For those who continue to make fun of all the Millions ‘Tweeting’ away their lives, now even the Pope tweets. 

Pope Benedict XVI sent out a message on Twitter to publicize the launch of the Vatican’s new website-  News.va, The following was the pope’s first message:

"Dear Friends, I just launched http://t.co/fVHpS9y Praised be our Lord Jesus Christ! With my prayers and blessings, Benedictus XVI"

The message was prepared for him a head of time so all he had to do was click and send. The occasion also marked the 60th anniversary of his ordination as a priest.            *Top

At a Vatican news conference, an executive of Google Inc., parent company of YouTube joined with Catholic clergy in publicizing the posting of the first 12 videos on the pope’s new channel.

According to  Father Federico Lombardi, director of the press office of the Holy See, the church hope to publish as many as 3 new videos per day:

“This is in particular directed towards the young, but not exclusively, …We have to talk in the language of today. This is a step towards better communication. The pope encouraged us to adopt new ways of communication in order to reach out to the people who are interested in the pope’s message.”

The Church’s YouTube channel will post videos 4 languages to start,  Italian, English, German and Spanish, with more to be added later.

Response: This is a wise move on the part of the Catholic Church, other church organizations should take note. Many savvy mega-churches in America already have a viable presence on the Internet, however there is room for improvement.

In order to get out the gospel message and a Christian perspective on culture and current events from a Christian world view, more due diligence is in order.  The secular progressives and atheists already have a substantial lead in the race for public access and media driven opinion.              *Top   (Cross-posted on ANSWERS For The Faith)

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Movable Type was long over due for a major overhaul and this looks like the real deal. It could well be a superior CMS program for churches and ministries to use for integrating all of their internet sites, blogs, and social network pages.

Take a look at the offering and remember that it all can be downloaded for <<free>>.  Also, they offer support service packages, upgrade and installation services for a fee.

Here is some of the features listed on the website:

What’s New in Movable Type 4.2?

• Community features are now built in. Build a social network with Member Profiles and more.
• AntiSpam is built in. Six Apart’s free, open source antispam product, TypePad AntiSpam, is built into Movable Type.
• It’s faster! Common tasks like search are up to 100 times faster than in previous releases.
• It’s more secure than ever before. Our security record keeps on improving.
• Search results are threaded. Paginated search results make it easy for visitors to find content.
• Commenting is threaded. Commenters can now respond to one another.
• New professional templates. Beautiful, new professional templates are now included.
• Simpler default templates. New templates make it easier than ever to build your site.
• Faster, better publishing. Choose synchronous or asynchronous publishing to fit your schedule.

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Also, Churchblogger has a good related post on the same subject- "Creating wordpress church websites".

Using WordPress could be a possible answer for many churches who don’t have the funds to pay for a professional website and yet want a great looking functional web presence. Also, WordPress doesn’t require a teckie to monitor or make changes.            *Top