eQuip archives

What about theology? Amidst some 3,000+ expressions of Christian faith in the United States (and over 30,000 in the world), the important place for theology can be lost in the shuffle, or lost in the heated debate among honest (and allowable) differences.

Dedicated websites to theology include: SmartChristian.com has a notable of links to theology and theological resources; TheologyWebsite.com is dedicated to the online theological community; www.carm.org is website to the Christian Apologetics & Research Ministry, with an Online School of Christian Theology and Online School of Christian Apologetics; Catholic.com has Catholic answers; Phil Johnson's Bookmarks links to many sites, deciding some to be bad theology, or worse, according to his convictions; and a nice online zine can be found at Quodlibet: Online Journal of Christian Theology and Philosophy. The Center for Catholic and Evangelical Theology offers a friendlier, ecumenical place for dialogue.

Two resources for those of us who are preachers and teachers: www.desperatepreacher.com and www.ebibleteacher.com.

Www.desperatepreacher.com has been around since 1996, offering resources and a place for dialogue among an ecumenical group of preachers around the weekly lectionary texts of the Revised Common Lectionary on the Web. It's collection of resources and discussions is intended to further God's kingdom by helping both clergy and laity to find creative ways to reach people with God's message of love, peace and hope.

Www.ebibleteacher.com has resources for the computer in the Bible class, like free religious PowerPoint backgrounds & templates, free photos of Bible places & things, free PowerPoint Bible atlas maps, sermons, Children's Sunday School lessons, and more.

www.prayerneeds.org is a web-based prayer portal, a part of the Prayer Driven Ministries. Prayerneeds.org was launched in 1999 to offer up more prayers and intercessions for the world. You can join their prayer team from whereever you are by viewing submitted requests, or ask for prayer for yourself or someone you know.

Church Executive magazine's January 2005 article "Does your Web site attract young families?" has observed these 3 things based on the author's consultation with churches:

1. If you're not on the Web, you don't exist.
2. Their first impression of your congregation will be from the Web.
3. A poor Web site can actually deter visits from young families.

Read the full article online.

Fish the Net: The Evangelistic Tackle Box at www.fishthe.net has been online since 1997, serving as a portal offering a vast number of links for doing Internet evangelism. As a ministry of Ark Webs webhosting company, it has a number of other websites and services that encourages and educates even beginners to "do the work of an evangelist" online through LiveTracts.com and InternetEvangelism.net.

Bible software vendors from around the world are jointly sponsoring a cooperative User Survey to ask Bible software users about their needs, requests, and dreams. Be a part of helping enhance the next generation of Bible Softwares. Please take the survey here.

www.eriv.net is the website of Riverview Church in Holt, Michigan. It uses Macromedia Flash to provide background music and a very contemporary design. However, it is definitely an adventure (or a challenge, depending on your perspective) to navigate the website to find the information you want.

While using Flash is very attactive visually, be aware that not every Web browser has Macromedia Flash installed or up-to-date. Also note that it may evoke strong feelings by Website visitors -- some may love the innovative one-of-a-kind design, some will find it too slow or difficult to figure out where to find pertinent info.

The International Conference on Computing and Mission (ICCM) is an annual gathering of women and men who have a common interest in computers and mission. ICCM has a vision of cooperation for effective use of technology bringing the Gospel to every nation. See how the Internet and other technologies can be used for the good of the world!

www.joepix.com is a very creative outreach using a website to host digital photos! This effort of photo evangelism mobilizes local churches or ministries to bless people with photos at major event venues, and then people can visit the website after the event to retrieve their photo, share their photo, and even to get the "big picture" of life -- a Gospel presentation. See more info about this innovative outreach at www.joepixinfo.com.

The Raise 100 to Free 100 was featured in a recent IJM newsletter for its fundraising and awareness-raising efforts.

The Youth Group at Chinese Bible Church of Orange County uses this website to share forms, news, and references with its group members and attenders via word of mouth. It's a quick and efficient way to pass along information!

A most innovative initiative I just recently discovered is the Web-Empowered Church. This is a great initiative to empower church websites using an open-source platform, and thus empower Internet ministry through collaboration towards new possibilities. The initiative is described in detail on the websites at WebEmpoweredChurch.com (for churches) and WebEmpoweredChurch.org (for developers), get more information there. It'll be exciting to see the training and tools like ministry extensions that'll come forth as churches and developers participate.

Web-Empowered Church is headed up by Mark Stephenson, Director of Cyberministry and Technology at Ginghamsburg Church, which has hosted a digitallyMastered Conference for a couple years now, both live in-person and virtually on the Web. Mark has his own personal website at www.ChurchCyberGuy.com and just added an RSS feed to his blog.

Bloggers are active with Bible reading this year. Blogs that are promoting Bible reading and conversations include: www.OneYearBibleBlog.com, Will Samson at Imagine, Adam Cleaveland at The Pilgrimage, Today's Bible or Today's Topical Bible, Friedens One-Year Bible Blog, Sean Boisen at Life of Jesus: the Daily Pericope Series, and BibleGeek's Bible Reading of the Day. And A-list blogger Andrew Jones encourages his readers to read the Bible too.

The response has been brisk. As of last week, One Year Bible Journey 2005 had 833 people signed up for their free weekly emails filled with commentary, encouragement, and questions for reflection. Go to www.oneyearbible2005.com to sign up!

Internet Evangelism Day is scheduled for April 24th this year. It's a good time to plan and prepare for that day, and develop ways for your church to participate. A number of free articles are available for your church's use, including: A Wired World, INTERNET: There’s a Day on the Way, Could God use you in Internet Evangelism?, and Googling the Gospel. Amazing stories (and videos) of how the Internet can reach people are also now online.

There are many ways to get involved: a spotlight during the morning service, launching a new outreach website, and/or hosting a brainstorming session to develop your Web evangelism strategy.

UMC.org has a series of articles to help churches learn about Web ministry and building church websites. The short article titled Making Church Web Sites Easy to Use is supplemented with a great Multimedia Tour, which gives you a very nice 10-minute (or so) online show-and-tell for an easy-to-use church Web site. You'll need to have high-speed Internet and Macromedia Flash installed.

Monday Morning Insight tells this great story of faithful giving and generosity last week. A small 20-member church (Mt. Signal Baptist Church) took up an offering and gave it to a megachurch (Gardendale's First Baptist Church) towards its $55M building program.

A small church giving in faith made an amazing impact, illustrating that it is indeed "more blessed to give than to receive." Read the full story online.

Just before the weekend hit, bloggers picked up on a recent Agape Press news article titled, Church Websites -- Now a Luxury? Perhaps a Necessary Outreach in Near Future, which cites a recent study by Ellison Research titled, Study results show a huge gap between large and small churches in the use of technology and Barna's 2001 article titled, More Americans Are Seeking Net-Based Faith Experiences.

The Ellison study shows that 91 percent of Protestant pastors have access to the Internet and use it for church business. But barely half of their churches maintain a website. The survey results also show that smaller churches are much less likely to have a website presence.

With the affordable availability of website building tools like the donor-supported ForMinistry Web Builder, technology costs are no longer prohibitive. With only a minority of surveyed pastors indicating that having a website is "extremely important", it suggests that cost is not the only factor for lacking a church website. It's just a matter of priority and value, or lack thereof.

This Lifeway article, Magnetize Your Church's Web Site, has some great tips on how to make it THE place where the present and future members of your church family come for information and interaction. Here are 5 main points:

1. Give people a reason to come back.
2. Employ technology wisely.
3. Make your Web site a priority.
4. Add specialty and targeted sites.
5. Get the World Wide Word out.

Read the full article online.

www.churchmedialink.com is the website to mediaLINK, an excellent source for pastors and church leaders to get quality media resources to share with their audiences. This free tool is created by the International Mission Board and the North American Mission Board. Full size MPEG1 videos can be downloaded and might even be useable in classroom settings!

New Year's is a great opportunity to start a new Bible reading plan. There are many to choose from online, including: www.readingplanner.com, www.bibleplan.org, www.heartlight.org/devotionals/reading_plans/. One that's been online for a decade is Daily Bible Reading Plan, created by Michael Coley and it's been online since 1995. One at Back to the Bible has a reading schedule that's available for your palmtop PDA via AvantGo.

BibleReadThrough.com is particularly dynamic and allows you to design your own reading plan online by selecting different ways to read through passages and choosing from 60 versions in 30 languages.

www.Give30minutes.com is an international effort to encourage Christians online to devote 30 minutes a week to online evangelism. Give30minutes.com's goal is to work within the structure of people's busy schedules in order to "build a team of people to talk about Jesus in the chat rooms of the Internet and people to pray for them while they do this - 24 hours a day, 7 days a week." It's the brainchild of a veteran chat room minister, Matthew Rich of The Internet Mission. (Link courtesy of Internet for Christians.)

www.polvero.com is a Christian webzine, blog tool, and discussion forum all wrapped up in one, with a bit of attitude. It has been around since 2001, and seems to have developed quite a voice over the years, to talk about the reality of Jesus today and in the here and now among college students. Webzine articles there are all written by college students, but the blogs and forums are available for Christians of all ages to use for free.

And, happy new year everyone!