[Fifty] years ago Larry Norman wrote the Christian rock anthem, “Why Should the Devil Have All the Good Music?” Today we should be asking the same question about social media, web content, and apps for families — where is Christian social media?
Well, of course, the devil doesn’t have all the good stuff. Christian tech entrepreneurs have been busy all over the Interwebs producing and sharing great content. It’s a theological stretch, but perhaps the “great cloud of witnesses” in Hebrews Chapter 13 might now include the 10,000 creators of Christian online content. But that’s a lot of content — where do you start? We’re thrilled to highlight some of the best the web has to offer in Christian websites and apps. Here are a dozen outstanding, proven examples of websites and social media at their best.
MARRIAGE & FAMILY HEALTH
For Every Mom
For Every Mom was [founded] on the belief that being a mom is amazing, wonderful, fun and beautiful. It’s also frustrating, exhausting and just plain hard. Motherhood is the hardest job ever, but it’s also the best job ever — the pay may be low, but the payoff is priceless.
Editor Bri Lamm says, “We made For Every Mom because we wanted a place online where women could experience the essentials of motherhood: Jesus, laughter, community, and really awesome parenting tips. This is a place where we’re all in it together: working moms, stay-at-home-moms, stepmoms, adoptive moms, foster moms, single moms, married moms, new moms, and experienced moms. We may be at different stages of motherhood, but every mom is a full-time mom.”
National Center for Biblical Parenting
This very helpful Christian parenting website offers books, videos, and live conferences to help Christian parents. Their section on developing your church’s parenting ministry is a great resource for pastors or family ministers to help Christian parents.
Proverbs 31 Organizer: This app is a daily organizer for busy Christian women, based on Proverbs 31. It provides many features including a checklist, alerts, scheduling tools, and notes. You can also set priority levels for each task. Find it on iPad, iPhone, Android, and Kindle Fire.
Of course, Focus On The Family remains the leading Christian parenting website. They offer guides on child development, health and safety, discipline and parenting stages. Their daily radio program is a virtual seminar on Christian parenting.
ENTERTAINMENT
The PureFlix app provides a family-friendly alternative to the usual Hollywood content available on other streaming services.
PureFlix is a Christian movie studio that produces, distributes, and acquires Christ-centered movies. Their vision is to influence the global culture for Christ through media. Their mission is to be the world leader in producing and distributing faith and family media. From their website: “Since day one, we continue to strive to make a difference for His name. Hollywood has played a major role in shaping our current culture by controlling most of the media we experience today. We challenge you to stand up for Christ and share these heartfelt movies with your families, friends, communities, and church to impact our world for Christ.” It’s everywhere: iPad, iPhone, Android, Roku, Chromecast, Amazon Fire TV, and Apple TV.
JellyTelly
JellyTelly is an online video and game network for families, developed by VeggieTales and “What’s In the Bible?” creator Phil Vischer. As a faith-based alternative to other children’s entertainment, JellyTelly provides families with a safe place to learn and play online and help raise the next generation of Christians. JellyTelly hosts faith-based videos, games, and devotionals created and curated to entertain your children while teaching them about God and faith. JellyTelly provides a safe place for your kids to access worthwhile faith-based entertainment via desktop, mobile apps, and Roku.
BIBLE APPS:
YouVersion
If you haven’t heard of YouVersion, where have you been? Since its launch in 2008, Life.Church’s YouVersion has become the one-stop, go-to app for all things Bible: more translations than you can shake a stick at (seriously: more than 1,700!), videos, devotionals, and customizable reading plans. This free app has seen eye-popping success, installed in 345 million devices worldwide. All platforms, all free.
Children’s version:
Bible App for Kids? Um, YouVersion has that covered, too. For parents, the Bible App for Kids companion website offers free resources designed to complement the app, such as coloring pages, activity sheets, and video episodes. It also has free resources for churches, such as the Bible App for Kids Curriculum, a complete two-year course for kids aged two through kindergarten that features video episodes and activities; original, license-free music; and leader guides and training videos.
Not Just Words
Not Just Words is a thesaurus-run Bible search app that helps you locate scriptures and verses within the Bible when you’re having trouble. All you have to do is plug in a few keywords in the search tool and the app will point you in the right direction. Price: Free!
SPIRITUAL FORMATION
Renovaré
Renovaré provides practical resources for cultivating a life — the “with-God” life — that makes us like Jesus from the inside out. Their motto is, “Training, not trying,” which underscores the possibilities of Christian maturity as learned behavior. This ministry is currently web-based, with a popular podcast as well, and they are developing an app called “Dwell” for release later this year.
Prayer Notebook
We all say to our friends, “I’ll pray for you” but it’s so easy to forget! Good intentions aside, there’s a way to remember all of the daily prayers you want to make: Prayer Notebook is an iPhone app that allows you to set daily reminders so you can make all the prayers you intend to. It also syncs with email and social media, so you can send a quick message telling a friend that you just finished paying for him or her. All prayers are password protected. Cost: $1.99
CHRIST-CENTERED SOCIAL MEDIA
Voke
If you’re tired of the negativity and data-collection so common to the mega-social-media sites, you might try going smaller with something like the Voke app, “a community of Christians inspiring hope and building deeper friendships through faith.”
Voke is a video and blog social media app, allowing you to share content with friends (whether they are on Voke or not), and invite them into a larger conversation of faith. Their formula is: “(1) Share compelling videos, (2) Engage in deeper conversations, (3) Grow your faith through adventure.”
BONUS!
Don’t forget all the great web properties available from the Outreach Media Group, [the] parent company of Ministry Tech and other great sites, like:
- churchleaders.com is dedicated to resourcing, informing, and connecting a community of church leaders for greater Kingdom impact worldwide. You’ll find engaging articles from today’s leading voices in the church, fresh ideas, current news, free resources, and a growing leader community, all geared toward helping you lead better.
- SermonCentral is the world’s leader in sermon resources and research. We are dedicated to equipping pastors worldwide in excellence in preaching.
- ChurchPlants.com is dedicated to resourcing, informing, and connecting a community of church planters for greater Kingdom impact worldwide. On ChurchPlants.com, you’ll find engaging articles from today’s leading voices in the church, fresh ideas, upcoming events, free resources, and a growing church planter community, all geared toward helping you become more effective in your mission.
- Outreach Magazine – The vision of Outreach Magazine is to share stories of outreach, helping Christian leadership discover the ideas, innovations, and resources that will equip them to advance the kingdom of God through the outreach efforts of the local church.
- ChurchJobFinder.comis the largest church job site for fresh ministry openings, pastor jobs, and Christian positions.
- FaithIt.comexists to encourage you in your Christian faith and to help you encourage the faith of others by sharing great content that matters. At FaithIt you’ll find compelling videos about radical compassion, inspiring images to remind you of God’s scandalous grace, infographics, music, and articles all geared to help you express your faith online.
- After releasing a movie in 2009, To Save a Life became an online community of over one million individuals facing mental health battles, struggles with addiction, suicide, sexual sin, relationships, and shame.
This article was published in MinistryTech Magazine. Subscribe for free.
