Pastor Jamie Munson, a friend from when I attended Mars Hill, was just honored as one of the Top 10 Church Business Adminstrators by the Church Report.

10 Jamie Munson
Jamie Munson is the executive pastor of Mars Hill Church (www. marshillchurch.org), a church of 4,000 in Seattle, Wash. He oversees the Mars Hill staff and all business and financial affairs for the church. He also serves as the president of the Ballard Chamber of Commerce.

Pastor Munson also serves as an advisor for Ekklesia Systems.

A new site is launched called the Godbit Project. I’m pretty excited about what they stand for. Something I have been pushing for a while here as we speak with churches about how to use technology for the advancement of the Kingdom of God. Here is their purpose:

The purpose of this site is to help the Church catch up with the rest of the world in adherance to standards given by the World Wide Web Consortium, the governing body of best-practices on the Internet. The majority of Christian web design agencies are using outmoded methods of coding to create websites that the rest of the world would scoff at. Basically, they are stuck in the 1990’s.

This is so common in fact, that the term “Christian” when associated with the Internet has become synonymous with “sub-par.” Without pointing fingers specifically, some of these practices include overuse of JavaScript, malformed (X)HTML, all-Flash websites, and over-dependence on tables for layout.

We realize that if anything is going to change, we need to stop simply poking fun at these agencies, and start educating them, as well as making churches and pastors aware of how they are being short-changed by doing business with such individuals. Our vision then, is to highlight churches, freelance designers and web agencies that are on the cutting-edge of web methodologies, in order to give others something to aspire after. We want to be a city on a hill.

They have started a gallery of church websites that adhere to valid XHTML 1.1, CSS and 508 accessibility requirements.

I spent today at the National Outreach Convention. I will dedicate a post to each session I attend to share what I learned. Here are the sessions I plan or have to attended:

Breaking Attendance Barriers

Do you desire to see your church grow to the next level? Do you feel stuck at a certain level in your church’s growth? In this session you will learn how to effectively develop growth systems that work whether your barrier is 125, 250, 500 or 1000.
You will learn:

* How to identify and remove the barriers that keep your church from growing
* How to develop effective systems for staff, space, small groups, and finances in order to strengthen your growth potential
* How to think strategically about growth in order to avoid future barriers

The TurnOut Solution: Solving the Problem of Plateau and Decline

Churches lapse into plateau and decline because, over time, they turn more and more inward. The solution is simply that churches must turn outward in order to correct spiritual negatives and to reach lost communities strategically. When they do, they foster health and growth, and see an increase in turnout.

You will learn:

* The origin and nature of plateau and decline.
* Spiritual and strategic dynamics of moving from plateau and decline to health and growth.
* The first steps in turning their churches around by turning their churches outward.

Putting E-Communications to Work in Family Outreach

Our culture is media dominated - a fact particularly true for young marrieds and younger families where the opportunities for preventing marriage and family problems vs. remedial efforts to fix problems are the greatest. These same opportunities provide an open door to use marriage content to reach families for Christ via e-communications.

This presentation will highlight the latest research from secular studies and the Barna Research Group on how the Internet is changing daily life. Identify opportunities for impacting marriages and families through church e-communications.
You will:

* Learn how the Internet & e-communications are shaping daily life among various age groups
* Understand the fundamental and basic considerations in choosing e-communication objectives
* Experience some best practices in using e-communications in marriage, family, and outreach ministry

Creating a Church that Connects & Integrates Visitors

This session is for those who are looking for practical tools that will greatly increase visitor assimilation in their church. Gain insights from a leading authority on assimilation in a concise presentation that provides practical “lessons learned” and “best practices” from fifteen years of working with thousands of churches.
You will learn:

* 7 Laws of Assimilation with associated principles
* Best practices and lessons learned in assimilation.
* The big picture of assimilation

The Power of the Internet for Outreach, In-Reach, and Up-Reach

Websites: The hub of communication inside and outside the church? The front door of today’s church? The meeting room for ministries? When the doors are shut and the lights are off at the church can your website can be used of God to actually reach people?

You will learn:

* How to use your church website as an Outreach, In-reach, and Up-reach tool for your church
* Website keys to create stickiness and generate ongoing traffic flow
* How to improve communication to your community, your membership, and your key leadership
* Practical web-based applications and ideas to harness the energy from your other internal and external media, advertising, and outreach initiatives

Redesigned Site v2.0 Now

Ekklesia Systems is a web-based application built for churches. Ekklesia combines a Content Management System (CMS), Contact Management System, Assimilation/Member Management System and Event/Registration Management System in one system. Ekklesia was created by church planters who saw a need because existing ‘off the shelf’ products and third party applications reached a point of diminishing returns. This group of pastors and lay-leaders decided to build a system that tackled these challenges .

Solution is SPORG meets Constant Contact meets a CMS meets Connection Power rolled into one.

An interesting article about how useful people consider their church website. Poll question, How Useful is your Church Website?

12% say they use their church web site every day
12% ask “What church web site?”
35% say their church’s web site is as current as a 1980 hymnal.

Another reason we create a web-based church content management system (and assimiliation, contact mgmt, event mgmt, etc…)

Take a look at Ekklesia Systems‘ first templated design mock-up. There is still a ton to be done but we just got this up there.

I need your feedback. Thoughts on the design?

Added a paragraph on what Ekklesia is all about:

Ekklesia Systems is a scalable Content Management Architectures for churches who are serious about integrating technology into the vision of their church. The system is designed from the ground up around the latest technologies. This allows your church to leverage the online medium and communicate your vision to both your community and to the world. Users will be able to Podcast, stream or download sermons, receive syndication of the newest content and events and interact through the church’s forums and blogs.

I usually write these things and then come back after to remove marketing mumbo-jumbo.

A team of us are beginning to build an affordable Church based content management sytem. What are important features that a church system wouldt need? (We’re going to call it, Ekklesia Systems. )

Overview:
1. Built based on Web Standards
2. Powered by a Flexible Open Source Structure – Upgrade path.
-Separation of Content and Web Features (modify navigation and website tools without disrupting content.)
-Separation of Content and Presentation (maintain consistency in design for all new content created with style-based content authoring.)
3. Integrates powerful Technologies – (mp3, podcasting, rss)
4. Easy to Use Administration
5. Great Design

Features: (more…)