I Am A Member Of A Large Church

[MattIM]

That is doing its best to go "green". One of the items it is trying to eliminate is the Sunday bulletin. Just to print the bulletin costs at least US$20,000 per year--not including staff time to prepare the bulletin.

What I would like to happen on this project:
1. When you sit in your pew and open your iPad, the bulletin will be available for viewing.
2. You can press on any quoted scripture and go immediately to that passage.
3. You can tap on any hymn and go immediately to that page in the hymnal
3. For any of the announcements
A. For prayer requests for parishoners, you can click on their name and find out about them
B. For church events, you can tap on the event name, and find out about the event, date and time, cost, and if RSVP required, automatically send an email confirming your attendance and how many tickets needed.
C. To see the church calendar, or determine availability for church facilities, etc, auto open request
4. To send messages to the ministerial staff auto open a request
5. To find out more information on what the choir is singing, or about the church, click on offertory, or prelude, or postlude, etc.

The digitizing and ipadizing my church's Sunday bulletin is my project. Anybody have any ideas?

 

[MikesTooLz]

Do many members of your church own iPads?

I think it might be better for you to go the route of creating a custom mobile website for the church with all of the info available.

This would allow you to reach out to other mobile devices as well, not just the iPhone/iPads.

 

[MattIM]

Thanks Mike for the reply...

This church is a very tech savvy. Your suggestion is part of our requirements--the bulletin has to be available for at least the Apple products and then eventually ported to other mobile devices.

This church has a lot of non tech seniors and we're targeting them for this project. With the ipad's ability to enlarge documents on the screen this is an easy selling point.

 

[MikesTooLz]

If your church is very tech savy, you may also want to setup a live stream to someplace like UStream that can be streamed to the mobile devices over the internet. They can listen in or watch even when they are away.

 

[Flinthills]

This is an interesting question. I think staff time will be higher. Building the content into a prayer request will change the the message from " Bob is sick" to a full paragraph on his condition, status of family members and if they are in town to visit plus a picture so every knows what Bob looks like and the ability to send him a get well message before church starts.

Is it okay to read the iPad during the sermon, or will you need to cut off all wifi so people will listen?

Where will people put the iPad when they stand? They hold it when they sing. If the church has the members stand and hold hands during a prayer, do they put it on the seats/pews and hope they don't sit on it?

 

[elladan11]

That is doing its best to go "green". One of the items it is trying to eliminate is the Sunday bulletin. Just to print the bulletin costs at least US$20,000 per year--not including staff time to prepare the bulletin.

What I would like to happen on this project:
1. When you sit in your pew and open your iPad, the bulletin will be available for viewing.
2. You can press on any quoted scripture and go immediately to that passage.
3. You can tap on any hymn and go immediately to that page in the hymnal
3. For any of the announcements
A. For prayer requests for parishoners, you can click on their name and find out about them
B. For church events, you can tap on the event name, and find out about the event, date and time, cost, and if RSVP required, automatically send an email confirming your attendance and how many tickets needed.
C. To see the church calendar, or determine availability for church facilities, etc, auto open request
4. To send messages to the ministerial staff auto open a request
5. To find out more information on what the choir is singing, or about the church, click on offertory, or prelude, or postlude, etc.

The digitizing and ipadizing my church's Sunday bulletin is my project. Anybody have any ideas?

Matt,

What you have here is a very interesting idea, but I think you might be looking at it from a small solution side of things. What I think might do you better, and you can feel free to disagree, is to design a custom App for the iPad that includes all the things you listed above. Make the bulletin a PDF or display within the app, send an email from within the app, show the church calendar within the app, etc. Even better, if you put the database for the app up on the web somewhere (which you'd most likely need to do anyway), then people could access the info from anywhere...wouldn't that be more useful than just during services?

Willing to discuss ideas with you - I design database applications for a living, but have little experience with ipad....although I'm interested to learn and this might be a good starting point. Any cash to make it work?

Cheers,

Matt

 

[[email protected]]

I use my iPad during sermons all the time now. It allows me to keep up with the pastor when he makes quick scriptural references, and it allows me to make quick cross references.

I also work at a school where we're integrating iPads. The previous posting suggested a good idea about creating an App, but just a heads-up, App developers, at least the ones Apple suggests, charge exorbitant prices for individualized Apps, like $20,000--that was a recent quote that I was given, and it was for something much simpler than what you're looking for.

 

[elladan11]

I use my iPad during sermons all the time now. It allows me to keep up with the pastor when he makes quick scriptural references, and it allows me to make quick cross references.

I also work at a school where we're integrating iPads. The previous posting suggested a good idea about creating an App, but just a heads-up, App developers, at least the ones Apple suggests, charge exorbitant prices for individualized Apps, like $20,000--that was a recent quote that I was given, and it was for something much simpler than what you're looking for.

A good point about the cost, but I was thinking about offering my help so that I could learn and work with someone on an idea....cost is only necessary to purchase the SDK...

Cheers,

Matt

 

[Mossi]

$20,000 a year is a lot of money, and the funds to upgrade from paper to iPad is much more. It would provide food and shelter for less fortunate people. I think you should ask yourselves "What would Jesus do?". How can you justify spending that kind of money for technology, when so many people are hungry? Maybe you should consider the reason for the church and what it's for.

 

[elladan11]

$20,000 a year is a lot of money, and the funds to upgrade from paper to iPad is much more. It would provide food and shelter for less fortunate people. I think you should ask yourselves "What would Jesus do?". How can you justify spending that kind of money for technology, when so many people are hungry? Maybe you should consider the reason for the church and what it's for.

I think you misunderstood - no one was suggesting spending that much, just that people had asked that much for development of other products in the past.