Like this:

this is a veritable grab bag of FREE (well, mostly) goodies for your church.  In about the past 12 months these have become revolutionary and/or fun and interesting (at least) for ministry-related stuff @ Xenia Naz. Let’s get the “captain obvious” ones out of the way first…

Facebook - is anybody NOT on facebook yet? (my grandma is.)  we’re all on there, so link up with us if you are too.

Twitter - we are slowly figuring out how to use this rather odd “micro-blogging” platform in a constructive way. (follow us @xenianaz and @xenianazworship - while you’re there, check out the screencast I made using the next resource)

Okay, now onto the less buzzed-about…

Screenr - create a 5 min “screencast” for free…great for how-to’s. can’t begin to tell you how cool I think this is.

Planning Center - it’s not free, but oh my, is it worth the price…in the past 3 weeks, this has already become a total game-changer for us when it comes to worship planning, scheduling, preparation, etc. They do offer a free 30-day trial, so I guess it’s kinda free

Dropbox - online file syncing/storage/sharing – up to 3 GB for free. makes life easier for those of us who wind up using multiple computers, which for me = church desktop (PC/win Vista), church laptop (PC/win 7), my old laptop (PC/Linux), wife’s laptop (Mac iBook)

COLLIDE magazine – if you’re at all interested in the convergence of media, technology, pop culture and Christian ministry, well worth your $16 subscription. (their free blog is excellent, too.)

Google Apps – I haven’t yet persuaded our office staff and IT folks to migrate us over to Google Apps, but if your church is about to spend money on software for intra-office networking (MS Exchange), email, office/productivity applications (MS Office), stop right there and check out Google Apps. It’s web-based “software-as-a-service” (also called “cloud-computing”), which has a lot of advantages over the old (and dying) paradigm of buying and installing software on every machine within a company or organization, e.g. access from any machine; operating systems make no difference; automatic updates/upgrades. Best of all, Google Apps is FREE for non-profit organizations with fewer than 3000 employees. I won’t gush on about this, but seriously – if you have needs in this department, you must explore this option.

(p.s. I also really like Google’s new web browser, “Google Chrome” – links are all over the place on Google’s pages – check it out.)

That’s more than enough to keep you busy.

Well, okay, one last one…give those boring staff photos on your website a groovy, vintage vibe with Poladroid – also free (can you tell I like free stuff?), and one of the more fun programs. I won’t ruin it for you: download and install it, and then “shake-it, shake-it, sh-shake-it like a polaroid picture!”

Have fun!  Let me know if you put any of these to good use (hit me at brannon(dot)hancock(at)gmail(dot)com or on twitter @brannonhancock).  Or post other free stuff you love in the comments - let me know what I left out (like Open Office, or Audacity, or…).

Advertisement