Echo Conference

Having shared some good conversation and good coffee with Houston Clark recently, I’m a firm believer in what he and his company have to offer the local church. Sit in on Houston’s breakout session, and be sure to visit with the Clark team at their Echo booth!

You’re probably well-aware of the greatness of Clover by now, but just in case you’re not …

Clover provides fully-functioning, beautiful, Flash websites for churches, para-churches, church plants, camps, youth groups, and other ministries. Stocked with tools specifically created for ministries, Clover provides the Church with an amazing platform to infuse its message into the world, doing what God has called it to do. Not only does Clover provide ministries with a clean, modern and intuitive platform to connect with their community, but also a revolutionary way of creating, editing, and updating their site. With Clover’s creation of “The Greenhouse,” any ministry can update their own website with little or no training. It’s so intuitive and revolutionary, you’ll have to demo everything yourself to believe it.

If your church or ministry needs some help in the website department, be sure to stop by the Clover booth at Echo.

One of the many reasons I’m looking forward to Echo is interacting with the team from Church Community Builder. I’ve heard great things about their technology — they’re the pioneer of socially-driven Church Management Software. We asked them to share a little bit about who they are, what they do, and what drives them to serve the Church:

Our passion is to improve community, connectedness and communication within the local church. Our web-based solution streamlines the daily administration and leadership of a church by providing that one right place to enter, track and manage critical information. Whether it is event management, calendars, church membership, financial tracking, assimilation, youth check-in, small group management or website integration, CCB meets the needs of today’s “wired” churches with easy-to-use, dependable technology. Our goal is to help churches build a loyal, committed community that can connect, communicate and serve in today’s web-oriented culture.

To find out more about Church Community Builder, visit them online.

Have you heard about The Playback Drive yet? The Playback Drive is the first of its kind — it’s a plug-and-play visual worship library stocked with more than 320 images and video clips, including animated motions, animated loops, stills, footage, 50 TripleWides and more. In our COLLIDE review, we called The Playback Drive an “attractive and cost-effective solution,” and we weren’t kidding.

The Playback Drive will push you out of your media comfort zone and will kickstart visual worship at your church. It’s a great tool and it will take your service to the next level. Plus, The Playback Drive is PC- and Mac-compatible, and it works with all major presentation software titles.

The Playback Drive is a partnership of Orange Thread Media, worshipVJ and Visual Worshiper — all of whom we love — so check it out here.

I’m totally biased, but I love the Centerline New Media story.

In October of 2008, Aaron Holt was reading a COLLIDE Magazine article on Floodgate Productions (an amazing church media producer). Inspired by their story, Aaron called his friend Stephen Anderson that same day and said, “I’ve got an idea.” Thus, the guys plunged headfirst into the waters of church media production.

According to Aaron and Stephen, “Centerline New Media was created with the sole purpose of worshipping God with all the gifts He has given us. We absolutely love being able to create quality media that can be used to further the Kingdom of Jesus Christ.” I love that perspective.

Check out their work at centerlinenewmedia.com. The CNM team hopes their site will not only be a resource for your media needs, but also a place to share ideas and learn from one another. And speaking of sharing ideas and learning from one another, be sure to say hi to the guys at Echo!