10 Ways

Joshua from churchredone.com gives a great post on 10 ways to not get someone to visit their church. Find the post here. What do you think agree or disagree. Also, thanks to Eric O from FeedBurner for getting the RSS feed problem fixed a few weeks ago.

Until next time.

SECURITY ALERT! SECURITY ALERT!

Vista’s out and the hackers are thrilled! Hackers are off to the races to be the first to find holes in Microsoft’s most secure system yet, Vista. Vista was launched after five years of development and many delays to improve security. I’m sure it won’t be too long before some gets in. It’s almost inevitable. I think the question isn’t ‘if’ someone gets in, it’s ‘when’ they get in. Good luck, Bill. Find the article here.

Speaking of security, how’s your church’s system doing? When’s the last time you updated your Norton or Spybot or whatever your use to try to stay ahead of the game? Now might be a good time to. Obviously, church hacking probably isn’t a real big business, but better to be safe than sorry in this day and age. Your computer’s security can be just as important as your building’s security. I’m usally amazed when I see ADT or whatever security sticker on the church door, but they church has nothing to protect it’s hardware (which sometimes includes bank account information, website passwords, etc.). I know it would be a pretty big inconvenience if someone stole my church’s PayPal account username and password.

Bottom line: Why risk it? Some pastor’s have told me that they are trying to be fiscally responsible and don’t think the board or congregation would approve. Take a vote, I bet you find a different amswer. If not to scare you enough right now, did you read the entire article that I linked to in the first paragraph? There’s a world convention called Defcon that is entirely for computer hackers. They have their own convention! I’m telling you today, better safe than sorry. Update your security systems, before you’re forced to later on.

Until next time.

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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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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.

Church Google

Seems like everybody is using Google nowadays. When the CIA wouldn’t give up Iranian sanctions targets to the state dept, the state dept started a search of it’s own, on Google. The three lucky Iranians with the most Google hits became the target of “international rebuke.” Seems like there’s a reason for everything to use Google.

Of course, this got me thinking. Everybody’s using Google to find something. What about the Church? What does the Church use Google for? Or, more importantly, when a seeker is looking for a church home, what do they find? When they go to Google and type in ‘mytown, local churches’, what do they find? What they should find is your church. Do they?

Is your church ready when the unbeliever comes looking? Try it. Search your town and local churches. What comes up? If your church didn’t come up, there may be some issues that need exploring. It is no longer good enough to just advertise in the local paper or have your church listed in the local business/church directory. When the seeker is searching, they want answers now, not after they look in the phone book. Are we truly doing everything that we can to reach the lost seeker?

When seekers start googling your church, what do they find?

Until next time.

Oh yeah, need a quality website that won’t leave you dipping into the sunday school fund for extra money? Check here.

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.

Bono and The Prez, on AIDS

Interesting transcript here. It’s Bono in February of this year at a National Prayer Breakfast with President Bush. I think it’s always interesting when politics and entertainment meet. What I like about Bono is that he sees his role as entertainer much differently. He understands that he is a role model and there is great responsibility with that. Of course alot of entertainers have their charities that they have founded or support. But with Bono there’s a tranparence there that you don’t see often.

What I also like is that he is plugging an organization that I have only recently become a part of. The One Campaign, the campaign to make poverty history. Here’s a good clip from the article,”God is in the slums, in the cardboard boxes where the poor play house… God is in the silence of a mother who has infected her child with a virus that will end both their lives… God is in the cries heard under the rubble of war… God is in the debris of wasted opportunity and lives, and God is with us if we are with them.” That’s why ChurchForward supports organizations like The One Campaign and World Vision. Every time I go to the fridge, I see a picture of a little girl in Africa that we support monthly.

Bono understands something here that I think we forget alot of times. We are here for a purpose. That purpose may not always be clear, and sometimes very difficult to see. Whatever your purpose is, I pray you continue doing it with all your might.

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!”