My wife, evie s., recently launched A Beautiful Idea. It is an opportunity for artists to create products to benefit charity. If you are an artist, you should sign up! It is really quite simple:

The official launch of the first wave of products is March 15th, but some products have already begun to sneak onto the site.

WE NEED YOUR HELP!

1. If you can create, create!
2. If you can buy, buy!
3. If you can tell others, help us spread the word!

Some fonts are worth having just in case you ever need them. Punched Out by Tobias Sommer is one of those fonts. And best of all, it’s free!

You probably don’t need to make 3D letters often, but if and when you do, this free font makes it easy. Simply print, cut, and paste.

Voilà!

Not everyone attends church, but people are more likely to attend church during Christmas and Easter. For an extra nudge of motivation, many churches plan special Christmas services. Here are two of 2009’s creative church Christmas promos:

CHURCH ON THE MOVE (Tulsa, OK)

LIFECHURCH.TV (Edmond, OK)

For Discussion:
- What are some other creative church Christmas promos from 2009 (links to YouTube clips are welcome)?

Each week MinistryCSS.com adds plenty of great ministry websites to inspire you.  Here are four of my favorite recently added church websites:

Brainerd Baptist Church

Access Church

Mission Community Church

Broadmoor Baptist Church

If you have a great looking website that you want added to this church website gallery, visit MinistryCSS.com and submit it for review.

Printed business cards are being used less and less.
And more and more of them are almost thrown away instantly once given out. People digitize most of that nowadays.

But what about a digital business card? You can email it or link to it from your printed card, which will maximize the lifespan of your contact information.

John Saddington of ChurchCrunch has released a free Digital Business Card Wordpress theme for download. It’s beautiful, sleek, and highly efficient.

If you are going to have a business card, think about making it a digital one. Be sure to stop by John’s blog and thank him for giving away such goodness for free.

Something exciting is happening! More and more churches are getting great church websites.

In fact, there are so many great church website designs that it is becoming difficult to list and keep track of them all. Fortunately, MinistryCSS.com takes on that challenge beautifully. Instantaneously, it is the new top church websites list.

If you have a ministry website that looks great and was designed with XHTML/CSS (tableless), you can submit your ministry web design for free to MinistryCSS.com. All submissions are:

1. Archived with a full screen capture of the homepage.
2. Able to be rated by other MinistryCSS.com users.

In other words, over time MinistryCSS.com will become an archived gallery of the best church web designs ranked by you and other users around the world.

View it.
Contribute.
Use it.

Many consider SXSW to be the best interactive media conference in the world. You learn from minds like Guy Kawasaki and the people at Facebook and Google. Unfortunately, SXSW has had little if any church oriented content in the past.

You can change that.

You can vote for SXSW Interactive to have several church oriented sessions in 2010. Why should you have to choose between SXSW and a church media conference? Let’s merge them together! If enough of us vote, then we have a good chance of getting these church panels.

FIRST STEP
Create a free profile for voting at http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/users/register
(an email confirmation will be sent)

SECOND STEP
Vote today for the church panels by clicking the “thumbs up” icon located near the top left of the following four pages:

#1 :: Creating Authentic Online Community
>> Tony Steward, Carlos Whittaker, John Saddington, & Cynthia Ware (moderator)

#2 :: Technology For Results Not Profits
>> Bobby Gruenewald, Brad Abare, Kent Shaffer, & Terry Storch (moderator)

#3 :: LifeChurch.tv - Reaching 2 Million+ With Technology
>> Terry Storch, Tony Steward, Bobby Gruenewald, & Kent Shaffer (moderator)

#4 :: Pushing Technological Change Without Alienating Your Co-Workers
>> Kem Meyer & mystery experts

Please spread the word and help us rock the vote!

When Clover launched their church website company in May 2008, I appreciated their immediate sponsorship of Church Relevance. But more than that, I was intrigued by their premade church websites that did not look like premade websites. They were clean and beautiful.

Now 14 months later, I am simply impressed.

I see more and more church websites sporting a “Made by Clover” icon. Their content management system is outstandingly simple yet powerful. And Clover has become an active supporter of many of my favorite church blogs, conferences, and magazines.

THE PROS

• Very Low Cost
  Every Clover website costs a one-time fee of $1,000 plus $20 per month for hosting and support.
• Quick Turnaround
  Rather than waiting months for a custom developed site, a Clover website is available the same day as purchase.
• Easy to Use
  The content management system is one of the easiest to use (if not the easiest) I’ve seen.
• Robust Features
  You can have online calendars, sermons, videos, and more.
• Search Engine Optimized (SEO)
  Despite being Flash websites, they are optimized for search engines.
• Beautiful Aesthetics
  As you can see below, the websites look good.

THE CONS

• So Easy It Is Dangerous
  Clover’s content management system is so easy to use that it risks empowering aesthetically-challenged users to turn a beautiful premade site into an ugly site through poor color choices and media uploads. However, in fairness all content management systems risk to some extent empowering people who should not design.
• Flash-Based
  I am not a fan of all Flash websites, primarily because of visitor inconveniences such as the inability to copy and paste useful info like a church address or event details. But Flash does look cool.
  *UPDATE* - Clover informed me that their sites actually do provide for the ability for visitors to copy and paste content.
• Premade vs 100% Custom  Tailored
  Theoretically, a 100% custom tailored website is better than a premade site. Ideally, a church website will be custom designed by a very talented designer that understands how to create desired responses and communicate the church’s unique DNA through the smallest online details. However, this is very, very expensive and difficult. And sometimes the beauty of a premade design can do a better job communicating your brand than the custom design of a designer still learning the ropes.

Visit CloverSites.com to see a video of their content management system and actually demo it yourself.