2June 2010Christian Computing® Magazine

Founder & Editor-in-ChiefSteve Hewitt - steve@ccmag.com

VP of OperationsMichael Hewitt - mike@ccmag.com

Contributing EditorsDr. J.D. “Doc” Watson Terry Wilhite Yvon Prehn Nick Nicholaou Kevin A. Purcell C. Brian SmithRuss McGuireDrew GoodmansonBradley MillerMichael Curylo

Copy EditorGina Hewitt

Corporate Home OfficeMailing address: PO Box 319 Belton MO 64012Delivery address: 311 Manor Dr. Belton, MO 64012Phone: (816) 331-8142 FAX: 800-456-1868

© Copyright 2010 by Christian Computing®, Inc.

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Christian Computing® is a registered trademark of Christian Computing, Inc. Written materials submitted to Christian Computing® Magazine be-come the property of Christian Com-puting®, Inc. upon receipt and may not necessarily be returned. Christian Computing® Magazine reserves the right to make any changes to materi-als submitted for publication that are deemed necessary for editorial pur-poses. The content of this publication may not be copied in any way, shape or form without the express permis-sion of Christian Computing®, Inc. Views expressed in the articles and re-views printed within are not necessar-ily the views of the editor, publisher, or employees of Christian Comput-ing® Magazine, or Christian Comput-ing, Inc.

Articles that are highlighed are provided by our partnerswww.ccmag.com/2007_03/2007_03editorial.pdf

Applying Tomorrow’s Technology to Today’s MinistryVolume 22 June 2010 No. 6

3 editorial

You Will Want to Log into CCMag.com and Register - Trust Me!Steve Hewitt - steve@ccmag.com

4 CCMag NewsBrief

5 eMails to the editor

9 Press releases

15 aCs ideas to iMPaCt

Reaching Out to Bring People Infrom ACS Technologies

17 aCCeleratiNg the dyNaMiC ChurCh

Dynamic Churches Leverage Self-Servicefrom Fellowship Technologies

18 teCh talk

Freeware from MicrosoftDr. J.D. (Doc) Watson - docwatson3228@qwest.net

21 higher Power with keviN

Bible Study AppsKevin A. Purcell - kevin@kevinpurcell.org

26 lauNChiNg oNliNe

Adding the Bible with Web ServicesBy Russ McGuire - russ.mcguire@gmail.com

30 MiNistry CoMMuNiCatioN

Why You CAN and SHOULD Create Your Own Blogs and Websites Part TwoYvon Prehn - yvonprehn@aol.com

7 Cover storyMissions Computing at Taylor University

by Steve Hewitt

June 2010Christian Computing® Magazine 3

editorial

We are making some fantastic changes with the online site for CCMag. The next time you visit us, I encourage you to take a minute and click

on “Register”. There are many reasons we have added this option to our site, and I will explain them in the next para-graph, but the really great news is that we are going to have

a drawing from those that register between now and October 1, 2010, and the prize will be a $500 Apple gift card, allowing our grand prize winner to apply the card toward the purchase of a new Apple iPad, or a new iPhone (or, any other Apple product they wish!)

Steve Hewitt - steve@ccmag.com

You Will Want to Log into

Registration is free, and, by doing so you will be signed up to receive our publication each month. So, if you are already a subscriber, why take the time to register (assuming the drawing for the $500 Apple gift card is not enough incentive!) You will discover that you need to be a registered user to take advantage of some of our online services, such as accessing our back issues. As well, only registered users will be able to leave comments on the articles posted on our site. We need information about who reads CCMag. By taking a minute or two to register and fill out our on-line registration form, you will be helping us out. As you know, CCMag is free to all of our 50,000+ subscribers. We are dependent on the support of our sponsors, and they would really benefit from knowing some basic demo-graphic information about our readership. In addition, we have added the registration as a way to provide additional security for our site. We have recently had some attacks to our site, and have had to ini-tiate several new levels of security. By requiring registra-tions for those leaving comments after our articles, it helps

to provide an additional level of security we presently need. So, please visit our site (www.ccmag.com) and register. And, this is an excellent time to encourage your friends and peers to do the same. They will not only enjoy receiving our publication in their email box each month, but they will join you in having a chance to win our grand prize! Watch for more information online and in our next issue concerning additional prizes and benefits for regis-tering!

Together We Serve Him,

Steve HewittEditor-in-ChiefCheck out our iPhone app!

CCMag.com and Register – Trust Me!

HP To Offer Printers with Their Own Email Addresses! Hewlett-Packard has announced a new line of printers that will be connected to the Web, providing several exciting new features. First, in answer to the rising use of SmartPhones, these new printers will have their own email addresses, allow-ing anyone from a SmartPhone to print any file by simply sending to the printer’s specific email address. This will allow print-ing to a web connected printer at their home or office, or directly to a public printer at a hotel for example. The new printers will be referred to as ePrint enabled printers and will also have the ability to allow users to access Google docs directly from the printer, in order to print such documents, spreadsheets, etc., without accessing a computer to pull up the files for printing. HP is also announcing a new service called Scheduled Delivery, which will allow people to subscribe to specific informa-tion and have it print out to their printers at a specific time each day or week. For more information, visit http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Midmarket/HP-Offers-WebConnected-Printers-Applications-735953/

Smart Phone Wars! So should you purchase one of the many new Android phones or check out the new Apple iPhone? New statistics are in and the iPhone is losing ground to smart phones that are running the Android OS from Google. According to new statistics reported by CNN, smart phones running the Blackberry OS are still number one, but their percentage of use is going down. iPhone was number two, but new data shows that phones running the Android have now taken second place and the iPhone has dropped to third. (CNN reports - http://cnn.site.printthis.clickability.com/pt/cpt?action=cpt&title=Report%3A+Google+Android+surpasses+iPhone+in+U.S.+-+CNN.com&expire=&urlID=426470083&fb=Y&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cnn.com%2F2010%2FTECH%2F05%2F11%2Fcnet.android.apple.iphone%2F%3Fhpt%3DT2&partnerID=211911 However, this report was released before the advance sales report for the new iPhone was announced. The new iP-hone has been revealed by Apple and it has several exciting new features. It is 25% thinner than previous iPhones, it has a new look and design, improved battery life, front facing camera (for video conferencing on the go), a better camera (5 mega-pixels) with a LED Flash, and a higher resolution screen. The power and features continue to grow and the price continues to be amazing. The new iPhone with 16 gigabytes will be $199. For more information, visit http://www.usatoday.com/tech/products/2010-06-08-apple08_CV_N.htm

Scareware Continues to Grow at Alarming Rates Scareware has increased tenfold in the first quarter of this year. What is Scareware? It is a fake program that gets into your computer and pops up scary messages warning you that your computer is infected and in dire need of a specific program to clean things up. One such Scareware company, Innovate Marketing has been shut down for marketing a fake anti-virus program, but not before they earned $163+ million according to court records. You get Scareware just like you would a virus, by visiting a site that is infected, or by clicking on a link posted on a social networking site such as Facebook. One of the most popular ways Scareware is spreading is through the use of Web sites. Those pushing the scareware create Web sites on popular subjects in the news, and use tricks to make their site appear at the top of the Google search listing, so they appear legit. Your best defense is to have good anti-virus protection software on your computer and IF you get a Scareware message, write down the name and information and do a search on Google for a solution to get it removed from your computer. For more information, visit http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/computersecurity/2010-06-07-scareware07_ST_N.htm

4June 2010Christian Computing® Magazine

Emails to the EditorEmails…

Last month we had to suspend the ability to leave com-ments on specific articles on our CCMag Web site. We received several emails from readers that expressed their regret at not having the opportunity to express their opin-ions. We have now restored the ability to add comments on our site for each and every article in CCMag, but thought we would provide these comments for everyone in this issue.

Concerning the Editorial by Steve Hewitt on recently published survey information that many Facebook users were considering leaving due to security concerns, we received the following comment:

---Having been an early Facebook user, I have seen how it evolved from something that was intended to be the very opposite of private. Facebook pro-vides people who have no understanding of web development or blogging a way to easily publish whatever they might want to say and have that distributed to any number of people who might be interested in reading it. Perhaps it is a symptom of our narcissistic culture, but the fact that one’s literary(?) output might be read by strangers is, for many, part of the attraction.

As such, it is odd that Facebook is now under fire for not being private enough. Granted, there are privacy settings which have given people a sense of privacy, and granted, they have been complicat-ed, confusing, and frequently changing, but these are things that only seem to matter to a very vocal minority (despite well publicized “movements” to quit Facebook, the actual number of users continues to grow). The idea that “Facebook has become the new email,“ is unfortunate. It is not a new way of doing email, but rather something altogether different. It was never intended to be a replacement for private conversations, but rather a public forum. Security and privacy have been relatively recent additions, so it is understandable that there will be some learning that must take place. Facebook can (and should) continue to

simplify and improve its settings. It also needs to take users concerns very seriously.

The learning, however, must be done not only by Face-book, but by its users. It is not enough that Facebook tries to protect its users, but users must also take respon-sibility for protecting themselves. They need to realize that whatever they put on a public site is likely to be seen by people they may not have anticipated. Users can control what information they post in the first place. For a church, having a Facebook page may be a great way to provide information about the church and to connect with its members, but it probably is not the best place to

June 2010Christian Computing® Magazine 5

post prayer requests (at least not those of a confidential nature). Post information about Sunday School and Worship service schedules, but not a member direc-tory. Recognize that the social nature of Facebook means that the page creator has little control over what others may say on the site. Comments that are deroga-tory or reflect badly on the church may well appear, so it is necessary that someone take responsibility to monitor and update the page regu-larly. If church staff are writing comments, they need to consider carefully what the tone of their comments might convey. What is intended as an informal comment could easily come across as disrespectful if not carefully worded. Churches should also be careful to not rely too heavily on Facebook for communication and inadver-tently exclude members who don’t (won’t or can’t) use Facebook. With some careful planning and thoughtful use, Facebook can be a great tool to facilitate real fellow-ship among its members and outreach to the community.

Facebook has some growing to do, but it is not likely to self-destruct anytime soon.

Timothy A JohnsonOwner

TeamLogicIT of RosevilleRoseville, MN

And, Nick’s article on the Macintosh provoked several responses, including these two.---

The article on mac’s was terrible. My experience with macs and windows is completely different. You could not pay me to buy another windows pc. I think Nick is off base with his attack.

Pastor Kevin Van Wyk Bridge of Hope Church, Waterloo IA

Nick’s article is without facts in so many places. “75% to 125% more expensive than Windows counterparts. That’s the simple truth.” This is very much WITHOUT

FACT. A simple trip over to Dell.com, which I’m guess-ing many churches use, to configure a computer congru-ent or almost equal to the bottom-of-the-line MacBook Pro shows that the base model MacBook Pro, which starts at $1,199, costs just $160 more than a Dell Studio 14z. The Dell model has a 1” larger screen, 1GB more of RAM, and a battery that even when upgraded still does not come even close to the “up to 10 hours battery life” Apple claims on their website. plus, at $1,038.99, the Dell does NOT have any anti-virus or anti-malware soft-ware included (other than a 30-day trial). Minimum $50 for a year, so now a Dell that’s close is at roughly $1,088. Not to mention the Dell model does NOT come with an internal CD/DVD drive as the MacBook Pro does, so an external DVD burner was added. Same with a SD card reader; not built in, so it was added.

Also, the MacBook Pro comes with a basic rudimentary “Text Edit” application that can open and save Micro-soft Word documents; the Dell comes with “Microsoft Works,” which does NOT natively open or save Word documents. As a result, a purchase of Microsoft Office 2007 or 2010 is necessary, *starting* at $100. The need for Microsoft Outlook is also crucial, since the Dell does not come with any software to utilize a Microsoft Ex-change account which many churches commonly use. The MacBook Pro has OSX which has Microsoft Ex-change support built-in. So adding the $100 so the total cost which, with anti-virus/anti-malware yearly subscrip-tions thrown in, now we’re at $1,199 for the MacBook Pro 13” with 2GB of RAM, 250GB hard drive, SD card reader, webcam, built-in SuperDrive (burns up to dual-layer DVDs), a better on-board graphics chip (the new

6June 2010Christian Computing® Magazine

nVidia 320M) and an up to 10-hour battery; and the Dell which has a 1GB more RAM, 1” larger screen, but no anti-malware/anti-virus, no Office compatibility, a poorer video experi-ence (the 9400M chipset lags behind the MacBook Pro’s updated graphics chip), no SD card reader built-in, and no DVD burner built-in and the need to purchase after-market Office suites and anti-malware/virus, the price is $1,188. Apple doesn’t charge shipping, and shipping on a Dell notebook with slightly better specs and not ready to go “out of the box” plus say $30 dol-lars shipping (and that’s conservative) puts the Dell at a MORE EXPENSIVE FINAL COST than a MacBook Pro. So have Nick show me where a Mac-Book Pro is “75%-125% more expen-sive, and that’s a FACT.”

The “operating system issues” are rela-tive. If Nick doesn’t have any kind of background or if the organization runs outdated or un-common software, then I can see the problem. My big issue with that section is that it’s fairly common knowledge that “repairing permissions” is *NOT* the proper way to troubleshoot Mac OSX and any issues that may arise. It’s a FALSEHOOD to think that just running a “Fix Disk Permissions” command will solve any issue that arises. Plus, he quotes an article he wrote from 2 years ago, and there’s been a completely different operating system since then (10.6 Snow Leopard), and as with any OS (Windows included), persistent issues go away as new releases, patches and updates come out. I completely question Nick’s process of troubleshooting a Mac, as it appears obvious he has not followed the basic steps to do so.

Not to mention that at least in our church since I was named IT Manager in late 2007, we’ve gone from 2 Macs in-house to now 11 total in 2010. Number of Macs that have failed: 0. Number of hard drive failures: 1, and it was covered under an Apple recall so we avoided a crash before it had a chance to happen. We have roughly 40-50 other users on PCs in our church, and I can tell you from looking at my Helpdesk tickets that requests for help are 92% PC, 8% Mac. And of that 8%, almost three quarters of the Mac issues are with Microsoft’s

own awful “Office: Mac” software that has enormous is-sues with our Exchange server and auto-save. There were a grand total of 6 requests from our 11 Mac users over the last year for help regarding connecting to an FTP server, logging in to a network shared drive, or general Mac OSX questions. The rest of my time is spent chas-ing down PC users and their issues with Microsoft’s OS and software/hardware issues. I’m using a MacBook Pro circa 2006 which has had zero issues, is plenty fast, can still hold a battery charge, and I have no plans to upgrade any time soon. Our PC users are lucky enough to be on a 2-3 year hardware refresh schedule, but our Mac users are more like 4-5 years…mainly because Apple’s hard-ware is just built seemingly better than Dell or anyone else we use for PCs in our church.

The “Susceptibility to Malware” section is nothing but unnecessary FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) in my opinion. Nick’s right, there are no viruses or malware right now on Macs. So why even highlight it? In my 5+ years at this church and now 3rd year as IT Manager, there has yet to be one single issue with any Mac in our building pertaining to viruses or malware.

The “Perception is Everything” section sounds like

June 2010Christian Computing® Magazine 7

Nick’s true colors as a Microsoft/PC “fanboy” leaking out. I do agree that too many Apple/Mac users give the company a pass when something’s not fixed immediately, but it’s also fair to say that when persistent issues arise with Microsoft/Windows/Office, it’s discussed more widely because Microsoft is king of the com-puter world & their issues can affect so many users…more than we could dream. Not to mention that Windows, up to Windows 7 anyway, has been lackadaisical in protecting its OS and its users. That also is something that’s subjective, but I tend to think many of those in the IT world would agree that Windows XP (still widely used by nearly everybody in business) is highly unsecure, and thousands of dollars are spent in attempts to protect it. And I can at-test even the best anti-virus/malware doesn’t stop EVERYTHING. A Windows 7 user here has already been hit with malware that required a reformat.

I should clarify that I’ve been both a Mac and PC user for years. While I have a MacBook Pro at my desk that I use daily, I also use Windows on a daily basis as well. I like both operating systems and can troubleshoot both…and find it more of a challenge to deal with PCs than Macs. Macs, in our workplace, make my job a LOT easier…in that as you can see from the stats I stated earlier, I really don’t have any problems dealing with our Mac users. Pretty much every issue that arises stems from Microsoft…whether it’s a server, a Hyper-V virtual machine, a desktop, or notebook…and all of Microsoft’s issues with its OS and software…I stay plenty busy. This is why our “Management Team” at our church is almost 100% Mac in practice, as these VIPs don’t wish to deal with all the issues the rest of those in the office do on a daily basis. Macs make my life easier, and depending on the user, I recommend them highly. And as pointed out earlier, a congruent Dell machine with similar specs can either be cheaper (but CERTAINLY NOT 75%-125% cheaper…Nick’s statement was grossly incorrect), but you sacrifice quite a good deal of safety, ease of use and hardware longevity. I recommend PCs for many folks since it’s what fits their relative situation; for others, a Mac can also be a perfect fit for other users who don’t wish to have to tinker/fix/troubleshoot their computer on a near-daily basis.

It would be nice if Nick or whomever is proofing his articles would do a bit of research of their own or have Nick “show his work” before publishing what I consider to be drivel and opinion-based falsehoods to a group of people who should, and probably do, know better.

Michael F SadowskiIT Manager

Parkview Christian Church

8June 2010Christian Computing® Magazine

Shelby Systems Launches Arena Select

CORDOVA, TN – On June 16, 2010, Shelby Systems announced the launch of Arena Select, a new line of its Arena church management software. Arena Select is loaded with the most commonly requested features optimized for medium to large-sized churches.

“Arena Select provides churches with a power-ful toolset that helps connect with their members and grow their ministries. The easy-to-use inter-face allows new users and volunteers to quickly make an impact in their work,” said Frank Canady, President of Shelby Systems. “Shelby Systems has a strong history of developing quality software products that support faith-based organizations in serving the Kingdom, and the introduction of Arena Select certainly continues this trend.”

Arena Select is ideal for the church that wants an intuitive, powerful way of expanding its ministry. Key elements include membership and contact management, superior reporting tools, and simple grouping and search options – all accessible via the internet. With connectivity from virtually anywhere, an Arena user has all the tools needed to work from the office, home, or on the road. The addition of items such as Mission Trip Man-agement, as well as Check-In and Contributions, round out a thorough set of features. Both staff and members will appreciate the convenience of features such as Online Giving and Event Registra-tion.

“Since Arena was launched in 2007, we have con-tinually enhanced the feature set based on feed-back from our customers and prospective custom-ers”, explained Mark White, Product Manager of Arena. “Increasingly, we’ve seen interest from a large number of churches who are impressed with the feature set of Arena, but don’t quite require the full-blown version for their organization. We listened to this feedback and designed Arena Select to be the perfect fit for their needs.”

The original Arena product will now be known as Arena Premium – and contains features not includ-ed in Arena Select. Web Publishing, Assignments and the ability to add Community-created modules are the most notable of these.

Further details about Arena Select are available at arenachms.com.

Tim Cool of Cool Solutions Group, Charlotte, North Carolina Releases First Book ‘Successful Master Planning: More than Pretty Pictures’

Tim Cool, Chief Solutions Officer of Cool Solu-tions Group, announced the release of his first book today “Successful Master Planning: More than Pretty Pictures.” The Book is available at most major booksellers.

Charlotte, NC. (Vocus/PRWEB ) June 3, 2010 -- Tim Cool, Chief Solutions Officer of Cool Solu-tions Group, announced the release of his first book today “Successful Master Planning: More than Pretty Pictures” . With over twenty-three years of experience working with churches, min-istries, and their leadership, Cool addresses the issues churches must confront and the questions that must be answered at every critical step of the master planning process and facilities expansion project. It includes helpful information about top-ics such as land and site selection, zoning, funding and financing, the architectural review process, construction, and post-construction. Providing realistic and practical applications, Successful Master Planning: More than Pretty Pictures” com-municates the importance of creating a master plan the right way. Crafted correctly, a solid master plan can bring unity, a renewed sense of purpose, and financial stability to the church.

“I’ve led five different building projects, yet found this book to be both insightful and profound. I think any pastor, church leader or board member preparing to embark on a construction adventure

June 2010Christian Computing® Magazine 9

Press Re leases

Press Re leasesshould read this book before making decisions about who to hire or when to start,” said Tim Stevens, Executive Pastor, Granger Community Church, Granger, Indiana.

Has your church or ministry ever considered a building or expansion program? Have you ever stepped out in faith only to get bogged down in details? Is your master plan little more than a “pretty picture” to present to your congregation? In Successful Master Planning: More than Pretty Pictures” , author Timothy L. Cool provides a com-prehensive primer to lead you through the myriad details, processes, steps, and decisions that must be considered as part of a church building project.

The book is currently available at http://www.Amazon.com and as an ebook through the Cool Solutions Group web site.

Cool Solutions Group is also the developer of http://ministrespace.com ministrEspace room scheduling software and has just released their Forever Free version that is available to ministry groups at no charge. This is ideal for churches that do not need all of the functionality of the minis-trEspace PRO version.

Cool and his wife, Lisa, live in Charlotte, North Carolina with their three children. Visit him online at http://www.coolsolutionsgroup.com where you can find his popular blog and information about all of the Cool companies and products and services.

Cool will be presenting live as a workshop leader at the annual National Association of Church Busi-ness Administrators conference in Orlando July 23, 2010.

10June 2010Christian Computing® Magazine

June 2010Christian Computing® Magazine 11

cover story

For many years, I have been aware of the ICCM (International Conference on Com-puting and Missions) normally held on the campus of Taylor University. However, it was only recently that I had the opportunity to talk to Stefan Brandle from the

Taylor University Computer Science and Engineering department. As he shared some of his passion for what they do at Taylor University, I realized that many of our readers would benefit from knowing about their program. They are educating and training men and wom-en to serve in mission organizations in vital areas where computers are used to enhance ministry. But they do much more than just provide “book” learning. They also provide their students with the opportunity to work with mission partners, enabling them to gain real world experience in applying what they have learned in real world situations.

by Steve Hewitt

Missions Computing at Taylor University

Taylor provides the education and training needed for technology and ministry!

evangelical Christian university that was founded in 1846. We’re honored that U.S. News and World Report ranked us the number one baccalaureate institution in the Midwest for the past three years. Although we’re a liberal arts school, we have a strong School of Science, including seven faculty members in Computer Science and Engineering. We’re expanding TU’s commitment to science, having just broken ground this May for a new $41M science building. The new building will include space dedicated to Missions Computing. What is “Missions Computing?” Missions Computing refers to the intersection of the Great Commission (Matt 28.18-20), the Great Commandments (Mark 12.29-31), and modern

I know that many of our readers serve in pastoral and church leadership positions, and could benefit from knowing about the courses and education opportunities that Taylor offers. Many of those seeking to serve in ministry turn to their church leaders for information and advice, and therefore I encourage you to check out the interview I did with Stefan, Tom Nurkkala and Bill Toll from Taylor. I also know some of our readers might be looking for an opportunity to gain new training and new opportunities to serve our Lord. You might also be interested in checking out this interview as well as the courses Taylor provides! Give me some background on Taylor University Taylor University (TU) is an inter-denominational,

12June 2010Christian Computing® Magazine

computing. Of course, we know that Spirit-empowered people—not computers—carry out the work of evangelism and ministry. But computers are powerful tools that help people work more efficiently and effectively. How did Missions Computing get started at Taylor? Professor Wally Roth, who founded the Computer Science department at Taylor in 1979, undertook the first Missions Computing project right after the department got started. Wally worked with Operation Mobilization (OM) and Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) to install a database system aboard the OM ship Doulos to keep track of their inventory of books and literature. Money raised by Wally served as the seed funding for many additional Missions Computing projects undertaken by Computer Science faculty, staff, and students at Taylor since 1979. Who else has Taylor served through missions computing projects? Over the years, there have been many groups we’ve been privileged to serve, including Wycliffe Bible Translators, SIL International, World Gospel Mission, HCJB Global, Crescent Project, and New Tribes Mission. In addition, we’ve worked with several organizations who wish to remain anonymous due to the sensitive nature of their ministry. What opportunities are there at Taylor for students who are interested in Missions Computing? Students in TU’s Computer Science and Engineering (CS&E) program have many opportunities to engage with the missions community. Several courses include substantial team projects. Rather than having students create “throw away” software, we enlist missions partners to work with professors and students on meaningful projects. For example, our two-semester Information Systems Analysis and Design sequence is designed to train systems analysts and software developers in the skills necessary to build large software systems that

meet real-world customer requirements. Over the years, these classes have worked directly with senior Information Technology (IT) staff at numerous missions organizations to analyze, design, and prototype significant software systems. The result for students is marketable, real-world experience. The result for missions partners is a solid analysis of key IT needs and working prototypes of software solutions. For students interested in becoming professional software engineers upon graduation, Taylor CS&E offers a degree track called Software Studio (SWS). As with the Information Systems classes, SWS students typically work directly with a missions organization to analyze and develop significant software. The goal in SWS, however, is to deliver production-quality software that a missions organization can deploy in its operational infrastructure. A key challenge in developing and supporting production-quality software is to provide continuity of design, development, and support. To address these issues, Software Studio has a rolling enrollment that extends over four consecutive semesters—two academic years. New students in their first year of

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SWS work with students in their second year to transfer knowledge and expertise about existing and emerging software systems. What about student opportunities outside of the classroom? Our students are required to enroll in a work practicum in which they can put what they’ve learned in class to practical use. Although it’s not a requirement, we encourage students to consider a internship with a missions organization. The organization benefits and the students get first-hand experience with what it’s really like to be a missions technologist. By demystifying missions in this way, we hope more students will be open to a call to serve the missions community with their technical skills. Many missions organizations look for student interns to supplement their software development and IT work. According to Mike Cochran of SIL International, interns are the most valuable outside contributors to projects at SIL/Wycliffe. Another great way for students to get connected with missions organizations and their computing needs to attend the annual ICCM conference at Taylor. What is the ICCM conference? ICCM is an acronym for International Conference on Computing and Mission. Co-founded by Bob Hodge, then Taylor’s CIO, in 1989, ICCM brings together Christian technologists every June for a long weekend of learning, encouragement, and fellowship around the themes of missions and computing. Some have described ICCM as “Promise Keepers for geeks.” Almost always held on the Taylor campus, ICCM attendees typically number from 120-130 and represent 40-60 missions organizations, ranging from the very largest missions (e.g., Wycliffe, New Tribes) to small organizations in which the IT department consists of the person who had the misfortune to read a “Dummies” book about computing. In the last several years, ICCM has also gone international, with conferences held in various countries in Europe, Asia, and the Pacific.

Does Missions Computing at Taylor extend beyond the Computer Science and Engineering department? We’re pleased to report that as of this past January, we established the Taylor Center for Missions Computing (CMC). One of several “Centers of Excellence” on the TU campus, the CMC is a campus-wide ministry that seeks to engage faculty, staff, and students throughout our community in meeting the computing needs of the missions community. For example, we have connected CS&E students and Art students to collaborate on the visual design of web sites, and we’ve engaged with Business faculty to coordinate “Business as Mission” opportunities. A locus for leadership, coordination, and funding, the CMC’s vision is to “discover, develop, disseminate, and deploy computational knowledge and tools to missionaries and through missionaries.” This is a tall order, but we think that it’s a natural outcome of the work that Taylor CS&E has been doing for over thirty years. We’re excited to see how God will work through the CMC to employ computing to help advance the Kingdom.

14June 2010Christian Computing® Magazine

How is the Center for Missions Computing funded? Great question! As for the other Centers of Excellence at Taylor, the CMC’s ongoing work and ministry is to be funded by an endowment. Because we’re only five months old, we have yet to raise those funds. Our goal is a $5M endowment, which will cover operational expenses in perpetuity. Is participation on projects within the Center for Missions Computing open to those outside of Taylor? Yes! The harvest is great, but the programmers are few! Seriously, the CMC wants to serve four main constituencies. First, of course, are our missions partners around the world. Second, consistent with Taylor’s educational mandate, are Taylor students, faculty, and staff. But we want to go beyond these two groups. The third group of participants we want to engage comprises other Christian schools. We’re taking what we’ve learned at TU about serving the missions community and exporting this knowledge to other schools that have the interest and ability to engage in Missions Computing work, but may not have the resources or critical mass of support necessary to do it on their own. We could also provide project management to coordinate volunteer efforts at other Christian schools as they work on parts of larger projects. Finally, we want to enfold Christian technologists at large who are interested in contributing to Missions Computing, but have not had access meaningful, stable volunteer opportunities. Think of this group as a “Christian Open Source” movement, applying the same organizational models employed by Apache, Linux, and Python, but to Missions Computing projects. The CMC can provide a home for Missions Computing projects that welcome contributions from the open-source community. How can readers get more information? To find out more about Missions Computing, contact:

Tom Nurkkala, PhD Associate Professor, Computer Science and Engineering Director, Center for Missions Computing Taylor University tnurkkala@cse.taylor.edu

Or visit these web sites:Taylor Center for Missions Computing: http://cmc.taylor.edu

Taylor Computer Science and Engineering: http://cse.taylor.edu

Taylor Campus: http://www.taylor.edu

International Conference on Computing and Mission: http://iccm.org

ACSWeb Site Using the church Web site for outreach offers ad-vantages to members and non-members. For example, the church can keep a scrolling list of events on the home page, and it can set up online event registra-tion and payments if there are any fees. A great way to acquire and maintain a quality Web site is by using an online service that will host, help build, and edit the site. With this kind of service, the church is given the tools to design its site and edit it whenever necessary; no additional software or coding skills are required. Church leaders simply decide who is permitted to edit the site. This saves the church from having to build a site from scratch and offers the flexibility to start small and adjust as needs or budgets change.

Social Media The importance of social media – Facebook, Twit-ter, etc. – in an outreach plan is crucial to its success. Because people spend more and more time each year on the Web, having a presence there will increase a church’s chances of reaching out to them. Facebook can almost be considered a second Web site for the church. It allows people to post events, pictures, and videos,

plus see if the church is a good initial ‘fit’ for them. Twitter is a great way to let people know in a condensed format about the latest happenings in the church. Potential attendees and members can follow tweets and be up to date about what’s going on in certain ministries in the church or the whole church in general. Pastors and small group leaders can Tweet out a prayer request, tell people what’s going on in their groups, or even promote the latest outreach event. And since every update happens in less than 140 characters, the message doesn’t get “lost”…it’s quick, easy, and manageable to read. For every form of online communication used, the church should keep them integrated and in sync! So for example, on the church Web site, make sure the Face-book and Twitter links are plainly visible and do the same thing on the church’s Facebook account. Syncing information and providing people with more than one avenue to connect with the church and all its ministry efforts is crucial to reaching people and bringing them in. Whatever forms of social media are used to en-hance the church’s outreach efforts, make sure it is something that can be easily managed and frequently

June 2010Christian Computing® Magazine 15

ACS ideas to impact

from ACS Technologies

While it may be true that 97% of churches do specific outreach*, the rate of effectiveness in most churches is not nearly as high. What causes outreach to fail? How did churches with strong outreach and

retention rates get started? And even more importantly, what’s the secret to sus-taining that success over time? This article, excerpted from the ACS Technologies ministry guide Going Outside The Church Walls, provides a great resource on how to combine the church Web site and social media sites, and even how to uti-lize facility scheduling software to make the most of every outreach event.

Reaching Out To Bring People In

updated. Outdated content may make people wonder how committed the church is to their outreach efforts – and even more importantly – how committed the church is to them. So take the time to come up with a plan that is feasible for the church and fits in well with the church’s overall culture.

Facility Scheduling Since first impressions are criti-cal to any outreach efforts, be sure that when an event is held on-site that overlapping time, facilities, or resources with another activity is avoided. Some churches use minis-try or facility scheduling software to help with these issues. By utiliz-ing them, the hassles of overbooking are avoided. If a room or timeslot is taken, those resources are blocked by the system to prevent double booking.

Begin Reaching Out Today Outreach begins when the church proactively starts taking steps to make it happen. With a strategic approach and the proper tools, outreach can be moved forward the right away. Use the outreach ideas we’ve provided - like utilizing the church Web site, social media, facility scheduling, and even event publicity – to keep people committed and achieve true ministry impact in the community and beyond. ACS Technologies is the leading provider of outreach tools that help your organization achieve ministry impact in the community and beyond. To get the latest outreach ideas and strategies please download the full ministry guide Going Outside The Church Walls.

*Ellison Research

16June 2010Christian Computing® Magazine

June 2010Christian Computing® Magazine 17

accelerating the dynamic church

from Fellowship Technologies

The healthy way to grow a dynamic church is to empower volunteers and members to partner with staff in effective ministry. Quite simply: you can only hire so many staff, while adding new volunteer leaders provides for more scalable growth. Mak-

ing it easier to serve the needs of a growing church means adding self-service to members and attendees so that staff are not overburdened with administrative responsibilities.

Dynamic Churches Leverage Self-Service

What Self-Service Means for Members & Attendees Our society already uses self-service. From ATM machines to self check-out at the grocery store to online banking, our culture has embraced this convenience. It only makes sense to add this kind of instant access to churches! Church administrators often have a daunting time keeping up with each and every person, but when power is given back to the people, members can handle their own information updates. This kind of self-service management removes the administrative burden from church staff.

How Churches Can Provide Self-Service With options such as online giving, event registration, volunteer sign-up, small group search and contribution tracking, there are many significant ways for churches to provide self-service. For example, offering church members online giving and contribution tracking alleviates additional time commitment from the staff. With self-service financial controls, the church can see a significant cost savings by allowing members to print their own contribution statements. How much could each church save in postage, envelopes, letters and printing costs by providing this kind of self-service for members? When church members are allowed to log in through the church website and update their own information (address or cell phone number changes), the information is not only-up-to-date, it’s going to be more accurate, too. Member self-service like this saves the staff time, too. Beyond saving time and money, church staffs are freed up to focus on actual ministry. Think about it: when staff can focus on meeting needs, connecting with people and providing timely follow-up, the health of the organization increases. Wherever people connect and interact, the opportunity for self-service exists. From digital kiosks to online giving, provid-ing church members with multiple points of access is key. Every time a member uses self check-in for their kids or registers for an event online, they are taking ownership and providing the church with useful information.

Evaluate Opportunities for Self-Service Have each department review the current processes for captur-ing, entering, tracking and managing people information. During this simple review process, areas where self-service can be employed will become clear. In some cases, a simple solution such as adding online giving can be accomplished quickly. For more complex solutions like providing online event registration, it will be important to leverage the right tools, such as Fellowship One, to provide this kind of self-service power and efficiency. Dynamic churches constantly re-evaluate their processes, which allows them to focus on ministering to people instead of merely administrating data.

18June 2010Christian Computing® Magazine

tech talk

Dr. J.D. (Doc) Watson - docwatson3228@qwest.net

I know what you’re thinking: “Microsoft products that are free?! Oh, puhlease!” That’s what I thought at first, but it’s true. Not only are these products free, they are excellent at

what they do, better, in fact, than some alternatives. We’ll take a look at four free offerings from Microsoft in this article—plus

one more next time—that you won’t regret using (or at least considering).

Freeware from Microsoft

Windows Live Writer First announced in November 2005, “Windows Live” is a brand name for a collec-tion of services and software products from the boys and girls at Microsoft. While the majority of these applications are web based, a few are client-based programs. Among the first of the latter is Windows Live Writer (Fig. 1, http://windowslivewriter.spaces.live.com/), and is a must-have tool if you are a blogger or are thinking about becoming one. Obviously, WLW serves as a client for Windows Live Spaces (http://spaces.live.com/), but it also works with other weblogs, including: Blogger, LiveJournal, TypePad, WordPress, and many others. WLW is a true WYSIWYG program that enables you to author and confidently post your blog entries while knowing exactly what they will look like online. It intuitively knows styles used on your blog, such as headings, fonts, colors, background images, paragraph spacing, Fig. 1 – Windows Live Writer, a must tool for the blogger.

June 2010Christian Computing® Magazine 19

margins and block quotes, and enables you to edit your post using those styles. Photo publishing is a breeze. You can either copy and paste an image from a web page, or use the “Insert Picture” dialog box to browse thumbnails of image on your machine. Once inserted, you can then modify size, text wrapping, borders, and graphic effects, such as tilting the picture. Similarly, you can also insert Bing Maps—we’ll look at this free Microsoft app later—and then customize them by changing the view to show road, aerial, or bird’s eye detail, and even adding push-pins (including custom links and/or photos for each pushpin). When readers click on the map, they get a larger view on the Bing Maps site. Back in the olden days, who could have ever dreamed of YouTube? Well, with WLW you can also insert a video and have it automatically published at YouTube when you post to your blog. BTW, if you are a Flickr fanatic, a Twitter twit, or just dig Digg, WLW has a plugin for you. Flickr Upload (http://gallery.live.com/liveItem-Detail.aspx?li=4d65ba39-74c5-4c57-a679-9301-d757f8cb&bt=9&pl=8) inserts an inline image into your post that gets uploaded to your Flickr account. DiggThis (http://gallery.live.com/liveIt-emDetail.aspx?li=4abe398d-5568-4485-bb59-50-

abbc4a34ed&bt=9&pl=8) adds a DiggThis badge to let visitors Digg your post. Twitter Notify (http://gallery.live.com/liveItemDetail.aspx?li=6b2b5ffe-936a-4cb3-869c-c01de29de176&bt=9) automatically generates a tiny URL and sends a Tweet about your blog post after you publish it from WLW.

Bing Maps While Google Maps is very popular, I found Bing Maps (Fig. 2, http://www.bing.com/maps/) a better alternative. The first test I performed, for example, proved significant. At random, I just decided to go from my current location, Meeker, CO, which I typed in the “From” box, to Yellowstone National Park, which I typed in the “To” box. Figure 2 displays the result I got in Bing Maps, while all I got on Google Maps was the message, “We could not calculate directions between Meeker, CO and Yellowstone National Park, WY” and no explanation as to why. Its “Birds-eye” view enables you to tilt around the points of the compass and view your destination from different angles, which is more practical than Google’s Street View. Bing Maps is also more “conversational” in its directions. For example, you get general directions such as “from the east,” land-marks (such as “Go left past the Outback Steakhouse”), and even the tips such as, “If you pass [such and such],

Fig. 2 – Bing Maps, a more practical alternative to Google Maps.

20June 2010Christian Computing® Magazine

you’ve gone too far.” Nice touches include the ability to drag the route to change it (Fig. 2) and get the best route to your destination based on traffic.

Paint.NET Paint.NET (Fig. 3, http://www.paint.net/) is a very souped-up version of Microsoft Paint. Technically, it’s not a Microsoft product, but practically, it might as well be. It was mentored by Microsoft and was origi-nally a computer science senior project during spring 2004 at Washington State University. In fact, one of the developers ended up at Microsoft and still maintains it. While PT can’t compare with Photoshop in sheer number of features, it sure does in speed and ease of use. All the essentials are there—crop, rotate, and resize images, adjust colors, unlimited undo, and collage creation—and it supports common image formats: JPEG, PNG, GIF, TIFF, and others (but not high-res RAW). There is a plethora of intermediate features, in-cluding a red-eye removal tool, layering, history, and plethora of special effects, such as: blurs, distort, emboss, glow, oil painting, outlines, and others. There are also hundreds of plug-ins available for PT. Check them out at: http://forums.get-paint.net/index.php?/topic/15260-plugin-index/. Shape3D, for example, renders a 2D drawing into a 3D shape. Others expand on Paint.NET’s functionality, such as Curves+ and Sharpen+, which extend the included tools Curves and Sharpen, respectively.

Fig. 4 – Process Explorer monitor s everything that is running on your PC down to the last thread.

Fig. 3 – Paint.NET, a free.

For basic to intermediate, and even a little advanced, image editing, PT simply cannot be equaled. It’s astounding that this kind of quality is free.

Process Explorer While definitely a geek’s tool, Process Ex-plorer (Fig. 4, http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx) is a great geek’s tool. It’s been described as “Windows Task Manager on steroids” for good reason. While trying to find a specific process that is running on your computer using WTM can be like looking for the proverbial needle, PE is much easier. In fact, it sometimes finds some that WTM misses. It monitors every-thing that is running down to the last thread by digging deep to see which application started a

process and which resources it’s currently using. This is a big help when trying to figure out which back-ground processes you can safely shut down, and can even help expose lurking spyware. PE does all kinds of cool stuff, such as: display a live CPU activity graph in the Taskbar, suspend a selected process, set the priority of a process, to name only a few. Even if you’re not a geek, if you’d like to understand a little more of what’s going on in that machine you rely on all the time, take a peek with PE.

June 2010Christian Computing® Magazine 21

higher power with kevin

Bible Study AppsKevin A. Purcell - kevin@kevinpurcell.org

Last month we covered the simpler Bible Reader apps. You can find it here: http://www.ccmag.com/view/pdf_article.php?recordID=301. This

month we will focus on the four more powerful Bible Study apps. They are more complex and powerful than the Reader apps. They have more content and can offer more in depth Bible study tools. All are free, which is why I don’t include pricing information. However, to get full

use out of them you will have to add books either via an app purchase or their web sites. You can use them as inexpensively as you want or you can go all out and spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars on content.

Logos – http://www.logos.com/ipad If you have read my column for any time you have heard about Logos for the PC. There is also a Mac version in development that you can try out. I have reviewed the iPhone app extensively on my web site (http://www.kevinpurcell.org/archives/518). The iPad app is essentially the same app. The major difference is the size of the screen, the number of toolbar buttons across the bottom, and the double column display when in landscape mode. There is not much difference than that. The key benefit of Logos is the access to your Logos library. If you register the app you receive ac-cess to a large collection of free resources. But if you own a PC or Mac version you get access to a bout 50-60 percent of your library. The reason you cannot access all of it is publishers do not want to give you access. Logos would love to make every book the produce available, but they cannot yet. The Passage Guide and Word Study Guides set

Logos apart. With them you can find all the content you need to do complex Bible study. If connected to the Internet, you can do these searches and more. If you are offline you are somewhat limited; searches can only be performed for content you have down-loaded. Every book you can read in the app can also be downloaded for offline use. But it is a painstaking task and if you log out for some reason, you will lose those offline files forcing you to download again. Logos cannot copy text and does not have a low light reading mode. You can add bookmarks but not notes or highlighting yet. Without these features Logos is severely limited. What makes it a great tool is the potential size of the library. If you are a Logos desktop user, you have to get this app. You will get access to a large percentage of your desktop books. And even if you are not a Logos desktop user, down-load the app and make sure to register it and you get a lot of good, free content.

22June 2010Christian Computing® Magazine

MantisBible – http://www.mantis-bible.comOne of the most creative of the apps is MantisBible. They just get the iPhone and iPad interface. I have extensively reviewed this app here and on my web site as well. (http://www.kevinpurcell.org/archives/742 for a review of the new voice fea-tures recently added) The iPad app is just as good. It is the same app as the iPhone as well. The “make your own study Bible mode” feature put links to your other translations, commentar-ies and other content right in the text of the Bible. You access this content by tapping the verse num-ber. It reveals a mini toolbar which has buttons for adding notes, book-marks, emailing the verse, getting help and two other unique features. The first of these is the Analyze fea-ture. It pops up a window with your verse in every translation you have installed on one screen. The content of every commentary is on another. And the definitions of all the words in that verse are on the third. Finally you get access to all of your notes on the last screen. The other great new feature is the memorization module which helps you learn scripture by heart. MantisBible is one of only a couple Bible apps in the app store that I know of that have this feature. Like Holy Bible HD (reviewed here http://www.kevinpurcell.org/archives/856), auto scroll automatically advances the program smoothly so you can read without having to even touch the screen. The new Text to Speech feature reads to you using one of several voices you buy and add on. The review on my web site (http://www.kevinpurcell.org/archives/742) details this new feature. MantisBible has a unique navigation feature with hotspots on the four corners. Use them to choose which book or translation to open, the books of the Bible, and then chapters and finally verses in the chapter. The abbreviations the book names make it

a little hard to figure out what you are switching to at times. But if you can memorize them, it is a quick way to switch. There is a lot of content that you can purchase right inside Mantis. And there is some free content as well. Also, Mantis has a low light reading mode. As of this writing, the only real glitch is that the grey triangles marking the hotspot corners in land-scape mode get lost. Two of them will move in about a third of the way instead of staying in the corners. Tap them and they go back to the corner and show their menu. By the time you read this, the glitch will hopefully be fixed.

June 2010Christian Computing® Magazine 23

For full and fair disclosure I have been given review copies of much of the content installed on my iPad.

OliveTree – http://www.olivetree.com OliveTree had a difficult route into the iPad App store because of their in app purchases. They were put in review status to make sure they were a legitimate app despite the fact that they already had the previous iPhone version. The app finally was cleared by Apple. As they say, it was well worth the wait. The OliveTree iPad app is like many of the new apps for the device – beautiful. The look and feel of the app is stunning with great environ-mental art work. But lipstick on a pig ain’t too cool. This is no pig. It is a powerful Bible study app. The best part of using OliveTree on the iPad is the space you have for reading. They have had split screen view (two books on screen at once) long before the iPad. But with the extra screen real estate you can read them easier and see more content at once. Gone is the scrolling interface. That’s okay because swiping works just as well. I have always loved the ability to sync user notes with Evernote. There is talk of replacing this with a pro-prietary sync to the OT server. I hope they do not do this. Copying verses is not as easy in OliveTree as some of the other apps. You have to tap the verse number or a button on the toolbar and a popup window shows options for copy-ing and other things. It works and at least they have that feature even if it is not as simple as other apps. OT has devotional tracking, but no custom reading plans. Only Logos offers this via their desktop app. One new feature is the library management. You tap your books

24June 2010Christian Computing® Magazine

icon and it shows you a shelf with the book covers of all of your books. Tap the Store button to buy books. Olive Tree has a wide selection of books including a lot of great, free content, more advanced academic content, and more common reading material for the average believer. If for some reason you want to remove a book, tap the Edit key and you can get rid of books by tapping their red X button. For language study OT shines. If you have one of the Parsed Bibles (Greek NT, Hebrew OT, or Septua-gint) then tap the underlined word and a popup window gives you the translation and grammar informa-tion from the corresponding diction-ary. You will have to own the right books for this to work and they are not cheap. But if you plan to do original language study, OT is the app the use. OT’s version of low light read-ing mode requires you to go into the settings and change the color of the background and text. It is not easy, but possible. OliveTree is a great Bible app. It has a lot of features. It doesn’t have as big a library as Logos, but all of your books are installed on your device. The only time you need the Internet is to buy content or sync notes. And OliveTree is aggressive in adding great, new features. For full and fair disclosure I have been given review copies of much of the content installed on my iPad.

PocketBible – http://www.laridian.com PocketBible is a rock solid iPad app. Unlike the other apps, PocketBible is a significant change in the feature set and interface. The change is definitely for the better. In my first review of iPhone apps, I put PB to-wards the bottom. It was newer than OliveTree and Mantis and didn’t have the library support of Logos. No longer is the kid brother trying to catch up. In

some ways it is setting the pace. PocketBible’s best new features are the ability to show more than one book at a time. It has split screen mode for both the iPad and iPhone. You can have two panes on the iPhone and an incredible five panes on the iPad. You might think the screen is not big enough for that, but it works great. Another new feature is the Toolbox. It is a small column in landscape mode or row in portrait mode that includes tools for searching, bookmarks, high-lights and notes. One thing I love is the ability to have your note editor open all the time. And if you want the toolbar to remain in one spot while you move around in the Bible or other books, tap the lock icon. All of your personally created content syncs with the Laridian servers for backup and restoration,

June 2010Christian Computing® Magazine 25

should you have to reinstall or you get a new device. And you can keep two devices synced this way. This along makes PB’s new version a stellar upgrade. One minor complaint I have is the interface of the notes editor. It uses HTML tags to do things like adding bold, italics, etc. For people who do not know HTML, this will take some getting used to. It seems a strange way to handle this. But if you don’t mind getting used to it, that is a minor issue. There is a lot of customi-zation that you can do through the settings menu. You can also track devotions and read in a quasi low light mode where you just turn down the brightness. I wish it was a toggle switch to turn the back-ground black and text white, but it does the job. You could use the iPad’s accessibility features, but other programs build it in and I wish PB did as well. There is a button in the Toolbox that expands it to make it cover about two thirds of the screen. This is great for looking at search results or editing notes. However, it covers the majority of the Bible. I wish it would shrink the Bible pane. The reason this is an issue is that the navigation system for PB requires that you tap in the lower corners to advance a chap-ter. This is covered up by the Toolbox so they are not available. This is a very minor issue as well and should not stop anyone from getting PB. Laridian’s PocketBible is a great new version for the iPad. They were not the first to the iPad app store, but they definitely have made their app one of the best. It is free to try but you will have to pay for the best add-ons. However, there is always free con-tent and they are aggressive in running sales. For full disclosure, I have benefited from some beta tester discounts, but I have never been given anything free for PB that was not available to the public.

Video Reviews I am currently working on video reviews of all of the iPad Bible study and Bible reader apps on my web site. To see these programs in action go on over to http://www.kevinpurcell.org/bible-study. There you will find reviews of all these apps as well as the apps reviewed in last month’s column. The link in last month’s column was not correct; sorry if that caused confusion. In the future the above site will have reviews of Bible applications for all of the iOS devices (iOS is Apple’s new name for the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad operating system). I will also have links to Win-dows and Mac reviews as well. And there will be tips for use too. If you want more coverage of the iPad then you can also find me at Notebooks.com (http://www.notebooks.com/author/kevin-p/).

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As we continue to build our online social network ministry for Christian families, it’s time to add functionality that is distinctly Christian. How

can we have a service that is distinctive from secular sites without including the Word of God?

launching online

By Russ McGuire - russ.mcguire@gmail.com

Adding the Bible with Web Services

Version Control The first challenge in integrating the Bible into any online site is dealing with the different ver-sions of the Bible that are available. There are so many, and each translation takes several MB of disk space on a hosting platform. Making each one readable, browsable, and searchable is no sim-ple task. The Bible Gateway provides 23 different English versions alone, plus versions in 52 other languages. We aren’t so ambitious as to want to include all of those versions. But, since folks have different preferences, we probably need to include a few. The second challenge is almost insurmount-able. Most of the versions that we use every day are under copyright control. When you check into using these versions for any purposes, you’ll encounter restrictions like these:

The text of the New American Standard Bible® •may be quoted and/or reprinted up to and inclusive of five hundred (500) verses without express written permission of The Lockman Foundation, providing the verses do not

amount to a complete book of the Bible nor do the verses quoted account for more than 25% of the total work in which they are quoted.

The NIV text may be quoted in any form •(written, visual, electronic or audio), up to and inclusive of five hundred (500) verses without express written permission of the publisher [Zondervan in the U.S.], providing the verses do not amount to a complete book of the Bible nor do the verses quoted account for twenty-five percent (25%) or more of the total text of the work in which they are quoted.

Publication of any commentary or other Bible •reference work produced for commercial sale that uses the English Standard Version must include written permission for use of the ESV text. [Good News Publishers /Crossway Bibles holds the copyright for the ESV.]

Of these, my experience indicates that Cross-way is the easiest to work with for electronic publishing, but even so, licensing for a use similar to what we needed would cost several hundred dollars per year.

We’re continuing the series on “Launching Online” – capturing the decisions faced and lessons learned in launching a new online ministry/business.

26June 2010Christian Computing® Magazine

The good news is that there are many good translations in the public domain. A few worthy of note are:

The King James Versio• n

The American King James Versio• n

The World English Bibl• e

The Hebrew Names Versio• n

Young’s Literal Translatio• n

Duoay-Rheims Versio• n (Catholic)

La Biblia Reina Valer• a (Spanish)

Most notable among these is the WEB – a modern translation that has specifically been cre-ated to be in the public domain and friendly for electronic publishing.

Serving the Bible to the Web But figuring out that there are public domain translations that can work for us isn’t enough. We

still need to find a way to make the Bible usable to our visitors – where they can easily read from chapter to chapter, can jump around from passage to passage, and can search for words in the text. A few years ago, as I was working on a couple of different projects, including a church web site and a site for another ministry, I came to realize how big of a challenge this was. I decided, instead of solving it once for each site, I’d solve it once for all and make it freely available for other minis-try sites to use. As part of Living Stones Ministry (http://lstones.com), I have been providing a Web Services interface (and sample software for ac-cessing it) for the above translations and more. Time out. What is “web services” and why did I go that route? According to Wikipedia “Web services are typically application programming interfaces (API) or web APIs that are accessed via Hypertext Transfer Protocol and executed on a remote system hosting the requested services.” In other words, a program running on one com-puter sends an HTML request to another server to get some information and that server returns the

June 2010Christian Computing® Magazine 27

information in a way that the program can inter-pret and use the data. As an end user, you benefit from web services all the time, whether you realize it or not. For example, anytime you see a website with a Google map on it, or displaying Google ads, you are seeing the result of a web services call us-ing Google’s web services APIs. The benefit of a web services approach is that the web site that folks are visiting doesn’t need to do much work – the originating program can be really simple – and yet the results can be very impressive. In my case, I wanted many web sites to be able to include full Bible capability without hav-ing to implement sophisticated software or host large Bible text databases. The Living Stones web service currently supports nine different public domain Bible versions and is used by ministry web sites around the world. But, it’s not the only Bible web service that’s out there, and it’s not even the best. Crossway Bibles provides a very sophisticated web service for non-profit ministries to include the ESV trans-lation of the Bible in their web sites (see http://

www.esvapi.org/ ). There are limitations on its use that make it not appropriate for my ministry site, but it may be the perfect solution, especially for a church website. To give you a better sense for how web servic-es actually work, I’ve put together a live demo that takes you step by step through the messaging back and forth between a ministry web site and the Liv-ing Stones web service. I recommend you check it out here: http://www.lstones.com/webservices.php .

Putting it all together For the Hschooler.net online social network, I was able to use the Living Stones web service to add four types of capabilities:

A basic interface for reading and searching the 1. Bible.

A “favorite passage” tool so that users can 2. share with their friends their most impactful verses and friends can comment back and forth on those passages.

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A “From God’s Word” widget that randomly 3. selects from a list of identified short passages and presents it on the user’s homepage each time they log in (in their preferred translation).

A “Read through the Bible in a Year” widget 4. that makes it easy for Hschooler.net members to develop the discipline of spending time in the Word each day.

The writer of Hebrews said (4:12, ESV) “For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the di-vision of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” That sounds like the kind of power that is essential for any min-istry website. Hopefully I’ve given you some ideas on how to add the Word to your site.

Russ McGuire is an executive for a Fortune 100 company and the found-er/co-founder of three technology start-ups. His latest entrepreneurial

venture is Hschooler.net (http://hschooler.net), a social network for Christian families (especially homeschoolers) which is being built and run by three homeschooled students under Russ’ direc-tion.

You can save your church a lot of money. Every church is looking to cut back on spend-ing these days. Creating and maintaining your own site can cost you almost nothing if you do it yourself with WordPress.com. Even if you have a big, overall site that you pay for and find useful, every church could benefit from free blogs and websites for individual ministries. Church plants and small churches can create great outreach without cost. The low cost of WordPress.com does not mean low quality. The WordPress people have recently been adding many new, free templates to the basic services that are fantastic. The new templates vary from very minimal and sophisticated to simple or flowery. A new one recently added that I just love is an extremely edgy grunge-looking template in red, white and black. You can vary them in many additional ways. I’m launching two new sites

using them for my church and ministry and have found them very easy and flexible to modify and use. It’s great to be able to create short-term minis-try sites without any cost at all and to link them to the main church site—when you DIY you can do that.

If you learn how to create it, it is much easier for you to modify and update your website. If a website is not totally current and con-stantly updated, it is useless. It is a waste of time to have to go through one volunteer or a website company to update information on your website. Once you learn how easy it is to do your own, you’ll feel silly for not doing it sooner. If you’ve built the site you can add schedule changes and simple modifications within min-utes. Even adding audio, video, images, PDFs,

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ministry communication

Why You CAN and SHOULD Create

Yvon Prehn - yvon@effectivechurchcom.com

DIY, do it yourself, is more popular than ever during these challenging times and last month we started a DIY series on creating your own websites in the

church. Though WordPress is the system I prefer and have been demonstrating on the webinars I’ve doing (schedule on www.ef-fectivechurchcom.com), the DIY reasons shared in last month’s and this month’s articles apply to any system you use in your church. Read on for some additional specific reasons why you

can and should create your own websites and blogs.

Your Own Blogs and Websites Part Two

just about anything in digital format, is extremely easy with the WordPress and many of the other DIY systems. Even with a very simple framework, being able to add a variety of media will give depth to your site and will serve your people.

Third, you can be more com-plete in what you put on your site because you won’t be intimidated by it. I’ve been doing a series of webinars on website creation and in preparing for them, I checked out a number of the website creation companies to see what they were doing and how much they charged. Some of the companies charged thousands of dollars to set up the sites. I have no problem with their charges—they earned every penny. For example, one site that cost almost $9,000 to create (this company honestly had their creation costs on all the sites) had an extremely complicated home page. Ev-erything on it led to a scrolling menu of options that would have been quite time-consum-ing, and hence costly to create. Sadly it wasn’t useful, but con-fusing and when you clicked on almost every link the page behind the fancy home page only had a sentence or two. I started checking more sites created by this and other companies and I found again and again sites with a complex home page of moving graph-ics, clickable lists and perfect photos of cheery, happy, slender and properly ethnic mixtures of people—but when you clicked on any link there was a one or

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two sentence entry or an outdated message on the home page. It became obvious that the churches paid for the good looks on the front page, but didn’t invest the same time or energy in the actual content of the site. Unfortunately no matter how many thousands were spent, with most, obvious-ly no one had any training in how to update or add to the site. You could almost feel an “Oh, I’d better not touch this” attitude by the staff. They paid big money to get it built and the un-derlying message was that mere mortals on the staff couldn’t mess with it. When you create your own site, you know what it can do. You know you won’t break it by adding a video or pictures or a PDF of the registration for camp. Adding your own content is so simple once you understand the system and far easier than trying to get someone to do it for you. I know many churches struggle with a system like this simply because they haven’t been trained to do their own. It is NOT hard to learn to create and update a website—you can do it!

Your outreach can greatly expand in how you reach your world Even though saving money, training staff and having currently updated websites are all impor-tant; these reasons are not the most important ones for creating our own materials. We are ALL supposed to be part of fully fulfilling the Great Commission given to us by Jesus. By creating your own websites and blogs you can share the

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messages of your heart, your testimony, and your vision with the world. Jesus said, “You will be my witness….to the end of the earth.” With the web, each one of us can literally do that. To fulfill the command of our Lord is motivation enough for all of us to learn to create blogs and websites. For my webinars, articles and advice on web-sites, current materials and webinar replays, go to www.effectivechurchcom.com.