Lauren Hunter

'Tis the time of year for churches far and wide to facilitate Vacation Bible School, commonly know in 'churchese' as VBS. VBS can have a huge impact both within your church community and in your larger community. Because there are so many different sized churches, and so many different styles, formats, and sizes of VBS, we polled about 15 churches to take a closer look at the facilities costs related to VBS programs.

Just last month, there was a surge of ransomware attacks all over Europe that affected businesses far and wide. Church websites are also subject to these types of attacks, and so we're sharing with you this helpful infographic. For some churches, having website tech support is vital to ensure that backups are done regularly and someone is there in the event that there is a security breach.

If you aren't already familiar with TED Talks, you'll want to pause and take some time to delve into this incredible resource. TED Talks are to non-believers as sermons are to Christians. The popularity of online education via video and podcasts haven't seen their full potential of growth yet as people continue to seek entertainment, education, and thought-provoking stimuli in the form of short video lectures, usually given at various TED Talks around the world.

Video isn't going anywhere. In fact, video is perhaps the fastest growing ministry tool available to churches and believers all around the world. We recently shared a helpful article that covered seven ways video can save your pastor time, and these suggestions can easily parlay into opportunities to share the Gospel and ministry of your church with a wider audience.

Where once screens were only in a few select locations - perhaps the living room - now screens ride along with us in our pockets, our purses, and our backpacks. Children have access to screens throughout the day at school and each of us, regardless of our field, use screens in some way whether we're a server at Chili's, a teacher, or business professional.

Technology has made the transformation of a worship sanctuary possible with the relatively new art of Environmental Projection, or EP. For some churches, this is a completely new concept. If you haven't heard of EP or, if you're in the infant stages of running EP at your church, this article aims at assisting you with setup options for every budget, from small to mega church. We've shared a similarly formatted worship software guide, and it seems that many readers appreciate having their options laid out in terms of church size and budget.

Often, churches tend to get wrapped up in the day-to-day grind and don't take a close look at the fact and figures about giving. It's important to take time out to consider giving statistics in order to look closely at your giving numbers and see how your organization can improve.

Since the dawn of web-based church management systems (ChMS), there hasn't been much change in this area of technology until recently. Although the shift to the "cloud" back in the late 90s' turned the church technology market on end (for the better), and shifted many churches to rely on the web instead of leaning on the power of their desktop software, after fifteen or so years, we now have another contender for change: open source church management systems.