The folks over at Friends Church in Yorba Linda have put together a great resource on their SnapShot Website for Thanksgiving week.  Each day this week, they will be posting something new to their Gratitude Initiative page.  Each post will include four things:

1. a theme that includes a song to listen to
2. a scripture to read
3. a prayer to pray
4. an action-step to take

They've included options for sharing via twitter and email as well as a way to add comments.  Check out what they've got going on and share something you are thankful for this week.

What do think should be included on the home page of your church website?  How should it be displayed?  What options for connection should be most obvious?  What are your goals when setting up your home page? How effective is your home page?  How do you measure it's effectiveness?  Check out what the folks at East Valley Nazarene have done with their homepage.  It's simple and beautiful and I think you are going to love it.

The good folks at Trinity United Methodist Church in Elkhart, IN have had a SnapShot Website for their church for the last 5 years.  Just this past month though, they decided it was time for a major redesign of this church website. Since they are using the SnapShot tools to manage their site, the entire redisign process took only a matter of hours as they switched to a different template, make a few custom changes to the new template, then clicked through each page of their site to make sure everything was in place.

Check out the new look and feel at www.3umc.org.

We recently interviewed Justin Davis, the Student Pastor and the Pastor's assistant at The Pentecostals of Pasadena about their new church website - www.thepopchurch.org.

Here are some of the highlights from the interview:

SnapShot Web: Tell us a little about The Pentecostals of Pasadena.

Justin Davis: Our church has been in Pasadena for 58 years.  In September 2008 our church was severely damaged during hurricane Ike, and we were displaced for 2 ½ years.  Several months ago we finally made it back home to our church building. Everything is new and improved, and we felt like our website needed to be new and improved as well.

SSW: We've seen the new site.  It looks awesome.  How much time do you spend working on your website each week? What changes do you make regularly?

JD: Time spent updating the site every week is a minimum, maybe 3 hours.  And that includes updating our podcast with our latest services on Monday and Thursday.  I also make any changes to the calendar that are needed.

SSW: What kind of feedback have you received from people in your church or community?

JD: Feedback from our church was been great.  The Sermon Archive is particularly popular, especially during a sermon series where you want to catch every message.  They also love having the church calendar online. We pass out year long calendars at the beginning of the year.  But, as always happens dates/times get changed, new events are planned.  With the online calendar it is being updated weekly and everyone is aware of upcoming events.

SSW: Now that you have worked with the SnapShot Tools a bit, If you could share one or two tips or tricks with others who are new to  the SnapShot Web world, what would they be?  

JD: Two words:  Recurring Events.  The initial setup of the calendar was time consuming, but every month got easier, due to the recurring events already being populated.  Also, I spent quite a bit of time reviewing the tutorials that are available.

SSW: Has this been a solo endeaver of have you gotten others involved in the website (either through editing the site or interacting in some other way)?

JD: We have a graphic artist in the church who supplied the slides for our home page slide show.  She keeps them updated with our upcoming events.

SSW: Anything else you'd like to say?

JD: I am extremely impressed with Snapshot Web, the product and the people.  Because they specialize in church websites, they had a module created for everything we wanted.  And most of it came pre-loaded on the site, we just had to edit it.  I have made several calls to them and they spent time to walk me through different questions I had, and made some changes to the site for me. This is their business, but it seems they are approaching it with the heart of ministry.

SSW: What do we owe you for that last statment and where can we send the check.  Just Kidding.  Thanks for the kind words.

The Student Ministry Website at First Baptist Church in Owensboro is very impressive.  Take a few minutes to click around the site and see what you think.  Here are the top 5 things that I love about it:

1. An Organized Home Page - When you pull up the home page you will see a simple welcome message, a slideshow with some of the latest announcements, a weekly schedule, and links to some of the most important places on the site.  It's clean and simple and easy to navigate.  
    
2. An Image Driven Bottom Navigation on Every Page - In the footer of every every page, you will see the phone number and address of the ministry as well as 6 images that link to things like facebook, twitter, the church site, a flyer for an upcoming event, etc.  Keeping these things available on every page, means that they are always only one click away.
   
   
3. Sub-Banners on Every Inner Page (almost) - On almost every page, you will notice an image that stretches across the top of the content area.  This image has the same footprint and it immediately tells you where you are on the site.  When I'm on the events page, I see the calendar sub banner.  When I'm on the student resourses page, I see the student resources sub banner.  It gives the site a uniform look and feel.
   
   
4. Creative Ways for Parents to Connect - Many people consider their youth ministry website to be a tool that is exlusively for their students.  The folks at  First Baptist Church in Owensboro have clearly structured the site in a way that makes it a great spot for parents as well.  The way they have done this is quite comprehensive.  They have a place for parents to be able to ask questions to the ministry team, an online discussion board where parents can interact with one another, a list of helpful parenting links, articles, and other resources, a regular newsletter, and even a place where parents can sign up for a parent Bible study with one of the student minsters.
    
5. Video and Social Integration - There are lots of videos on the site - embedded from both youtube and vimeo. This is a great way to draw people in, to allow for a creative outlet for students, and to make your site a bit more interactive and social (as people can share the videos with a single click.)

Take look around fbcstudentsonline.org and let us know what you think.

Bridge Community Church is an Assemblies of God church in the greater Philadelphia area.  Among other things, Mike Oldham oversees the media ministry at Bridge Community Church, which includes the church website - bridgecomchurch.org. Every Monday morning, Mike will spend a little time working on the church website.  He devotes most of his attention to the home page as it's the "face of the website."  

On the home page, Mike has set up a few different features that have proven very effective as communication and interaction tools.  He's got a great looking slideshow with some upcoming announcements, a calendar list, the latest sermon available for listen or download, options for sharing the site, and a place to login to their Church Community Builder account.  

Take a look at what they have going on their home page and let us know what you think. 

Want to know why others are using SnapShot Web to manage their Church Websites?  Here's what a pastor from Hedgesville has to say about using SnapShot Web for the church website at Hedgesville Church:

Our church is located in Hedgesville, WV (Eastern Panhandle) and has been in this location now for about 34 years.  We are a very young church at heart with contemporary worship and very strong children, youth and young adult ministries. Our first goal is to serve our community and let them see the love of Christ in what we do not only what we say.  We love technology!  We try to squeeze every drop out of everything we have and Snapshot helps us do just that.

I am the Associate pastor and have been on staff going on ten years.  I lead our young adult ministry (HC Live) and handle all the technical stuff. (sound, lights, video, graphic design,computers, etc)

We use our church website as the front door of our church.  Visitors can get a feel of what our church is like while finding out info and schedules for all out ministries.  We also embed sermon archives and a live stream for our Sunday morning service.  This gives people a chance to experience a service before they get here.

We routinely update the schedules and announcements and sermon archives and we have totally changed the look of our site once since we have been with SnapShot Web.

We have had visitors attend out church expressly because they visited the website.  It's the first thing people looking for a church do when they come into a new community.  We have to do our best and SnapShot has made that easier for us to do in house instead of a big web design bill.

The first tip I can think of is to look around.  There are a ton of incredible looking church websites out there and you can get a feel for what is good and what's not.  I have found that it is pretty easy to customize snapshot to fit just about anything you want.  Don't try to come up with everything on your own.  If I like the way a website looks as soon as I see it then I try to look at WHY I like it and incorporate those principles into ours.  Chances are the really good websites at the really big churches cost a lot of money and I can get that look for a lot less as SnapShot Web is quite affordable.

Our team of people who head up our small groups usually change the info about their group activities themselves.  It is extremely easy to show people how to make basic changes to their pages.

One other thing!  I have been a customer of SnapShot Web for more than a couple of years now and the one thing that stands out is their customer support.  They get back with you quickly!  They have answered all my technical questions and have equipped me to make changes to our site for a very custom look.  The customer support is first class.

Chris Jones
Associate Pastor
Hedgesville Church

I'm connected to LA VIDA Education in Nicaragua in a few different ways.  First off, my church has been supporting the ministry financially, prayerfully, and though work trips for the last few years.  Secondly, as of last week, SnapShot Web is powering the ministry website.  Finally, my family has decided that we will be supporting LA VIDA with our Christmas Giving this year.

If you are still looking for a way to give a meaningful gift this Christmas, check out LA VIDA Education and see what you can do to help provide educational resources and extracurricular programs to schools and communities in Nicaragua.  

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:

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!

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

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...

Incarnate Consulting is made up of proven, veteran youth workers who have been in ministry for at least 10 years. The "whole church approach" that they use includes helping a church develop a vision for kids in their church and community, finding the right people to do the job, and helping to develop a strategy for reaching and keeping kids. Their ministry is designed for churches who want professional ministry but can’t afford it or churches wanting to save as much as possible for when the right person comes along.

They have been using their SnapShot Website for almost 2 years and with just about an hour and a half every week working on the website, they’re able to make regular changes to directly help youth workers, including games, talks, and seasonal blogs that create a jumping off point for their members to use at their churches. With the SnapShot Web tools and support, they have set up a site that's easy to navigate, clear to read and full of valuable information.

In His Eyes Ministries is about bringing God's perspective into the everyday lives of women.  The ministry offers a variety of resources in print and in person in order to develop authentic discipleship relationships.  The ministry is run by April Motl.  She a fairly new SnapShot Web user.  We talked with her recently about her experience with her new SnapShot Website and here's what she had to say:

Over the past few years I have tried six previous methods/services to create a website and I finally have a site I am really happy with.  Snapshot's design tools were simple to use and the appearance of the site was fairly consistent across different web browsers- something that has always been a bit of a nuisance.  The design tools offered a level of creativity/freedom I was very happy with, but did not require a ton of technical knowledge. 

Make sure you check out April's ministry and her new website at www.inhiseyesministries.com.

I spent the last 5 days at the Simply Youth Ministry Conference in Chicago. 

I'm back in California - exhausted but recovering.  I got the chance to talk with dozens of youth workers about their areas of ministry and influence.  I'm inspired by all of the youth workers out there who are passionate about connecting with, and caring for, students.  I'm also impressed by all of the support, resources and tools that are available to help them succeed.  You can check out some videos from the conference at conference.youthministry.com.

Right before the Toby Mac concert on Sunday night, SnapShot Web gave away a free year's worth of hosting and a custom template to a youth pastor from Ashland Kentucky.  Check back soon for some pics and links to the site we'll have set up.

I came across a band called The Music Room this week.  Their music is amazing and their vision is inspirational.  They are getting ready to head out on a 52-city tour so there's a chance that they'll be in your neck of the woods within the next few months.  You've got to check out their music, their story, and their schedule at www.entertheroom.com.  Here's some of what they have to say about their music and their mission:

The Music Room is a band that wants to serve. We don’t want to glorify ourselves. Our songs are not geared towards self-glorification, but perhaps instead they ask the listener to self-examine. We want to write songs that force people to look truthfully and soberly at the life they are living. We don’t want to shame people, or discourage people; we want to see people be set free. If our music can lead people to know and recognize a God that sets people free from shame and slavery then we’ve succeeded. You see we’ve gone from not expecting much of ourselves to expecting that God will do much with us if we make ourselves available to His plans.

One of the really cool things that The Music Room is doing is partnering with an organization called Courage to be You.  This is a non-profit that works to raise awareness about human-trafficking (sex slavery of young girls) in Northern CA.  Courage to be You has produced a compilation album to sell at benefit concerts for the purpose of raising financial support to build a safe house for girls rescued from the hopeless life of sex trafficking. The Music Room was able to contribute one of their songs - “Cost of Believing” - to this compilation.  Check out www.couragetobeyou.org for more info.

Check out this SnapShot Website that's being used for an upcoming movie project with an amazing cause.  Go to www.nottodaythemovie.com and watch the videos that they have on their home page, check out some of the recent blog posts, follow them on facebook and twitter, and see how you can be involved.

The movie will draw attention to the horrific issue of human trafficking by telling the story of a college student who travels to India for a summer trip with a few friends.  He finds himself in a situation that will change his life forever.  He meets a young girl and her father, Dalits by birth, who are facing starvation and plead for his help.

Anyway, we came across this recently and couldn't help but share it with you.