INTRODUCTIONS:
MinistryVault.com is the new address for Church 2.0 - the blog. My name is Brook Drumm and I will be taking the baton from Kevin and continuing the great work he has been doing. I love what Kevin has done here and we all are grateful for it. More specifically, I thank God for making it possible for him to use his gifts and passions to serve in this way.
MOVING: EVERYTHING MUST GO
We have packed every last article up and have moved it on over to the new site: ministryvault.com. Why are we moving? Mainly, because our new platform (Wordpress) will give us more control over every aspect of the blog. We will, essentially, be able to serve our readers better, faster and with more style. Also, web design/development is what I do for a living, so I can squeeze Wordpress for all it is worth!
We have changed the FEED to point to the new blog today (June 3rd, 2010).
NEW AND IMPROVED
We have a completely new look to the site and have already posted some new content on the new blog. You may notice that we are whittling down our categories to simplify a bit and adding some new topics that we will be covering: Hardware, Editorials, "No Tech", Apps and more...
Again, thanks to those who went before us.... may God bless and keep them... and bring them back often to join the fun.
May God receive the glory for this work.
Brook Drumm
You may already know from my last post, but I am passing the baton of Church 2.0 - the blog, so I can plant a church in Cleveland, OH. I know, I know "What good can come from Cleveland?" But I tell you God loves to show up in those places, and I have already seen him at work there.
As I step off to start a church, would you give generously to support our effort? We want a killer web presence and we can do it well for significantly less than the tech industry at large can. For $5000 we will have...
- Professional Logo and Graphics
- Professional Layout and Website
- Media Hosting (Vimeo, Podcast, etc)
- Online, Facebook, and Google Ads
- Customized Micro-sites and Missional Social Networks
- ChMS system for event check in, online tracking, and online giving
- TheCommon.org to meet needs within and outside the community
- Personalized Social Networking Tools (CSS Code)
- PhotoShop and Video Editing Software
- Mobile Applications (iPhone, iPad, Android Apps)
- Business cards, postcards, and letterhead
Isaiah 32:8 says.. “Generous people plan to do what is generous, and they stand firm in their generosity.”
Thank you in advance for your generosity!
Kevin Rush [www.planterinthemaking.com]
Dear Church 2.0 - the blog,
My name is Kevin Rush (a.k.a. Kez) and I am the founder and primary contributor of Church 2.0 - the blog. It has been just over three years since I wrote our first blog post that stated our purpose; to provide help to Pastors and other servants of God to use technology to meet ministry needs with less effort and expense. Three years, 475+ subscribers, and just under 250 blog posts later, I am proud to announce that we have done just that and we will continue to do that into the future. However, it will not be under my direction and leadership.
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For a while I have been following God’s calling to start a new church to reach people who are far from God. It’s been a long and exciting journey, but he has led us to Cleveland, OH to plant a church in 2011. You can learn more about my calling at www.planterinthemaking.com or by signing up for a newsletter here.
After spending sometime in prayer and advice from close friends it has become clear to me that I no longer have the time, nor the passion that I once had, for the Church 2.0 blog. I need to give all my effort and energy to our church plant, so I have decided to find new leadership and contributors to run the blog full-time.
As I began a search several friends directed me to Brooke Drumm. Brooke owns a web development company in Lincoln, CA. He has designed an iphone app and a podcasting company dedicated to churches too. Before starting his company Brooke was a youth pastor for 12 years. Brooke’s passion is the local church and anything at the crossroads of church and tech. His experience, background, and expertise makes him an excellent candidate to run Church 2.0. Brooke is assembling a top notch writing team, as I type this, and they will be taking over the blog in the future. I am very excited about what he is bringing to the table. I will stay on the team as an advisor and guest writer in the future.
Over the past three years, I have never asked anything from you besides your thoughts. As I venture off to plant a church I would love to ask and challenge you to support our plant. Since you are Pastors and Technology buffs I am challenging you to help us raise $5000 for our church’s web presence. This fund will go towards graphics, web design, support, website hosting, social networking, ChMS, software, and a little hardware. Consider giving a one time gift of $25 or more. If half of our subscribers would give $25 we would be fully funded and we could have a killer online presence!
To give click the ChipIn Widget...
If you can’t give to us at this time you still can help get our fundraising effort out by post links or the ChipIn widget on your blog. Just click 'copy' in the widget above and paste the given code to your blog.
As we roll out our church plant’s web presence I will write some guest posts on the blog.
Thank you for allowing me to speak into your ministries and churches. I pray that it has been a blessing to you as it has been my pleasure to create and lead this community. The best is ahead of us!
Grace and peace,
Kevin Rush
P.S. - A big shout out to my fellow contributors over the years; Chad Lemon, Tony Stewart, Jon Cole, and Nic Scott.
Are you a blogger? I am. Over the years I've been privileged to review dozens of books. Several of them were sent to me for free because the author wanted me to review it. Most of the time you have to follow blogs and find authors who want bloggers to review them, but now you can go directly to the largest Christian publishing company, Thomas Nelson, by using BookSneeze.
I just got this email and thought I would pass it along to you all...
I just discovered Church 2.0, and I can see that you’re passionate about the use of technology for praise and worship. The NAB Show (http://nabshow.com) is a client of our communications firm, and I want to tell you about two exhibits that you and your readers may be interested in at this year’s show, coming up April 10-15 in Las Vegas.
The Technologies for Worship Pavilion offers comprehensive training for house of worship staff and technical volunteers and is the focal point for all things related to worship technology at the NAB Show. In addition, you may be interested in Destination Broadband - the newest broadband-centric exhibit at the 2010 NAB Show. It will be featuring technologies like online video platforms, streaming video, mobile video distribution, and much more.
Technologies for Worship Schedule: http://ow.ly/1fCqd
Destination Broadband: http://ow.ly/14hgA
The reason I'm reaching out to you is because I have a special registration code for you to pass along to your readers, giving them access to the show – a $150 value - for FREE. This special pass includes the exhibit floor, the Opening Keynote and State of the Industry Address, Info Sessions, Content Theater, Destination Broadband Theater and Exhibits. All you and your readers need to do is visit http://ow.ly/13TL9 to redeem or register at http://nabshow.com/register with the code A913.
Thanks, Kevin, and please let me know how I can help your coverage of the 2010 NAB Show on Church 2.0. Don't forget to check out the official show website at http://www.nabshow.com for more information, news, and to register!
Thank you!
NAB Show Team / Tuvel Communications
ChurchRelevance.com has a great article and video link from the The Church Law Group outlining some great guidelines on enjoying a Super Bowl watch party at your church while respecting copyright law.
I recently was invited to be a beta tester for BibleMesh.
BibleMesh is a tool developed by Redeemer City to City, an associated with Timothy Keller's Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City.
BibleMesh is an online interface to teach and discuss the bible, the God of the bible, and God's story revealed through the scripture. It starts each section out with a 10+ minute video explaining the over arching theme of at portion of scripture. The sections are...
- Creation
- The Patriarchs
- Moses
- Israel
- After the Exile
- Jesus
- The Church
Happy New Year Everyone!
One thing that is synonymous with New Years is Resolutions. What resolutions are you making? May I suggest committing to a bible reading plan. YouVersion has recently rolled out reading plans of various lengths and styles. With over 20 to choose from you will be able to find one that is perfect for you. Click the picture below to get started...
My friend, Tony Steward, contacted me to let me know about This Christmas presented by LifeChurch.tv.
LifeChurch.tv will be hosting a whole bunch of Christmas worship experiences at Church Online this year. Church Online’s Christmas experiences are perfect for people who may be traveling, people who have friends or family who do not attend church, and anyone else who would like to join an online community for Christmas worship.
The Digerati team is excited about reaching people who aren’t planning on attending church this holiday season, and they’re committed to providing a welcoming environment in which they can experience the message of Christ’s love. They have 12 different online experiences scheduled on Wed, Thurs, and Friday! Christmas day!
Go here to get more information and download free Christmas music!
MERRY CHRISTMAS from Church 2.0 and the LifeChurch Digerati Team!
Glo is the newest digital bible study tool from Zondervan. Glo is a inexpensive highly visual bible study tool for the masses. This tool does not have the depth of Greek / Hebrew tools, concordances, and commentaries that many preachers, teachers, and pastors want. However for the regular church member or small group leader this is a phenomenal resource.
The Spiritual Home Base and use of Lenses are brilliant breakthroughs for a digital tool.
The Spiritual Home Base tracks and reports your progress of what you have read, watched, experienced, as well as how much time you've spent in Glo.
The Lenses allow you do drill down in to content using a tagging system. Just think of this as very powerful topical and timeline search. To to BibleGlo.com to see more.
The only downfall I have seen with Glo is only avaliable on the Windows Operating Systems. And I'm waiting to see how well their share and socialize functions work. Haven't seen much in their tutorial and demos.
Coming in at a very modest price tag of $50, Glo is a great bible study software!
For those who don't know Logos Bible Software is the power house of Bible Software Packages. Although I have read many mixed reviews of the changes that have been made in version 4, Logos is still the most comprehensive and powerful software on the market. Logos has recently added a iPhone/iPod app. In a society that is on the go, it is very important to have access to your bible tools where ever you are.
The biggest downfall with Logos software is it's price tag. You are easily going to spend $1000 to get one of their robust packages.
During Christmas they are running a 25% discount code: DECKTHEHALLS
If you were thinking of purchasing Logos Bible Software, take advantage of this discount!
This week I'm going to feature some different bible study tools / packages. Before I do, what software packages are you use?
Amazon is giving away MP3s for Christmas in what they are calling 25 Days of Free
If you don't know I am a huge fan of Worship House Media. Not only do they save me hours of time surfing for the best video for our worship gatherings by offering many different producers works, they give a lot way for FREE!
Your not going to want to miss 12 Days of Christmas.
On the 1st day of Christmas Worship House Media gave to me Fearfully Made
...and a partridge in a pair tree!
ChurchMediaDesign.tv is a great site to learn more on how to use and create media for church.
Their newest episode #89 featured a documentary that Hillsong Television made about “Church News”. Church News is a 3-minute segment in their weekend services where announcements are made or ads as they call them. There area a lot of good tips on filming and producing video elements in this show along with the resources, technology, and programs they used to produce this seqment of their weekend services.
It's worth checking out! www.churchmediadesign.tv
TruthCasting is a website that will allow you to host your sermon video's for free. Now they are offering you a customized iPhone app that will show up on iTunes for a small fee. Check it out.
Following my post a couple days ago on Going Where the People Are, I wanted to say that going where the people are isn't enough, nor is content alone enough.
You need to be attractive and compelling. That's why CSS and layout is important. Don't worry you don't have to really understand CSS, but think of it as code that organizes content in attractive and compelling ways. In lamen terms it is code that personalizes the layout and background to websites or social networking platforms.
IT SETS YOU APART
Yes, the photo to the left is a photo of their facebook fan site, not there website or blog.
Very attractive and compelling. It sets them apart from all the other churches on facebook. You can see more unique facebook fan pages at facebookdesigns.org.
THE ADVERSE EFFECT
The adverse effect of going from attractive and compelling look to a less than compelling layout is JesusCreed.org that has moved to belief.net. Even though Scott McKnight is brilliant, his content off the charts, the layout that belief.net has moved him to is distracting to say the least. It's actually difficult from me to read his content now because of the poor and distracting layout.
Check them out below and let me know which one is more attractive and compelling?
The old JesusCreed.org look...
The new...
It's obvious, that in the social networking scene, facebook has emerged as the front runner. Not only is Facebook powerful because of it's ability to collaborate, communicate, invite, and present to one another. But it's powerful because it's where the people are. I can't even tell you how many people (from nearly every demographic) want be my friend on facebook. And I can't tell you how many people who have never set foot into our church gatherings/services, but have become a fan on our churches facebook fan page. So now our church has direct access into their lives and a platform to connect with them, and the best part is that they found us!
If your church or organization is not on facebook, you should be. I always say, 'Go where the people are.'
One of the most creative designers I've crossed paths with is Barton Damer (Alreadybeenchewed.net)
At Guru's conference Barton did some fabulous tutorials that are now online.
BartonDamer-Tutorial 1 from Echo Conference on Vimeo.
