My Blog can beat your Blog up

Posted by D. Goodmanson on Sep 28, 2006 in Culture, General Technology | 12 comments

In a world of fun competition, now geeks can brag about their (blog) strength!  Find out your blogs Page Strength.  So you can go and get the bragging rights, 'My blog can beat your blog up' here is a tool to find your sites page strength.  I took my blog roll to find out who would have the bragging rights to walk with swagger.

5.0 Goodmanson

4.5  Mark Driscoll
4.5  reformissionary (Steve McCoy)

4.0 Bruce Chant

3.5 David Fairchild
3.5 JoeThorn
3.5 CawleyBlog

2.5 Michael Foster
2.5 Pete Williamson

Can you feel it!  A little blog smack-down for you all!  Michael/Pete come on you two!

Filed Under: How to lose friends and annoy people. 

List of Church Technology & Website Blogs & Resources

Posted by D. Goodmanson on Sep 27, 2006 in Church, General Technology | 10 comments

For those of you who like to follow the latest church web/technology out there, here are a list of blogs & resource sites:

ChurchTechBlogs (An aggregator of Church Tech Bloggers, that Goodmanson.com has been added to.)

Blog Ministry (A site dealing with web ministry & online evangelism)

Church Marketing Sucks (Church marketing, web and communication)

Godbit (Designing better church websites)

BetaChurch (Church design & technology) 

Church Technology Review (Church websites, technology and web 2.)

Geeks & God (Everything tech audio, web and beyond)

Churchbit (Group of like-minded church tech strategists, many of the participants on in this list.)

Uneeknet (Design, usability & web standards) 

Art of Mission (Web & church/mission)

Godly Creative (Web & church/mission)

Matt Heerema (Web & church/mission)

Nathan Smith (Web & church/mission)

Robert Evan (Web & church/mission)

Tim Bednar (Web & church/mission)

Goodmanson (web, technology, church planting & leadership) 

Gospelcon (the internet ministry/church conference) 

Technology and the Mission: Conference Session

Posted by D. Goodmanson on Sep 25, 2006 in Church, General Technology | 2 comments

I was able to use Microsoft Producer to take my PowerPoint and integrate the MP3: Technology & Mission Session requires IE which contradicts the web standards I advocate, but I have not had the time to coordinate the PowerPoint presentation with the audio mp3 in Flash.  If you know how to do this and want to, let me know.  :)

Session Description: "There are numerous opportunities for churches to use technology to expand their reach, spread the gospel and gather people to your local church. Come learn practical ways to enhance your ministry and become incarnational-minded in how you do online ministry. Learn from case studies and best practices from churches that have been successful online."

The two main thrusts dealt with (1) how are you as the church communicating to the world online and (2) how are your reaching out to people through the web.  For example, if:

• - American ages 13 to 24 now spend more time online than they do in front of the TV.
• - 64% of wired Americans have used the Internet for spiritual or religious purposes.
• - During usability studies, 88% of web users went to a search engine first to accomplish a task and 53% of searchers didn’t scroll down past the first 4-5 results above the ‘page fold’.
• - MySpace (in terms of market share) is the top site on the Internet.
• - 45% of internet users, or about 60 million Americans, say that the internet helped them make big decisions or negotiate their way through major episodes in their lives in the previous two years

What should the church be doing in response to this?  I presented 4 best practice cases where churches used the internet to reach the lost and minister the gospel to them.

New Acts 29 Site

Posted by D. Goodmanson on Sep 22, 2006 in Church Technology, Ekklesia, General Technology, Monk Dev | 0 comments

The Acts 29 Network launched their new website.  The previous site, while very sexy, wasn't as functional being an all-flash website.  The new site takes the old look and moves it to web standards (design/content done by Church Plant Media) using Ekklesia 360 CMS as the backend.  There should be a lot more content, media and even a regional focus for those wanting to explore the new site.

There are more tweaks coming, but enjoy!

Religion Sites Embrace Web 2.0 @ Red Herring

Posted by D. Goodmanson on Sep 19, 2006 in Church, General Technology | 0 comments

God might not have a MySpace, but He’s got the web’s attention.

One has Psalms, the other has podcasts. One creates meaning out of Latin, an ancient language; the other finds new meanings through derivatives of common words, like “digg,” “friendster,” or “flickr.” One community meets every Sunday, the other meets with every click of a new web browser window.

Alone, the power of the church is as undeniable as the power of the web 2.0 upswing. While the former has been around for centuries, permeating every inch of the globe, the latter has needed but a few years to make its mark on the Internet landscape. And each, in some ways, is following the same business model: the church wants followers every bit as much as MySpace does.

Full Article: Religion Sites Embrace Web 2.0

Update: List of Web 2.0 Applications for Churches @ Church Tech Review

Kaleo Church New Website

Posted by D. Goodmanson on Sep 18, 2006 in Church, General Technology | 3 comments

Kaleo Church has (finally) launched our new website.  There are still a lot of images/links that need to be fixed, but I am glad we are finally totally in Ekklesia 360 Church CMS. 

Thanks to: Church Plant Media, AM Design & the Kaleo volunteers with a special thanks to Chris Livdahl and all the hours he spent migrating content.