Web apps for ministry – what do you use?

November 11, 2009 in Christian Living, for Churches, Pastors

This Saturday I’ll be presenting two seminars at the Create conference and I’d like to ask for your help. One of the seminars I’m presenting is entitled “I’m not cheap, I’m entrepreneurial”. At it, I’ll be sharing free or cheap tools to assist with ministry. I’ve got lots of ideas for apps that fit into this category (and I’ll be sharing 2-3 per category, plus some surprises!), but I’d like to hear your ideas. Below are some categories and examples – what tools do you use and recommend?

  • http://youth.stmatts.org.au CJ

    Look forward to seeing the complete list. In addition to the above (many of which I already use), I have found Micropoll to be quite an effective online polling tool. It’s pretty simple to set-up, and also reasonably flexible if you’re willing to give it the time.

  • http://www.riceyouth.org Vee Choy

    Hi! Attended your seminar last year. Very helpful!
    At RICE this year we’ve been using:
    eventbrite.com (ticketing)
    Google Calendar (Meetings & event calendar sync)
    Google Forms (Surveys)
    sitefinity.com (website CMS)
    and twitter of course =)

  • http://www.withoutashepherd.com Hayley

    You have taught me everything I know ;)

    Except:

    Journler
    I haven’t used it much this year but I find it an easy place to keep illustrations for talks; personal stories; recorded voice (i used for recording myself sayiing greek paradigms); bible passage teaching ideas / bible study openers.

    Caffeine
    Keeps your computer awake – easy to use for when giving ppt presentations etc. don’t have to change settings.

    RescueTime
    (similar to Focus Booster – I prefer FB)

  • http://xnreflections.blogspot.com Mikey Lynch

    On a more advanced level, we use Subversion (along with Tortoise or SVNX) to manage our church documents and enable collaboration.

    I’m kinda averse to using third party apps (google cal, google docs) where I can avoid it. Don’t know why exactly, just kinda seems messy, when you can create your own native system with a little more work and thought.

  • http://ravingsandranting.blogspot.com/ &rew

    One year for a bible study I used a google calendar and a blogger blog. I didn’t really have that many people on the uptake of it…

    Next year I think Facebook will be one of, if not the main communication tool I will use (going to do a uni age bible study) as from talking with some other leaders, Facebook is the main way they communicate to their people throughout the week… They call Facebook emails femails… Its good in conversation when a male leader is talking to a younger male at church: “Did you see the femail i sent you?”

    Mikey: Wow subversion, that is a cool idea. Do you automatically run a script to update back to the root (or stump or tree or branch) or do your users do that themselves?

  • David Pinn

    PayPal, LinkedIn, Wild Apricot (membership, event management), Box.net, Dipity.com

  • http://xnreflections.blogspot.com Mikey Lynch

    Regular, ongoing users use a subversion client for edit documents, I find that the slightly complicated procedure reinforces that editing documents is a serious business.

    Lower level users use Autoversioning feature that updates as they edit.

  • http://www.omf.org.uk Tony Waghorn (OMF)

    * Website analytics – Google Analytics
    * Password management – Passpack (life-saver)
    * Email newsletters – Constant Contact or Dotmailer
    * Asset management – ResourceSpace (open source)
    * Video sharing (temporary) – Vimeo
    * Presentations – Prezi
    * CMS – eZ Publish and Squarespace

  • Steven Kryger

    Thanks for sharing everyone – some great suggestions coming in, along with more than a few that I haven’t heard of that I’m enjoying checking out.

    Keep them coming!

  • dan harding

    thanks. @danharding

  • Steve

    Hi Steve,

    I attended your session at Create (tall guy pink shirt). It was worth the whole $100 entry price alone (and am still benefiting from the great stuff posted at your site. eg Christmas DVD’s)

    I understood (and may have been mistaken) that you were going to post the presentation here… i.e. the full list of apps for each category. For that reason I didn’t copy them down… Would you be able to email me a copy of that powerpoint so I can go over all the different apps?

  • Steven Kryger

    Hi Steve, thanks for getting in touch and great to hear you found the seminar helpful. I’m on holidays this week but will be posting all the details when I return next week.