Recommended Links
Improving Your Connections:
Constant Contact
Constant Contact is a great e-mail marketing application. Whether you want to send a e-news letters, invitations or create and send online surveys, Constant Contact is my first recommendation. Allowing you to track who opens their mail outs and who doesn't, track what articles are clicked through, plus a host of other features. The price is a very reasonable monthly fee based off the number of e-mail recipients. $15 per month grants you a list up to 500.
In addition Constant Contact stays on top of e-mail guidelines and helps keep you off spam lists.
Zoomerang
Want detailed online surveys to help in your market research? No problem. Zoomerang can handle it.
Campfire
A product of the 37signals powerhouse, Campfire is a web application that offers users the ability to set up private and personalized group chat rooms and file sharing.
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Improving Your Web Presence:
I go way back with the guys of Brick River. If you're in the market for a way above average website that can do anything you want and leave your visitors breathless, Brick River is the way to go hands down. Currently they've created and are hosting almost half of the United Methodist Conference sites as well as a plethora of others (this humble site included) from small business sites to extraordinary complex systems such as 7villages. If you're serious about your site being the absolute best, give Brick River a call.
E-Zekiel
A product of AxleTree Media, E-Zekiel is the one stop shop for church websites. If you don't have much money, don't know what you're doing or how to go about building a professional level website. Go here. I repeat. Go here. If you're United Methodist, use this link and get a discount http://www.umc.e-zekiel.com/templates/cusumcom/default.asp?id=24720.
HelpRoot
The folks from AxleTree Media are at it again. This time with a volunteer manager to help you connect, organize and get some serious work accomplished in your neighborhood. Helproot integrates perfectly with E-Zekiel and E-Z TV, so no matter what your budget, the power of the web is now in your hands.
Big Heart Design
For those of you looking to bite off a more ambitious web project and would like to talk to somebody who can help you navigate those waters to keep you from wasting time and money. Talk to my good friend Matt at Big Heart Design.
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Improving Your Public Image:
Church Marketing Sucks
Don't let the name scare you. This is a great no-nonsense look at church marketing practices and ways we all can become better at spreading the word about our faith communities.
Servant Evangelism
Want to change the way your community looks at your faith community? Small things done with great love was a motto of Mother Teresa. This site has a lot of different ideas for a lot of different areas for a guerrilla approach to loving your community.
Cafe Press
Do you need a nifty way to design, create and sell your own promotional material? Cafe Press is a one stop shop that allows users to design and create merchandise and then set up an online store to sell it. Did I mention it's free? They produce your material by demand and make their money by taking a portion of your sales. It's a win-win.
Improving Your Understanding of Younger Generations:
Relevant Magazine
Hands down the best publication on youth and 20 something faith, culture and music.
Pew Internet and American Life Project
Tired of people spouting off what 'research says'? Read it for yourself. The Pew Internet & American Life Project produces reports that explore the impact of the internet on families, communities, work and home, daily life, education, health care, and civic and political life.
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Improving Your Worship:
CCLI/CVLI
Yes...you really do need to get your license. Christian Copyright Licensing International (CCLI) provides churches with simple, affordable solutions to complex copyright issues surrounding congregational worship services.
Worship Leader
A great resource for worship leaders and song writers. Their purpose (as stated on their website) Believing that God is the Audience of our worship, the Worship Leader will be a trusted gathering place in our changing world. Together we will strive for excellence and a deeper understanding of the devotional arts in the 21st Century. Leaders will be given more of what they need to lead and inspired to author multimedia devotional arts that direct the Church to the one true worship leader...Jesus Christ.
Worship Together.com
The worship site from EMI, you'll find Lots and Lots and Lots of music resources. Free mp3 downloads, sheet music, discussions, song demonstration videos by the artists who play them and much more more.
Nooma
Rob Bell's video devotion series. These videos are phenomenal and reasonably priced.
Sermon Spice
A great site with thousands of downloadable videos to give your sermon a little extra kick.
Highway Video
Another great site with gobs and gobs of worship video and graphics.
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Organizations that are changing the world:
Started by the guys from Jars of Clay, Blood Water Mission is committed to clean blood and clean water to fight the HIV/AIDS pandemic, to build clean wells in Africa, to support medical facilities caring for the sick, to make a lasting impact in the fight against poverty, injustice and oppression in Africa through the linking of needs, talents and continents, of people and resources.
ONE is Americans of all beliefs and every walk of life - united as ONE - to help make poverty history. We are a campaign of over 2.4 million people and growing from all 50 states and over 100 of America's most well-known and respected non-profit, advocacy and humanitarian organizations. As ONE, we are raising public awareness about the issues of global poverty, hunger, disease and efforts to fight such problems in the world's poorest countries.
Nothing But Nets is a grassroots campaign to save lives by preventing malaria, a leading killer of children in Africa. While the UN Foundation has been working with the UN to fight malaria for years, it was a column that Rick Reilly wrote about malaria in Sports Illustrated, challenging each of his readers to donate at least $10 for the purchase of an anti-malaria bed nets -- and the incredible response from thousands of Americans across the country -- that led to the creation the Nothing But Nets campaign.
TWLOHA is a non-profit movement dedicated to presenting hope and finding help for those struggling with depression, addiction, self-injury and suicide. TWLOHA exists to encourage, inform, inspire, and also to invest directly into treatment and recovery.
On October 21, 2002 a small group of people scattered $10,000 in small bills and change outside the New York Stock Exchange and invited everyone to help themselves. Homeless people were given invitations with dollar bills attached and found themselves collecting quarters next to dark-suited Wall Street brokers. The event showcased a paradigm of abundance in which money is neither scarce nor sacred.
This paradigm led Shane Claiborne and Darin Petersen, to create Relational Tithe as a way to live in an “economy of abundance.” They believed that there are enough resources to meet the needs of every person, and that the needs of each person are the responsibility of all people. The beginning of Relational Tithe can be boiled down to a question: “What would happen if we all set aside a tenth of our incomes to meet the needs of people we know?”
A handful of friends from across the United States joined in asking that question and committed to six months of ‘relational tithing’ to answer it. The results that this community experienced were amazing.
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