Archives For Technology

Changing The Way We Pray

May 10, 2013 — Leave a comment

I have tried many different ways to track prayer requests and who I need to pray for. I have kept a hand-written prayer journal, an excel spreadsheet, an Evernote note, and shamefully even just tried to keep it all in my head. But I have never quite found the perfect solution.

Ora

Well, there is a new free app on the market promising to deliver a new way to pray – the Ora App.

I recently downloaded it, and I’m very pleased with what I have found.

Ora is like a social network for prayer. You create a profile and instead of posting a status or tweeting, you post prayer requests.

You can invite your friends to join, and divide them into groups. So you can get your small group together, a group of pastors you to pray for, or even a group for your entire church.

Once a prayer is posted, you can comment on prayer requests and swipe the request to let them know that you have prayed for it.

You can also mark your prayers as answered and keep track of God’s faithfulness.

Another cool feature is that you can also set an alarm to remind you to pray every day at a specific time.

Continue Reading…

In Spiritual Life, Technology , , , , , , ,
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How to Send Your Sermon Out on Mission

April 11, 2013 — Leave a comment

As followers of Christ, we are sent on a mission. We are not called to sit idle in the pews. We are called to go out and make disciples. Our faith is active, not passive.

But think about this for a minute: What if we took this same thought and applied it towards our sermons?

Way out

Photo Credit: Rob Brewer cc

What do I mean? As a pastor, you can extend the reach and extend the life of your sermons by sending them out.

Send your sermon out on mission. Don’t just let your sermon be confined by the four walls of your church. Get your message out to the world as a free gift.

Here are a few ways to send your sermon: Continue Reading…

In Miscellaneous, Technology , , , ,
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13 Ways to Extend Sermon Life With Social Media

April 4, 2013 — Leave a comment

If you aren’t taking advantage of social media, you are missing out big time!

In fact, it just might be one of the most powerful tools a pastor can use to extend the life of their sermons.

Twitter

Photo Credit: JoshSemans cc

Schedule Your Posts in Advance

To make your life easier and do everything I am about to suggest, I highly recommend using either Buffer or HootSuite to manage your church’s social media accounts and schedule posts in advance. This will save you a ton of time. You can sit down and schedule out weeks of content so you can spend more time doing other things.

I personally use Buffer to schedule all of my posts for Pro Preacher. I love the ease of being able to quickly drop in posts as I think of them and have them automatically scheduled for me.

13 Ways to Use Social Media to Extend the life of your sermons:

  1. Share video highlights from your sermon.
  2. Share short audio clips from your sermon by uploading to a site like SoundCloud. Continue Reading…
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The Pastor’s Guide to Blogging

April 2, 2013 — Leave a comment

Pastors, do you have a blog? If not, have you ever thought about blogging? Maybe you should.

A blog is an excellent way to build a platform that will allow you to share articles, and audio or video content from your sermons with your congregation and people around the world.

Keyboard

Photo Credit: Mike Poresky cc

When I started ProPreacher.com less than 5 months ago I wanted to write about preaching for me. I am passionate about preaching. I have been on a personal 9 year journey to be the best preacher I can be. So ProPreacher.com was a way to help me process my own thoughts and ideas about the theology, methodology and technology of preaching better.

I thought, “Hey, if a couple of people find it and read along then that’s cool too.” I had no idea that within a few months I would already have thousands of readers from around the world and articles on popular websites!

In February, for example, I had over 19,250 page views. I wasn’t even doing much to promote it. I wrote stuff, and people found it searching on Google and Twitter.

The best part is that blogging isn’t rocket science. It’s actually much easier than you may think.

Continue Reading…

In Technology, Writing ,
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How to Broadcast Your Sermon

March 27, 2013 — Leave a comment

So you want to extend the lifespan of your sermons, and have taken the first step to record your sermons. Now what?

Broadcast it!

On Air

Photo Credit: Curtis Kennington cc

Broadcasting comes from a term originally referring to a way of planting crops. Farmers would throw seeds everywhere (broadcast it). Although some would fall on bad soil, enough of it would grow to produce a crop. (Hmmm, sounds like a story I have heard before).

The idea for media broadcasting is to put your message in front of as many people as possible so you can reach as many people as possible. Yes, some will not be receptive. However, if the message is good and you get it out in front of enough people, you will see fruit.

Here are some of the ways to broadcast your message: Continue Reading…

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