The Lakeland Outpouring: Streaming Difficulties
May 20th, 2008 Categories: Technology for Pastors
I tried to tune in to the latest session of the Lakeland Outpouring last night, and I have to tell you that I was less than impressed with the streaming video application. Now, I have blazing fast internet, so it’s not me. Also, this isn’t the first time I’ve had this problem. It may be a problem on the website of some sort, so I thought I would do my part and speak up.
I have found that if you click on “Menu” on the bottom of the streaming video application and set the “Buffertime” to 5, it helps some, but not much. In my own opinion, it’s just about time to disable that chat room (which is probably the root cause of the issue) and move it to another page.
Even if it freezes up occasionally, it’s still worth watching. If you’re having streaming video problems at the Lakeland outpouring website, leave a comment, especially if you figured out a fix.
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Content Management Software Is Dead: Long Live The Blog
May 19th, 2008 Categories: Christian Blogging Tips, Technology for Pastors
By now you’ve probably heard how relatively easy it is to get top-notch results in SEO and increased readership by leveraging the power of the blog. You’ve probably heard tales of people using blogs for all sorts of conventional website purposes with greater results, but you still continue to labor over your church website content management software and achieve the same results month after month.
What if I told you that we designed a new program that will revolutionize the way that Churches organize their websites and upload their content?
That’s right. We’ve figured out how to turn the average Wordpress Blog into a multi-faceted content management machine and, with the added SEO goodness of Wordpress, we’re going to score you a whole bunch of extra traffic in the process of liberating you from managing the beast that your website has become. What exactly are we talking about? Good question:
Think of your Church blog as the headquarters. The headquarters is where the Army goes to get information about what’s going on, to learn things, and to hear from the leadership. Beneath the headquarters, you have subordinate commands doing most of the work of the Army, right?
In your current website, it’s probably a separate page for each ministry. There’s a youth ministry page, a couples ministry page, a children’s ministry page…all of which are seldom if ever updated with anything meaningful and none of which pull their weight when it comes to bringing in traffic to your website. It’s a sad state of affairs.
We’ve figured out a way to turn a network of blogs into a super-powered church website application with complete content management functionality.
So, instead of having a youth ministry page, you’ll now have a youth ministry blog, and a seniors ministry blog, and a choir blog, etc. These blogs will each operate with complete individual functionality and, as blogs do, generate much more traffic than you currently experience.
Next, our code ninjas have figured out a way to re-syndicate the content of each individual blog onto all of the other blogs, resulting in a blog network that will keep interested parties in your network. The most recent articles will show up on the sidebars of all of your affiliated blogs. This has several advantages:
1) Delegation of content management tasks: For instance, the youth minister will now be responsible for updating the content on the youth ministry blog. No longer will one Pastor have to spend all day updating the pages for every single ministry at your church. Each minister will be independently capable of running their own portion of the network, freeing up valuable time and energy for the work of the ministry.
2) Added SEO benefits: The re-syndication, at least as far as we’ve experienced so far, has managed to boost the SEO profile of each site participating in the exchange. As if switching each page of your website to a blog wouldn’t do enough SEO miracles, our early research indicates that the combined synergistic effect of several blogs working together seems to be even better.
So, now you’ve got a church blog, and several subordinate ministry blogs.
The church blog would feature the following highlights:
- Fully Custom Design
- Unlimited Pages
- Full-Featured Content Management
- Re-Syndication of User Content
The individual, subordinate ministry blogs would feature:
- Unlimited template blog creation for as many ministries as you can think of
- Full-featured Author blogsites for each minister
- Customization Upgrades (custom design, domain, etc)
- Author-focused content
- Author-focused call-to-actions
If that was all we had done, it would be totally cool. But, consider all of the other added features that we’ve programmed into this world-beating wordpress upgrade:
Your blog network will also get the following cool options:
1) A fully-functioning intranet. We all know that communicating with your Associate pastors can be a challenge. Now, you’ll be able to communicate more effectively via a fully-functioning back-end blog that shows up on your dashboard. Use it for announcements, planning, meetings, or just to stay in touch between services.
2) One-click template creation. Starting a new dance ministry? No problem. One click and they will have their own dance ministry template blog. It’s as simple as checking your email.
3) One-site management for all users on all subordinate blogs. You can manage permissions, add users, create profiles, or anything else that you need to do from your custom dashboard. It’s just like the old Wordpress, but with a whole bunch more functionality.
Add, on top of that, the capabilities of a Gmail hosted email system, and you’ve got the complete church tech application for web 2.0 ministry. Now, tell somebody about it, will ya?
If you’re interested in getting a quote for this bad mamma-jamma, click here. I’m the man with the plan. Now, all you need is this comfy computer chair to take the world by storm!
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Charlotte Outpouring Continues Lakeland Tech Trends
May 17th, 2008 Categories: Technology for Pastors
There have been several prophets who operate on the National level who have foretold of the spread of the Lakeland revival to many other cities throughout the country and throughout the world. Looks like Charlotte, NC and Morningstar Ministries is next on the hit list.
Click here to view the video of what’s going on over at Morningstar. If you watch the whole video, you’ll see that Morningstar is also using cellular phones, streaming video, chat rooms, blogs, and everything else that they can leverage to spread the revival and get it out of their doors. Wow. How much more excited could I get about what God is doing?
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The Lakeland Outpouring: Is Your Church Ready?
May 14th, 2008 Categories: Technology for Pastors
The thing I’ve noticed the most about the Lakeland Outpouring as it relates to technology was the level of preparedness of that ministry to broadcast streaming video, to blog, and to spread the word via technology and technological means. This, at least to me, begs the question: Is your church ready?
What will you need?
Well, you’ll probably need a Web 2.0 site that will allow people to participate in what’s going on in your congregation. Does it have to be a blog…no. But a blog is an extremely effective medium for allowing participation in your church. You’ll also need a way to communicate what the Lord has done or is doing in your congregation. Try podcasting, for instance.
Also of great importance will be a robust, developed network of subscribers to which you can channel praise reports, healing videos, etc. It always helps to know people, and with all of today’s social media and cool blogging tools, there are no excuses for your church website to be an island with no connection to the rest of the world.
Now, does there have to be a Web 2.0 website or blog at your church in order for the Lord to pour out revival? Of course not. It just seems as if the Lakeland group was really able to leverage the move of the Spirit in that location and get max exposure by being prepared for the eventuality of revival. It’s food for thought. To check out the live streaming video of the Lakeland Outpouring, click here.
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Teen Mania Challenges Teens to “Let Their Voice Be Heard” At Acquire The Fire Atlanta
May 13th, 2008 Categories: E-Vangelism, Technology for Pastors
I loaded up the van and took my youth group to Acquire the Fire in Atlanta last weekend. We had a great experience and all, but I was surprised to learn that Teen Mania and Ron Luce are pushing technology in an attempt to have this generation “Let their voices be heard.”
Ron talked about blogging, video podcasting, youtube, and many other ideas for spreading the gospel through the innovative use of technology. Our only reply was, “Dude, that’s what we’ve been saying!”
We are firm believers in the idea that the church should be on the cutting edge of innovation and technological advancement. Seems like we’re doing exactly the opposite at the moment, so we welcome the voice of Teen Mania proclaiming with slightly more influence than us the value of embracing technology for evangelism.
If you’ve never been, take your kids to Acquire the Fire. You’ll like what you see.
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