Mavis Moon
I live in San Jose, California, and attend San Jose Christian Reformed Church. I work as the IT Director of Pivot Interiors, a Herman Miller office furniture company.
I grew up in the Air Force, where my dad was a chaplain, so I lived in several places during my childhood, including Michigan, Alaska, Washington, Texas, Florida and Arizona. I went to Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where I met my husband Randy.
We have lived in San Jose for over 30 years now. I have 3 adult children and 3 grandchildren who are, of course, the cutest things ever.
Posted in: Thoughts on Easy Worship?
Update: I just read an article on an app that CRCNA is putting out, and I'm trying it now on my phone. I am going to ask our secretary about using that app rather than Planning Center for our directory. I need to find out more about how it might work with tracking our offerings. Link: https://www.crcna.org/news-and-views/crcna-offers-social-media-tool-bridge-gap
Posted in: Printable Church Year Calendar?
I also like the "Salt of the Earth" calendar that Joyce refers to (http://christiancalendar.squarespace.com/). It is not something you can download and print, but you can order it and it is a beautiful calendar with art and with information on the litugical seasons and holidays. I think you would like it a lot.
Posted in: Who knows of any affordable Christian web host and CMS solutions?
Karen, we use www.squarespace.com. You design the whole thing online so you don't need software. It's got lots of templates you can choose from and change to look how you want. You can do most everything with "what you see is what you get" but you can also use raw HTML if you want. There are videos and excellent documentation, plus tech support via email that they usually answer within around 10 minutes. I think it's a great solution.
Our website is www.sjcrc.org or if you go to squarespace's site you'll see samples. Email me if you'd like me to set up a web conference and I'll show you our site in detail.
[email protected]
Mavis
Posted in: What Are Your Feelings Regarding Standing for the Church's Creeds and Confessions but Not for God's Word During Worship Service?
I think standing for the reading makes sense and is a good thing, but I would be fine with not standing as well. The Word is strong enough whether we stand or sit. I read the Word sitting, even lying in my bed. It's not a sign of disrespect.
Posted in: What software works for tracking church membership information?
salesforce.com is free to non-profits and we use it ifor membership and offering tracking. It falls under "cloud computing" which is mentioned by others. I plan to write an article on it for this network but thought I'd respond to this discussion, too.
By being "in the cloud", it makes it convenient for people working from their homes. You only get 10 free licenses but for us that is enough. The deacons use one login to record the offerings. Then I have the other licenses for myself, an office admin, the pastor, and others. It integrates with Google Apps and GMail, which is a nice feature, too.
You can also very easily export from Salesforce to Excel so you can do mail merges and so on.
I'm hoping to have the article up in a couple weeks but in the meantime, this is a link to the page about their non-profit donation program: http://www.salesforce.com/company/foundation/. You'll see the link to apply for donated licenses on that page.
Posted in: What software works for tracking church membership information?
Duane, I'm glad you tried Salesforce and found it do-able, and also had a good experience with their support.
I'm thinking of making my church setup for Salesforce.com into an App available on the App store. Like you, though, I haven't been able to devote the time to it yet.
Regarding your last sentence about the system not being able to use, I would disagree if you actually mean just to use -- I believe one of Salesforce.com's biggest advantages is how simple it is to use for the average user. Its user interface is very much like other web-based sites such as Amazon or EBay and I've found that users find the navigation intuitive.
However, if you mean that it might not be simple for someone who does not have some database management experience to set it up for their chiurch, I can see where you may be coming from. That would also be true for anyone trying to create something in Access or other database programs -- there is a learning curve involved and database experience would make it much easier to understand. However, that said, I believe Salesforce.com is quite a bit simpler to customize than most other database programs. An awful lot can be done with simple point & clicks. Advanced features do require learning more, though.
I hope you get a chance to delve more into Salesforce.com. I sometimes make people look at me weirdly when I say, "Databases are fun." Maybe you'd agree? :)
Posted in: What's the best way to divide responsibilities when it comes to planning services?
Thanks, Joy!
Posted in: What's a good internet-based method for church backups?
Thanks for all the input, everyone, and keep it coming! There's also some information and links to resources in the Church & Web blog, "Bewitched, Bothered & Bewildered By Backups."
Posted in: What's the best way to divide responsibilities when it comes to planning services?
Joy, our worship director just left and I'm intrigued by what you describe.
So far, our worship leaders have led the praise band and led our worship during the services, as well as coordinated the planning, etc., that you describe above. I can see where it can be difficult to find that creative musician-praise-team-leader who is also good at planning and organizing. But we want both -- of course. :)
I'm wondering: What about the person who actually leads the worship during the service? Is that your pastor in your church, or is there someone in the praise team who introduces the songs and makes the transitions during singing, readings, etc.? Is that praise team leader a paid position?
Posted in: What is the best way to create a collection of family pictures for the church's book?
Denise,
It's funny you should ask this. We just decided to do the "usual" thing that you describe - hire a company to make a pictorial album - because we hadn't done that in a long time. However, like you said, the experience wasn't necessarily so great. The photographer sometimes posed people in weird positions and the participation wasn't as high as we'd hoped. It all took a lot of work and I'm hoping it was worth it (we don't have the book yet).
Looking back, I was much happier with a different method we used a couple years ago. A church member with a good digital camera (SLR) volunteered to take photos and make an online album. We posted announcements in the bulletin and he would just catch people after church, during coffee hour, have them come over to a place with nice green leaves growing up the fence, and took their photo. It turned out quite nice. You can see it here. If I were to do it over, I'd choose a better site for hosting it but still the photos are very nice. People got to choose the pose they liked right there on the spot. Also, it even looks quite good when just printed right off the web, so people with no computer can enjoy it, too.
I'll be interested to hear what other ideas people may have.
Mavis
Posted in: What is the best way to create a collection of family pictures for the church's book?
Hi Denise,
I think a couple of them asked for the digital file, which was easy enough to give them, but we published it as an "online photo directory" from the beginning, so they knew it was for that purpose. I did print it from the web for new people as they started attending, and that worked out fine.
Mavis
Posted in: What Is the Best Way to Follow Up With Church Visitors?
I would be interested in hearing what people are doing now. We are planning to start putting a Welcome cart outside by our sanctuary front door and have someone stand by it to give out materials if people want them and to answer questions (and welcome people of course). We think we'd like to have coffee to give out, too, but starting with this.