Cyber Monday Lived up to it’s Expectations

According to eMarketer.com Cyber Monday(November 27) surpassed expectations with it’s retail online tallies. Sales totaled $608 million, up 26% from Cyber Monday 2005. The first 27 days of November were also up 24% from 2005. All trends are pointing towards a record year for online shopping. Nothing is expected to change going into 2007, or the rest of the year for that matter.

With all this online shopping, it makes one think. Trends are pointing more and more to online activities increasing with no plateau. What is the church doing to keep up? Is it enough to have an e-mail address so that the young hipsters in the congregation can contact the youth pastor if needed? Or does the church need more? Does it need a website, maybe even a web ministry? Something online that is interactive and engages people who happen to pull up a church’s web address. Why are we still trying to reach teenagers that have grown up on X-Box, or even twenty-somthings that grew up on the original Nintendo, with Flanograf boards? I think the even bigger question is, why do we think that it’s alright?

It would seem like more and more people are using the internet for their financial purchases. Why not tithing and online giving? With reports that online users are going to buy 39% of their holiday gifts online (up 8% percent from last year), it seems like people are more and more comfortable with doing financial transactions online. Why shouldn’t the church be able to offer the same conveniences to their congregation?

Seems like a winner to me.

Until next time.

The NEW Nativity?

I was afforded the opportunity to see “The Nativity Story” at an early preview last night. Let me start out by saying that I wasn’t expecting a whole lot. How can you enjoy a movie where you already know the ending? But I have to say, I was surprised. New Line Cinema did a very good job to showing the realism of the time. Even more surprising was that the same company that put out the Austin Powers trilogy and American History X stayed very close to the Bible. Maybe not too surprising to the millions of Lord of the Rings trilogy fans who have said it stayed very close to the books.

Overall, even with a few things not quite lining up with the good book, I could recommend the movie to for all ages. The movie was excellent. Beyond the minor indescripancies, the movie told the story of our Lord’s birth well. It opens this Friday, 5 stars.

Until next time.

EXTREME MAKEOVER – BLOG EDITION

As some of you may have noticed, the Realtor Blog just had an extreme makeover this past week, as well as IowasRealtor.com. A couple different reasons for that, some more important than others. IR.com was converted to AdamForney.com and blog.iowasrealtor.com converted to AdamForney.net. With all the changing that was going on, I had to make a decision about the blog as well as the website because the blog had been linked.

With all the different issues being brought to my attention, I decided the blog needed a makeover and different focus completely. From here on, you will still see some real estate blogging going on, but the main focus has been shifted to something a little more eternal, the church. Most know of my past with ministry being a youth pastor and such. Eventually I have to realize that it is a part of me that cannot and will not escape. You pastors out there know what I’m talking about.

Most of you know of Thrive Web Group and it’s new partner site, ThrivingDomains.com. Now everything has been brought under one roof with the label of ChurchForward. It’s a way to centralize everything and have future divisions of the company know how it fits into the whole. TWG and TD.com aren’t changing, you still get the quality service from both that you have in the past.

ChurchForward will be able to take all the services we offer in our web suite (i.e. web design, domains, blogs, consultation, etc.) to the next level as we continue to prepare the church for the newest technology that comes out and how we can reach the world through it!

Adam Forney
Founder/CEO
ChurchForward.com
“Fusing together methods to grow the church and reach your world!”