Cobblestone Community Network Goes Live

Posted by D. Goodmanson on Jul 7, 2009 in Church Technology, Church Websites, Monk Dev | 1 comment

Cobblestone was created to help your community be the church. Cobblestone is designed to encourage behaviors that are important for the body of the local church. Learn how Cobblestone can assist you with objectives such as:

• Helping People find opportunities to Serve
• Connecting People into Community
• Creating effective and powerful Communication channels
• Managing Events
• Discipleship and Accountability Groups
• and many more features.

Cobblestone is designed to move people deeper into real relationships. Cobblestone automates much of the administration, for example it can automatically connect people into home groups based on your criteria, so you can spend your time in relationship not administrating. This powerful web application automates many of the processes to allow your people to focus on the relationships not the administration. For example, our Group Permissions Agent can connect new members to the small group nearest them (or other criteria your church sets.) Use Cobblestone to manage Events on both your public website and within your community site. Push missional events into third-party Social Media sites such as Facebook. Learn more about these and many other ways Cobblestone can help facilitate the mission of your church.

Cobblestone Community Network BETA Release

Posted by D. Goodmanson on May 19, 2009 in Church Technology, Church Websites, Ekklesia, Monk Dev | 4 comments

Our team at Monk Development has been hard at work and now we finally have the BETA release of Cobblestone. Today four organizations are on the system with more to come. Here are a few of the screenshots to whet your appetite:

Grace Login page. Cobblestone can be pointed to a subdomain of your site. eg. members.churchname.com

Grace Church using Cobblestone

Cobblestone integrates with Ekklesia 360 (for those who use the CMS) and can share events, import members, etc.

Christian Web Conference

Posted by D. Goodmanson on May 11, 2009 in Church Technology, Church Websites, Monk Dev | 0 comments

The Christian Web Conference is designed to equip individuals with the vision, knowledge, and relationships that are necessary in order to be thoughtful practitioners and consumers of developing web technologies. Expect GREAT conversations from numerous LEADING THINKERS who will help shape not necessary ‘what or how’ you use the web by WHY.

Why Should I Be Part of the Christian Web Conference?
The Christian Web Conference fosters community and learning through a combination of, idea roundtable sessions, and meal-time fellowshipping with web media experts. Attendees should expect to meet and interact with some of the top intellectual Christian web users in order to form friendships, learn how to improve their web media knowledge and ability from experts, and participate in vision casting for Christian use of web technologies. Ultimately, you should be a part of this conference because your brilliant ideas will be valued by others and because you can learn from the brilliant ideas of others. Your ideas and skills can help transform the way people use and think the web so come prepared to share and collaborate.

Digital to Incarnational: people & ideas advancing the kingdom through web technologies.

I will be facilitating a session at this conference.

Cultivate | Where Culture, Innovation and Communication Connect

Posted by D. Goodmanson on May 11, 2009 in Church Technology, Church Websites, Monk Dev | 0 comments

Save the date of October 27th for the Cultivate Conference @ Park Community Church in Chicago [just one day and proceeding the STORY conference]. Cultivate is collective wisdom. It brings ministry and marketplace leaders to the table and asks them to leave their formal presentations at home. Cultivate is about bringing you together with the skilled, the experienced, and the insightful, and together you will drive the content. Together you will discover breakthrough insights. Cultivate is about organized conversations, and each conversation will be designed to nurture collaboration without confining the experience to a box.

Expect to be stretched. Expect to be challenged. Expect to cultivate a new way of thinking. If you are creative, strategic, and responsible for influencing how your church communicates, there is a chair waiting for you…

I will be attending and facilitating a session on Web Strategy. Looking forward to seeing you there.

ECHO: Church Media Conference

Posted by D. Goodmanson on May 11, 2009 in Church Technology, Church Websites, Ekklesia, Monk Dev | 0 comments

A conference for church leaders that love using media, technology, and the internet to be more effective in sharing God’s story.

Why you should go
* To discover new forms of media
* To be inspired to use media in new ways
* To learn how to create original forms of media
* To move beyond what’s been done and dream about what’s next
* To turn ideas into a reality that impacts others for Christ

What you can expect
* Speakers and classes that challenge you to raise the standard of media being created for the church
* To learn practical techniques, tools, and skills geared toward helping you do what you do better
* Opportunities to connect with others who share your passion for creating and using media
* To find and learn about new resources for media and technology

Dates: July 29 – 31, 2009
Location: Dallas, Texas

Get a $50 off promo! The code is: goodmanson and will be good through July 29.

I will be attending and conducting two Breakout sessions at this conference.

Churches: Using the Internet to be on Mission, Disciple and Create Community

Posted by D. Goodmanson on May 1, 2009 in Church Technology, Ekklesia, Monk Dev | 2 comments

Denver Seminary sponsored a webinar for their alumni network where I presented on the Future of the Church Online. Here is a brief description:

We have all heard about the importance of a church website, the craze of social networking and the need for pastors to blog. But how effective are these really in gathering people, creating community and fostering discipleship? Learn how to enhance your web ministry and impact hundreds, if not thousands of people. Learn from case studies and best practices from churches that have been successful doing ministry online. This valuable webinar will equip you with practical strategies whether you are an online expert or a beginner.

Download the pdf or watch the video from this presentation here.