Blog We write about church website design, ministry marketing, and other topics relevant to communicating via the web.
Win Over $1,000 Worth Of Work
Today MinistryCMS is very excited to bring you our Web Design giveaway! This is an awesome chance to win over $1000 in design work to spend on your ministry website. And best of all it’s dead easy to enter, read on to find out how.
How to Enter
To enter, you’ll need to do one of the following:
1. Send a tweet on twitter and include the #ministrycms tag in it.
2. Comment on any blog post that month.
You can be creative with your tweet or re-tweet our message, but don’t forget to follow @ministrycms to find out if you’ve won.
FAQs
Can I enter more than once?
Yes, you can enter as many times as you like with each comment or tweet counting as an entry.
When does the competition close?
You need to comment or tweet by August 31st, 11:59pm Eastern Standard time to be considered. Remember to make sure you comment or tweet by the end of the time period!
Terms and Conditions
- Entries close 11:59pm on August 31st 11:59pm, Eastern Standard time.
- If you are suspected of attempting to rig the contest by spamming entries or votes your entry(ies) will be disqualified
- Please contact MinistryCMS support (support@ministrycms.com) with any questions or clarification.
- Grand Prize Winner will receive free Web Design Essentials Package and 1 month free hosting.
Good Luck!
The World’s Oldest Bible Is Available Online
After seeing the world’s oldest Bible has been made available online, I started wondering: has the world’s oldest Bible beaten to your church to the internet?
If so, you’re not alone. there are churches everyday that are and reaching and helping others.
So I ask again, is your ministry online? If not, why not contact us today and see how we can help you get online and reach millions of people.
You can see the oldest Bible, The Codex Sinaiticus, at it’s own website here.
Tutorial Video: Create A Form In Seconds, Part 3
In the third video of MinistryCMS video tutorial series, we’ll discuss an area that most clients want on their website, online forms.
Use the form making ability to create contact forms, online registrations, web surveys, and more. Through simple drag-and-drop procedures, you can easily add functionality to your ministry website in a matter of seconds.
Tutorial Video: A Walkthrough On Adding Content To Your Ministry Website, Part 2
In our first tutorial video, we gave an overview demonstration of the capabilities of MinistryCMS. In this second video, we get more in-depth with the our great tools and describe the basic steps of adding text and images with the text editor.
Step-by-step walkthrough from the video:
- Login to your site.
- Find the place on your page you would like to add content.
- Click on the Add Element button.
- Choose Text, the default selection, from the dropdown menu and click Add.
- Move you mouse to the new text element you added, and click on Settings on the dropdown.
- Type in the text or add pictures that you want on this page.
- Press the Update button.
LifeChurch.tv Launches Video Ministry Service On July21st
LifeChurch.tv is getting ready to launch a great tool on July 21st.
From VideoTeaching.com – “In just days, we will be unveiling a robust video resource site for your church. VideoTeaching.com will allow your church to access a free online library full of high-quality video messages from gifted Christian communicators. We are excited to share this free resource with you!
Come back July 21, 2009, to register your church and access the full library of video messages.”
For all you church planters and pastors out there, this could be an invaluable tool!
My Favorite Online Bible: YouVersion.com
How many of you read your Bible…on your computer? Well if you’re like a growing number of people out there, you get your daily Bible fix through electronic means. While I’ve used personal Bible software in the past, there always comes a time when I need to lookup a verse or reference something real quick and I go to the best source I know: The Goog.
“Do we really need another online Bible tool?” is probably what you’re thinking. And my answer was no up until last year. Then I stumbled on YouVersion.com and it has become my defacto online Bible reading website. Read on to find out why.
User Experience
In my opinion, this has been the biggest problem with most online Bible sites. Frankly, their user interface hasn’t been updated since 1994. Not YouVersion. Their interface is very slick and designed by one of my favorite web designers, Chris Merritt. Why is this important? Because the less friction it takes for me (or anyone else) to read the Bible, the better. The User Experience at YouVersion is top-notch and allows me to quickly get on, do some daily reading, and take some notes all in seconds.
Multiple Versions
Different language and different versions. Me? I love the King James version all the way. But there are many other versions available depending on your preference. This is great for anyone wanting to search the scriptures and see different takes on verses depending on a version of the Bible.
Community Involvement
Where’s the fun in studying scripture if you can’t discuss it with someone? With YouVersion, sharing and commenting on scripture is available at the click of a button. No messy seperate sign ups to forums, etc. Just get signed up and start discussing the Lord’s words with other people.
Mobile Version
This is my favorite part about YouVersion. If you’re really in a hurry and you’re on the go, when you have a minute, just navigate to YouVersion.com using your mobile phone and you can catch up on your devotional reading for the day!
I can already see how awesome this would be in a church application – Imagine yourself sitting in a pew listening to a message with a pencil, paper, and your Bible writing notes and thumbing through text to keep up. Sounds typical right? Now imagine you’re sitting there listening to an same message with your mobile phone out with YouVersion up and your thumbing through scripture and taking notes at the same time? Awesome!
As Much as I Love it, I Want More
So, what’s missing? Well, not much. If anything I would ask for a great concordance tool for looking up where words are found (like Strong’s Concordance) and a Hebrew/Greek Lexicon. Other than that, I’d be all set. Maybe the great online Bible search isn’t over?
What do you think about YouVersion? Have you tried it out and gone back to your favorite online Bible tool? If so, tell me about it below.
Getting Started: Ministry Web Design On A Budget
Quick: what is the size of your technology budget? You do have one, don’t you? If you’re like most ministries, setting money aside for technology is way down the list (probably at the bottom). So how do you still afford to have a nice website when you’re strapped for cash? With planning, strategy, and knowing your budget.
First, Get Key Input from Influencer’s
Talk to key people that will be a part of using the website or supporting the site once it is finished. Get their opinions on what their expectations are, overall goal of the site, and possibly even design preferences. Different people will have different opinions on what purpose it will serve and ideas on how it will benefit the ministry. It helps to get all of their input even if you don’t use it all; maybe they will bring up an idea that you hadn’t thought of?
Second, Set Definable Goals
Most web designers will start off by asking you what your goal(s) are for the website. This question should be one of the first ones you tackle as well. You’ll save yourself valuable consulting time by having a list of goals defined and ready for the designer. This will help them better determine the web design and strategy needed for your site.
Here are some examples of website goals I thought of off the top of my head:
- Upcoming Events
- Podcasting
- Event Registration
- Downloadable Forms
- First-time Visiting Information
- Contact Forms
- Statistics Tracking
Once your goals are defined (or at least a decent-sized list), start prioritizing the items. In this list, organize everything from “Must Have’s” to “would be nice”. I find it best to number from 1 being the most important then 2, then 3…you get the idea. This will help in visualizing importance to be placed when building out the page design and, overall structure on your ministries website.
Now You’re Ready to Start the Process
At this point you should have a good starting point for your website project. To recap, you listed the goals of your website and gathered input from key influencers; now what do you do? In most cases, this is the point where you most likely contact a company specializing in website design for ministry and churches like MinistryCMS. This is point where your budget starts coming into play in knowing what you can afford. Begin by looking over the design offerings and see which plans align with your needs. Depending on the size of your budget, you might decide on using a template solution. If you have a bit more available in your budget, choose a custom design solution. The large benefit to custom design solutions is that they are crafted specifically to your needs which can help yield better site conversions – that and the design is uniquely yours and not used by other websites.
This is only a starting point for the process of building a beautiful yet functional website for your ministry. Have you gone through these steps yourself before contacting a company like MinistryCMS? If not, what has been your experience with doing it differently? I’d love to hear about it in the comments.
Tutorial Video: An Overview Of Managing Your Church Website, Part 1
Video demonstration offers so many more advantages over live demonstrations. Interested visitors are able to view the videos any time they want without having to meet a demonstration schedule, plus many people prefer to watch and rewatch a video rather than participate in personal meetings. Plus, the visitor can rewind or cue up to a specific point in the video to get a better understanding of our offerings.
In this four-minute video overview, we’ll show you the basics of logging into your website, managing your site content, and adding and manipulating pages on our CMS. You’ll be amazed at how easy itis to build out your church website.
As a reminder, our videos are available in our support site. If you ever need a quick walkthrough on updating your website, they’re available at a click of a button!
How Your Ministry Can Use Social Media
In the fast-paced environment that is the internet, it can seem overwhelming for a ministry to branch out beyond their website to reach people. Whether you’ve been out of the social media spectrum awhile or this is your first entry, my advice is: Jump In!
Spread your Message Farther
If you had an upcoming event at your church, you would tell as many people as you know, right? You would print flyers, postcards, handouts, call friends, family, neighbors, strangers, etc. – The internet is the same way. You want people to know about your church or ministry’s events/needs. using social media is no different. There are various social sites to get your message out. Not all are applicable to every ministry, but here are some common ones that people use:
-
Social News Outlets
-
Digg – is a place for people to discover and share content from anywhere on the web.
-
Technorati – collects, organizes, and distributes the global online conversation.
-
Reddit – is a source for what’s new and popular on the web.
-
Stumbleupon – helps you discover and share great websites.
-
-
Communicate
-
Photos
-
Flickr – wants to help people make their content available to the people who matter to them and enable new ways of organizing photos and video.
-
-
Video
-
Youtube – video sharing website on which users can upload and share videos
-
Vimeo – is a respectful community of creative people who are passionate about sharing the videos they make.
-
Ustream.tv – Stream a live broadcast, webcam chat rooms or free TV online. Web podcast, free Video Streaming, Live TV show broadcasting and LIVE VIDEO Chat by USTREAM.
-
-
Music
New Ways to Spread your Message
I listed some great sites above to get yourself and your ministry involved and sharing. But why would you want to? Well, the internet is big. I mean real big. What other medium do you have such a huge opportunity to connect? you can reach people either locally in your community or take your message on a national level. The choice is yours.
Give, Rather than Take
The best advice for social media interaction is to be geniune and to be involved. People can tell if you truly care through your message, so don’t force it. Spend time learning in the circles you might be following and are interested in. People don’t want your first personal message to them to be about donating to your cause…Which leads me directly into a social best practice: it is good to give anywhere from 3-5x the amount of links/help/advice back towards the conversation or person for every one time you ask for something directly related in your ministry.
No Reason to Wait
You are not alone in waiting this long; there are hundreds of thousands of people signing up for these services monthly and starting to use them too. They come from all ages and walks of life, so don’t be afraid that you’re age, gender, or interests should hold you back. I often come across people whom I would never think would be interested in Web Design or Technology but often they have a question or just want to learn. My point is, we all benefit from this new form of sharing, interacting, and helping. Jump in the conversation and introduce your Church or Ministry and to get people talking about it. There’s nothing better than open, honest communication!
So what is your church or ministry doing to connect with people online? Are you localizing your message and focusing on people around you, or is your ministry working towards a national/worldwide connection? What is the biggest challenge you’ve faced so far in interacting online? Leave your thoughts or comments below.
50 Excellent Church Website Designs
Sometimes in creating web sites for churches, we often look to others for inspiration in a new design. Below are 50 church websites that I’ve compiled that are constantly used as a good reference for different design ideas. These ministry websites represent an excellent variety of themes, moods, colors and graphics that combine into good web design. These examples also help visually communicate to clients what can be achieved through good web design.
If you’re church is in need of a design refresh similar to one of the sites below, please take a look at our available design options. If you have any other suggestions, please feel free to submit it in the comments.
Bethlehem United Methodist Church
Christian Service Brigade Ministries
Fourth Avenue Church of Christ
Island Evangelical Community Church
Rolling Hills Community Church
Trinity United Methodist Church
If you are wanting a rejuvenated website for your ministry, please take a look at our different design packages.
