Digital Ministry

As is custom on Thanksgiving Day, giving thanks for all we have can be easy or hard depending on what's going on in our lives. If things are tough, it's often hard to give God our thanks; when things are going well, sometimes we forget to thank God too. We praise God first because he loved us and sent his only son to die for us on the cross (John 3:16),--everything else should be gravy.

Although secular media generally glosses over the spiritual component of Christmas, this holiday is one of the most important religious celebrations for Christians of nearly all denominations. This means that during the holiday season, churches have a lot of activity going on. Winter festivals, Christmas church services, holiday potlucks, and other occasions can bring in a lot of people. During this sacred time of year, it’s important to keep your church connected.

Picking a WordPress theme for your church website can be a daunting task. If you weren’t overwhelmed by the number of church themes available on ThemeForest, you certainly will be by the multitude of themes and theme shops online with the “perfect” theme for your church.

Heading into the giving season, churches are looking for tools, techniques, and ways to achieve their donation goals and end the year in the black. Leadership Network sat down with the number crunchers at MortarStone, which has analyzed more than $1.5 billion in personal church giving, and asked them to calculate various benchmarks. What they found provided very interesting results.

Church leaders have the weighty responsibility of managing funds on behalf of the congregation. Whether church finances are handled by a board of directors, a staff accountant or a volunteer, the expense management process can be complicated and time-consuming.

As we head into the busiest season for churches, now is the time to wrap your head around Facebook as your new best friend for church event outreach. It's one of the best (and least expensive) ways to share your event, be it a Fall Festival, Trunk or Treat, Harvest Party, or holiday event, getting your church message seen on Facebook is becoming more challenging every day.

Canva is a wonderful online graphic design tool for church communicators (and everyone else who's ever had to design a flyer or graphic). I've used Canva to design graphics for this site, presentations, social media headers, Facebook images, and much more. It's an incredibly easy tool to use that can help with a plethora of design needs.

In a 2001 journal article (I was 11 years old, for perspective), Mark Prensky, a thought leader in the educational technology world, coined the term “Digital Natives” to describe young people who do not know a world without video games, computers, Internet, and more. You are a Digital Native if you were born after 1980—so that would include all Millennials and every generation that follows.