Bulgaria Mourns
Bulgaria mourns after a fatal crash near the town Yambol killed 17 people and injured dozens more on Thursday.
May 28th is celebrated in the Eastern Orthodox tradition as the Feast of the Ascension of Jesus Christ. On this day, it is tradition to take a pilgrimage to your local monastery. A bus, after taking people to the Yambol monastery at the Bakadjik Mountain, lost control due to break failure and ran over some 30 people on its way downhill. Eleven women, four men and one boy were propounded dead at the scene of the crash. One more died in the hospital and a dozen others are in critical condition. Yambol is also the city which we make our base location while we minister in Bulgaria. Read more
WebMinistry 2.0 for Churches {A Step-by-Step Guide} Part 2: 5 Reasons to use WordPress
{1} It’s FREE. Open source means absolutely free for the end-user.
{2} It’s easy to use. If you can use Microsoft Word with relative ease, you can use WordPress.
{3} The search engines love it. Google and the other search engines “index” WordPress posts in minutes giving you and your church better exposure in search engine rankings for free.
{4} Thousands of free templates. You can change the way your website looks in less than 5 minutes without loosing any of the content
{5} You’re in COMPLETE control. YOU don’t have to pay a webmaster or your youth pastor to do it. You can do it yourself.
READ THE COMPLETE SERIES:
- WebMinistry 2.0 for Churches {Step-by-Step Guide} Part 5: 5 Things to Learn about WebMinistry 2.0
- WebMinistry 2.0 for Churches {A Step-by-Step Guide} Part 4: Ten Useful Plug-ins
- WebMinistry 2.0 for Churches {A Step-by-Step Guide} Part 3: WordPress and Its Famous 5 Minute Installation
- WebMinistry 2.0 for Churches {A Step-by-Step Guide} Part 2: 5 Reasons to use WordPress
- WebMinistry 2.0 for Churches {A Step-by-Step Guide} Part 1: The Web Process
WebMinistry 2.0 for Churches {A Step-by-Step Guide} Part 1: The Web Process
This post is more of a recommendation for churches and ministries looking for quick and inexpensive ways to present their work on the web. It was inspired by the volume of interest in our WebMinistry work in Bulgaria, which was produced by the recent BibleTech conference organized in Seattle by Logos Bible Software.
Our team did a subsequent presentation on the topic of WebMinistry 2.0 at the Leadership Development Institute held annually by our friends at the Church of God of Prophecy. And finally, the essence of the work was implemented in the websites of the Bulgarian Church of God in Chicago and the Bulgarian Evangelical Church of Houston.
All this bids us to write about the church ministry on the web in the beginning of the 21st century with the recommendation of how and why to use WordPress. We begin with a simple graph explaining the web process and setting the goals:
{1} to teach the postmodern world
{2} with a church website or blog
{3} based on WordPress
The following chart attempts to show how to relate a church event or a message to the world around us:
READ THE COMPLETE SERIES:
- WebMinistry 2.0 for Churches {Step-by-Step Guide} Part 5: 5 Things to Learn about WebMinistry 2.0
- WebMinistry 2.0 for Churches {A Step-by-Step Guide} Part 4: Ten Useful Plug-ins
- WebMinistry 2.0 for Churches {A Step-by-Step Guide} Part 3: WordPress and Its Famous 5 Minute Installation
- WebMinistry 2.0 for Churches {A Step-by-Step Guide} Part 2: 5 Reasons to use WordPress
- WebMinistry 2.0 for Churches {A Step-by-Step Guide} Part 1: The Web Process
BibleTech 2009 Reflections
Okay. Here it is in a nutshell or Twitter style … what we recommend from BibleTech 2009, and of course this is just our impression:
1. The Dramatizer – developed to separate the Bible text in drama scripts.
2. Mobile Ministry Magazine. What really needs to be said is this whole website is run from a Nokia cell phone.
3. Geeks&God: Using Drupal and much more to educate churches how to do ministry on the internet Web 2.0 style a.k.a Drupal Church Recipes.
These guys are something else. Hats off to Logos Bible Software for organizing this great conference. It inspired us to rethink our WebMinistry 2.0 philosophy and its consecutive presentations at the Leadership Development Institute of the Church of God of Prophecy and the Bulgarian Evangelical Church of God in Chicago.
A bit of disappointment was the lack of any presence by last year’s presenter James Tauber, especially since we have had a few questions for him about the MorphGNT. Now it seems that both the man and the morph have fallen off the edge of the world. Well, may be another time, James …
And finally, here are the Top 10 BibleTech 2009 Reflections according to Google:
http://openscriptures.org/blog/2009/04/synopsis-of-open-scriptures-at-bibletech2009/
http://www.ministrylive.org/index.php/2009/01/26/bible-tech-conference-2009/
http://www.supakoo.com/rick/ricoblog/CategoryView,category,bibletech.aspx/
http://evepheso.wordpress.com/2009/03/30/reflections-on-bibletech2009/
http://www.olivetreeblog.com/2008/01/16/olive-tree-at-bible-tech-2008/
http://wezlo.wordpress.com/2009/03/28/bibletech09-day-1-reflections/
http://weston.ruter.net/2009/01/14/open-scriptures-at-bibletech/
http://www.gabetaviano.com/speaking/back-from-bibletech/
http://jpsinteractive.org/blog/jt/bibletech-report/
http://blog.laridian.com/?p=134/
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20 Signs of the Last Days
1. The Spirit poured out on all flesh (Joel 2:28)
2. Israel restored as a political state (Deuteronomy 28:64, 30:3 Jeremiah 29:14, 30:3 Isaiah)
3. Universal apostasy (2 Thessalonians 2:1-4)
4. The watering down of the gospel (2 Tim 3:5, Matthew 15:9)
5. False prophets and false Christs (Matthew 24:24)
6. Good will be called evil and evil good (Isaiah 5:20)
7. Worldly knowledge will increase (Daniel 12:4)
8. Earthquakes, floods, famines, plagues and diseases such as the world has never seen (Matthew 24 and Luke 21)
9. Peace will be taken from the earth and wars will increase throughout the world (Matthew 24 and Luke 21)
10. Wickedness, murder and crime among men, while the belief in the occult will increase (Matthew 24, Luke 21, 2 Timothy 3:1-5, 4:3-4)
11. People will not believe the signs of the Last Days (2 Peter 3:3-4; Matthew 16:1-4)
12. Increase in persecution of the Christians (Matthew 24:9; Mark 13:9)
13. Spread of Nuclear Weapons as predicted by the Bible (Isaiah 24:1; Zechariah 14:12; Matthew 24:21,22)
14. Middle East Tensions and an unified Arab league (Genesis 16:12; Psalm 83; Isaiah 2:3-4)
15. The new tower of Babel (Genesis 10; Isaiah 13:1-11; Jeremiah 50-51 Revelation 18)
16. Gog and Magog (Ezekiel 38:1-4; Revelation 20:8)
17. The Revived Roman Empire (Daniel 2:34-45; 7:7-24; Revelation 13:1-2; 17:3-16 )
18. The Anti-Christ (1 John 2:18-19; 4:3; 2 John 7)
19. The Mark of the Beast (Revelation 13:18)
20. The FINAL SIGN: The Gospel will be preached to end of the world (Matthew 24:14, Revelations 14:6-7)
Church Leadership Seminar for the Bulgarian Evangelical Church of God in Chicago
Back in 1994-95, we helped start the Bulgarian Evangelical Church of God in Chicago. The church has now grown to be a multifaceted ministry hub serving some 100,000 Bulgarian immigrants in the Great Lakes Region. We presented a three-day Church Leadership Seminar, which we have designed specifically for the Bulgarian Church of God with a special focus on the problem in ministry of the Bulgarian Evangelical churches in North America. Pastors, team leaders and lay ministers attended the seminar on Saturday afternoon for seven-hours of non-stop teaching and training. The module on Stress Management and Internal Motivation was most favored by those in attendance, as the discussion after the session continued for close to an hour. Overall, seven of the twelve modules of the seminar were presented including the following topics:
1. Problem Solving, Delegation and Conflict Resolution
2. Bulgarian Churches in North America: Analyses and Perspectives
3. Structuring the Church for Growth: Breaking the 200 Member Barrier
4. Stress Management and Internal Motivation
5. 21 Laws of Leadership
6. 17 Laws of Team Work
7. 52 Leadership Principles of Jesus
WebMinistry 2.0 in Chicago
Our three day seminar with the Bulgarian Evangelical Church of God in Chicago started with WebMinistry 2.0. This is a series of lectures dedicated to ministry and inspired by the BibleTech 2009 Conference, which our team designed and presented at the Church of God of Prophecy annual Leadership Development Seminar in April. The presentations are combined with in-depth workshops which gives us the opportunity to share experience of over a decade of ministry on the internet and to empower local churches to take their rightful place in the web-sphere. The WebMinsitry 2.0 seminar in Chicago allowed us to launch the new website for the Bulgarian Evangelical Church of God there at: BgNewLife.org in parallel with the website of the Bulgarian Evangelical Church of Houston at: TwitterChurch.US.
Ministering in Mississippi Again
Having served as youth pastors at the Church of God at Southaven, it is always a great pleasure to return to the Grace Land area on the border of Tennessee and Mississippi to visit with old friends.
This time our visit was even more gratifying, as we were invited to speak about our work in Bulgaria at the Baptist Church in Nesbit, MS.
We had a wonderful day at the church and we were happy to bring to the congregation the word that God had laid on our hearts.
Easter Services in Houston
“Jesus has risen. He has risen indeed”, was the greeting on the morning of celebrating Easter with the Bulgarian Evangelical Church in Houston. We gathered in the building of the Second Baptist Church of Houston and had service and fellowship there for the next five hours. The message we preached focused on the Resurrection of Christ and we could barely hold our tears during the services, as the Holy Spirit visited the congregation encouraging everyone in His presence. The anointing was so strong that people began sharing about the blessings of the Lord in their lives and we concluded the service by praying for and anointing all present including the children.
The Bulgarian Evangelical Church in Houston is close to our hearts not only because it is the newest Bulgarian church in the United States, but because it incorporates a wide range of opportunities for the development of church leadership, congregation growth and ministry effectiveness. Therefore, we continued teaching the next day on the 20 Signs of the Last Days presenting the church with the urgency of the times that we live in. We prayed for the people of the church with the same prayer we blessed every church throughout our journey, as we pronounced a three-fold blessing over each family: (1) that they would receive a Boaz Blessing (3) that they would have a debt free home and (3) that God would give them an encounter with a person that could bless them in such a away, that they could become a blessing to others.
WebMinistry 2.0
Cup & Cross Ministries will be doing a presentation on the subject of WebMinistry 2.0 at the International Leadership Development Institute organized by the Church of God of Prophecy. Our team will be teaching a workshop on Tuesday April 21, 2009 at 3:45 PM.
Schedule of the event is available at: http://cogop.org/362679.ihtml
The location of the events is:
Peerless Road Church of God of Prophecy
3301 Peerless Rd NW, Cleveland, TN 37312
http://www.peerlessroadchurch.com/
We hope to see you there.
