Google+ is quickly becoming one of my favorite social networks and part of it is because of the ability to share photos with specific groups of people. Recently, I took photos at my daughters kindergarten graduation, but I didn’t want to post the photos publicly and I didn’t want to put them on my Dropbox. I decided to post them on Gooogle+ and share with all of the parents.
Here’s how I did it:
Mychurchlive.tv church streaming service is a new option that offers everything needed to broadcast all of your church events–LIVE!
The platform was built using the latest server technology and designed specifically for churches.
Features and awesomeness include:
Facebook is the social media network that everyone is on (regardless if they are fully active or using it for more than just Farmville). There is currently a hot button issue with parents on if Facebook users under 13 should be allowed on the network. The infographic below has some great insight into the discussion, including the responsibilities of parents and their seemingly double-mindedness.
VBS can be hairy and sometimes a little scary if your outreach was a success and you have more kids show-up than what you expected–a good problem I would say. 
One thing that can really make VBS go smoother is a streamlined child check-in system. Not only will guests feel more comfortable and have confidence in your church’s ability to keep their children safe and accounted for, but starting VBS on the right foot is sure to make the rest of the VBS experience more satisfying.
Here’s a closer look at how your typical child check-in system works:
Do you know who a Maker is?
Here’s a basic definition from the ever-so-referenced Wikipedia:
“The maker culture is a contemporary culture or subculture representing a technology-based extension of DIY culture.”
This is referring to the Maker culture, but it should give you a pretty good idea of what a Maker is as the culture is comprised of them. #duh
I would venture to say that many ChurchMag readers are Maker’s, whether they know it or not.
Dale Dougherty, a Maker himself and founder of MAKE magazine, shares a cool TED talk on Makers:
I’ve been reflecting on the next wave of internetness: “the internet of things” — that ability for our toasters and cars and devices to talk to each other in real time and automate our physical world! Intro in Part 1; Church Ideas in Part 2
So, as Christians, do we have Biblical and theological thoughts about technology automating our lives? Is this good? Bad news? How do we reflect on this?
One thought experiment is to think through the “theological anthropology”—just a fancy term for “being human the way God intended us to be.”
With our stuff ready to obey our every whim, and our knowledge extending into a virtual omniscience about things we aren’t anywhere near (“whoa, turn down the A/C back at the house!”), it could be tempting to say we are becoming a little more like God. And this, of course, often sets off the blasphemy alarm and it should. We know the sin of putting ourselves in God’s place is the most core of them all: it’s Adam and Eve’s apple.
But if we think again, we realize “becoming more like God” isn’t always a theological black plague. In fact, when God made the world and gave Adam the command to steward and tend the garden, he was making us like himself in the sense that we were to sort and build and make stuff (yes, even in PHP). This is part of the imago dei (the image of God): our ability to create!
But can it go too far?
Cool ideas and concepts continue to spill forth from Google. I especially love this one that intends to bring Internet connectivity to African institutions of learning via flying craft.
The trial involves 10 schools in Cape Town, South Africa, and involves the use of “white space network” with blimps (and other infrastructure down the line) to stream signal over large areas the schools are situated in… literally wi-fi via blimp. It’s a fairly large undertaking, but one with a lot of potential by way of mindshare payoff.
This series of What’s In Your Bag? has contributors opening up their own tech bags and sharing with the world actual devices that they regularly use within their own blogging and professional lives from various backgrounds all over the world. The hope is that we can give you guys some great insight into some useful tools that we already are using in the day to day.
Here is what is in my bag in the photo above from the top-left to the bottom-right:
What do you think makes an ethical church tech purchase?
Eric Dye, Jeremy Smith and Phil Schneider talk ethical church tech and top church tech posts from around the web on the second ChurchMag podcast in recording history…
(Sounds fancy, doesn’t it?)
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