It can be difficult if you are tossed into updating your church website and have no idea what you are doing. I want to provide you a few tools that will help you in your journey to becoming a web designer! Well, at least some tools that will help you keep your church website up to date and looking good! Please enjoy and if you have more tools that you use please, leave them in the comments!

A lot of the questions I have recieved over the last few weeks have been in regards to podcasting. Podcasting is a great tool we have today that allows pastors and churches to share sermons with their memebers directly from the church website. Also, users can subscribe to messages which will automaticlly download to their computer. Today I would like to share with you a list of 23 different tools you can use to create, share, or listen to podcasts! As always enjoy this list, and please add your own favorite tool if yours is not listed!

This is the last of the online application posts for awhile, I think. Today we look at file storage and email marketing apps. Churches should now be keeping files online so that they can be accessed anywhere. I cannot think about how many times I have worked on a sermon out of the office, then had to email it to myself so that I could access it at my work.  Now, we can upload it online and access it from any computer with an internet connection! I also outlined a few email marketing applications that will allow  you to track all the emails you have sent, see who opened it, or clicked on a link. Enjoy!

Yesterday I shared Top Chart, Diagram, and Whiteboard Tools for Pastors. Today we look at the top applications for collaboration with your team! Managing your staff can be one of the most challenging aspects of being a pastor and most churches do not have typical business hours, so the use of collaboration tools can really benefit the church. I do want to highlight one major standout on this list: Text The Mob is a fantastic tool that you can use to get feedback during your sermons every week! Your congregation can text in answers to questions that you propose on Sunday mornings. I have been in a few services where this has been used and the result, if you have buy-in from your church is awesome! I am thinking about running an article on all the text applications that churches can use later on, but for now this was the only one to make this list. Enjoy!

Yesterday we covered online calender and scheduling tools for pastors. Today we move on to online chart, diagram, and whiteboard tools for pastors. Each of these items are simple to use and provide a good way to jot down thoughts or ideas. I love the idea of being able to share a mind map about an event coming up, or even my next sermon series. This list is much shorter than normal, and breaks my rule of not posting things that have less than 10 items in it, but I am tired and I want to spend much needed time with my wife. So enjoy these! And don’t worry, the long lists will be back soon!

This week I am going to share with you online tools that pastors should be using. Today is part one: Appointments and Calendars. I have said that pastors have to be extremely organized individuals, they have a lot of thing that they have to manage. Today, I want to share with you 11 online calender and meeting applications that will make tracking your time much easier. Some of these applications are free, but all of them have free trials. I have personally used most of these at one time or another. Enjoy!

This week we are reviewing the bottom three reasons to use Google Docs. G-Docs (that is what we call it in the hood) is an online service that allows you to manage documents online. We are talking about spread sheets, word documents, presentations and forms. They are not the only player in this game: Microsoft, Adobe and a sleu of small non-epic groups like Zoho, Ether Pad and Think Free offer similar products. So after waxing about the top three reasons to use G-Docs last week we present the least of these.

A lot of companies have really embraced the Web 2.o movement and the church can make use of a lot of the applications available online. Today, your church staff needs to be very organized, as they are dealing with a lot of information: sermon notes, video, podcasts, meetings, counseling appointments, and planning events to name a few. I have listed 39 applications that you can use to organize your church and your life!

Enjoy!

Here are the top three reasons that Google Docs will help your ministry team get the word out to your church. None of these ideas are new to the web, but Google has founded a joint effort to allow you to collaborate, publish and access your docs from anywhere online. Give it a try on your next project and see how easy it is to create and manage content for your team and the families of your church!

Find Powerful Images for Your Website

This is a follow up article to “Make Your Website Better“. I wanted to take a chance over the next few days to dive deeper into five areas that I feel that most church websites lack. Today I want to provide some resources for pastors and web designers out there who are interested in where exactly to get stock images to use for sermon series, worship slides, or just to help inspire ideas. These resources include some free image libraries and some paid or subscription based libraries