You ARE a Key!

OK so I was listening to a new app on my phone (Holy Ghost Radio) and I do not know who the speaker was, but he said something in his sermon that really grabbed my attention (not that I wasn't paying attention in the first place :-). The speaker said "You may think you don't matter and that the role you play in your church doesn't matter. You may think that if you weren't there, no one would notice... but you are WRONG! You ARE a key!" It really was like God smacking me in the back of the head!

Here lately I have felt more and more like what I do doesn't matter to anyone but me. If I were to fall off the face of the earth, no one would notice. I have also been feeling used, like some people only talk to me because they need me to do something for them. It takes a toll on you mentally and physically. When this minister made this statement it hit me like a ton of bricks. He went on to say that whether we realize it or not, all of the little things we do, whether it be cutting the grass, cleaning toilets or washing the windows, are vital to reaching the lost! We are called to be the "body of Christ". When we think about a body, we first think about the arms, the legs, the head... the "big" parts of the body... but what about all those little parts that keep everything going? Every part of our body is important... even the tiniest little parts are important! Don't believe me? Break your pinkie toe and see how much harder it is to walk when that toe isn't in place! Each one of us is a key to making sure the Body of Christ not only functions... but grows.

Stephen Curtis Chapman has a new song out that expresses quite well, this point. I'll post the lyrics below. Basically the song says regardless of who you are or what you do, God made YOU to do it, so do it to His glory. So don't get discouraged, rebuke that spirit that is fighting you and telling you that you don't matter, and PRAISE GOD IN YOUR MINISTRY! Whatever you do to further the Kingdom of God is your ministry! Do it with pride and love in your heart knowing that you are doing a work for God!



Steven Curtis Chapman - Do Everything Lyrics

You’re picking up toys on the living room floor for the 15th time today
Matching up socks and sweeping up lost Cheerios that got away
You put a baby on your hip and color on your lips and head out the door
And while I may not know you I bet I know you
Wonder sometimes does it matter at all
We’ll let me remind you it all matters just as long as you

Do everything you do to the glory of the One who made you
Cause He made you to do
Every little thing that you do to bring a smile to His face
And tell the story of grace
With every move that you make
And every little thing you do

OOoh ooooh oooooh

Maybe you’re that guy with the suit and tie
Maybe your shirt says your name
You may be hooking up mergers, cooking up burgers
But at the end of the day
Little stuff big stuff in between stuff
God sees it all the same
And while I may not know you I bet I know you
Wonder sometimes does it matter at all
We’ll let me remind you it all matters just as long as you do

Everything you do to the glory of the One who made you
Cause He made you
To do every little thing that you do to bring a smile to His face
And tell the story of grace with every move that you make
And every little thing that you do

Well maybe you’re sitting in math class
Maybe anekatips on a mission in the Congo
Maybe you’re working at the office
Singing along with the radio
Maybe you’re dining at a five star
Or feeding orphans in Myanmar
Anywhere and everywhere you are
Whatever you do it all matters
So do what you do and don’t ever forget to do

Everything you do to the glory of the One who made you
Cause He made you to do
Every little thing that you do to bring a smile to His face
And tell the story of grace as you do
Everything you do to the glory of the One who made you
Cause He made you to do
Every little thing that you do to bring a smile to His face
And tell the story of grace with every move that you make
And every little thing that you do

Ooh oooooh
Every little thing you do

I'm Such a Slacker!

Wow, it is already August and I haven't posted ANYTHING this summer! I know I am SUCH A SLACKER! To fill you in on what's been going on... No, I haven't fallen off of the face of the earth and I haven't forgotten about you... I completed my Associate's Degree in Web Design (with a 3.89 GPA). I am now mid-way through my first class towards my Bachelor's in Communication/ Technology.

With my last post I promised to tell you about the amazing project I completed for Mother's Day... This year we decided that the main focus for Mother's Day needed to be on our church's First Lady. After all... if our Pastor is like a Spiritual Father to most of the congregation, that makes her our Spiritual Mother doesn't it? So rather than just include a bunch of pictures in a slideshow and the usual feel good poems in the bulletin, we did something a little different. I gathered short quotes, messages and statements from as many members of the church as I could, and we included them as an insert in the bulletin. Sister Manley was able to sit and read these short little messages. Some made her laugh while some made her cry; others just made her feel appreciated and loved. This project was really quite simple, yet meant so much to a wonderful lady. One of the elders wrote a poem that left most of us in tears.

For this project, I used Microsoft Publisher. I simply selected a new document and chose Booklet as the document type. I created effects by making little snapshots in photoshop of curly brushes and edging that I liked. Saved the snapshots and pictures and inserted them into the bulletin pages, then used the "Order" option to send the inserted images to the background. The hardest part of this project was getting everyone to turn in their messages in a timely manner. There is always going to be that one straggler who doesn't turn their information in on time, and gets offended when their information doesn't get included. I had someone turn in their quote at 10:00pm Friday night, when the information was requested to be turned in by the previous Wednesday. Regardless... try not to get frustrated because after all... these projects aren't about us. Below is a screenprint of what some of the pages looked like.



Oh and for added touches... download some free fonts so you can have a variety of fonts on the page(s). http://typenow.net/ is a great resource for free fonts. If all else fails just do a Google search for Free Fonts and you will have hours of web surfing pleasure. If you don't know how to install the fonts on your computer, all you have to do is save the fonts to the C:\WINDOWS\fonts folder on your PC (I can't help you if you have a MAC, I don't know how to install anything on Macs). Be warned... once you start searching through fonts... you will look up and hours will have gone by without you even realizing it!

I promise I won't wait 3 months to post again! Not sure what the next topic will be but I can promise it will be sooner rather than later :)

What A Crazy Month!!!

Wow I totally did NOT mean to let over 20 days pass before I made another post!! It has been a CRAZY month! I finished the class I was in and then my computer crashed! (Thank God it decided to crash AFTER I finished my class!) I'm now in my final class for my Associate's Degree and this one is a doozy! I'm taking JavaScript and it is all new to me!

So in the last post we talked about how to get started in DreamWeaver. Hopefully by now you have had plenty of time to play around with DreamWeaver. Once I get a chance to stop and catch my breath, I will fill you guys in on the awesome project I did for Mother's Day!!

Let's Get Started in Dreamweaver

OK so we discussed in my last post about which programs you can/ should use to build your site. Now let's get started building the site! Before you start building your site, you will need to go to a hosting provider, such as GoDaddy or any of the others, and start off by purchasing your domain name (your web address). I used GoDaddy for all of my websites. (Handy Tip: Do a Google search for GoDaddy coupon codes before you make your purchase, sometimes you will find a code to get your domain name(s) at a very cheap price!) I highly suggest trying to get several domains, for instance our main church domain name is rosemarkpentecostalchurch.com, that was the first domain I purchased. Since then, I purchased RosemarkUPC.com, Rosemark.info and a few others. By purchasing multiple domains, and having them all re-direct your visitors to your main site, you will increase your traffic. A lot of people will also purchase a common misspelled version of their site to help direct people to their real site.

Now that you have purchased your domain name(s), you will need to decide which hosting plan you want. GoDaddy offers a wide variety of plans on both Linux and Windows servers (I will be discussing the Windows server as that is the one I know how to use). The plans vary in price range and storage space and most include email addresses. The plan you choose is up to you and should be based on your needs. The good thing is that if you see you need more or less space you can always go in and change your plan to meet your needs.

When you purchase your plan you will need to setup a "ftp" account (it is free with your hosting plan). FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol. You will have to setup a user name and a password (write them both down and keep them). Once you have purchased your domain(s) and hosting plan, and you've setup your FTP, you are ready to open up Dreamweaver.

I've got some screen prints to help you get started. Keep in mind, I am using Dreamweaver CS3, there may be some differences depending on which version you are using.

This is the screen you will see when you initially open Dreamweaver (you can ignore the file list on the lower right for the time being, these are the files to my church website). From this screen you can open your existing web files (if you have any) or in this case we are going to start a new site. To do this, we will select "SITE" from the top menu bar and select NEW SITE...

Now that we are starting a new site, a setup wizard will help us along the process. In the first step of the wizard, you will need to name your site, and enter the URL or address for your site. For this example I am naming my site "test" so the URL would be http://www.test.com.

 Now we have to decide whether or not we will be using server technology... I have to be honest... I don't exactly know the differences, I just know that my web designer friends told me to select YES and one of the ASP choices. When I find out the difference I'll update this post and let you know. For now, let's go with the advice of YES and any of the ASP choices (I use the VP Script on both of my websites and it works...)

Now we are going to tell Dreamweaver how we want to edit our websites. I ALWAYS edit locally and send to the remote server later. This allows me to make changes, save the changes on my computer, go back later and make more changes and THEN tell the computer to post the changes on the web. There are times when you may not want your changes to take effect until a certain date, but you don't want to wait around and risk forgetting the information...

Now we have to setup the ftp information so Dreamweaver can log into our site and post our changes when we tell it to. the ftp address is your URL without the http:// portion. Your login information is the information you setup when you purchased the Hosting Plan.

Now that we've got all that done, go ahead and test your connection, BUT, keep in mind that it takes up to 24 hours for the account information and the ftp information to fully update so you may not get a successful test. Once you complete the setup wizard, you should see the screen below:

Notice the file name at the bottom right... Should be whatever you named your site... From here we can start a new HTML or ASP web page.

I will talk about starting the coding for sites in the next post. For now, play around in Dreamweaver and get to know your software. 

More On Websites and Design

Sorry it's been a while since I posted, was sick last week and I'm just now getting caught up on everything!

So last we spoke we were discussing the Navigation on your websites. Hopefully you have mapped out your website on paper and you have a pretty good idea of what you want the site to look like. This week I really think I should discuss with you the various programs that you would benefit from.

Adobe Photoshop is my favorite program for editing photos. You can also use Photoshop to create and publish websites... Below are some pro's and con's for Photoshop, we'll start off with the good...

Photoshop Pro's:

• Photoshop has SOOO many tools that will allow you to do pretty much ANYTHING with a photo.
• Photoshop allows users to convert photos into various types of extensions (jpg, gif, bmp, png, etc.)
• You can create animated graphics
• There are literally THOUSANDS of brushes available for FREE download to help you achieve different looks
• There are THOUSANDS of actions available for FREE download to help change pictures and achieve certain effects with the click of a button.
• There are thousands of free tutorials to help you achieve certain effects.

Photoshop Con's:

• Photoshop is quite complex and can be difficult to maneuver in if you are not familiar with it
• Photoshop is quite expensive
• Photoshop takes up a large amount of space and you must clear out your temporary files frequently to prevent your computer from slowing down
• The built in tutorials are not always helpful to beginners.

So others most likely have more Pros and Cons for Photoshop but these are the main ones that I personally see. Me personally... I am a HUGE fan of Photoshop... but I have also taken classes and read books to learn new techniques. If you are new to Photoshop I highly recommend at least reading a book. Watching YouTube videos is also a very easy way to learn how to do things in Photoshop.

Now that we've discussed my favorite photo-editing software, let's move on to some options for your website (Photoshop WILL make web pages, but I don't use it for that). There are several WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) programs that allow you to see what you are designing as you design it. Publisher, Front Page, (Photoshop) and I am sure there are several others. My personal favorite is Dreamweaver. Dreamweaver is another Adobe program (no I'm not their spokesperson... but maybe I should be :). Dreamweaver and Photoshop are actually available for purchase together as part of a web premium suite along with Flash (we will get into Flash in a different post), Illustrator (another photo editing software that I have never used but have heard great reviews on), Firework (never used that one) and a couple other programs. It is pretty pricey but may be worth it if you need the programs, just keep in mind that all of the programs together take up a LOT of space on your computer.

OK Now on to Dreamweaver :) Dreamweaver is a web program that allows you to see the coding view of your page (it looks like Notepad II with color coding) along with the design mode (WYSIWYG). This split view is a lifesaver when you are first starting out. If you don't know how to write HTML code, you can build your page totally in the design view. The downside to this is that sometimes Dreamweaver THINKS it knows what you want and will change your coding and sometimes that coding doesn't come across well in the web browser, so I highly recommend learning SOME coding at the very least so you can fix the coding errors. The other benefit to Dreamweaver is that you have the option of previewing your page in an internet browser.

***Let me stop right there and add this comment... I highly recommend downloading the latest version of Internet Explorer and AT LEAST Mozilla FireFox. If you CAN download Safari and Google Chrome that is even better!! The reason for this is that there are times when your website may look perfectly fine in Internet Explorer, but won't load in one of the other browsers. There are times when certain areas of your web page will not function in Internet Explorer but function perfectly in one of the other browsers. For this reason you should test in as many browsers as you can, and on as many different platforms as you can (Windows, Linux or Mac). ***


OK just to recap, for editing your photos I recommend Adobe Photoshop and for building your web page I recommend Adobe Dreamweaver. I will go into more detail about getting started in Dreamweaver in another post.

Web Tools...

So we've talked about flyers, logos and dramas, now we should discuss building your church's website. The web is an awesome outreach tool... when it is used properly. A bad website can negatively affect people's oppinions about your church (or business), long before they have ever stepped foot on your property! A bad website is far worse than no website at all! For one of my recent assignments at school, I was tasked with finding a BAD website, and making suggestions for fixing it. There is actually a list of the top 10 worst websites!! I found a doozey for my assignment! This site not only had flashing graphics, it had a distracting background, the words blended in with the background and visitors had to scroll all the way down to the bottom of the page to see the content.

When you are designing your website try to step out of your position, put yourself in the position of a visitor... What information are you looking for if you have never been to a church, if you know nothing about the church and you are looking for a church home. If you have small children, you will want to easily find information about the Sunday School department, if you are a young single adult, you will want to find out about the Single's Ministry... All of your departments should have their own mini-site attached to your main church site. The links to these pages should be easy to find and the links MUST work! There's nothing worse than a site with "dead" links (links that go no where).

I am going to focus on the navigation for this post. We will get into the appearance and content in more detail later. For now, I want to focus on navigation because in my humble opinion... Navigation is one of the most important parts of your site!

The navigation area of your site is the map that will lead people to your organization. The navigation should be easy to find and even easier to navigate. Visitors should know what page they are on and what page they are going to without having to search for a title. There are MANY free programs that can help you create drop down menus for your navigation. My advice is to do a google search and see which one you like. If you don't want to go through all of the steps to get a drop down menu, you can easily create a menu on the side of your page. A simple <UL> tag can help you create an unordered list that will make your items into a bulleted list. Sometimes a simple unordered list is all you really need for your navigation.

For our church's site, I used a program to help me get a horizontal menu with drop downs for the departments. The link to our site is listed below so you can see what I am talking about.

http://www.rosemarkupc.com/

Once you've decided how you want your navigation to look, now you must determine what pages you will have... The best way to design your site is to draw it out on paper, and keep these rough sketches so you can refer back to them while you are building the page. List out what pages you will need to make. If you have a Ladies' department, they will need a page, if you have a Sunday School department... they will need a page. Once you get all of the pages listed out, you can organize your navigation menu and see how many links your navigation will need.

Well I think that's enough on Navigation to at least get you started. Send me an email or a comment if you have any questions.

Flyers.... How much is too much??

With Easter just around the corner, many churches are designing and posting flyers to publicize their Easter programs and the special events they host on Easter Sunday (or on the Saturday before Easter in some cases). When designing flyers... when do you stop and say... That's it, I have enough graphics on this flyer?

We have all seen them, the flyers with LOUD colors, cluttered typing and jumbled up or pixilated graphics. These flyers do very little to get the message across to our target audience... the unchurched! There are also the flyers on the opposite end of the scale with very little to no coloring, no attention grabbing text and no details about the event. These flyers do even less to get our message across! (I mean really... what good is it to advertise an event if you do not tell where or when the event will be held?!) Somewhere in between there is a happy medium... This happy medium is an effective flyer.

Recently our Outreach Director contacted me for a flyer to send out that was not for a special event, we weren't promoting any fund raisers or any special services... We were just promoting our church. The only information she gave me was that she wanted a flyer to send out... I told her to give me some time because I wasn't used to creating flyers without a theme or an event to promote... Immediately after praying about it, God gave me the theme for the flyer! Below is that flyer...

The theme for this flyer is Restoration... which coincidentally is the theme behind our Pastor's Vision for our church (which I did not know about until after I had emailed him the flyer and he called me and read me his vision that God had given him for the church over 17 years ago!). The graphics do not interfere with the message of the flyer, the font grabs your attention and the scriptures help to reinforce the overall message of the flyer. The location of the church as well as our website is included in case people want more information or would like to join us. The downside of this flyer (that I did not realize until after we had sent the flyers out) is that I did not include the service times on the flyer. If someone DID want to visit our church, they would have to go to the website to find out our service times. This is a mistake that will definitely be corrected on future flyers.

The next flyer that I am working on is our Easter flyer. This flyer is a little more colorful and has more graphics. I also made sure to include the service time on this one :)

This was the first draft of the Easter flyer. It didn't make the cut! While we all liked the concept, the flyer seemed to focus more on the Easter egg hunt than the REAL reason for Easter and for our special service. Notice that the font is large enough that people won't have to get too close to read the message, the time, date and location is all included, along with our website and our BRAND NEW LOGO! :) (yes I'm a little excited about the new logo :) In addition to the issue of the eggs, the font for the date and time were a little light when the flyer was printed. Below is the final version that we are publishing this week.

The colors are bright and will attract attention, yet don't distract from the overall appearance of the flyer. The background is light enough that the message can be clearly read, yet also helps to deliver the true reason for Easter as well as the reason for our service.

Now that we have a logo, you can expect to see that logo on everything we put out, from letters, to flyers, to business cards and soon even on our envelopes. Our webpage has been changed to include the logo in the address bar (I'll discuss that in a completely different post!!) Branding is all about getting your brand out there. My goal is for people to see that logo and KNOW that what they are looking at is from our church.

Well I hope this blog helped you get your flyers designed. Don't hesitate to send me a message if you need any help or if you would like to use any of the graphics from our flyer. I'll be more than happy to share!

God bless!
Steph

Drama Drama Drama!!!

Ok so normally when you hear "Drama Drama Drama" you don't think about worship, ministry and praise... This time I'm talking about a dramatic interpretation of a song for the purpose of WORSHIPPING Him, MINISTERING to a congregation and PRAISING God!

Our Sign and Stick Teams are currently practicing for our annual Easter Drama. I started thinking about these dramas that many churches do, especially at Christmas and Easter. The question came to mind... Are we doing this as a performance... or for worship, ministry and praise? If our dramas are simply performances... then we need to stop and re-evaluate our priorities. Anything we do, whether it is a drama, skit, singing in the choir, praise singing or even preaching... MUST be done for God and for worshipping Him and glorifying Him. Performances are all fine and great... but not in a church.

Whether you are called to write dramas (or plays and skits) or you are just called to participate, remember that everything you do, is to God!

I'll try to post pictures and/or a video of our Easter Drama.

God Bless!!
Steph

Logo Mania!!!

This week has been all about Logos for me! I've been trying desperately to design a logo for my church. I had a vision in my head of what I THOUGHT I wanted... and when I brought that vision to "life" on my screen... I didn't like it...

I liked the story behind it more than I liked the actual image itself. One thing to keep in mind when you are designing your logos... If you have to explain the logo and what it means/ represents... then it isn't designed well... For this logo, I would definitely have to explain to an "outsider" or someone who doesn't go to our church, that the rose represents the ROSE in Rosemark, the half heart represents our desire to seek after God's heart, and the flames represent the fire of the Holy Ghost the Bible talks about (the elements together also make an R)... see... great story... poor design.

One thing that I did that helped me temendously, was I showed my designs (all 7 of them) to a friend that has never been to our church, does not go to a Pentecostal church, and knows very little about our church. It is VITAL to have an "outsider's" point of view when you are designing ANYTHING, logos, flyers, postcards or whatever you are desiging (including web pages!). My second attempt fared slightly better, but still not what I wanted... It felt more like a piece of clipart than a logo to me... numbers 3 and 4 weren't quite what I wanted either

Attempt #2

Attempt #3 just looked a little too busy and hectic and still needed the explination.

I like #4, but it was just missing SOMETHING... (other than the half of the cross that was hidden behind the rose :-)

Finally after about 8 different designs... I came up with the one that appears to be the winner. My Pastor loves it, my "outsiders" love it and I am happy with it. Here's what we came up with...

Here we have the new Rosemark Pentecostal Church Logo (at least for the time being :-)

In one of my recent college courses, we studied logo design and one of the major points the instructor stressed it KISS... Keep It Simple Students (she said Keep It Simple Stupid but I don't like that one :) Logos should not be so complex that they don't print well or that customers have to spend a long time looking at them to figure out what they are. Logos should also be recognizable. When people look at your logo, they should understand the concept and how the logo ties to your business, or church.

Well I think that's enough information for one post. I'll try to make them shorter in the future... I'm just SO excited about all God is doing and I have so much I want to tell you all! Please don't hesitate to send me an email or leave a comment if you need more/ less information or if there's a subject you would like to know more about!

Steph

Introduction

I guess I should start off by telling you a little about myself. I am a 28 year old mother first and foremost. I work full-time outside of the home and I am a full-time student. I am also the assistant to the Pastor of my church, as well as the web designer for the church. I've been "in" church for almost 11 years now. I was not raised in church and I have not always done what I was supposed to or even what was expected of me. Through God's grace and mercy, He's brought me through all of my trials and tribulations and has forgiven all of my stubborness and rebelious ways. HE saw fit to continue to work on me and change me into who HE needed me to be, not who I thought I should be.

Ok, now that you know a little about me, I'll explain why I felt the need to create this blog (which I know I know, is just another drop in an ocean of blogs). Honestly, I felt the need to create this blog to help others who are in the position that I personally find myself in. Once I finally realized that God actually had plans for my life, I began searching for my ministry. I knew I wanted to do SOMETHING for the Lord, but I didn't know what I was supposed to do. I have been a Sunday School teacher to younger children, pre-teens, and to high school aged teens. I have helped in the soundroom of the church, I am a choir member, I'm on the praise team, I have worked in the outreach department and have been the church photographer. I have helped in almost all departments of the church and still did not feel that I had found my part of the ministry. That was until about 2 years ago. About 2 years ago, I saw a need, my Pastor was in dire need of an assistant who understood scheduling constraints, and technology that would assist him in maintaining his schedule. I immediately knew that was what I was supposed to do! I was supposed to play a supporting role in one of the greatest ministries in the church! My Pastor's ministry!! Seeing that I am a secretary for a very large company, I knew I had the skills, training and knowledge to help him. So, for the last 2 years I have supported my pastor and helped him in any way I could, from typing letters to designing flyers to creating a webpage for the church. Over the last few months I have felt that there is more that God wants me to do (not that He doesn't want me to continue in my supporting role for my pastor, but that there is more in His plans).

Recently I attended a Music Conference at Indiana Bible College and one of the classes I attended was called Church Marketing and Design. It was in this class that God finally opened my eyes and gave me that AH HA moment. While I was sitting in the class, I had solutions to problems that other churches were having. Some of the people in the class were sharing how their church had spent THOUSANDS of dollars to have an outside company create their web pages (I created our webpage for the cost of the hosting each month which is less that $10 a month!). Many of my fellow classmates also voiced their concerns about graphic design and designing flyers and such. I had answers for them too! I immediately knew what God had in store for me! So I opened my mouth and I answered as many questions as I could, and gave out my email address for anyone who needed my help... my FREE help! My ministry IS a ministry of support for others! THAT is what God wants me to do! Just like Aaron and Hur lifted up the arms of Moses while he held back the Red Sea (supported him while he did the Lord's will), my role is to support others while they do the Lord's will. Through this blog, I will share tips and answer questions that will help churches grow and expand. It is my prayer that I am able to bless someone with the knowledge and talents I have been blessed with. I also hope and pray that I am able to help others who are also called into the ministry of support. "Yea, ye yourselves know, that these hands have ministered unto my necessities, and to them that were with me. I have shewed you all things, how that so labouring ye ought to support the weak, and to remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he said, It is more blessed to give than to receive. And when he had thus spoken, he kneeled down, and prayed with them all." Acts 20:34-36