TechShepherds.com

System Administrators Appreciation Day - July 25

The last Friday of each July has been set aside as System Administrator Appreciation Day. To learn more check out http://www.sysadminday.com/

If you are a Sys Admin, thank you for your tireless, long hours to ensure ministry has the tools needed for today's ministry.

If you are not a Sys Admin, you have the rest of today to make your plans to show your apprecation tomorrow.

Google Apps To The Rescue

In addition to the church, we have 7 affiliate ministries.  One of those is our preschool, who had several issues with their email system and Outlook.  The wanted to allow all the teachers to have email addresses in addition to just the administrators.  They also needed to have a calendar to share with the teachers.

In min-April, I moved them to Google Apps.  Currently they use email, calendar, and internal Google-Talk.  It has greatly reduced the number of service calls to our help desk. 

They have fewer than 15 users on the preschool staff.  Has anyone used Google Apps for a user base of over 100?  If so, how is it working for you?

Online Bible Community

I have been using YouVersion.com beta for the past few months.  I am excited about this tool for Bible study and community.  The development team at YouVersion have and continue to make great enhancements.  I highly encourage you to check it out if you have not already.

www.YouVersion.com

Fighting Elephants In the Church

A Masaai elder once told me, "When elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers."  Satan tries to get leaders as high up the organizational chart as possible to fight with one another.  In the end, they may hardly scratch each other, but those around them and who report to them (the grass) suffers greatly.  Just food for thought.

Basic Requirement for ChMS

I have been asked a lot lately what the basic requirements should be for a Chruch Management System (ChMS).  While there is a fairly extensive list and it depends upon how each ministry is structured, I do have one basic requirement that has to do with the technology itself. 

The platform should be either SQL or Oracle.  Since Oracle tends to be on the pricy side, then SQL is the way to go.  If the date in the ChMS is truly mission critical, it needs to be on a stable platform. 

So when shopping for/evaluating a ChMS for your church, you can dramtically narrow the list of possibilities down to a handful with this one requirement.

Taking Initiative

Do you ever feel like Charlie Brown.  You know, the poor fellow who never gets up the nerve to talk to the little red-haired girl? 

It may not be a red-haired girl for me, but know there are times in my life when I have not taken the initiatives that I should have taken and let my voice be heard. 

For a really great post on this subject of taking initiative, take a look at TheLifeWorhLiving.net blog.  This is a new blog by a friend of mine.  I guarantee that Larry Enis will challenge and inspire you.  Check out his blog here.