Webpresence for the Kingdom: Another Webministry Launched

Helping Churches Grow remains our mission statement.  One of the areas we focus on in this endeavor is webminisrty. We have been blessed with the opportunity to launch a first-ever website for a small Bulgarian Church of God in Chicago metro, Grace International Church. Over five years ago, we were able to build from ground up the website of New Life Bulgarian Church of God in Chicago. We have witness its effectiveness by giving them a platform to broadcast their services live all over the world.

With much prayerful consideration and reviewing the available internet entities, we decided on GraceInternational.TV as their domain name. After the approval of the lead pastors, the vision became a reality on January 31, 2014 to usher in the New Year with webpresence for the Kingdom. With the help of GraceInternational.TV many more Bulgarians in the Chicago area will become aware of this ministry and get connected with this local church.

We have witnessed the power of the Gospel brought via the internet over the years and feel that the gifts the Lord has blessed should be used to help churches become established on the internet with e-real estate. Webpresence is an invaluable recourse. If we can be of any assistance in helping your Church Grow in the area of webministry, please feel free to contact us to discuss this opportunity. (Learn how we help churches build their own and unique web presence)

WebMinistry 2.0 for Churches: A Step-by-Step Guide

• WebMinistry 2.0 for Churches {Step-by-Step Guide} Part 1: The Web Process
• 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 3: WordPress and Its Famous 5 Minute Installation
• 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 5: 5 Things to Learn about WebMinistry 2.0

WebMinistry 2.0 for Churches {Step-by-Step Guide} Part 5: 5 Things to Learn about WebMinistry 2.0

1.To have a website that is seen by search engines is as important as having a website itself. After all, the idea is to tell the world, not just yourself, about your ministry.

2.Write regularly. Rank-based search engines like Google-like websites that are updated regularly, simply because the visitors like new stuff as well. News is the very purpose of communication. You would not leave your church without a new sermon for weeks. Why should you leave your website without new posts?

3.Keep up with new developments and upgrade your website backend often. To look for new alternatives is not a waste of time, because what took days to program by hand a few years ago, is now available for free and ready to use.

4.Use video. Shoot, edit, publish, embed or broadcast live. Always, always use video. If a picture is worth a thousand words, a video is worth 25,000 words per second {a thousand words for each of the 25 picture frames it plays every given second of its length}.

5.Communicate with your visitors. Provide way to receive and respond to feedback. Communicate with other web ministries. The web is about networking. Use it as prescribed.

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 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

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