Time to get Flashy!

For anyone who wants to have a superstar church website but isn’t real sure about how to even start with it, I have found a site. It’s great for teaching you the basics and what basic stuff you need. So HERE you go. Did you catch it? That was the website for Flash tutorials. Good stuff, since I’m just learning the basics myself. Anyway, hope that helps.

Until next time.

Adam Forney, Founder/CEO
ChurchForward

How about that Obese Youth Group?

West Virginia has come up with an original idea. Dance Dance Revolution. That’s not the original idea, but using a video game to help kids lose weight is. The preliminary results from a 24 week trial have looked pretty good for the kids. Stable to loss of weight is the end result they’re looking for. It looks like it might be on the way. Here’s the story from FoxNews.com.

So having a problem with obesity in your youth group? Maybe Dance Dance Revolution is your answer! Good news: video games can be useful for more than just leisure activities. Bad news: I still don’t think I’m any closer to justify playing Halo 1, 2, or 3 (when it comes out) to my wife. Oh well.

Until next time.

Vista Palooza!

Well Microsoft is doing it again. Releasing the “Next Big Thing”. The newest operating system is coming out tonight at midnight. Vista will be released to the multitudes, with it’s updated Word, Excel, and of course PowerPoint. Before you go running off and camping overnight at the local Wal-Mart, let’s look at how Vista is going to help your local church. After all, that’s what ChurchFuse is here for, you know (Fuse Your Methods to Reach Your World), that whole thing.

Vista will come with a nice little price tag of between $100 to $400, depending on what version you’re upgrading from. One new little thing is being able to download the system from the internet. That’s a first. And I’m sure there’s more…right…more things to know about Vista…right? Not really. Not yet anyway. Beyond all that, there’s probably not a lot of reason to upgrade right now. Microsoft will probably need to get rid of the usual ‘first edition bugs’ anyway. It’ll be interesting to see what Scoble has to say about it in the coming days. Here’s FoxNews.com’s story about it. So, not a alot of reason to get excited about Vista, yet. Maybe in a few months though, after the inital release.

So sleep on my readers. Sleep in your own beds tonight, and don’t make your wives angry by pulling out the tents and sleeping bags. Buy Vista later. That’s my take on it.

Until next time.

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Cellphone Nursery Nanny?

So I saw an interesting story on Fox News today(good luck finding the link on foxnews.com). The story told of a retailer that was putting a camera in dressing rooms for the ‘convenience’ of the customer. Convenience, you ask? Well, the convenience comes in when the person in the dressing room can take a picture and send it to any e-mail address or cell phone of their choosing. E-mail? Cellphone? Did you get that creepy feeling yet? Well don’t, this is a descent blog after all. You see, I had a different idea.

My church is getting the nursery redone right now. The sheetrock is up and should be painted by this weekend. Whoo Hoo. But, the senior pastor (yes, he’s my dad) is looking for a way to incorporate a one-way window, so parents can see in but the child can’t see them and get distracted. Good idea. The person in charge couldn’t find any one-way glass. Not a real big surprise to me living in little Des Moines. So they wanted to put a small closed circuit camera in the nursery, with the monitor just outside the door. Good idea. But then, me being me, I saw the story on Fox and begin to think.

Wouldn’t it be great to do the dressing room idea in the nursery. Let’s imagine: Mom gets worried about child during service, mom goes to website on phone to get picture or better yet, live stream, mom happy because child is okay. No distractions, mom focuses on pastor’s great sermon again. What a great scenario. Now I know that may be a little far stretched for today, but it’s coming. Trust me, it’s coming. That’s what this blog is all about, opening up to new ideas. Any takers?

Until next time.

10 Ways To Absently Communicate

Found this post the other day. It’s a great post about ways to have a discussion without being in the same room. There are many different ways of communication, it just takes a little bit of creativity and set-up. For you pastors out there having a hard time getting everyone together, this is fantastic. For you bi-vocational pastors, this should give you some great ideas on how to conference in all those volunteers you have.

Anyway, check it out here and let me know what you think. Just sounded like some good ideas.

Until next time.

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.

CES-Mania

Well for all you wannabe tech geeks out there, if you missed it, the CES will wrap things up tomorrow in Las Vegas. Because of course, if you are a tech geek, you’ve been planning the 4 day event now for 8 months. CES presented by the Consumer Electronics Association is a 4 day gadget-extravaganza. Big names like Apple and Microsoft always unveil something great there or somethings great. The huge buzz yesterday was Apple’s IPhone. Which is not turning out to be as good as most thought, even Apple-lovers. Paul Kedrosky names a few and Robert Scoble pointed out what should be the other five. As an ex-Cingular employee, I could not agree more.

Anyway, this is the time of year when you get to see the future of technology. So I am always happy around the time the CES is going on because I get to start figuring out how the church is going to start using the newest technology. Alot of times I’m right, sometimes I’m not though. Either way, it’s fun fun fun:)

So I thought of a challenge for you, the readers (all 5 of you, including my wife and I). Check out the CES and tell me what you think will make the biggest impact in the church world. Incase you are trying to find some good insight to cut through all the newest stuff, Scoble does about as good a job as anyone and covering the CES and giving good feedback. So have fun with this, lets get a good discussion going.

Until next time.

Who’s Your Techie?

So I commented on a comment last night. My first. Thank-you. Whether you read the comment or not, it of course, got me thinking. Where is the ‘know-how’ generation in the church today? Of course we have the mega churches and many other churches today that have it down. The vast majority of churches though, are still in Flanograf mode. You know what I mean. The church that introduced the overhead projector 10 years ago (even then behind the time) and still have the same overhead projector, just a different bulb. And let me tell you, those bulbs can be hard to find at 6pm on a Saturday night. Take it from one who knows. FedEx just can’t deliver the bulb that fast!

Back to the know-hows. I believe there are many people sitting in pews today that have the ability to make their church more effective, but for some reason aren’t making a difference. I’ve seen many reasons for that. For some I think they just don’t understand how important their role in the Kingdom and bringing people to Christ is. For others, the leadership in their church is the issue. Not wanting to make the change, or not seeing the importance of the change is crucial in making today’s church more effective. Our changing and being able to adapt to our environment, just like so many other areas of life, is what makes the church effective. How effective is your church? I don’t know about you, but my denominations statistics on salvation experiences are lacking, and it’s supposedly on the higher side of the chart. It all begins with the local church. You leaders can say all they want and initiate all the programs, and do everything in their power, but if it doesn’t make a difference at the local church level, it doesn’t matter.

You see, the church has an issue it needs to deal with. How do we “recruit” (can I say that?) the ‘techies’ in the church and make them a valuable part of our ministry. I don’t think we need to go beyond the church walls(although I’m not opposed to it) to get who we need. I think we just need to focus our vision a little more and see who God has already planted in our congregations to help with this ‘issue’. Look at your congregation today. Who there has some kind of gift that can be used? Let’s not forget about one of the greatest gifts. The gift of “Willing to Learn.” Who is able to be taught and take up the ministry?

The Bottom Line is the same. Let’s face it, we as ministers have a hard enough time as it is. We need to use all available gifts and talents we have in the church, not only to lighten our load(although that’s nice!), but to reach the unsaved. God has given us the gift of technology, we need to use it. However we can, and with whomever we can. I was explaining to my church about how great the new website was and everything we can do with it, as a ministry. I don’t think they got it until I said that we now have the ability to reach everyone in the world through our church. A man in China and a girl in Europe can now all be touched by our church’s ministry at the same time! That’s God’s gift of technology in action! We need to be excited about it!

Who’s in your church, sitting in the pews, untapped? Let’s find a way to be more effective today.

Until next time.

How Cyber is Your Church?

Okay. So I know technology changes faster than we realize. I understand the church sometimes lags behind in the technology race. I understand that sometimes it’s okay to. But when I ran into this article, I couldn’t believe how far behind we are, as the church. The article was from June of 2006, yes, six months ago. For those of you who will not read the article, it speaks of how good PowerPoint can be to enhance a service, how cell phones can be distracting in a service. PowerPoint. Was the article talking about how helpful PowerPoint can be? Powerpoint 2 came out in 1987. Stop….let it sink in. Yep, that’s almost 20 years ago. Granted, you can do alot more with PowerPoint today with adding sound, tables, and much more complex variables. Cell phones being intrusive to a service? Of course, but who doesn’t know how to put the phone on vibrate or leave it off completely. That’s not the technology’s fault. It’s the old “guns don’t kill people, people kill people” argument. Phones going off during service don’t irritate me, the person who doesn’t turn it on vibrate or off, irritates me.

I liked that the article brought out the point of PDA’s. I enjoy having SmartBible on my Treo, in 2 different versions(NASB & KJV(for the ‘I hate anything new’ crowd)). I have a copy of God’s Word anywhere I am. Anywhere. I don’t enjoy the stares I get while in church, following scripture with the pastor, on my cell phone. I guess people don’t get it sometimes. Technology can be good! Christians can use all different types of technology to not only enchance their personal walks, but also to spread the gospel.

When reading the Rev. Goodier’s remarks about accessing the Bible on a PDA, did you catch the almost dare I say, arrogance? “It can be a convenience.” Of course he still carries around his pocket sized copy of the Bible. So what’s the problem? Is it because it’s not on paper, or because it’s on a cell phone? Am I reading it wrong? Then he’s back to the PowerPoint. Geez, give me a break. He’s acting like he’s using a technology no one’s ever heard of. Point of Interest: my eight year old nephew can put together a PowerPoint presentation. I’m scared to imagine what the good Rev. might say if he came into one of my church services, powered with MediaShout and it’s use of moving backgrounds and animated words. I would guess it might be a while before he explores the amazing world of DigitalJuice.com.

It’s my same old complaint. The church will stumble on to some form of technology that helps their spreading of the gospel, only to find out that the business world has been using it successfully for years, sometimes decades. It’s like thirdfloorthoughts commented on 12/14/06, we need to be operating ahead of the curve, not behind it. It’s time to put away our petty preconceived notions about different technologies and use what we can to reach this world. Believe me, someone is going to reach every person in this world. The question remains, will it be us or the world? The world’s got a pretty good head start on us. It’s time to stop arguing about issues that we are scared of and start using technology to get things done. Sounds pretty simple to me.

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!”