I am the pastor of CrossWay Church, a newer CRC church plant, in Vancouver, WA (a suburb of Portland, OR). I am married and have two adopted daughters.
I liked Community series because it has a good framework for what the expectations of a small group is and the benefits of the small group. Also has practical ways for people to begin to learn their story. You can hand it to new leaders and they should be pretty set. The DVD material is crafted well and it also has full sermons that they are based on as well.
Just picked up the Tangible Kingdom Primer, it looks like a pretty interesting group / individual study as well.
Another potential video resource is Paul David Tripp's Getting To The Heart of Parenting. You can buy the DVD on his personal site and download handouts for free. http://www.paultrippministries.com/store
I haven't done this yet, but am considering it for spring. We did his What DId You Expect? series. Video quality isn't as slick as some but content was very good. His relationship book is pretty Christocentric and have heard positive comments about the parenting course.
I don't have the answer to your question specifically. We generally ask for permission for photos that highlight particular people unless the photos were submitted by family (We asked for photos of church life a while back). We haven't gotten written permission but it might be great thing to do.
I have found some other sources to get good quality images for church websites and other publicity items that you can legally use. I compiled a list in a blog post I wrote on a different site. WIll just put a link to it rather listing them all again here.
We don't pay for sound techs, but we thank them often in person because they come in early to set up every week (We are a mobile church).
In past churches, the church required that funerals, weddings, etc (anything not church sponsored) have to hire a church sound tech to run the equipment. It wasn't much $25-50. It did acknowledge that many of them had to sacrifice to help out (take an hour or two off work).
When I was a youth pastor, I would hold a parent dessert meeting to talk about the upcoming year and how we could work together (not just events but personal issues). I also did quarterly training stuff geared towards parents. I would pick hot topics (drinking, porn, talking to kids about sex, etc.) and bring in someone to educate them. They really appreciated it.
I agree with Wendy. I think you should create a FB page that is view as another online connection point for your church and the outside world. We have a closed prayer group that is closed/ private to accomplish for private inhouse matters. Links and those kinds of things would be great for potential visitors to see.
Today, I had two of my pastor friends who aren't currently involved in social media tell me that they watched this Justin Wise interview. One bought the book. Both felt convicted to start and empowered to take next steps! LOVE IT! It has some great take aways for you and your church. http://www.churchwp.net/social-media-and-the-church-interview-with-justin-wise/
Are you just wanting examples of WordPress websites? The case I made for using WordPress is article is more for the backend side of things not necessarily the design side. All WordPress website would show this. The one thing that would maybe need some help is the search engine point. To accomplish this, you need to just make sure your page titles include what your are talking about. My church website is https://www.crosswaychurchwa.com. ChurchWP.net has a list of church themes that might work. I haven't had time to update it in a while. Churchthemes.com is a company that specializes in church WordPress themes. Hope that helps. Would be happy to talk in person.
One thing, ServiceBuilder has added an attendence feature since I orginally posted the blog. It also allows different levels of permissions (admin, group leader, user, etc) so that multiple people can work on the schedule.
Our church has just started to use Service Builder dot Net(I can' put a link because of a spam filter). It is similar to Planning Center Online but free (It does accept donations). There is not a limit to the number of users or people like the free version of planning center. It is a great tool.
You can create multiple service templates for your typical order of worship or start from scratch each week. Pull them the templates when you layou thte service. Then all you have to do is ad the songs that you would like to sing into the spot. You can also assign people to do certain parts of the service. Each worship planner can work on the service. There are comment sections where you can share your ideas before the service gets finalized.
Each church basically creates their own song database. Most praise songs are already inputed so you just have to search by name or title and click to ad it to your set of songs. You can link to powerpoint, lyrics and chord sheets on a public DropBox folder (a free cloud service). You can even set up links to Utube videos and MP3 online that sing it in a similar style so your band can play. A few other CRC churches must be using it as well because it has the Grey, Blue and Red Psalter hymns already in its song database and you can set it as your default hymnal. We do a mix of praise songs and hymns and it works great. You can even search for songs that you haven't song in a certain time period (weeks or months) and look at future and past services.
You can attach a file with the written components or link to a Google document in the comment section.
The reason, we really like ServiceBuilder is because it has great tools for all the roles of a worship service. You basically create a database of your workers and can assign them to roles in the service (guitar, vocals, prayer, reader, worship leader, organist, etc). You can assign people to other roles as well nursery, greeter, setup, etc. We don't have a church secretary. Service Builder allows multiple volunteers to schedule their role (sound guys do theirs, nursery their schedule, etc.). The best part is that you can set it up to automatically notify who are schedule to serve (via email or text -if they approve this method) the monday before they are scheduled to serve. People can confirm that they will serve via the message.
I realize that this may sound complicated but it isn't. Once you input the data, it does a lot of the work for you. Jason, the developer, is open to ideas. He has a heart for smaller churches who can't afford Planning Center.
Posted in: Do you have suggestions for a Small Group study to help teach some basic principles of community?
I liked Community series because it has a good framework for what the expectations of a small group is and the benefits of the small group. Also has practical ways for people to begin to learn their story. You can hand it to new leaders and they should be pretty set. The DVD material is crafted well and it also has full sermons that they are based on as well.
Just picked up the Tangible Kingdom Primer, it looks like a pretty interesting group / individual study as well.
Posted in: Does anyone have recommendations for parenting classes?
Nate,
Another potential video resource is Paul David Tripp's Getting To The Heart of Parenting. You can buy the DVD on his personal site and download handouts for free. http://www.paultrippministries.com/store
I haven't done this yet, but am considering it for spring. We did his What DId You Expect? series. Video quality isn't as slick as some but content was very good. His relationship book is pretty Christocentric and have heard positive comments about the parenting course.
Posted in: Permission for Photo Use on a Church Web Site
Richard,
I don't have the answer to your question specifically. We generally ask for permission for photos that highlight particular people unless the photos were submitted by family (We asked for photos of church life a while back). We haven't gotten written permission but it might be great thing to do.
I have found some other sources to get good quality images for church websites and other publicity items that you can legally use. I compiled a list in a blog post I wrote on a different site. WIll just put a link to it rather listing them all again here.
Hope that helps.
Brad
Posted in: Paid Tech ... Need Opinions
We don't pay for sound techs, but we thank them often in person because they come in early to set up every week (We are a mobile church).
In past churches, the church required that funerals, weddings, etc (anything not church sponsored) have to hire a church sound tech to run the equipment. It wasn't much $25-50. It did acknowledge that many of them had to sacrifice to help out (take an hour or two off work).
Posted in: Parents Involved in Youth Ministry
When I was a youth pastor, I would hold a parent dessert meeting to talk about the upcoming year and how we could work together (not just events but personal issues). I also did quarterly training stuff geared towards parents. I would pick hot topics (drinking, porn, talking to kids about sex, etc.) and bring in someone to educate them. They really appreciated it.
Posted in: 6 Ways Your Church Can Use Facebook Better!
I agree with Wendy. I think you should create a FB page that is view as another online connection point for your church and the outside world. We have a closed prayer group that is closed/ private to accomplish for private inhouse matters. Links and those kinds of things would be great for potential visitors to see.
Posted in: 6 Ways Your Church Can Use Facebook Better!
Today, I had two of my pastor friends who aren't currently involved in social media tell me that they watched this Justin Wise interview. One bought the book. Both felt convicted to start and empowered to take next steps! LOVE IT! It has some great take aways for you and your church. http://www.churchwp.net/social-media-and-the-church-interview-with-justin-wise/
Posted in: Tablets in Church?
I agree with Allen Onsong is a great app. I preach from my Ipad too and encourage my folks to read their Bible from it.
Posted in: Top 6 Reasons Churches Should Use WordPress to Create Their Site
Are you just wanting examples of WordPress websites? The case I made for using WordPress is article is more for the backend side of things not necessarily the design side. All WordPress website would show this. The one thing that would maybe need some help is the search engine point. To accomplish this, you need to just make sure your page titles include what your are talking about. My church website is https://www.crosswaychurchwa.com. ChurchWP.net has a list of church themes that might work. I haven't had time to update it in a while. Churchthemes.com is a company that specializes in church WordPress themes. Hope that helps. Would be happy to talk in person.
Posted in: Service Builder: Free Online Tool For Worship Planning and Volunteer Management
One thing, ServiceBuilder has added an attendence feature since I orginally posted the blog. It also allows different levels of permissions (admin, group leader, user, etc) so that multiple people can work on the schedule.
Posted in: Service Builder: Free Online Tool For Worship Planning and Volunteer Management
Sorry this article is 4 years old. They have changed their info since it was written. It is worth the money for us
Posted in: Worship Planning on a Cloud
Our church has just started to use Service Builder dot Net(I can' put a link because of a spam filter). It is similar to Planning Center Online but free (It does accept donations). There is not a limit to the number of users or people like the free version of planning center. It is a great tool.
You can create multiple service templates for your typical order of worship or start from scratch each week. Pull them the templates when you layou thte service. Then all you have to do is ad the songs that you would like to sing into the spot. You can also assign people to do certain parts of the service. Each worship planner can work on the service. There are comment sections where you can share your ideas before the service gets finalized.
Each church basically creates their own song database. Most praise songs are already inputed so you just have to search by name or title and click to ad it to your set of songs. You can link to powerpoint, lyrics and chord sheets on a public DropBox folder (a free cloud service). You can even set up links to Utube videos and MP3 online that sing it in a similar style so your band can play. A few other CRC churches must be using it as well because it has the Grey, Blue and Red Psalter hymns already in its song database and you can set it as your default hymnal. We do a mix of praise songs and hymns and it works great. You can even search for songs that you haven't song in a certain time period (weeks or months) and look at future and past services.
You can attach a file with the written components or link to a Google document in the comment section.
The reason, we really like ServiceBuilder is because it has great tools for all the roles of a worship service. You basically create a database of your workers and can assign them to roles in the service (guitar, vocals, prayer, reader, worship leader, organist, etc). You can assign people to other roles as well nursery, greeter, setup, etc. We don't have a church secretary. Service Builder allows multiple volunteers to schedule their role (sound guys do theirs, nursery their schedule, etc.). The best part is that you can set it up to automatically notify who are schedule to serve (via email or text -if they approve this method) the monday before they are scheduled to serve. People can confirm that they will serve via the message.
I realize that this may sound complicated but it isn't. Once you input the data, it does a lot of the work for you. Jason, the developer, is open to ideas. He has a heart for smaller churches who can't afford Planning Center.