Free Personal Web Hosting and Personal Homepages!

If you are one of those people whose head is spinning with all the new Internet terms like blog, podcast, folksonomy, or netiquette, here’s one more: webinar.  In this article, I’ll explain in plain English what a webinar is, how it works, why you should consider participating in one or even hosting one.  Plus I’ll include examples from a previous webinar and provide details on how you can participate in an informative webinar tomorrow on the NE1 Web Page Editor at no cost.

(more…)

On June 22, the movie Evan Almighty opens in theaters across the U.S. It’s the latest movie to be heavily marketed to Christians. In conjunction with the movie a new website has been launched called Ark Almighty, which bills itself as a way to help churches live out Jesus’ call to love one another by facilitating the posting and fulfilling of needs within the church. Is this really a generous effort to help others or just a slick movie marketing campaign?
(more…)

Good afternoon and happy Friday to you all.  Last month in our blog survey we asked if you would be interested in reading about related articles found on other blogs.  A significant percentage of those of you who responded expressed an interest in that, so we’re going to experiment for a while with a Friday afternoon blog article featuring some of the articles from the week which I thought were interesting.  Some of the articles are a little off-topic, but it’s Friday, and we have to have a little fun.
(more…)

Happy New Year everyone!  I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas with family, friends, and most importantly, Jesus.  I love this time of year because it’s a time of optimism and fresh starts.  More than any other time of year, in January we believe in the possibility of what could be.

Now I’m sure you’ve noticed in the last couple of weeks there has been no shortage of articles, blogs, and TV shows containing 2007 predictions.  They range from the dire like Pat Robertson’s prediction of a terrorist attack to the wacky (the Spice Girls will reunite.)  I promise not to scare you with doomsday forecasts, and while it’s tempting I’ll resist the urge to humor you with outrageous possibilities.

In fact, I’m kind of cool to the whole prediction thing, but I believe that success often comes from anticipating a trend and putting yourself in a position to ride the wave.  My hope is that by talking about some of the current trends related to Christianity and the Internet that you can position yourself to ride one or more of these waves in 2007.  So, here are 5 predictions for 2007 and their implications for Christian ministry. (more…)

In the last blog article we discussed techniques on how to shot video in and out of your church. In this article we will be discussing what to do with that video, including video editing, video editing software, video formats, and embeding video into your web pages. So, get comfortable because we’ve got a lot of ground to cover.   (more…)

You may have noticed a growing trend in churches to use video as a tool, to not only help their audiences receive their message, but to also put video on other mediums such as DVDs and the web. In this blog I am going to go through the steps on using your video system to its full potential. (more…)

Just a few years ago, there was very little video on the web.  The majority of Internet users still used slow dial-up connections which made it painfully slow to download video.  Most web hosting accounts included so little disk space that a couple minute video would fill up the entire account.  It was just impractical to put video on a website.  But all that has changed.

More than 70% of people in first-world countries have broadband Internet access.  Disk space allocations in web hosting accounts have expanded from megs to gigs.  With the explosion of video-sharing sites like YouTube, online video has gone from the techno-geek fringes to the mainstream.

We now live in a very video-oriented, media world.  If a picture is worth a thousand words, a video is worth a million.  Online video helps to engage and connect with visitors on a personal level.  And yet very few churches have added any video at all to their websites.  That’s why we’re doing Video Month at OurChurch.Com, and why I want to talk about three videos every church website should have. (more…)