What is a CMS and how can it save your church money? The abbreviation "CMS" stands for Content Management System (website content that is). A couple of years ago our team at Church Plant Media created a custom-built CMS that we specifically designed for churches. But we don't simply offer a CMS product; we provide a website design service as well. Over the years, we have helped churches save money in 3 different ways; specifically through our tools, service, and ministry.
We love serving the Church and helping people spread the good news about Jesus! It is amazing for us to consider how many people we are able to touch as we link arm-in-arm with these partners in the gospel. Listed below is a small sampling of our favorite websites from the past 5 months. Some use our newer design styles as-is, while others feature unique color customizations done by our team (or theirs).
Our team has been doing an amazing job in the past few months and so have our gospel partners! We launched a record number of websites this past month, so it was hard to choose only a few of our favorites. The first few examples listed below are from partners who had the coding skills to change the colors of their design style, while the others are using their design as-is. One website that we are all very excited about is the Oklahoma Chapter of The Gospel Coalition. Our home office is located in Oklahoma City, so having the opportunity to serve these like-minded, local brothers is a real blessing.
These past five months have flown by so fast for our team. We have designed and built a few brand new design styles and we released some great new features in our Content Management System. We continued to grow relationships with church planters at the Exponential Conference and we launched a number of sites for new partners we are really excited about. Maybe our biggest milestone earlier this year was to launch our Church Planting Supersite, the ultimate gateway to all things church planting. In addition to the Supersite, we wanted to feature a few others sites.
In November, we partnered with our friends over at Rice Bowls to encourage churches and ministries to help feed orphans through the Red Bowl Challenge. Rice Bowls feeds over 1,500 happy kids in 52 Christian orphanages across the globe. Through the challenge, we were able to provide 5,560 meals for those orphans. That number is about 1 full month of meals for all of the children living in 2 different orphanages.
The last quarter of 2011 was a busy one for Church Plant Media. If you haven't been following our blog, let me catch you up on all of the exciting changes... In October, we lowered our price to $1,000 for any gospel loving ministry. In November, we partnered with Rice Bowls to help feed orphans around the world through the Red Bowl Challenge from Thanksgiving until New Year's Day. Then in December, we released a few new website designs and we completely refreshed our easy-to-use Content Management System. In addition to all of that, each month we also launched a number of new websites on our system.
Next week most people in the USA will celebrate by eating turkey and stuffing, mashed potatoes and squash, pumpkin pie and cylinders of cranberry goodness. We all have much to be thankful for. Which is why we are announcing a special holiday challenge that will give back to those in need, when we have plenty. From Thanksgiving Day until New Year's Day, we are asking everyone we know to team up with the good folks over at Rice Bowls to feed children in 52 orphanages across the globe. But we are not only asking, we are going to reward the biggest giver with a big gift!
We thank God for the opportunity to serve gospel ministries across the globe. In the past 2 months we have been honored to create website designs for a number of ministries we love and respect in the USA, Canada, the UK, and down-under in Australia. Although we only did the design for their projects, John MacArthur’s team recently launched the new Grace to You and Grace Advance websites. We also partnered with author, blogger, and pastor, Tim Challies on the website for Grace Fellowship Church in Toronto, Canada. Lastly, we recently launched a website for Steve Chong and Kirkplace in Sydney, Australia. In recent years Steve has been mentored by Mark Driscoll and instructed by John Piper, as he leads the RICE Movement.
These past few months we have continued to serve a diverse group of ministries with full custom designs and new design styles. A few of our recent favorites were for a large Methodist church in Texas, a large evangelical charismatic church in California, a brand new Acts 29 Network church plant in Australia, and another A29 church in California. We also did our annual re-launch for our good friends over at the Exponential Conference, the largest gathering of planters on the planet. Lastly, we did a full color customization for ChurchWorks Network, a brand new Baptist church planting network based in Texas.
At Church Plant Media we have served hundreds of churches for over 10 years. In this time we have learned a few things about what a great church domain name should look like and how it should function. To help you sort through the options and opinions, we present these 5 tips for you to consider when making your domain name purchase.
We usually wait a number of months before featuring our favorite designs, but we did not want another day to pass without sounding the horn about the new full custom design for our friends at The Master's College. A little over 1 year ago, we were given the opportunity to redesign their Undergrad Admissions site and a sister site for their Resolved Conference. Although we have only been providing the designs for their team to build, we have built a lasting friendship with their team. We are currently in the process of a redesign for Grace to You, John MacArthur's radio ministry. We'll be sure to give a shout out once that design is live.
One of the primary differences between Church Plant Media and other web development companies is that our team has made a commitment only to serve gospel-centered churches and church-based organizations. After years of serving churches from different denominational backgrounds and heritages, we felt that a litmus test was needed to define our partnerships. So in early 2009, we decided to draw a line in the sand and we created a Statement of Belief.
Our bloggage has been bare these past few months, but we are still very much alive and well. We have been devoting a ton of time to our new CMS refresh, and we think you'll like what you see when we release it in a few weeks. Over the past 4 months, we launched nearly triple the number of sites than we had launched at this time last year. Out of these new sites, we wanted to share 12 of our favorite designs. We are also stoked to announce the re-launch of the Exponential Conference, the largest gathering of church planters on the planet.
Do your audio monitors give you feedback? Do you have monitor mixing nightmares? Do you experience wireless microphone interference? Does your audio simply not sound good? Does your video not look good? Our friends at Housetop Media will help you solve these problems and more. They help Christ-centered church plants, portable ministries and multi-site campuses, preach the gospel loud and clear. And they do it for free.
As we head into the summer months, we wanted to share 10 more sites that we have launched in the 2nd Quarter. A few of these sites were current CPM partners who decided to update their look and feel with a new design. Also numbered among these 10 sites, is New Covenant Bible Church, the church plant that our blogging friend, Justin Taylor, is now a part of. Finally, we are very excited to announce two newly launched CPM service partners: Child of God Ministry Concepts, lead by Carlfred Giles, and Housetop Media, lead by Derrick Jeror.
Our good friend, Justin Taylor, blogger at The Gospel Coalition and Editorial Director at Crossway, recently asked us the following questions for an interview on his blog. Justin is facilitating a free website giveaway for us to celebrate our partnership in the Gospel and to promote our new low price. A word to the wise: If you don't regularly read Justin's blog, we strongly suggest that you make it a regular part of your day.
As we move into the 2nd Quarter of 2010, we wanted to share 10 different sites that have gone live since the beginning of the year. Numbered among these are a 3 generation church, a few brand new church plants in the US and the United Arab Emirates, as well as a 5 year old church plant who has already planted a number of churches. We are also very thankful to be serving our good friends at the Acts 29 Network, and author, blogger, and pastor, Tullian Tchividjian with his congregation, Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church.
Now that we are well on our way into 2010, we wanted to take a look back at some of the PLUS and MAX sites that we launched in the 2nd half of 2009. As always, our Creative Director, Andrew Bradshaw, knocked these out of the park with his kung fu master design skills. Here are just a few examples of his work.
Earlier this year, our team was hand picked to serve John MacArthur and the staff of Grace Community Church, to create a new web site design for the 2010 Resolved Conference. Early registration is now open for the conference, which will be held from June 25-28 at the Palm Springs Convention Center.