My sister just got back from India.  She was there for just over a month working on a movie called Not Today.  It's a movie that will highlight the devastating issue of human trafficking.  It's a movie that has a great cast and crew, an important message, and is generating a good amount of recent press (and I'd say all that even if my sister weren't involved.)

Here's a quick blurb about the plot from the movie's website:

The Twitter Feed feature has been out for a few weeks now and we're getting lots of great feedback.  So far our favorite way that we have seen it used is as a simple and elegant newsfeed on a church home page.  It's an easy way to let your community and the rest of the world know what's going on at your church.  Check our current favorite instance of it.  

If you are using it on your site, let us know so we can take a look. If you have yet to get it set up, just send us an email at support@snapshotweb.com with the word TWITTER and your domain name and we'll have it configured for you so you can drop it on your site right away.

As always, you can follow the latest from SnapShot Web on twitter, facebook, and our blog.

We've just released a sweet new twitter feature for your SnapShot Websites.  It's included will all three plans.  If you don't yet have it on your site, just send an email to support@snapshotweb.com or a direct message to @SnapShotWeb with your domain name and the word TWITTER.  We'll add it to your site right away. Check out this quick demo to see the New Twitter Feed in Action...

We came across these Free Social Media Icons from Elegant Themes.  We think that may be a great fit for your website.  There are icons for just about every social media site you can imagine (and several that you may not have heard of just yet.)  Take a look, download them, use them, and let us know if you need anything.

At SnapShot Web, We pride ourselves on going above and beyond helping you make your church or ministry website into something beautiful, effective, and amazing.  We love to support you as you manage your SnapShot Website.  We'll often get a phone call or email that begins with "So sorry to bother you but..." It's never a bother.  Helping you is what we love to do.  We see it as a great gift and joy to get to support you and your ministry in this way.

Occasionally we will have a SnapShot Web user that doesn't ask any questions.  This sometimes means that she or he is not working with their site much.  It sometimes means that they are comfortable with the most basic setting and they will leave their site as it is.  And it sometimes means that they are a super-user - so gifted at working with the SnapShot Web tools that they may have things they could teach us.

Grace for Africa - a beautiful ministry with a stellar website.  They are committed to sharing the love and grace of God with the people of Africa.  They have some amazing things happening.  The recently gave us some specific and flattering feedback about how they are using their SnapShot Website.  Kellie Barrett from Grace for Africa had this to say:

 There are a lot of great things about SnapShot but what I love most about this site is that...

1. It's completely what you want it to be. If you want to choose from their templates - you have a lot of great ones to choose from; if you want to make your own design you can do that too.
2. Any question you have regarding your site will be answered within minutes! Absolutely any questions and like I said I do not have experience in site design so most of my questions seemed very elementary and yet they were answered clearly and efficiently.
3. It's SO easy to learn the ins and outs of the site. The support team is there always but there are also video tutorials explaining every module/option on the site. Very very user friendly!

Sometimes people will ask us "Just how customized can our church or ministry website be if we use SnapShot Web?"  Well, take a look at the new Live Curriculum Site and see what you think.  The designers over at Simply Youth Ministry put the design together and our team here simply dropped it into the SnapShot Web tools. 

Stay tuned in the near future as we are working on some great new templates that you are going to love.

I have been a fan of Snapshot for a while. Years ago I used it as a youth minister and now that I have "grown up," I use it as a pastor. Right now, I serve a wonderful and friendly small rural church in the panhandle of Texas with a big vision -- we desire to reach the un­‐churched and de‐churched and make disciples the best we can according to Scripture. I believe that Snapshot helps in this process. Here are some practical ways it has helped us:

We use the website for information/PR -  Snapshot has many great features that allow us to get info out -- from calendar events, to scrolling flash images, to Facebook/Twitter helps, to podcasting. We use these all. I would like to see the website be the go‐to for all information rather than the church bulletin. This would be better because it can be edited/updated anywhere at any time and there are quicker, real‐time updates. We have done community wide mailers and the main way we want to interact and get the word out about church is through our website. Snapshot also looks good and clean which has allowed residents of the town to take notice (and even motivated them to upgrade their web pages!).

We use the website to streamline - instead of calling the office or telling me in the hallways of the church on Sunday that I inevitably forget, we have used the website for members and ministry leaders to submit announcements and events to put on the calendar. It has really helped in organization of our office and calendar. This helps us focus more on our purpose and mission rather than just adding "stuff" to the calendar. Snapshot also makes PayPal easy with its module and has greatly helped in online payments for events.

Snapshot really has so many qualities that have helped our ministry this past year. The staff at Snapshot have always been an email or phone call away and have been quick to help in our times of great peril (i.e. PayPal changing everything during our sign-up for a conference!). If you are considering Snapshot, sign-up now without thinking - it will provide helpful tools to fulfill your vision to reach and disciple a generation that is desperately seeking truth.

By Paul Stohler
Pastor, First Baptist Church
Canadian, TX
www.fbccanadian.org
pstohler@fbccanadian.org

If you are looking for ways to take your design to a great new level, there are lots of great (and free) resources that will help you along the way.  One of those resources is Texture King.  Spend some time on their site and see some of the amazing texture resources that you can download and use for free for your design needs.

There is a Ministry at Milligan College called Youth In Ministry.  They have had a SnapShot Website for quite a while and they have some great things happening.  Here's what they had to say when we asked them about the latest happenings:

Our ministry is called Youth in Ministry or YiM for short. We partner with...