In preparation for my youth group’s 2nd Online mission trip I’ve put together a media site that allows them to have one clearinghouse for video content they can use to share His lOve with others. I hope to be able to have an explanation for each video to show how it can be used to share Christ with others or even simply to spark a spiritual conversation. If you have anything you can add, simply hit the contact form on the site and send me a link, I’ll try to have it added within 24-48 hours. Thanks.
Links
Free Group Text Messaging from your website
This is a simply amazing plug in for wordpress. If you run your church or youth group website on wordpress this could potentially save you $60 or more a year. As a youth minister I’ve tried various ways of keeping in contact with my students. I’ve gotten myself a facebook, signed up for twitter, log-in to msn/google chat on a regular basis, gotten a phonevite account (see post on phonevite), adn send group e-mails. Yet nothing can communicate with teens like txt can. At first I signed up for 300 txts a month, that was a bad idea. The few services I found charged a nominal amount per month. But then I realized that $5 a month still adds up to $60 for the year. So I was lef t with no idea what to do. How was I going to communicate with all my students on a regular basis easily? Wordpress came to save the day again. I found EasySMS which allowed me to integrate the system into my wordpress site and communicate with all my teens though the wordpress dashboard. It’s a really easy system to set up. Simply install the pgin and activate the system and the widget. Put the widget into your wordpress sidebar or footer and viola! it’s ready to use. You can then sign up and get started. EasySMS lets you put subscribers into groups and send any number of messages for free. Did you catch that last part FREE!!!. Check it out for yourself. Don’t have a wordpress site for your ministry? Check out ShareYourChurch.com or BanyanData.com to get started.
Free Wordpress Plugin SMS EasySMS Group Text Messaging from your website | Mister Nifty.
Articles
Phonevite
I heard about this website shortly after bringing up the idea of a phonetree system at our church council. The phonetree system seemed a bit expensive for us at the time, so I went and explored my options. I saw lots of web services that seemed to do the trick, but all of them required a credit card or the purchase of minutes. Finally I came across Phonvite.com. This web service was awesome. For those of you who don’t know I like FREE. Phonevite knows how to do FREE very well. Phonevite allows you to make calls to 25 people completely free of charge. For small churches or youth groups this may be all that is needed. Phonevite does add very brief advertisement to the end of each recording that currently just advertises for phonevite, the paid service does not contain these ads. Phone also gives you real time reporting of who does and doesn’t answer and how long the person listens to the recording. This is all included in the free version. The paid version allows you to request RSVP and messages back to the phonevite system. This truly is a phenominal system. You simply have to see it for yourself. Quite possibly the best phone recording system out there. Try it out and let me know what you think.
