Protect Your Church Email Addresses From Spam

reCAPTCHA is a neat tool that protects your email addresses online from the spiders that crawl the web looking to include you in their Spam emails.

Here’s a description:

A CAPTCHA is a program that can tell whether its user is a human or a computer. You’ve probably seen them — colorful images with distorted text at the bottom of Web registration forms. CAPTCHAs are used by many websites to prevent abuse from “bots,” or automated programs usually written to generate spam. No computer program can read distorted text as well as humans can, so bots cannot navigate sites protected by CAPTCHAs.

And here’s an example of how it works using my email address:

cory…@gmail.com

August 31, 2007 · Filed Under Church Marketing

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LifeChurch’s Craig Groeschel Reads Spurgeon

I figure that headline might get a couple more people to read the great question and answer with LifeChurch.tv’s Senior Pastor Craig Groeschel that Kent has posted today.

I love this quote by Groeschel:

It’s not about you! It’s not about marketing. It’s not about buildings. It’s not about sermon series. It’s not about the music, the lights, or the environment.

IT IS ONLY… ALWAYS… ABOUT JESUS!

He also mentions Blue Ocean Strategy as a resource with one of the biggest impact on him … I already own the book, just haven’t cracked the cover yet … great Labor Day reading now!

August 31, 2007 · Filed Under Church Marketing

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Church Logo Identity Manuals

Get a Church Logo Identity Manuals… I don’t have one, but this post on logo and identity manuals is a good resource to start one.

August 28, 2007 · Filed Under Sidenotes

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How a Pastor Can Prepare for a Radio Interview

This week, I got an email from Paul Butler, a freelance producer for Moody Radio’s Prime Time America program, asking to interview me about ministry and blogging for the program. The radio piece will be airing in the next week or so and I’ll give a link once it’s finished. He also interviewed a CCP reader and blogging pastor, Ron Dauphin, who I helped get a blog going.

Anyway, through the interview, I quickly realized, I had never done a radio interview … and that I could learn a lot from Paul’s experience.

So afterward, I emailed him a couple of questions and want to share his answers here. His answers are excellent and will help any pastor or minister prepare for a radio interview.

1. Please tell me about yourself.

I am a homeschooling father of three. I currently teach at the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago. I teach mostly radio broadcasting and production courses. I graduated from MBI in 1993 with a BA in Communications and received my MA in Communications from Northern Illinois University in 2003. Before teaching I was a senior producer for the Moody Broadcasting Network in Chicago. I currently am a freelance producer for Moody Radio’s Prime Time America and other programs.

I can be found online at www.homeschoolblogger.com/Ebenim and my radio pieces are posted at http://ebenimmedia.vox.com/.

2. How should a pastor prepare for a radio interview? Read more

August 25, 2007 · Filed Under Media

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Embed Google Maps in Your Church Website

Google just announced the ability to embed Google Maps into your website.

This makes it super easy to put a dynamic and accurate map to your church on your website … much like YouTube easily allows you to embed videos from their site. Embedding is simply copying and pasting code so you can show videos, in YouTube’s case, and maps for Google Maps.

To embed a Google Map of your church into your website, click here.

August 24, 2007 · Filed Under Church Websites

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Get Expert Church Consulting from Church Relevance’s Kent Shaffer

Recently, Chris Forbes and I had the opportunity to have lunch with Church Relevance’s Kent Shaffer. He spent some good time with us talking everything church marketing. And I think all three of us thoroughly enjoyed the meeting.

Anyway, I got to hear Kent’s heart and passion for ministry. He seems like (and in fact, is) a humble, caring, godly guy.

Today, he just formally announced his church consulting services … he’s offer a variety of options that your church might be able to use and tap into Kent’s experience and knowledge.

Disclaimer: He didn’t hit me up about posting this. I’m a CR feedreader and just wanted to tell others about his work!

August 22, 2007 · Filed Under Church Marketing

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