website – Salvaged Faith

Plug into these resources

Posted on May 18, 2010Leave a comment

I have a few go-to websites and resources for church work. And I thought I’d share and encourage you to list your own in the comments! (These come in no particular order)

1) The Text This Week (http://www.textweek.com/): This is a lectionary resource that has a wonderful compilation of prayers, commentaries, articles, music, and ponderings from all over the world.

2) Lectionary Liturgies (http://lectionaryliturgies.blogspot.com/) I actually first connected with Thom Shuman’s work through Text Week, but since then I have added him to my blog reader. I think that he has wonderful prayers that always seem to hit in the right spot with where my preaching is headed for the week. I also appreciate the communion liturgy and try to weave bits and pieces together with our congregational prayer of thanksgiving.

3) Jan Richardson’s art (http://www.janrichardson.com/) I think her pieces are beautiful and she has been working on a lectionary series also at http://paintedprayerbook.com/ She now is allowing churches and organizations to use individual pieces through a licensing agreement.

4) Stock Exchange (http://www.sxc.hu/) – It sounds like a sketchy website, but this is the absolute best resource for stock photography for FREE that I have found. Amateur photographers post their work to be used for a variety of different applications and I have discovered some amazing pictures here. Most of my blog pics come from this site. Most pictures have standard restrictions that just say that your work can’t be sold unless the photographer grants permisison to do so, but the images can be used for logos, illustration, pamphlets, etc. I use the pictures for slide shows, photo montages, website work… its fabulous.

5) Expression Engine (http://expressionengine.com/) – This is the company our church website is through. They have fantastic customer support, a very simple publishing engine, and wonderful templates. As a non-profit we pay about $10/month for hosting and support… which includes email addresses hosted through our site. I think it is a fantastic investment.

6) The Work of the People (http://www.theworkofthepeople.com/) – Awesome visual liturgy resources. My suggestion – buy the 10 for $50 membership pack. We got resources that lasted us all year long for only $50, which amazingly allowed us to get the entire Lenten Series (6 videos, stills, loops) as ONE of our 10. Unbelieveable value.

Falling Behind

Posted on February 5, 2009Leave a comment

I definately have not been blogging as frequently as I planned at the beginning of the year. If I’m completely honest with ya’ll it’s because I’ve been sucked into the vortex of trying to get “Loremaster” of Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms in the game World of Warcraft. Basically, you have to do 700 quests on each continent in order to get the title. Last night, I completed 700 on Kalimdor and have only 100 left on Eastern Kingdoms. I’m a nerd. A complete nerd. And I don’t really care.

That has basically what I’ve been doing in my free time. Which means no time left to blog.

Church work has been very fruitful in the past few weeks. I was in a bit of a preaching rut, but I dug myself out of it on Sunday. We had a baptism, communion and an ad board meeting all in the span of the morning – and so I knew that my sermon needed to be much shorter than normal. And having to focus on being concise really helped the message. Our speaker system also was malfunctioning, so I preached without amplification, which also made me consciously enunciate more and put more emphasis and passion behind what I was saying. Not that I wouldn’t have meant it the same way before… but I really felt strongly about this sermon on forgiveness, felt like God was calling me to say some things, and not only did I say them, but the Holy Spirit helped them to make contact with a number of people. I actually felt energized by worship, instead of that feeling of just being absolutely spent when I got home.

Ironically, it was a message that really came true in my life later that day. God has a way of hitting us upside the head sometimes and more often than not, I find out that the message I’m preparing is as much for myself as for the congregation. We really are all on this human journey together.

Yesterday I got a great surprise when I recieved an email from someone who is in the local hospital. They were in need of some conversation and faith wrestling and found my email and our church through our website. It was the first time I’ve heard about our website having an impact on others, being a vehicle for invitation, and all of the time I spent on the site really has paid off, just in the one conversation I got to have with her today. If the site was shut down tomorrow, I know that it has served it’s purpose. Hopefully, it will continue to be a place for connection.

junk mail and websites

Posted on January 15, 2008Leave a comment

I don’t think I ever realized HOW MUCH junk mail a pastor gets. We get catalogs in the mail EVERY DAY! and tons of paper is wasted on advertisements. Every time I get something in the mail now, I look for a way to unsubscribe from the catalog or ad service. Today, I tried (hopefully successfully) to rid myself of two more subscriptions. geez louise!

I’m also working on setting up a church website. This will allow us to post online our calendar, let people know when services are, etc. I made the arrangements just now: firstumcmarengo.org – but nothing is set up yet… hopefully in the next week or two you can start clicking!