The Geek Shall Inherit the Church

Okay, so I wanted to give this to you in sections and expound on each a little, but I can’t wait. Here’s the article from Ministry Today Magazine showing about just some of the ways to embrace technology to reach the world and your community. I don’t know how long this page stays up, I actually read the article originally from the print version. So read it before it goes away.

It talks about e-mail, new ministry positions available, and even examines the ‘dark’ side of it all. Great job of covering alot of different aspects of technology ministry. Good news: alot of this you can incorporate into a smaller church too! You just have to scale it down a little. I’m already examining different ways to assimilate it into my church. Have fun with this one, let your imagination go wild.

Until next time.

“Not Understandable” on DVD dot com

Okay, so let me first apologize for being so long since I wrote. So, I’m sorry. It was a long wonderful Christmas and New Year’s (in Atlanta and Des Moines) and sometimes it’s just hard to get out of vacation mode. I was also working on my newest website, a real estate website/blog for central Iowa. Woo Hoo. Anyway, that’s done and showing good signs of success already. But fear not, on my down time I was keeping lots of notes for this blog. I’ve been reading A TON of good stuff about how some churches have been using technology in a new favorite magazine of mine. But more about that at another time.

My issue for today is a great idea with just the wrong context. BiblesonDVD.com has an offering that amused me at first and then saddened me. I saw a commercial on television (not sure if it was a Christian station or not) for what I thought would be a good product. Only to be saddened once I got to the site. Have you went there yet? Did you notice anything? I did. Those three old initials kept popping up. KJV. Aaahhh! Why? It’s not like the church doesn’t have a hard enough PR problem. (i.e. I don’t understand the sentences) No one talks in KJV today. Why not a nice little version with NIV, or better yet, redo it completely in terminology that the lost of today understand?

My problem is this, if you’re going for realism and going to spend all this money to make something quality, why not make it effective too. If you just want realism, take the Mel Gibson Passion of the Christ approach and do it all in the original language. I know some of you like the NKJV for the ‘poeticness’ (is that a word?) and flow of the scripture. But when someone is down to their last leg and at the end of their rope, they don’t want poetry. They want the truth that speaks to their heart, and they want (and need) it to be understandable to them, to be able to apply it to their lives today. My feeling is this, a new believer has a hard enough time trying to make sense of all of the confusion of Christianity. Why unnecessarily further complicate things?

I could go on and on about this, but it’s late and we’ve got plenty of time in the future to discuss this issue. Bottom line: The lost need to find the truth. And we have a responsibility to get the truth to them. Why make the task harder than it is? Be relevant in every form of ministry that you do. Make the gospel usable and applicable to the unsaved. Be transparent, let them see Christ in you. The faster they get it, the faster they start telling other people about it!

Until next time.

How’s Your Church’s Cell Phone Ministry?

Whoo Hoo! This is not only a dream of mine, but it appears, that of others too! You know what I’m talking about if you know me at all. Cell phone ministry. The church having the same access to media forums as the secular world. Have you seen the commercials for Amp’d Mobile? They have streaming videos that look good. You can now rent and stream an entire movie on your cell phone with Sprint. And that’s no choppiness, just a good clean stream, for under $5! Movies that were in the theaters as soon as 3-4 months ago. Some churches have seen the future and understand that everything, let me say it again, EVERYTHING is going to cell phones. You can already check movie tickets with Fandango on your phone, not to mention take credit card payments with some Nextel phones. E-mail, on your phone? No problem, it’s standard now. What about being able to track the lost child, or closer to me, the person with Alzheimer’s? No problem. One more time, for dramatic emphasis, in the future… EVERYTHING is going to be done on your cell phone! Why can’t the church do it too?

The question is, will the church jump, or take the usual ‘wait until it’s been tested and the technology is 15 years old’ route. I’ve said it before, the church can no longer afford to try to reach the same generation that grew up on Nintendo and cable television with Flanograf boards. Technology is constantly getting cheaper, will the church adapt? I’m not talking about a projector and you watch video clips for sermon illustrations. I’m talking about website, wireless, podcast, fusing everything together to effectively reach this generation. Let’s not look at history, we might not like what we find. I get saddened everytime I hear of a pastor that wants to get moving in the right direction, only to have the board ask if it’s really necessary. The importance of technology? Take away their television, radio, cell phone and internet and they’ll begin to understand the necessity of technology. What does it take for the church, as a whole, to understand the importance of technology? Leave me a comment, let me know.

One thing I explained to my pastor. You may not have camera phone right now, but by the next time you go to upgrade your cell phone, you will have a phone with the option of a camera, internet access, text messeging, and the ability to watch live television or movies. All from your cell phone. Maybe even take credit card payments, PayPal payments and have a projector on it. Where is your church at in the technology game? Think about it.

Until next time.

The NEW Nativity?

I was afforded the opportunity to see “The Nativity Story” at an early preview last night. Let me start out by saying that I wasn’t expecting a whole lot. How can you enjoy a movie where you already know the ending? But I have to say, I was surprised. New Line Cinema did a very good job to showing the realism of the time. Even more surprising was that the same company that put out the Austin Powers trilogy and American History X stayed very close to the Bible. Maybe not too surprising to the millions of Lord of the Rings trilogy fans who have said it stayed very close to the books.

Overall, even with a few things not quite lining up with the good book, I could recommend the movie to for all ages. The movie was excellent. Beyond the minor indescripancies, the movie told the story of our Lord’s birth well. It opens this Friday, 5 stars.

Until next time.

EXTREME MAKEOVER – BLOG EDITION

As some of you may have noticed, the Realtor Blog just had an extreme makeover this past week, as well as IowasRealtor.com. A couple different reasons for that, some more important than others. IR.com was converted to AdamForney.com and blog.iowasrealtor.com converted to AdamForney.net. With all the changing that was going on, I had to make a decision about the blog as well as the website because the blog had been linked.

With all the different issues being brought to my attention, I decided the blog needed a makeover and different focus completely. From here on, you will still see some real estate blogging going on, but the main focus has been shifted to something a little more eternal, the church. Most know of my past with ministry being a youth pastor and such. Eventually I have to realize that it is a part of me that cannot and will not escape. You pastors out there know what I’m talking about.

Most of you know of Thrive Web Group and it’s new partner site, ThrivingDomains.com. Now everything has been brought under one roof with the label of ChurchForward. It’s a way to centralize everything and have future divisions of the company know how it fits into the whole. TWG and TD.com aren’t changing, you still get the quality service from both that you have in the past.

ChurchForward will be able to take all the services we offer in our web suite (i.e. web design, domains, blogs, consultation, etc.) to the next level as we continue to prepare the church for the newest technology that comes out and how we can reach the world through it!

Adam Forney
Founder/CEO
ChurchForward.com
“Fusing together methods to grow the church and reach your world!”