Every member of your ministry's online community has the option of activating their own FREE podcasting blog. A personal blog is an outstanding platform for sharing with the world how God has been working in-and-through each member of your ministry community. E-Church Essentials believes that every pastor, staff member, and key lay-leader should consider developing their own blog. E-Church Essentials blogs support the following features:

1. MP3 audio broadcast (Podcast)
2. MPEG4 video broadcast (Vlogging using video URL)
3. RSS/XML broadcast of text and graphics
4. Archiving of all entries by custom-defined categories and date
5. Visitor comments/discussion interactions
6. Dedicated "links" page
7. Dedicated contact-form page
8. Optional display of personal photo
9. Unlimited entries and categories
10. Permalinks that permit linking to specific articles or podcasts
11. FREE Podcast Reader from E-Church Essentials [Download Here]

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Blog Sample: Clay Feet Expressions   Clay Feet Expressions is David Posthuma's personal blog, designed to address postmodern and emergent church ministry philosophy issues.
Blog Sample: Newsletter   Email-based newsletters are far more effective when they are integrated with a blog. E-Church Essentials empowers your ministry to create newsletter blogs to communicate important events and information related to your ministry organization.

______________________________________________________________________ Download FREE RSS/XML News Readers and/or Podcast Reader FREE Podcast Reader (ZIP file) FREE RSS/XML News Reader by E-Church Essentials ______________________________________________________________________

So . . . what makes a blog so perfect for pastors? Please read the following brief introduction to the ministry benefits offered by blogs.

• Blogs are easy to update.  In fact, bloggers should try to post a new article at least once a week…it only takes a few minutes.

• Blogs are interactive.  People can post comments regarding your blog articles by selecting the “Comments” link that displays at the end of your article posting.  In contrast with websites, which are monologues, blogs permit an interactive dialogue. Postmodern ministry is all about interactive relationships, and a blog is one way to offer a more interactive communication process.

• Blogs can be broadcast.  Unlike a typical website, a blog can be broadcast to people’s personal computers.  On a typical blog, you will find a small icon that states RSS or XML.  These icons indicate that the blog has the capacity to "syndicate" or "broadcast", similar to the Associated Press (AP) which is syndicated and broadcasts its information to other news agencies.  In the same way, by loading a “News Reader” on their computer (many News Readers are free, including Internet Explorer 7 and iTunes), people can, in essence, have a customized newspaper on their desktop. They simply right-click on the orange RSS, XML, or Podcast button displayed on the blog page, copy the subscription link to their clipboard, and paste the subscription link into their news reader. Then, whenever a new post is made to their subscribed blogs, the new post immediately downloads and displays on their desktop within the news reader.  In a similar fashion, more advanced news readers can receive MP3 audio files. This form of broadcast is often called “Podcasting”, because of the ability of the IPOD MP3 player (Note: all MP3 audio devices support this feature) to instantly download audio files from a podcasting blog.  This means that your ministry's audio teachings can be easily broadcast each week to subscribers of your blog.

• Blogs can be linked.  Through the use of standard links, permalinks and referrals, other blogs and websites can link to your blog generally, or to specific articles within your blog.  Blogs archive all article entries, so links to specific articles are never lost.

By encouraging people in your ministry to download a free News Reader [RSS Text Reader | MP3 Podcast Reader], and pointing that reader to your pastoral blog, you will find that you can have direct interactive communication with your ministry members.  In particular, you will offer a communication platform valued by young adults...the demographic most ministries desperately need to reach.  Alternatively, you may also create an email newsletter jump-page that directs recipients to specific articles within your ministry blog.