Church Technology Tips

As many of you know, I work both as an associate minister and as a consultant in the information technology field. Generally, I work in (web) application development, but I spend quite a bit of time in miscellaneous administrative tasks, so there’s a few things that I’d like to share with other churches.

These tips have come from all over the place, but the list is basically mine. I’ll work on putting up a "kudos" section later, because I don’t want to take credit from those who’ve suggested things like this well before I ever thought of them.

I’d eventually like to move this site to a Wiki format, so that you can contribute your own as well.

Proecting Your Family: Internet Content Filtering and Accountability is a guide I just put together with suggestions for protecting your home or small office.

Ministry-related tech I’m currently dabbling with:

• Logos Bible Research:
  Using Smart Tags to automatically insert Scripture References
• Microsoft Office 2007 (PowerPoint!!)
• Joomla! (open source CMS)
• Currently developing two custom apps: a membership/visitor tracking database as well as a essentially complete projector control system.
• VNC and it’s derivatives
• Google Apps Suite
• Windows Media Encoder and VBScripting
• The Paperless Hymnal and Taylor Publications ePraise Hymnal
• …and more! :-)

I presented a little overview of church technology’s tips and traps to the local Dickson County preachers and elders meeting. Kudos to John Bentley for some of his work that I was able to share.