Tim Postuma

Have you considered a Google Spreadsheet, Jack?

You can give access only to those who are authorized to see it. Those that are authorized can enter their contact as a new row. Having it in a spreadsheet allows it to be sorted, grouped, etc. People use their Google Account to log in (note that they do NOT have to use Gmail, a Google Account is simply a login and can be created with any email address).

When the elder's term is up, you can take them off the permission list and add the new elder to the permission list.

It does mean that all elders could see all contacts. If that's not OK, you could get fancier with a separate tab for each district, and then configure permissions so that elders can only see the tab that applies to them. But to do that you'd need to dig into the Google Spreadsheets help to get it set up correctly. It's a little more complicated, but still fairly easy once you figure it out.

That's just one option that comes to mind. Hopefully others can weigh in with thoughts about this approach, and other alternatives. I'm sure other churches have faced the same question.

In our church we have a full council (elders and deacons) as well as a small 'Administrative Council'. I'm assuming your 'Executive Committee' is analogous to that.

Our Admin Council is similar to yours in that it normally includes the chair of council, vice, and clerk as well as the senior pastor and our part-time operations manager. I don't see any problem with a non-pastor/elder/deacon being on the admin team, but I suppose a legitimate point could be raised about whether staff (pastor or not) should be voting or non-voting (what's the fancy name for that again? can't recall).

In our case, voting power never really seemed to be an issue we thought about. Our small admin team operated on a consensus basis, and most of what we did seemed to be either monitoring implementation or making recommendations to the full council which was the vote that really counted anyway. Our administrative council was more of a working group; the real decision-making power is with the full council.

I'm sure others can give a much better church order explanation of how it should work (Henry DeMoor's excellent Church Order Commentary likely covers this) but hopefully this perspective helps a bit in the meantime.

Thoughts from others?

By 'ministry evaluation tool' do you mean for evaluating specific ministry programs of your church, or the overall collective ministry impact?

Good question, Jeff, and it's great to hear there's interest in some of the out-of-print products from Faith Alive. I'm involved with the ongoing printing and distribution of Faith Alive products, so I'll share some of the thinking we've had about this exact issue.

First, it's important to understand that getting those electronic files created does cost money. In some cases, quite a bit depending on how old it is, what format the electronic file is in, etc. In some cases it means pulling it off of old media or converting from an old file format. Even if it's in a modern format, proper ebook conversion (ePub) can be a couple of hundred dollars per title. Bottom line...you need a lot of requests for a title to justify the staff time it takes to retrieve and convert it.

Having said that...we are working on a solution that will result in far fewer titles going out of print. It's called 'print-on-demand' and it enables us to keep titles in print even if the sales volume goes down to just a handful of copies a year. Once that is in place, we can not only keep more titles in print, but consider bringing back into print some older titles. We still have the costs mentioned above, but by 'restocking' it we make it available to more people and therefore the conversion costs can be recouped.

If there's a particular title you're interested in, please mention it when you call Faith Alive, or send a note to [email protected]. Our customer service reps are logging those requests, so we can track demand and make stewardly decisions about what titles to bring back.

Or we can start a list here, and open it up to other people reading this thread: What Faith Alive titles would you like to see back in stock?

With regards to archiving, I know that churches are asked to provide a copy of their minutes to the CRC archives. See more information here, as well as other advice about keeping congregational records. Hope this helps! Maybe others have advice about how their distribute the minutes within their congregations...

Good points, Amy, about the need for redundancy.

When it comes to cloud storage, I'm partial to Google Drive. It makes it easy to store files in the cloud and it takes only a second to add/remove people's access to the whole folder (as council members come and go). Plus they make it easy to batch-export everything so you can periodically save it to a local hard drive.

As a bonus, when council members get familiar with Google Drive/Docs there are a million other ways it can be used to collaborate.

Hi Christopher. A key decision will be whether you want to make the webcast public or private. If public, then you'll need a webcasting license for all your music, and you'll need to ensure you are legally allowed to broadcast video of the people/leaders in your congregation (I think this can be sometimes done with a blanket-notification (e.g. in the bulletin) but privacy laws vary and so you'll need to confirm the laws in your region - I'm not a lawyer). Google it and you'll find some other good articles like this.

Password-protecting the webcast so it's only available to members (who can't physically attend the service) would, I assume, change some of the above and make it much simpler. But that would need to be confirmed.

If so, then you could look at doing it as a Google Hangout (can have up to 10 people) or Skype or similar services. But instead of using the built-in laptop webcam, of course you'd need to use a good quality external camera/mic that can zoom all the way to the front podium. I've used $100 external USB cameras that might do the trick, but it depends on how far away the camera would be. Do some online shopping for USB cameras/webcams and I'm sure you can find something with a good optical zoom.

Hope this helps, at least somewhat. I've used these technologies, but not in a church context so maybe some others can chime in who have experience with it in a church service context.

The same question came up at our Admin Council meeting last night, so I'm hoping for an answer as well. Anyone?

My church has gluten-free elements available. Usually we have communion by people coming forward in the three aisles. As part of the instructions for how communion will proceed, the pastor always mentions that "gluten-free elements are available at this station (pointing). Just indicate that to the serving elder and they will be offered to you". When someone wants gluten-free elements, the elder just puts down the bread and picks up the plate. There are several people in the congregation that need gluten-free elements and, even if there weren't, it's nice to do for guests.

When we do a 'communion circle' at the front of church, it's not quite as easy as the elder with gluten free elements needs to walk around a bit and see who needs them. But it works.

We don't have communion seated in pews...but perhaps another church has experience serving gluten-free elements with that method?

We've tried having all the bread gluten-free, but had trouble finding the right one. Periodically, we experiment again.

Hope this helps. I'm curious to hear how many other churches have gluten-free elements, and the logistics of how they offer them in a way that's as seamless as possible.

This is a little different, but when we dedicated our 'House of Servants' next door to our church, we ended the service by going outside and holding hands to form a circle around the house. The pastor spoke a prayer that was repeated by a few people strategically placed so everyone could hear. That may or may not work in your situation, but it was very meaningful.