This Article is printed in the June 2010 edition of the Adventist Messenger.
Adventist Church Connect Features
Last month I briefly discussed the Adventist Church Connect content management system that the North American Division is providing free to every Seventh-day Adventist church and school in Bermuda, Canada, and the United States.
I also mentioned that we would continue our look at the ACC system and highlight some of it’s main features. With such a powerful tool and so many useful features, it was difficult to build a “best features” list, however I did put together my thoughts on some of ACC’s most useful ACC features.
Prayer Request Feature
The Prayer request feature allows site visitors to submit prayer requests that are directed to any number of emails you wish such as prayer teams, elders and/or church pastors. The prayer feature immediately sends an email response back to the site visitor with Bible promises that relate to their request. Prayer requests can then be followed up with a personal email.
I remember one particular prayer request I received approximately three years ago from a mother in Alberta. She stated that she had reached the very lowest time of her life. She lost her job, her marriage was in ruin, and she was having suicidal thoughts. She was asking us to pray for her situation and that God would work in a very special way. After I received the email, I prayerful responded with some encouraging words. To make a long story short, she ended up attending my church in Kelowna with her two kids and has made some very good friends.
The prayer request feature has been a doorway to many new relationships and a wonderful tool for providing spiritual encouragement and prayer for many people.
Calendar of Events
The Adventist Church Connect calendar tool allows departments to enter and categorize their own events. You can attach documents such as bulletin inserts, agendas, and special messages to each event. Another calendar feature provided allows you to add events from the local conference, union and North American Division.
This is a great online resource for church members to stay informed of upcoming events and programs even if they are away or misplace their church bulletin.
Photo gallery
The Photo gallery feature is a great tool to display those church events and special programs you want others to get a glimpse about. It is also a great way to showcase the churches outreach and ministry programs such as a strong youth program, cooking schools, CHIP, Easter or Christmas events, etc…
Audio and Video Feature
The audio and video feature, which is not free, provides the tools for uploading audio and video files such as church sermons. These files can then be viewed and listened to by the website visitors. This feature includes an administration section for adding information about each file.
Adding audio and video to a website has proven to attract more site visitors. At one of my former churches, the online sermons were being viewed by many people from all over the world.
One of these site visitors included a Christian business man from Australia. One day I received an email from him explaining that his wife was not a Christian and did not want him attending church. “I watched your sermon online and it really touch my life”, he stated. “From now on I am going to make your church website my virtual church”.
Built-in User Levels
With the Adventist Church Connect built-in user levels, there are several preconfigured levels of access such as; member, author, editor and administrator. Also added to this section is the ability of the administrator to create additional user levels as needed.
In addition to user levels, Adventist Church Connect allows for individual users to be assigned permission to add or modify specific pages or access specific features. For example, your church’s youth leader could be given permission to add articles and photos to the youth department pages on your church’s website and add youth events to the calendar. Given these permissions, this person could not modify any other pages on the site.
For more information about Adventist Church Connect visit http://adventistchurchconnect.com.
