Clover Sites has recently come out with some new designs and features I wanted to highlight. If you’re just hearing about them, they make some pretty slick sites that you can jump into for your organization. Their websites used to just be tailored for churches, but they’ve now expanded for many different kinds of organizations.
GraceWay Media (formerly PowerPoint Sermons) is an excellent resource. I previously wrote about them here, but I like them so much that I thought I’d give them another shout out.
Here’s the tension we’re dealing with: most churches want to have nice-looking graphics to help brand the series they do as well as announcements, but they can’t really afford to have a graphic designer on staff. So what do you do? That’s where sites like Graceway work really well.
You may recall that I had purchased the Kindle 2 last year, but ended up returning it after a few days. Here’s why. I’ve now had the Kindle 3 for about two weeks, using it pretty much every day.
Here’s what I’m liking about it and why I am keeping it this time:
1. Better screen. According to Amazon, it has 50% better screen contrast than the previous version. The screen is whiter, and the fonts are blacker and sharper. You can actually see it under a microscope here to see the difference in fonts. For me, the screen has made a huge difference. It looks so much better, and being e-ink, you’re not tiring your eyes out at all reading on it. Could it be better? I think it could be. I imagine that they could make the screen even whiter and the fonts even darker. I think they’re about 2 versions away from being completely perfect, but it’s at the stage right now where I definitely felt good about it and wanted to jump back in.
In light of the recent tragedy in Japan, I thought I’d post a few links on how you can donate quickly and easily.
1. Text REDCROSS to 90999 to give $10 towards the earthquake and tsunami relief. This is a free text message for most carriers. Click here for more info.
2. Text 4JAPAN to 20222 to give $10 towards the relief on behalf of World Vision. To give more click here.
3. Text SUPPORT to 85944 to give $10 towards the relief on behalf of ADRA. To give more click here.
This is part two in a series. To check out the first one click here.
I’m going to walk you through our journey of how we raised $5,000 to partner with Charity: Water to build a well. I’ll share the good, the bad, and the ugly, and then I’ll share some parting lessons that I learned in the process.
It all began last December. I was speaking and dreaming with one of our church leaders, when we came up with this idea to partner with Charity Water to raise funds to build a water well. Every year leading up to Christmas we do a big push for a special giving campaign that goes towards evangelism or some mission project. So we thought, let’s do Charity Water this year for our giving campaign. We had about three weeks to go, and I was convinced that we’d be able to make our goal. So here’s what we did to set it up.
Did you hear the news? Our church is building a water well! See the final page here.
That’s right, this past Christmas we partnered with Charity: Water to build our very own well. In the next post I’ll address how we actually did it and give all the details with lessons learned, but for now I just wanted to share a brief nugget on why we set out to do this.
The short answer is…because I have an iPhone 4. I’ve been trying to think of a really good reason why I should get the iPad 2. I don’t have the first generation iPad, and I have to say I haven’t missed it. I can’t think of anything I would want to do on the iPad that I can’t already do on the iPhone 4. As a matter of fact, my iPhone 4 already has a better screen (retina display) than the iPad. Sure, on the iPad there are bigger and more functional apps than on the iPhone, but if I really want to do some fancy stuff, that’s why I have my MacBook Pro.
