It’s not hard for a church to be on social media. But it takes a lot of work to do it well.
In an interview with Faithlife Today, Justin Wise, author of The Social Church: A Theology of Digital Communication, shared some things every church should know about social media.
Imagine if every small group in your church started with a 10 minute video lesson taught by a prominent seminary or Bible college professor.
The videos were designed for the classroom, so they’re perfect for watching together. The content is focused on a topic or biblical book of your choice. The teachers are known, respected, and depended on by pastors around the country. And the small group is the perfect setting to grow together.
This could be the reality for your church. Right now.
Sign up to get your free copy of Can Someone Please Volunteer?.
Even when all the seats are filled, many churches and ministries struggle to find and keep enough volunteers.
It’s not a reflection of how well you share the gospel. But it’s probably an indicator that your volunteer program could use some work.
After pastors and church staff shared their struggle to train new volunteers, Proclaim Church Presentation Software produced Can Someone Please Volunteer? to help build volunteer programs that last.
Now, Proclaim wants your church staff to have a copy for free.
“What’s your calling?”
How you answer that question could change the way you see your entire life. The answer—and the process of learning how to answer—helps us find our place within the body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12:4–30).
Every Christian is called to go and make disciples (Matthew 28:18–20), but where and how we do that looks radically different for every person.
It’s no secret that conferences are expensive. Unless you live in the right city and incredible opportunities are in your own backyard, the biggest cost of that high-caliber teaching isn’t actually the teaching—it’s getting to the conference and reserving a place to stay for the weekend.
Thanks to technology, where you live or how much you make doesn’t determine who you can learn from. High-caliber education is increasingly becoming more accessible, and so are conferences.
We sat down with Kenneth Ching, author of Shattered Prayers: The Testing of a Father’s Faith, to talk about his book and the process of writing such a personal story.
Read more…
Kenneth Ching lived a comfortable life—with a great job, a big house, and an easy faith. He went to church and believed in God’s goodness. But when his son is born with a serious and rare genetic condition, his life is thrown into terrifying chaos.
In his honest and raw memoir, Shattered Prayers: The Testing of a Father’s Faith, Ching brings to life his experience of letting go while learning to truly trust the Savior he claims to know. Ching doesn’t shy away from asking the hard questions: Why does God answer some prayers but not others? How does prayer work? Is God even listening?
Shattered Prayers is ultimately a story about recognizing God’s presence and faithfulness in the midst of brokenness. And how one man thought God ruined his life by giving his son a terrible disease, but eventually realized God was actually fighting to save his faith and his son’s life.
Enjoy this excerpt from Shattered Prayers:
Every week, your church uses an ancient technology to collect contact information and track attendance: paper bulletins.
In addition to supporting the recycling and waste management services in your community, those paper bulletins create a lot of tedious work for your staff (or a very patient volunteer who deserves some appreciation). Someone has to collect all those bulletins and manually enter the information into spreadsheets—because what good is all that information if it isn’t organized?
That’s why Faithlife just made your bulletins digital. Collecting and organizing that information gets a whole lot easier, and your congregation stays more connected.
While you may not be ready to ditch your printer, technology is becoming increasingly valuable to churches. As of a year ago, about two thirds of your congregation has smartphones. The epitome of convenience is filling your pews every weekend. Your church can use that to your advantage.
Digital bulletins turn smartphones into assets, not distractions.
Faithlife.com now lets you create digital bulletins your church can access online—before, during, or after your service.
Every week, churches print off thousands of bulletins—most of which never actually leave the building. It costs money, wastes paper, and fails to remind most of your congregation about upcoming events, volunteer opportunities, and the key takeaways from your service.
Digital bulletins leverage smartphones to keep your church more connected.
Reading the Bible regularly can be hard. Sometimes it can feel like it takes too much work to understand what Scripture is really saying. And the last thing you want is for your Bible reading to become stale, or to feel forced.
If Bible study matters to you but you’re struggling to keep going, try some of these techniques.
Here are 15 ways to read the Bible with fresh eyes: