Tech Tips for Catholics

About a year ago, I came across MyChurch.org and have found it to be a great tool for our parish community and it has helped us to grow in community.

• What is MyChurch?
  MyChurch is a free community‐buiding site for Christian churches. You can create a profile page for your church and allow members to join and connect through blogs, photos, events, media, bulletins, small groups and more!
• Is MyChurch Safe?
  A dedicated team of staff and pastors review thousands of church submissions each week to make sure church profiles are reserved for Christian churches that follow the Nicene Creed. Your church profile page can be moderated by multiple staff or members and each small group can customize their own level of privacy.
• Connecting with a Purpose
  With an extensive platform of tools, MyChurch allows your community to connect in a unique and fun way throughout the week. It’s like MySpace, but completely centered around your church! Keep members up‐to‐date on announcements and prayer requests with Bulletins. Post single or recurring Events, and allow members to RSVP. Small Groups let members connect around ministries and interests. Share and learn more about each other with Blogs. Upload church Sermons (Homilies) and Media, where members can add comments.

Please Note: Because MyChurch is not strictly a Catholic network, some Catholic parishes are not listed and might need to be added. Do a search for your Church prior to adding it.

Features: In the menu bar, after you have logged in, there are a couple of menu categories.

• The “Home” menu is all about you. You will see submenus such as Main, Write, Subscription, Photos, Friends, Comments, and Mail.
• The “My Church” menu is all about your church and takes you to your church’s MyChurch page, where you can post a bulletin, upload church photos, check out small groups, post an event, or post to the sharing board.
• The next menu I’d like to talk about is the “Explore” menu. This is where you will find public blog posts, reviews, and videos posted by other MyChurch people (keep in mind that not all posters in the explore section are Catholic and some maybe even anti-Catholic, but generally the posts are ecumenical in nature).
• The new menu that they are working on is the “Ministries” menu. Not a lot has happened with this one yet.
• And the last menu is the “Churches” menu where you can search for churches. This is good if you are going on vacation and are looking for a Catholic church near your destination (though I recommend MassTimes.org for a more official search). But you could maybe see what is happening in the parish you will be attending. They also have a pretty cool map feature that is similar to Frappr! Map, only with the different churches in a certain destination.

Well that about sums it up. If you’d like to see a short review I posted on MyChurch about Popple’s “Plaid” CD or a review of the DVD Padre Pio “Miracle Man” you may.