If you’re the one building church presentations every week, you might wonder, How can I:
The answer: Smart Media. Take a quick look at these Smart Media features in Faithlife Proclaim for some shortcuts and best practices in creating cohesive presentations fast. (more…)
You know the feeling when you get a perfect haircut? You walk a little taller, smile a little wider, and show it off with a selfie. A simple change like a new haircut can make all the difference in how you look and feel.
Your church website is unique and should have a custom look just like that custom haircut. It’s a funny comparison, but it’s important that the design and feel of your website reflect the uniqueness of your church.
Give your church website a fresh look by updating the design theme in a few simple steps. With customizable themes, your church website can look completely new. Change the menu, layout, color scheme, fonts, and more to fit your needs.
Incorporating closed-captions on your sermons allows people to engage with your content if they don’t have headphones or are hearing impaired. Reading closed-captions while listening to the audio of a sermon can also help people process and internalize the message.
Raise your hand if you’ve been here before:
You’re about to transition to a new verse or point in your sermon, when all of a sudden you can’t remember what’s next. Or you allude to the next slide in the presentation, only to see that you were wrong about the next slide. Now you’re busy backtracking.
These are the blunders a confidence monitor can save you from.
No hymnals? No problem.
In Faithlife Proclaim, you can display pages from hymnals on the big screen with just a few clicks. It’s a great way to help your church sing in parts and carry on the tradition of hymnody. [Read more…]
Prayer lists add unique functionality to Faithlife Groups. Here’s a quick primer on what they can do, and how to get the most out of them.
Faithlife Groups offer five levels of access, and empowers you to set privacy settings that suite your group’s unique needs. In the group settings panel, determine which members will be permitted to connect to group prayer lists, create and share new prayer lists, and remove requests.
Regarding prayer lists, you have three decisions to make:
For a more detailed explanation of all privacy controls and user permissions on Faithlife.com, check out the post “Understanding the Privacy Settings on Faithlife.com.”
It’s easy. Select “Prayer lists” from the documents menu, give your list a title and start adding requests right away. You can set frequency and duration for each request and add tags so that your prayer requests so you can find them again later.
Then, visit Documents.Logos.com to share it with a group. The “Collaborate” option will give a group ownership of your prayer list, so that members can add their own requests to it.
You could, for example, create a prayer list about a missions trip that your small group plans to make together. You would create the list in Logos 5, seeding it with some general requests like “financial support” and “safe travels.” After announcing the trip, you could share the list with your group at Documents.Logos.com, and then members could connect to it and add their own more specific prayer requests.
Though a prayer list may belong to a group, it may still not appear on the group’s page. A group administrator or moderator can add group lists to the sidebar for all to see. Tab over to the “Sidebar” section of the group settings menu, and drag a prayer-list widget to make shared prayer requests visible to all group members.
* * *
Faithlife Groups are the digital home for your faith community. It’s free to join and invite others. Tools like prayer lists, reading plans, Community Notes, and a group newsletter make it easier than ever to communicate, collaborate, and fellowship around the Word of God. Join today at Faithlife.com.
Faithlife.com is a superb home for your digital faith community. We’ve been adding lots of new bells and whistles over the last few months. Some of the most useful features, though, have been around for a while.
Here are four features you might have forgotten about:
Set your group’s URL so it’s easy for everyone to find. By default, the address will be your group’s name. But change it to Faithlife.com/Whatever-You-Want in group settings.
You have a lot of control over your Faithlife group’s privacy settings. You can set the overall level of visibility for your group, choosing between open, closed, and secret. And you can set permissions for each member, defining the amount of access available at each level. There are a lot of choices to make here, so I made some recommendations about privacy settings in a previous post.
Limited-time groups are common in church life. Small groups often meet weekly through the fall, disband over the holidays, and then reform after the dust settles in January. New groups start up all the time. When you form a seasonal group, you can also set an expiration date for it, saving you the trouble of deactivating it later.
If you need to create a new group much like one of your existing groups, use the “duplicate this group” button to save time. You can then change the name and group photo. Think about all the time you’ll save when you don’t have to create brand-new groups for each new Bible study series or small group that pops up.
What are your favorite Faithlife.com features? Tell us in the comments.
* * *
Faithlife.com is the digital home for your faith community. It’s free to join and invite others. Tools like prayer lists, reading plans, Community Notes, and group newsletters make it easier than ever to communicate, collaborate, and fellowship around the Word of God. Join today at Faithlife.com.
It just got easier for faith communities of all types and sizes to communicate important information—Faithlife.com now supports newsletters.
Group administrators, look for the “Newsletters” tab in the menu and you’ll find this new feature. It will be empty, since you haven’t sent any newsletters yet. Look for the “Send a newsletter” button on the right.
Clicking this button will lead you to the newsletter editor, which offers a handful of style options and content pods. Choose from text, members, and events.
When you’ve finished building your newsletter, send it from either the group or your personal account. If someone isn’t getting your newsletters, ask them to check their account settings. If they have unchecked the newsletters box for email notifications, they won’t receive your newsletters.
Start using the newsletters feature to communicate with your group today!