Archive - April, 2008

Cell Phone Bible

April 29, 2008 in Technology with 0 Comments


If you are able to browse the internet from your phone or mobile device, then you need to check out YouVersion for Mobile. It was officially released today from the awesome tech guys at Lifechurch.tv. It is a quick and easy way to search through over 14 different versions of the Bible. I also like the daily reading plan for reading through the Bible. Just point your phone or mobile device at http://m.youversion.com

For more info about this new service, check out the swerve blog. The great part of YouVersion is that it is completely FREE. They also have a regular web 2.0 version for anybody with internet access at http://www.youversion.com

Check it out. I’ve been impressed with it on my Motorola Q.

Graphic Resources for Churches

April 29, 2008 in Church Related, Technology with 1 Comment

I have been planning on posting some information about good sources for church graphics, but Kent Shaffer over at the Church Relevance blog beat me to it. Check out this great post which includes a listing of free church graphic resources. He lists companies that do still image backgrounds as well as video backgrounds. There are also some sermon illustration sites that are listed. Be sure to check out the comment section as well for more ideas from other readers.

I am frequently asked where we get our video backgrounds and sermon graphics from, so here is a quick listing of what we use. I hope this helps and please drop me a comment if you have any additional sources for great graphics. Just for info, I typically use Photoshop Elements for image editing, Premiere Elements for Video editing, and EasyWorship to bring it all together and project on Sunday morning. (I am always looking for someone with Final Cut experience or Adobe After Effects experience that is willing to work for cheap)

Video Backgrounds that we use at Cornerstone for Worship

  • Digital Juice Jump Backs – It helps that Sam used to be the CEO of Digital Juice – It’s nice to have connections
  • WorshipFilms – They have great nature scenes and seasonal videos
  • Christian Collages – These are all good and I’m using these all the time. They don’t have a big collection yet, but I am impressed so far.
  • Muddy River Media – These backgrounds are FREE (They have some good backgrounds and they are adding more. Did I mention they are free?)

Sermon Graphics

  • istockphoto – This is where I can usually find any stock photos or vector art when I want to create my own church graphics or logos.
  • Lifechurch.tv Open Resources – Lifechurch is awesome. They provide all of their sermon series graphics for free. They are doing some incredible things with technology.
  • Vine Resources - Another church that provides church sermon graphics for free. These are from the college ministry at Southeast Christian Church in Louisville, Ky.
  • Newspring Online – I haven’t used any of their free resources yet, but I probably will at some point in the future.
  • Midnight Oil Productions – they have some great image & video packs that you can edit and build from. I am using these for our current Breaking Free series.
  • Pastor’s Place – I have used some of their stuff before, but they have mostly images and powerpoint only.

Again, I hope these help you out in finding the right graphics to display for your church. Just remember that you want to enhance the message, not distract from it. I have seen too many churches go way overboard on the graphics they use and create distractions during the worship service. Don’t use something unless it adds to the message and theme of the service. Now try some of these out and get creative!

Super Mario Galaxy

April 26, 2008 in Family with 0 Comments

The kids got Super Mario Galaxy for the Wii for Christmas. I started playing it but gave up after a few weeks because of how much time it was taking. Luke, my 8 year old son, started playing it as well and has been clearing levels ever since. He finally got to the final level today and beat it on his first try. He was down to 1 life left, but he beat the game. I think I was more anxious and nervous than he was. He was so excited to finish the game. I wish I could just freeze the happiness and joy he had after the accomplishment. I really only helped him a couple of times and then he figured out that he was better than me, so he wouldn’t let me help him. I’m sure that this will be the first of many times that I am beat by my son.

Sermon Illustrations

April 26, 2008 in Uncategorized with 2 Comments

To the other pastors and teachers out there, have you ever had an experience that you know will make an awesome sermon illustration one day? I had an experience last week that I would love to share but I can’t. At least for now. It’s frustrating to have a great story, but you can’t share it because of the people involved. I guess I will have to save it and use it when I preach somewhere out of town.

While I’m on the topic of sermon illustrations, I even had one of the youth ask me last week if I went on trips just to come up with illustrations. I like to share things that I have experienced and seen, so I guess he thought I went looking for illustrations. I tend to look at most of my events and experiences as teachable moments. Just remember to share the mistakes as well as the successes if you want to really connect with the people you are teaching.

Denominations In Decline

April 24, 2008 in Church Related with 0 Comments

The Southern Baptist Convention released some news this week that should be a wakeup call to many pastors and churches around the country. The SBC is the largest protestant denomination in the country with over 16 million members. The big news was that the national membership actually decreased for the first time. If you look at the graph below, you can see that this is not a surprise, the membership has plateaued and is now declining.

Why is this important to me? I have grown up in SBC churches, I was licensed and ordained through the SBC, and I still think that it is a great denomination that is focused on solid Biblical theology and practice. But I am concerned because of the growing traditionalism that is prevalent throughout the SBC. Many of the new churches and church plants have simply not been accepted into Baptist life because they do things differently from the way church was done in the 50′s.

Ed Stetzer from Lifeway Research has a great post on the news that was released. Ed is a voice of reason within the SBC and I think he has some great ideas about what needs to be done to get the focus back on people and away from politics and in-fighting. It will take the SBC realizing that churches can be culturally relevant AND Biblically faithful. I hope and pray that this news will be a catalyst for change within the domination.

I do think that we will see networks of churches outside of traditional denominations continue to grow. Check out the links and pictures below for some more info.

Ed Stetzer’s commentary on the new Southern Baptist Membership Decline
Ed Stetzer Video Interview about the new study

Another Blogging Milestone

April 24, 2008 in Technology with 6 Comments

I just hit my 400th blog post. I started Faith Engineer as a way to share my thoughts about youth ministry and technology. Since that time I have become the pastor of Cornerstone and I am now sharing more about ministry, sermon ideas, and the current state of the church in America. I just noticed that I have also had over 6000 visits to my website. That’s amazing that anyone actually cares what I’m writing about.

In honor of the 400th blog post, I want to ask that all of my visitors add a comment and let me know who you are and what you do. Thanks for dropping by.

Some Internet Discernment

April 22, 2008 in Technology with 0 Comments

I have a problem when it comes to Christians and the internet. It seems like I am constantly getting email forwards about things that just aren’t true. And unfortunately, most of the time I’m receiving them from uninformed Christians. Please, before you forward something on, check it out to make sure it is true. We have a responsibility as Christians to share truth, and that extends into what we email to others.

We need to use discernment about what we forward to others, especially those outside of the faith. Do we want to be known as people who constantly want to boycott companies and criticize politicians? Why do we expect non-Christian companies to have the same values as Christ-followers?

With the election coming up, I am seeing numerous emails about Barack Obama being a muslim. I don’t agree with much of his political agenda, but it bothers me that Christians are trying to create controversy when there is none. Check out the facts about this urban legend and you will find out about his faith. Whether or not you agree with him, please don’t spread lies and untruths about him. And the same extends to any other person or company you receive an email about.

Check out the wikipedia article on urban legends and then head over to Snopes to find out if those other emails you receive are true or not. Let’s be above reproach in everything we say (even if we say it through email)

A Free Way to Do Online Forms

April 18, 2008 in Technology with 1 Comment

Do you ever have a need to collect information on your blog or website? There have been several times that I wanted to do some type of online registration for an event, but I didn’t want to pay money to setup an online form using a web service. I’ve looked at Icebrrg and Wufoo, which are both great web apps, but they both required a monthly service fee if you wanted the ability to have numerous people fill out your form. If you’ve read this site for long, you know that I have a passion for helping smaller churches. And FREE is good. So when Google announced that you could do online forms using Google Docs, I thought it would be a good fit for ministry.

I did a website for an upcoming children’s event here in our hometown. We have several area churches coming together to do a weeklong children’s praise and worship celebration in the park. I didn’t want to spend much time on the website, but I wanted it to look good and be functional. I used iWeb 08 and used one of the default templates with a just a little tweaking. I added in a blog, and I added the ability to do online registration. For the online registration I setup a Google Docs form that automatically updates a Google Docs Spreadsheet. You can have text questions, multiple choice questions, drop-down boxes, and more. And did I mention it was free? The google info on the online forms is here. All you need is a google account and then you can signin to Google Docs.

The drawbacks are that the form is made to be emailed or be filled out on it’s own webpage. It’s not directly embeddable in a blog or other webpage. I got around this by just loading it as an iframe. See the below picture for the iframe code that I used. You can modify the width, height, and scrollbar visibility in the code below to fit your screen. This works good but it won’t take on the style of your webpage. I’m hoping Google will add the ability to embed the form in any webpage without using an iframe.

You don’t have as many options with the Google forms as you would with Icebrrg and Wufoo, but it’s free and it works. After people fill out the form, all the answers are tabulated in a spreadsheet that you can view or share or export. I think you could use this for online polls, registration forms, online prayer requests, youth permission forms, and anything else that you would like to track or share online.

If you want to see the form in action, then visit http://www.praisinpark.com
However, please don’t fill out and submit the form unless you are actually attending, since this is actually being used. Leave me a comment if this info helps. Thanks

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