Description: Career Connections is the Career Resource Ministry of Second Baptist Church. Career Connections provides support and encouragement in the form of workshops, online tools and resources to help form an effective action plan for starting your new career. Career Connections is a branded version of Job Connection by NeedsMet Inc. If your church is looking to start a career/job resource ministry, then you should give NeedsMet a call.

Ministry Applications:

• Create a branded career/job board for your church’s attendees. You review and approve both job seekers and employers that submit resumes and job openings. You can also backfill the software with job opportunities from your specific geographic area. From day one, you can launch with a bank of job opportunities for your members and visitors.
• Promote your job board by hosting career and networking seminars. Given our current economy, this is a great resource to meet the real needs of prospects to your church. Here is an example of a seminar (link may expire once the event is over) that our church is offering as a complement to our online job/career board. The seminar is led completely by members of our church.
• NeedsMet now offers a similar tool called Stuff Connection. In some ways, it is your own branded version of a craig’s list or similar tool for two parties come together online to give and receive in a easy-to-use environment. This is a great tool to connect people within your church to meet the needs of one another (Acts 2:44-45).

Description: While you’re writing, the Livescribe Smartpen is remembering–linking everything you hear to everything you write. Later, simply tap on your notes to replay the recording. You can then upload your notes and audio to your computer, share it, search it and more. Now you can find and get what you need, instantly, with a tap.

Ministry Applications:

• Recruit a great note taker to take notes of Bible Studies or sermons while recording them on their pen. Then publish them by linking to the online audio and notes. Your audience can then click anywhere in the notes and begin playback at the time the note was taken.
• Use this pen to record leadership meetings, committee meetings, etc and then share out the notes and action items to each of the attendees and absentees.
• As a pastor, I use this pen frequently for internal staff meetings and project meetings. It helps me capture decisions made, details that are often missed, and summarize next steps for everyone involved.

Description: CaringBridge provides free websites that connect people experiencing a significant health challenge. Authors add health updates and photos to share their story while visitors leave messages of love, hope and compassion in the guestbook. Similar sites include CareFlash and CarePages. Each one of these sites will work with churches to create their own branded version, some at a cost and others for free. If your church is interested in partnering to provide this to its members, be sure to contact each one and compare the costs and services carefully.

Ministry Application: CaringBridge or one of its competing sites is a great tool to alleviate the burden of communicating health updates to friends and family. There is nothing worse than having to answer the same question over and over again in the midst of suffering. These free and personalized sites provide secure communication updates to those who subscribe to your personal page. We often recommend these sites combined with Care Calendar to provide the perfect tools for caring for those with challenging health conditions.

Description: Logos Bible Software is a multi-platform Bible Study program designed to run on Windows, Macintosh, Droid, iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch. The software is available is different versions depending on the size of library you want. It is the Bible Study software of choice by the pastors at Second Baptist.

Ministry Applications: Do I need to state the obvious? This is the product I recommend for teachers, pastors, and small group leaders. It is feature rich and the latest version (4.0) is a huge improvement over the challenging user interface of its predecessor. They don’t have a network/server based solution yet, but I am hoping that will be sooner than later in their product road map. Until then, it must be installed on each individual computer if you are wanting to run it in a networked environment.

Description: Tatango.com is a group text messaging tool packed with lots of great features. Just watch the video above to get a quick overview. Tatango is just one of several solutions on the market for group texting. See my earlier posts on a comparison of different solutions.

Ministry Applications:

1. A group text messaging tool is essential for any student ministry. Many of our student pastors use Tatango to communicate with their students and parents. They use it for spontaneous meetups, contests, and general news and announcements.
2. Our volunteer ministry staff uses Tatango to send out announcements of volunteer opportunities. They call it Flash Serve….giving individuals scheduled and spontaneous opportunities to drop what someone is doing and jump in to meet a specific need.
3. Our new member ministry uses text messaging to send out ‘all calls’ to their trained new member team who help individuals wanting to join the church and/or be baptized following our worship services.
4. This is also an effective tool to create a text messaging group for your employees or leaders to alert them to last minute schedule changes, emergency information, and/or urgent prayer needs.

Description: The Sony ICD PX820 is a personal digital recorder that is easy to use and highly rated on Amazon.com. Combine it with a Pearstone OLM-10 Omnidirectional lavalier and you have an inexpensive setup to to record MP3 for distributing online.

Ministry Application: Many churches have volunteer or paid workers to setup, monitor, and record the audio for the teaching pastor, but so much more great teaching happens every week in small group studies, Sunday School classes, etc. For under $100, you can capture the teaching of God’s Word in any setting and make it readily available for the web. Better yet, you won’t need a highly skilled audio guy to get you started.

Description: Poll Everywhere is a simple text message voting application that works well for live audiences. People vote by sending text messages (or using Twitter) to options displayed on-screen. The poll that is embedded within the presentation or web page will update in real time. Advanced uses include texting comments to a presentation, texting questions to a presenter, web voting, and SMS interactivity in print, radio, and TV.

Ministry Application: This is a great tool for ice breakers or audience engagement for any size setting. I have used this before in a Sunday School/Bible Study class to engage my audience as my opening illustration. Here are some various ideas for Poll Everywhere:

1. Community Building: For each poll, select 1 couple and list 3 truths and 1 lie about the couple and have the audience vote on which answer is the lie.
2. Getting Attention/Opening Illustration: Use Poll Everywhere to ask a question about the Bible or a life application. Remind your audience that answers on the screen are anonymous.
3. Group Think/Vote: Ask the group their choice of a group activity or mission project. The option with the most votes wins.

Description: Fotobabble can be described in two simple words: talking photo. Simply add your voice to any photo and share it with whoever you like.

Ministry Application: Fotobabble is a great tool to make a highly personal touch. Consider some of the applications for ministry:

1. Take a picture of your friend or your friend’s child getting baptized, record a brief congratulatory message and send it to them.
2. At your next leadership meeting, take a group shot, record a thank you note for their sacrifice and commitment to the ministry and share it out to those who attended.
3. Snap a pic of your newest church members and send them an audible welcome to the church family.
4. If you have someone who is ill or homebound and can’t make it to their family group, Sunday School class, or other small group. Take a picture of the group and send the photo along with brief audio greetings from the group members…all wishing them a quick recovery.

Description: Animoto automatically produces beautifully orchestrated, completely unique videos from your photos, video clips and music. You basically upload your photos and then elect background video and music from a large library and your done! This great tool empowers you to make phenomenal, high impact videos on the cheap. ]

When you register, use this promo code: gzcfsvja. This will get you $5 off an annual account or an extra month of Animoto Pro.

Ministry Application: Lots of great applications here:

1. Take pictures of your church’s baptism service and create a highly personal and memorable video to share with those who attended. The video provides a great witness….what other ordinance of the church better illustrates the death, burial and resurrection of our Lord!
2. Take photos from your church or small group’s events and create a highlights video to share with others and to promote the next event to visitors.
3. Create a first impressions video of your church, group, or class to provide visitors an idea of what to expect when they visit.
4. Upload images and a video testimony of how Christ has changed your life to create an emotive and powerful story of your faith journey. Share it with others.