newsletters. Graphics. Everything. (Dream, dream, dream.)

And if you had to put a price tag on it, what would you be willing to pay? I know, you have a small church, so you’d only be willing to pay, oh, maybe like three cents a day.

Oh, and one other thing. You need a church website. A good one. Like a megachurch website—complete with video and audio. It would have to be a website that was easy to set up, to update, and to use. And it would have to be free.

Is this kind of one-stop media solution possible (outside the realm of your wildest pastoral dreams, of course)? Yes. In a word, it’s Sharefaith—the world’s largest collection of church media. With an online library of over 38,000 designs, and a membership of tens of thousands of churches, Sharefaith is the church’s partner for reaching this generation with the truth of Jesus. We want to help you achieve excellence in your communication, to grow your church, and to reach more people. We invite you to join us.

Okay, one final thing. We’re going to drop the price. Our special promotion with Tony Morgan isn’t going to come along every day, so we want to give you an insane discount: 20% off our regular price.

Basically, your wildest pastoral media dream just came true.

Signup for for a Sharefaith Membership today.

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This is a sponsored guest post from the team at Sharefaith, one of my ministry partners on TonyMorganLive.com.

For churches that have embraced Google Apps, I really think this is going to be a great option to get computers that are easy to maintain and much less expensive in the hands of the majority of your team. Check out the intro video from Google:

No, these Chromebooks won’t work for everyone on your team. But for those folks who primarily need email, calendars, documents, web browsing and access to a web-based church management solution, this is a perfect solution.

Over the last few months, I’ve been highlighting Bellevue Church Management System (bvcms), a new church management solution. One of the unique features is that it’s an open source solution.

Open source software is computer software code that is made available to the public under a software license agreement that permits users to use, change and improve the software and redistribute it under the terms of the license agreement. While open source software is free (there is no purchase price), it does have obligations to users. bvcms is licensed under the GNU General Public License which requires any derived works to be made available under the same license. This guarantees that the project will be forever free to users and developers.

Here are some advantages of bvcms being open source:

1. This is the only completely open source church management solution.
2. Invites developers to the table to improve upon bvcms.
3. Puts the power into the hands of the church to uniquely alter the software for their church if so desired.
4. Makes a statement that this was developed by the church, for the church and was never intended to become an enterprising exercise.
5. Open source removes the barrier of entry and ‚ democratizes the church management process for churches of all sizes.

No longer do you need to be a big church to afford a robust system. Larger churches don’t have to pay what is essentially a staff member’s salary to a to have a fully functioning church management solution.

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This is a sponsored post from Bellevue Church Management System, one of my ministry partners on TonyMorganLive.com.

As we continue getting to know the story behind Bellevue Church Management System (bvcms), I thought this time we could highlight some key features. Here are some examples of what makes them stand out as a strong player in church management solutions.

Built in Advanced Reporting Tool
What good is collecting data if you can’t use it to inform and validate ministry decisions? bvcms spent a considerable amount of time creating a powerful query tool that was so easy to use even a non-technical person can do it.  The advanced query tool included with bvcms makes it easy to get the information you need when you want it. It’s that simple.

Access via Web from any Internet Connection or Web-enabled Mobile Device
Ministry doesn’t exist within four walls and neither should your church management system. Utilize any internet connection to access the database including Web-enabled mobile devices. (Break free from your church office…finally!) This also means you will always be using the latest software version and never have to worry about potential network down time or loss of critical data.

Touchscreen Check-In and Event Registration
Eliminate the need for paper-based check-in and event registration. Improve the visitor and member experience while at the same time capturing critical data about the people attending on-campus activities. Feel free to use a kiosk or any touch screen computer monitor. (Currently, bvcms is developing the check-in process to function on the iPad.)

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Over the past several weeks, I’ve been highlighting Bellevue Church Management System (bvcms), an open source church management system. Here’s a real-life case study of a church that transitioned into using BVCMS. Bellevue Church Management System interviewed Rob Lamarre, Administrative Pastor/Business Operations Manager of Point Harbor Community Church, about his experience with the system. Point Harbor, located in Chesapeake, Virginia, was established in 1976. Approximately 850 people attend Sunday morning worship, and the church has 16 staff members.

Q: What problem or challenge did you face that led you to use bvcms?

A: Nobody at the church could look up information remotely. This was overburdening a few of the staff because they were constantly getting calls from people asking them to look up information. In addition, the check-in system was terrible.

Q: Did you already have a church management system in place? If so, what compelled you to seek a different solution? If not, what compelled you to see a church management system?

A: The church was using a system, but it wasn’t adequate – it was really just a big phone book. Being a data guy, I always want to analyze things and know about our trending, such as how many 35-year-old dads came to our church last summer. But the data in our old system was not very good. There weren’t many people that understood how to use it, so there weren’t a lot of checks and balances as to how data got entered or how valid it was. There were occasions when we had three different records for the same person because that person’s name was entered differently. Although that’s still possible with bvcms, it’s less likely because of the way it’s set up.

Q: How did you learn about bvcms?

A: I started looking around at different systems, and was introduced to bvcms founder/developer David Carroll though a vendor I met while working on an unrelated project. I was concerned about David being a “small shop,” but he put our fears to rest and showed us how we could use Bellevue Church Management System to do all the things we were trying to do. There were so many features that it was a lock for me.

Q: How did bvcms meet your needs?

A: The biggest win I had was with children’s check-in. We have between 200-300 kids each week, and we would have kids stacked back as far as the eye could see trying to check in. I noticed a lot of parents get upset and leave the line, so the bvcms children’s check-in feature with the touch screens, and the way it provides management for the staff and ministry leaders to be able to login from anywhere and see the names of the kids they are working with, was very appealing.

Q: What do you like best about bvcms?

A: I love the fact that even though I’m miles away, I can login and provide support. The ability for everyone to work from wherever they are is huge. Children’s check-in runs smoothly every Sunday now, and we are capturing the parents’ data as well. Now when they come to register for the first time, we register the whole family.

Q: What difference has bvcms made from a financial, operational and ministry perspective?

A: David has given us excellent support, and financially it’s been a big win. When we have an issue, David takes ownership and stays on top of it until it is resolved. The only reason I would ever be hesitant to notify David of a problem is because I know he’s going to stop whatever he’s doing to work on it. We have a system better than anything I knew was out there.

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This is a sponsored post from Bellevue Church Management System, one of my ministry partners on TonyMorganLive.com.

At the beginning of the year, I decided to convert my blog’s layout to the Standard Theme, which in multiple cases, has become the standard theme for many bloggers.

Here are a few things I’ve noticed since I made the switch:

• Increased Traffic – I’ve noticed a significant upswing in traffic. Both visitors and the number of page views have increased by nearly 50% from the same period last year. That’s consistent with similar stories I’ve heard from other bloggers who have made the switch.
• Improved SEO Performance – Standard Theme is optimized for search engine results. Though I’ve implemented some other shifts in my blogging strategy, Google search is still key to traffic on my site.
• Simple Dashboard – Standard Theme is completely streamlined, meaning everything plays well both inside and out. It has an easy to use interface on the dashboard/administration side. Because of the way it’s coded, it loads fast. (It’s much faster than my previous site.)
• Built-in Plug-ins – It comes with several standard plug-ins already installed and custom-fit to work well within its framework.
• Ready to be Customized – It’s also very easy to customize. Check out the “showcase” on the Standard Theme site to see the many way the theme has been implemented.

I’d like to commend John Saddington and the 8BIT team for creating and constantly improving Standard Theme. If you’re in the market for a functional and easy to use theme, I highly recommend it. (*And it’s currently on sale for a limited time!)

Here’s my affiliate link if you’d like to take advantage of the same theme as friends like Michael Hyatt and Jon Acuff are using.

As I’ve had the opportunity to visit and consult with churches across the country, one of the questions I’m frequently asked is why a ministry needs a church management system for their community. Can’t they keep using Excel or Access (or those books in the pews) to manage what’s happening in their church?

A church management solution, like BVCMS, is the central element to any community building exercise. It is a particularly helpful diagnostic tool for church leadership that is rarely maximized and most often relegated to the tasks of tracking attendance and contributions. However, the potential for what these systems hold is so much more extensive.

For example:

• It captures the person’s contact information.
• It offers a way to measure ministry progress outside “pastoral privilege.”
• It measures what’s effective and what’s not.
• It provides a way to communicate with everyone.
• It tracks habits and behaviors (which trumps perception).
• It provides accountability to ministry leadership with respect to results, impact and progress.
• It offers a window into unspoken ministry opportunities. (Significant variance in giving; leadership positions; Bible study attendance, etc.)

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