WebMinistry 2.0 for Churches {A Step-by-Step Guide} Part 4: Top 10 WordPress Plug-ins
WordPress includes the unique option of adding small programs that modify and/or enrich its capabilities. They are called plug-ins. The newest version of WordPress includes a special part in the administration panel for these plug-ins as follows:
{1} Event Calendar – WordPress includes a built-in calendar, which can be used to announce future events on their respective dates. Additionally, the calendar helps categorize the stored information by date, which gives a chronological timeline of the events in your ministry.
{2} Akismet is also a built-in plug-in, which helps manage the unwanted comments in your WordPress based site. This is a helpful tool against blog spammers.
{3} Post-notification does not come with WordPress, but it could easily be installed. It is basically a mailing list, with which your website automatically notifies your subscribers each time a new post is published. Read more
WebMinistry 2.0 for Churches {A Step-by-Step Guide} Part 3: WordPress and Its Famous 5 Minute Installation
To have WordPress installed on your server as a base for your church website you will need the following 7 tools {if the previous statement sounds a bit strange to you skip these steps and go to www. Blogger.com}
{7 Tools Needed For a WordPress Installation}
{1} Obviously, you will need a computer, internet connection and a good browser. Chances are you already have several of these, but for an internet browser, we recommend the new Chrome browser from Google, which can be found at http://google.com/chrome.
{2} Your visitors will need to be able to find your website on the internet through an appropriate and descriptive web name called a “domain.” We suggest that you use http://GoDaddy.com to purchase a domain name from. Read more
Rock The River Tour 2009
BULGARIA VOTES in the EU Parliament Elections
European Parliament Elections leave Bulgarian Evangelical Churches with no venue of political support.
As an EU member, Bulgaria voted in the EU Parliament Elections on June 6, 2009. After the 100% count, it was announced that GERB (new centrist party led by Sofia’s mayor Boyko Borisov) has won 24.48% of the votes with 627,693 votes. The Socialist Coalition for Bulgaria totaled 476,618 votes or 18.59%, the Turkish Movement for Rights and Freedoms (DPS) received 364,254 votes or 14,21%, the Nationalist Ataka got 307,985 or 12,01%, the National Movement for Stability and Progress (NMSP) of former Tsar and former PM, Simeon Saxe-Coburg, secured 205,145 votes or 8%, and the democratic Blue Coalition got 204,784 or 7.99%. Read more
Children’s Bible 3.0
June 1st is International Children’s Day in Bulgaria which has been celebrated for several decades now. On this day every year, Cup & Cross Ministries International releases a Bible related project for children. This year, our team was able to complete and make available on the internet Children’s Bible 3.0. This product contains over 100 audio, video and text/picture Bible lessons for children to be used as teaching aids in schools and churches. Children’s Bible 3.0 is indeed the next level of ministry to the children of Bulgaria and our team is both proud and privileged to be able to contribute to this project.
2009 Global Day of Prayer in BULGARIA {video}
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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