E-zekiel Technology Blog

Have you “liked” us on Facebook? Check out the E-zekiel page, and let’s stay in touch. Social media is a tool for communication and connection – between you and your members, between E-zekiel and our clients, among many other uses.

 

Every organization has strengths and weaknesses – primarily because every organization is operated by individuals who have strengths and weaknesses. As a leader, how can you help the individuals in your organization flourish in their strengths, post a guard around their weaknesses and achieve more as a team than they ever could on their own? A blog on Pastors.com – 9 Ways to Create a Winning Organizational Culture – has some ideas how.

 

Tweets and status updates can miss the subtlety of communication that comes in a face-to-face conversation. Yes, even with a winking emoticon or an LOL. Online communication can also loosen the typing tongue in a way that, face to face, might give you the chance to see how your words affect another person – and, thus, adjust the tone before you finish what you’re saying. These are the sorts of issues that can create and fuel online conflict – whether you’re on the receiving end or the sending end. So how can you live out your faith online when harsh words get slung your way? A blog on Pastors.com has some ideas. Take a look at 10 Godly Ways to Handle an Online Conflict.

 

Writing a regular blog has many benefits. It helps you connect to members and visitors. It gives you a forum for expressing and sharing your faith. And because you frequently post fresh content, the activity has a positive influence on search engine results for your site. But the big question is: what are you going to write about week after week? Kurt Steinbrueck offers some tips on how to create content for your blog on his blog.  You'll find it here: http://churchmarketingonline.com/2009/06/is-your-church-social-part-27-blogs-10-church-blog-ideas/
 

How are churches using social media to connect with members? Christianity Today’s Leadership Journal posted an interesting article exploring ways to leverage social media to multiply a ministry’s effectiveness, as well as challenges ministries face in doing so. Take a look here: http://www.christianitytoday.com/le/2011/fall/connectedchurch.html.

 

A blog on pastors.com linked to an interesting online video produced by a struggling church making plans to make a comeback in one year’s time. Not only are they repurposing how they serve their community, they’re also inviting the world to watch what happens through daily blog updates and share their own ideas over the next year. There’s more at this link: http://blog.pastors.com/blogs/pcom/one-year-to-live/.

 

There’s no question that the Internet has a far-reaching influence on life as we know it – pretty much every minute of every day. In fact, Business Insider offers an eye-opening set of stats that shows “Incredible Things That Happen Every 60 Seconds on the Internet”. Look and see:

 

Our offices will be closed and customer service will not be available on Friday (Dec. 23), Monday (Dec. 26), Friday (Dec. 30) and Monday (Jan. 2) so that we can spend time with our families during Christmas and New Year’s. We hope you have a joyous Christmas and a happy and safe New Year’s.

 

You’ve got two great ways to display scenes from your Christmas and New Year’s gatherings – thanks to the recent introduction of E-zekiel.tv Beta, a free Christian video sharing website, and the Album Manager that comes with every E-zekiel.com package.
 

The ability to schedule when your content appears and when it disappears is one of the best benefits of panels, and yet many people aren't aware that they can be used for this task.  So here are the basics:
 
Creating small amounts of content that can be placed in various areas of your site can be done through the Panel manager.  As you create a panel, you can designate a date when it should be published and a date when it should expire.
 
For instance, if you're promoting an upcoming event, you'd simply set the expiration date on the panel for the day of the event, and the panel will be removed from the public view of your site at the end of the day on that date.  So now you won't be promoting your Christmas Eve candlelight services, say, when the New Year rolls in – which is an even more helpful feature during a time when offices are closed or staff members are taking time off.