geeks & God

My husband and I are very active in our local church community.  Our church holds services on Thursday evenings and Sundays so we attended last night's service and I guess I just have it on my brain right now. So I decided to do a little research on what I could find in the Web 2.0 world of church communities.  Our church currently uses Planning Center which is an online worship and management center for churches.  We are active volunteers for the children's ministry at our church and signing up to participate has become such a seamless process for us.  We simply get an email notification and can click on a link that is directed to the planning center and allows us to either accept or decline the invitation to serve/volunteer.  In this planning center we can go into the calendar to block out dates we're in town or not so that when the church employee who coordinates the calendar needs to schedule volunteers she can easily see who not send invitations too when dates are blocked out prior.  Another feature of this tool is pastors and ministers can actually plan out sermons and meetings with the tools literally down to the minute! In a growing church environment you're usually relying on volunteers, members and those that serve directly in the church via email, texts, phone calls, face-to-face, etc.  It becomes very challenging to have everyone on the same page when your church community is made up of all different lifestyles, ages and in some cases people spread out all across a city.  Like most online services this one does come with a price, but for businesses I think they'll find it to be worth their while if they working with a vast majority of people that aren't always available to meet on a daily or weekly basis. There's a lot Planning Center offers in terms of focus to specific types of church services so if you're involved at church you may find this of interest to you! 

                    [Images below feature some of the services Planning Center offers]

To help you see how my church has utilized not only the Planning Center but other forms of technology I've included the link to my church so you can browse their web page.  It's really awesome to see how churches (something that has always been known as being so traditional) are just as much ahead of the game as businesses and schools.  Take a moment and tour Beaches United Methodist Church site and see for yourself how technology is working in many ways!