UPDATE: A more thorough look at this CMS.(I should check these things out before I tell you to! It’s Monday and I’m tired)
According to Jason, Web Empowered Church CMS Pre-release is out:
I got an email late last week from my buddy Mark Stephenson who’s spearheading the Web-Empowered Church … a free CMS solution his team has been developing for a while now.
I’ve not seen it in action, but I know Mark and his heart and vision for this project…it is certainly worth checking out for those searching for a Church Management System (CMS).
I haven’t looked at it first hand, I have visited the website and looked around, it looks very promising. They are still building the software, so don’t expect all the bells and whistles today. Considering the source(Jason), who has a good source(Mark), I would say this is worth checking out.
Their mission:
The mission of WEC is to innovatively apply WEB technology to EMPOWER the worldwide CHURCH for ministry.
These guys are geeks in the truest sense of the word.
Our mission statement is reflected in our logo which shows the cross spread throughout the world via the Internet. The ones and zeros that make up the cross spell out the word "Jesus" in binary ASCII code.
Click here to go to the page to see Jesus in binary ASCII. You’ve got to check this out. It’s a sweet logo!
If you are in the market for a new CMS, check this site out and let’s keep an eye on things as they progress, I expect things will only improve from here.
Go to webempoweredchurch.com/ to get the details.
FYI: Clint just let me know that my links are no good when clicking thru with Bloglines. I always use the the full link when creating links, but for some reason, Bloglines does not, which results in ‘page not found’ So, you may need to click thru to my blog first, then click the link to click thru. I need to research and determine if this is a Bloglines issue, WordPress issue or a personal problem. I went back to some early posts, from months ago and clicked thru some links thru Bloglines and got the same result. Anyone have any insight?
Man, what else can break here?
We’re on the leading edge of Web-Empowered Church at Church of the Resurrection.
See my post here: http://appianway.blogspot.com/2005/09/first-chance-to-hear-more-about-web.html
And also this page on the Resurrection web site: http://www.cor.org/About_this_Website.1683.0.html
Web-Empowered Church is a very cool thing, and getting more useful by the month.
I like the ideas presented, but I don’t like to be on the “bleeding edge” with something as visible as the church’s web site. How tested and reliable is this tech? I saw only a few modules, any ideas where this project is headed?
Thanks for the link, Jim.
The Web-Empowered Church (http://WebEmpoweredChurch.com) is based on an open-source enterprise-class Content Management System called TYPO3. TYPO3 has been around for several years and is most popular in Europe where it was developed. Sites such as Volkswagen of Germany (http://www.volkswagen-ir.de/) DaimlerChrysler, EDS, and many others use TYPO3. So TYPO3 is not new software. And it is written using a standard MySQL database, and standard PHP scripting. TYPO3 is very powerful, but its power can make it harder to use, and we are attempting to address that. The “bleeding edge” part of Web-Empowered Church may be the modules that we are creating. Our mission is to take the Church to whole new levels of Internet ministry. And we may not always get that right because we are all learning how best to do Internet ministry. Right now we are new. That is why we called this a “Pre-Release†but this is a serious effort from the Foundation for Evangelism (http://evangelize.org) with plans to support over 10,000 churches by the year 2010. So, I encourage you to keep an eye on us. If you have any questions, please let me know.
In Christ’s Sevice,
Mark
I’ve followed Web Empowered Church CMS for a bit now. A group of churches opted to start a best-of-class system called Ekklesia Systems – Church Content Management System which is a little different in it’s goals but fit better into our plan.
Just to clarify, Web-Empowered Church is focused on next-step web-based ministry. It uses a content management system called TYPO3. Although it will include some church management functions, it is not a church management system. In time, we plan to provide interfaces to common church management systems. In Christ, Mark