Welcome to ChurchSpring Live, Episode 002!
Learn about domain names and why your church website needs one. If you're confused about what a domain name is or how to update yours, you don't want to miss this episode. [truncate]
We'll explain what a domain name is, how to purchase one, and answer any questions that you have! Plus, we'll share some practical How Tos to update your church domain name and staging website name in your ChurchSpring website.
Show Notes
- Welcome to ChurchSpring Live, Episode 002 (00:55)
- All you need to know about your church domain name (04:25)
- What is a domain name? Your domain name is similar to a physical address (06:11)
- Why do you want a domain? (07:45)
- What is a staging site subdomain? (11:35)
- What makes a good church website domain? (14:10)
- Your church website domain should be short, should avoid numbers and special characters, and include .com if possible.
- Does ChurchSpring manage your domain? (19:39)
- We compare the difference between domain hosting vs. website hosting (bonus: ChurchSpring will help you update your domain to point to your ChurchSpring website for free!)
- Where can you purchase a domain? (24:00)
- Buy directly from a registrar (such as NameCheap) and not a reseller to avoid extra payments and stress!
- Once you purchase a domain, do you own it forever? (31:00)
- Action Step: You got this! Go out and purchase a high quality domain name for your church website. (39:00)
- ChurchSpring How To(45:36)
- Update your ChurchSpring staging site name (also called a subdomain name) (47:00)
- Update your custom domain name and how to identify who is your domain provider (50:30)
- Q&A (56:10)
- Closing Prayer (1:06:13)
- Additional Notes & Resources
CSL 002 Transcript
Rohn Gibson (00:00:54):
All right. Welcome everyone to ChurchSpring Live episode two. We are super excited. Yeah, maybe we're, we're making progress. So we're super excited to have you all joining us. I see. We've got a few people online already. So we are just thrilled to be able to engage with you in this way and serve you in this way. So quick intros, my name is Rohn Gibson. I am the co-founder and president of ChurchSpring. And joining me today, I have Isabel Faletti
Isabelle Faletti (00:01:31):
Hello there! I am the church success lead, and I am so excited to be digging into today's content.
Rohn Gibson (00:01:40):
Awesome. Well, we've got some, some really great things in store for today. So we're going to go ahead and just dive on in for those who are brand new to ChurchSpring ChurchSpring is a software provider committed to the great commission. We help church leaders by providing practical tools to aid and growing the local church for the glory of Christ. So that's who we are. That's what we are about. And we really want to be able to partner with you and provide tools to reach your community. So we've got a "hi" that just came in in the comments. So hi, Iris. Awesome to have you joining us today, feel free. Anyone that's watching. If you have questions as we go along or prayer requests, please feel free to submit those. We'll answer as many questions as we can. And we're going to wrap up with prayer here at the end, and we'll be sure to to pray for those requests.
Rohn Gibson (00:02:28):
So also to make sure that you don't miss out on any future Facebook lives go ahead and like our page. We're also going to be posting events, so you'll, you should also receive notifications about a new event on our page that you can come and get a reminder from there as well. So I'm going to use this. This is awesome. Look, we've got Iris using the stream yard thing. That's so awesome. We've got a, let's see, I'm sorry. I don't say your name correctly. Is it Keshi? Anyway, so we've got Keshi joining from community covenant church in Calumet park, Illinois. So that's awesome. We've got Kevin joining us today as well. So welcome to all of you. We are just absolutely thrilled, honestly, that awesome. I just made my day. So getting a little emotional, I'm not going to lie. I'll tell you, Satan did not want us to get on live this morning and we are just so thrilled that God's providing all the technology to work so far and we're just trusting in him. So it's so good to see you. Okay, Kishi. There we go. Thank you so much. I totally get the whole name mispronunciation. My name is spelled R O H N and I get called Roan and Rahan and all kinds of things, but it's pronounced wrong.
Rohn Gibson (00:03:56):
Yes. Yeah. So Keisha, thank you so much for giving us that pronunciation. And we've also got Tanya joining us today as well from kingdom family, Christian fellowship and Alabama. Hey, down there. Awesome. We're so glad to have you on Tonya as well. So feel free. Yes. Kishi. We're totally on the same page. We gotta, we gotta stick in this together. That's awesome. So, so awesome to have you all joining a man, what a privilege to, to serve you all and to connect with you all here on Facebook live. So today we are going to talk about a topic that we get a ton of questions about, and I think there are quite a few just, just needing some help and really understanding the importance of domain names, what they are. Should I have one, what are some best practices on? So we've come up with a list of questions. So some of the commonly asked questions that we receive at ChurchSpring, and we're going to go through those today. So without further ado, you've got the list Isabelle. So let's jump on in.
Isabelle Faletti (00:04:57):
Yep. Awesome. Yeah, I, so I work every day with our customers and a lot of what I do is helping our customers update their domain name and it can be a confusing topic and a confusing process for someone who is completely new to this world. And it was, it was new to me. So I completely understand it can kind of be frustrating. So if you're tuning in and if you're nodding your head saying, yes, I'm a little frustrated and a little confused about domain name. Cause I just don't get it. Keep listening because we are going to answer all your questions and help you see that this, this is a step by step process that you can get to the end too. So I'm really excited to talk about this. This is close to my heart who thought I would say that domain name is close to my heart. But it is!
Rohn Gibson (00:05:50):
Just a quick reminder again, if you have a question about a domain name now that we've kind of talked about the topic, please feel free again, submit your specifically regarding domains and anything else. And we'll, we'll answer as many of those as we can, but we'll probably stick mostly to the topic here of your domain name. So please feel free to show that man. It's so cool to see the comments Benjamin. Thanks for joining us. All right, let's do this. Let's jump in.
Isabelle Faletti (00:06:11):
Okay. So first let's just kind of start at the step one and explain what exactly is a domain name, because I know that can be confusing. We have to define terms to know what we're talking about. So Rohn, help us out. What is a domain name?
Rohn Gibson (00:06:27):
Let's jump on in. So a domain name, just a perfect example would be ChurchSpring.com. That is your domain name. So that is your really your digital address. So if you think of it, your, your church location, you have an address, your home, you have an address. So what that does is that tells people where to go to see you, whether it's at church at home, et cetera. So your domain name is your physical or your digital address online. So where do I go to find out information about your ministry? I go to your domain name. So if, for example, if you want to find out about ChurchSpring, you go to ChurchSpring.com. So that is what a domain name is. Every church should have its own domain name. I know there's staging sites. There's and we'll get more into that here in a minute. So I don't want to get too far ahead of ourselves about, you know, I can do that very easily. So holding it back, it is, it is so important that your church have its own domain name. So again, for us it's churchspring.com because that domain name is going to go on so many pieces. If you have business cards, if you have door hangers to invite people to church, it should have your domain name on there. So people can go to find out more about your ministry.
Isabelle Faletti (00:07:45):
Well, you kind of stole my next question. Why do you want a domain name? So that was a good answer. Anything else you want to add to kind of the reason why, I mean, bef before you answer, I will say it is one of the reasons is that it's so easy for visitors to remember your name. So instead of remembering again, we'll get into kind of what a staging site is. So we've mentioned that, so stay tuned, we'll explain more what that is, but it's easy for people to remember. So you can verbally say, Oh, go check out our church website@firstbaptistchurch.com, easier for people to remember. They don't have to type in a lot of characters and numbers and all kinds of crazy stuff. Because that's, that's the world that we live in. So that's the format you would want to follow. Anything you'd want to add to that run?
Rohn Gibson (00:08:34):
Yeah. So I just want to say so it's so great. There's so many churches that we talk to that, you know, they look at, well, Facebook can be my church website and I don't need a domain name. I can just use, you know, whatever service provider, their have their sub domain. And it's great to see, we've got some great people on here that agree with, they need to own their domain name. So thanks Benjamin for the comment brother. We are yeah, definitely. You gotta own your own domain name and you want to own it. Right? So again, I'm not going to get ahead of, ahead of ourselves here, but it's so important. Yeah. I don't want to get ahead of ourselves. I'm just going to say, go out, purchase your own domain name. You own it. Then you can put it out there on as many places.
Rohn Gibson (00:09:20):
If you do billboard, if you do digital advertising, if you do whatever that is, to reach people in your community, that is going to be the place, the address many times that gets the most visits. So sometimes we don't, we don't realize that we look at our physical address as well. That's the place that's going to get the most visits. Well, in reality, your digital address may actually be the place that gets the most visits. I, I attend and I'm part of a small local church here in my community. And most services, especially with obviously things going on here currently, but even outside of that, as people go to our website and listen to sermons and watch it throughout the week, we actually get more visitors throughout the week, our website, because our website's available 24 hours a day, seven days a week versus our local gathering place that may be, you know, depending on how you do things at your church. It's, you know, there's just a few services throughout the week and fellowship times and things like that. So so important on your own domain name.
Isabelle Faletti (00:10:18):
Yeah. And something that I just thought of, because I was responding to a ticket this morning, actually someone asked how can they help their search results? And this is one of the reasons why you want a domain name for your church. Is that when someone searches for you or searches for a churches near them in Google or Yelp or whatever search engine you want your website to come up that'll be another topic for another episode, but that was a good example here.
Rohn Gibson (00:10:50):
Here's a great thing from Benjamin. And if you have a ChurchSpring website, you want people to see it. So thank you for that, man. It's a, our team works very hard, Isabelle the rest of our group. Man, we work very hard. So thank you for that. I can't tell you how many pastors I've talked to though that they don't want to tell people about their church website because it's just outdated. Or it doesn't really represent their local ministry very well. So I really appreciate that Benjamin man, so cool to engage in this way. I'm honestly just tickled, like having worked on this thing for years and years and years, man, I just, I really appreciate you all. So thank you for that.
Isabelle Faletti (00:11:31):
Yep. Okay. So we've mentioned already a staging site or a subdomain. What are we talking about here, Rohn?
Rohn Gibson (00:11:41):
Yes. So when you create your ChurchSpring website specifically and different providers do this differently, but with ChurchSpring, when you create your seven day free trial and you get going, we actually create what's called a staging site for you. So that would be like your church dot church, spring.org. So that's a place where you can go and after your sites, you know, you've, you've again created your seven day free trial. We've already loaded your site with some of the template content, but where you can go in, tweak it and change it and make it, make it your own before you officially go live at your own domain name. Right? So again, we'll use the example of church, bring.com. Let's say that you have a current website, you go and you create your seven day free trial with ChurchSpring. We auto assign you initially a subdomain that then you click on you log into you make that website you're own, you upload sermons, you add events, you go into your leadership pages and tweak those, add photos of your church leadership as well as information about them.
Rohn Gibson (00:12:43):
And then once you're ready to go. So that's your staging site, right? It's not live. You can get to it. The people that you want to get to it can get to it and change it. However, it's not live to the general masses via your once. You're ready to go. Then you go in and you update your domain name and point it to the ChurchSpring servers, which then makes your ChurchSpring site live at your domain. So the staging site it's such an important piece. However, I want to be clear your staging site and that subdomain. So your church, that ChurchSpring.org, that is not your domain name. That is not, that is not your domain name. We don't want you to use it that way because we want you to own and have your own digital address@yourchurch.com. So, but that's what a staging site is super helpful. It gives you as much time as you need to tweak it, change it before then you actually go live at your own domain name.
Isabelle Faletti (00:13:43):
Yep. That was a very good answer. I love that Rohn. Yeah. and just so everybody who's listening just so you know, I will be going through the step by step process of how you can update your ChurchSpring subdomain name. So in probably about 10 or 15 minutes here, I'll be walking through that process. If you do have any questions about that, you'll be able to comment and we'll help you out there. Okay. So what makes a good church website domain? There's a lot of different domains that you will see out there. I don't. Yeah. So Ron, help us out. What should people be looking for when they're looking to purchase their domain?
Rohn Gibson (00:14:27):
Yeah, absolutely. So the first thing is short. We may or may not have a hall of fame, Slack channel with some of the longest domain names you can imagine. On our secrets, I know, I know you're getting the inside scoop on church technology company. So we've got to do some things like, you know, keep it, keep it light and fun, but anyway, really keep it short and as short as you can get it the better. Don't go too crazy because you know, and start chopping letters off that really need to make sense. So then every time you tell people your domain, you have to spell it out to them. So, so keep it short. It'd be reasonable avoid numbers and special characters. And the reason I say that learn from my experience. I bought a domain name once and every time I told somebody about it, I had to spell it.
Rohn Gibson (00:15:20):
I'll just give you the example. It was rfiv. Okay. Well, people are like, well, what does that mean? Is it our, and the number five? Is it our FIV? He, and I'm like, Oh no, it's actually none of the other things. This was, this was during the cool days where you like dropped the E at the end, rfiv.com like that. That's what you need to go to. And it was so annoying to have to tell people that, but Hey, it's a four letter domain. Fail. That's not a, that's not a good domain name. So give it short, keep it sweet, avoid special characters, avoid numbers. And if possible, go with a.com. Now I know there's a lot of different opinions on this, but the reality is when most people think about a website, they think of a.com domain. Now there are not church domains. I would recommend you get the.church or a.church domain, but I would forward that to your main.com domain, if possible, again, I know there's a lot of opinions on this. I'm not going to act like that's some hard, fast rule that if you don't have a.com, your website's awful. That's not true. However, that would be our recommendation just based on main line user activity.
Isabelle Faletti (00:16:31):
Right? Right. And if a church has.church for their domain, and if that their.com version is still available, then someone else can buy the.com version. And then that's confusing for your visitors or for your members who are trying to come to your church website. But they're just typing in.com because that's more the frequently used format for the D for domain names. So like Rohn said, you, you can purchase multiple domain names and, and have them all forward or point to your one website. So yeah. Well, we'll talk about kind of, what does that even look like to buy a domain name cause that that can make confusing, but you don't just have to have one, basically you can purchase more domain names for your
Rohn Gibson (00:17:25):
Yes. Yeah. You can make the, the main domain. So that would be like your.com. So let's say ChurchSpring.com and then, I mean, we do this too, so you're gonna have ChurchSpring dot net, ChurchSpring dot whatever.church, and then forward those to your main home base. So it's kind of like having a post office box. So you have your main physical address, which would be like your home or your ministry, but then you have a post office box and you can actually have them route the post office box to then just show up just for the mail to your physical address. So that's what some of these other domains would be that then you forward, it's like a kind of a post office box that then just forwards to your main address.
Isabelle Faletti (00:18:03):
Yeah. Yeah. And we had a question here. What about.org?
Rohn Gibson (00:18:09):
Yeah. So I would recommend you get your.org, but I would make, again, your main domain name, a .com just because that's what people goes to again, this is very much preference. There's a lot of people out there that will say, Oh, this is a hard, fast rule. I don't believe that. Ultimately whatever you build your brand around and I say that loosely but whatever you make is the consistent thing that you share. That's what people are going to start going to, but people are just naturally, especially people that don't know about your church, you know, if they hear, Oh yeah, go to, you know faith, central, whatever dot. And they're just going to assume it's a.com. Right? So it's just the easiest thing to remember, but I would encourage you to definitely get, let's say you purchase your.com, then go ahead and also purchase the.org and forward that to your.com.
Rohn Gibson (00:18:57):
But again, it is a little bit of preference here, but I would, I would recommend you buy all the extensions, right. Well, you don't want to have happen is you only buy the.com somebody else goes and buys the.org or the.net. And then somebody thinks, Oh, they said.org. And then it takes them to completely different church in a different state or there's other nightmares. And there's other nightmares that can happen with that too. So yeah, so absolutely. Keisha definitely get, as many of those extension has makes sense for you and then forward them to your main domain, which again, we recommend as the.com.
Isabelle Faletti (00:19:34):
Yeah. That's a good question. Thanks for asking that. All right, Ron. So we get this question a lot on the support team, we have a live chat on our webinar, a live chat on our website, and we get this question, does ChurchSpring manage your domain? So let's unpack that to kind of solve the mystery of what does it mean to manage a domain even?
Rohn Gibson (00:19:57):
Yes. Yeah. So this is good. With, with ChurchSpring, we believe that your church should own its domain name. So we have people ask us all the time, do I buy my domain name with you? We don't. So basically anybody that provides our types of services, if they provide their domain names, they're technically a reseller. So they're not actually the one that has the direct relationship with the entity. That actually is the main entity that distributes domain names. So they're actually a reseller. What that does, if you resell, it creates a ton of headaches for the ministry. If you ever choose to go to a different service or make changes or things like that, we deal with those nightmares all day long of, Oh, well, I thought I actually bought it from this person, but they're pointing me to sometimes there's like three layers to actually get to the person who actually owns the domain and controls the domain.
Rohn Gibson (00:20:53):
So what we do while we could get into that and we could actually generate additional revenue from it, we know that in the longterm, it's going to create a headache for you. Right. So we just don't do it. So what we recommend and we'll talk about the different providers that we recommend that you check out. But we recommend you go through one of those providers, you purchase your domain and then when it's time for you to point that domain to us, we will actually do it for you, or we'll give you the instructions on how to do that. But one of the things when it comes to domain names is sorry. I think I may have just gotten ahead of ourselves a little bit apologize, but there's a difference between domain hosting, which really is your domain name servers and your website hosting.
Rohn Gibson (00:21:35):
Yep. So your domain hosting with your domain name servers, that's going to be without getting beyond crazy technical and nerdy here. And by the way, we look at nerdy as a term of affection, a church, not a derogatory German anyway. So if you hear us use that, that's our, that's our warning. But your domain name servers, those are typically because they can't be elsewhere, but typically, and what we would recommend is that you use those through your, the company that you register your domain name through. So basically the company that you purchase, your domain name through, and then there's website hosting. So website hosting is where your actual physical website files are. That actually, when somebody goes to ChurchSpring.com, it goes basically the route would be, it goes to your domain name provider, which manages what's called your domain name servers, which then tells what's kinda like the post office box right there, which then tells the traffic, okay.
Rohn Gibson (00:22:32):
Yes, you're here, but you actually want to go here, which then pointed to the server where your website is hosted. So that's the difference between your domain host, which hosts your domain name servers and your actually website hosting that actually hosts the physical files for your church website. I know we covered a lot there and that can be a little confusing, but the point is, is that there's multiple. When you talk about hosting or, you know, when you start getting a domain names and hosting, it can be a little complicated. So ultimately you want to purchase your domain name through a domain name provider. They are going to host your domain name, which technically is talking about domain name servers, DNS. You'll hear that term, domain name servers. And then you'll update that to point to your actual website, host, which again, we'll do that. Or you can do that depending on your technical experience and your level of feeling comfortable with giving us permission to go in and manage it. And we know we deal with all kinds of types of partners. We have people that absolutely not. We're not giving you access. Hey, that's great. Here's step by step exactly how to do it. And then there's people are like, absolutely. I don't even know what this is. Please just do it for me. And we are more than happy to do that for you as well. Free of charge. Yeah.
Isabelle Faletti (00:23:46):
Free of charge. Yep. Okay. So where can you purchase a domain? Because if you knew Google, if, well, if you know the right words, even Google, then you will get a lot of different ads, a lot of results. And that can be really overwhelming. And then if you're like me you spend 60 minutes just researching and you get sucked into the black hole of all these options. So where would you recommend just starting out if a church does not have their domain name, what is just one place that they can go purchase the domain name?
Rohn Gibson (00:24:15):
Yes. Yes. So real quick, Keisha, we see your question and we're going to circle back around to that. So just to know, we're going to come back to that, so yep. We recommend namecheap.com. And I think we've even got a little banner for it. There you go. Go check out namecheap.com. You can, they, their domain names start out at under $9 a year for that. So I recommend that you do that. Namecheap.Com again. That's where we'd recommend you go. You can also then manage the domain name of there as well to point them, as far as updating your IP addresses for your domain name servers, to point those to the church, bring servers. Keisha, just cause it's coming up in context ChurchSpring does host your website. So ChurchSpring, not only as a website software provider, we actually bundle the software with hosting.
Rohn Gibson (00:25:07):
So you don't have to go out and find an extra basically an extra provider. Whereas if you were to use like a WordPress depending on how you want with word press or some of these other providers, you would actually, you would use their software, but then you'd have to go out and find another hosting provider to actually host that software and all the content for your church website. So with ChurchSpring, that's just all bundled into one thing of your your church website software that actually manages your church website. And then the hosting is just included in that subscription.
Isabelle Faletti (00:25:40):
Yeah. Yeah. And Benjamin, I see that you have a question here. We bought our domain from Google, but we have issues with the security certificate when pointed to ChurchSpring. Is that an issue from ChurchSpring or Google? That's a really good question. So first off, send us a ticket in your ChurchSpring website or you can just shoot us an email. However you're able to easily contact us so that we can help take a look at your DNS records. Chert spring does give a free SSL certificate to any domain names that are pointing to your ChurchSpring website. So when you do experience issues with a security certificate, that is a reflection that your DNS records are not set up correctly. So Benjamin sounds like you have kind of a little bit of knowledge, but that probably means that your C name record is not set up correctly. So T go into your, your Google domain, look at your DNS records, free to take a screenshot, send it on to us and we will get that set up for you.
Rohn Gibson (00:26:48):
Yup. Yup. Cool.
Isabelle Faletti (00:26:50):
Okay. So namecheap.com. Yep. That's where we can go to purchase a domain.
Rohn Gibson (00:26:56):
Yeah. So namecheap.com again, start there. I think that's one of the cheapest, if you know of a cheap that has good quality, feel free to share in the comments here, but that's the one that we recommend. And then again, you'll manage your domain name there and then as well, I cannot tell you how many times we talked to churches where somebody outside of the ministry purchased the domain name and they don't even know how to log in many times they don't even know where or who they registered that domain name through. I'm sure many of you can probably relate to that. But that is such a common thing. So I wouldn't encourage you have somebody at your church. If, even if let's say it's a volunteer who purchased it, make sure you get the login information. So if that volunteer to leave or whatever, that you can still log in and control your domain, cause otherwise they technically control your website. Right. So just keep that in mind, nowhere it's been purchased from and know how to log in. So you can go in and control your domain name.
Isabelle Faletti (00:28:00):
Yeah. Yeah. And Rohn, Kevin here has a really good question. I'll put it up on the screen here. We have our domain name through national domains costing us $224 per year. Can we move this to namecheap.com?
Rohn Gibson (00:28:13):
Oh man. Kevin, I feel free brother. So domain names, there are so many scams out there and domain names. I don't know if you guys have experienced it, but you'll purchase a domain name and then you'll start getting mail. You'll start getting mail from people saying, Oh, we can upgrade this or do this. And they charge you outlandish -it's I mean, honestly it should be a crime outlandish fees. So you absolutely should not be paying $224 a year for your domain name. Now, if there are additional services attached to that. So sometimes there are additional services attached to it, like email hosting or things like that. That could be a factor in that. But literally, if you are talking about your domain name, you could be saving a ton of money. And basically looking at between nine to, I mean, under $20 a year.
Rohn Gibson (00:29:04):
So less than 10% of what you're currently paying to have your own domain name. Again, we offer free SSLs. Many times domain name providers will upsell you certain things through the checkout process and you know, your mind not even be aware of it, they're just not super clear. But even with that, even with an SSL, we provide that for free to you. So I would recommend go to Namecheap. You can actually transfer your domain. They'll walk you through that. They have great support over there. They'll walk you through transferring your domain to them. And then if they ask you, Hey, do you want an SSL? Do you want any of that stuff? No, we've got all that care of our provider provides that for free. We just need the domain name through you and they can help you with that. So, great question, Kevin.
Isabelle Faletti (00:29:47):
Yeah. Yeah. I love that question. And Tanya, I just responded in the comments to your question about if you are a current chert spring customer, how do you actually point your domain name to your website? I will go through that process actually after our Q and a time here. I also in the comments I gave you the link there. So you can click on that link and kind of get a get ahead of our tutorial here, but hopefully that can help you out. But yeah, so as we had mentioned, we will update your domain name to point to your website for free. We just need your login information to your domain provider. So Kevin, I think it was, yeah, whether that is national domains or Namecheap or Google or kind of whatever your, your provider is. We just need that login info and then we'll update it for you for free.
Isabelle Faletti (00:30:37):
Or you can also do it yourself if you're comfortable with that. Or if you don't quite want to get out, give out your login information. Totally fine. We provide a tutorial that we take you step by step of the process of updating it yourself. So again, I'll walk you through that process here in a couple of minutes. Ron, can we talk about once you purchase purchase a domain, do you own it forever? So once you purchase your domain with namecheap.com you're on that annual or maybe sometimes five-year what happens after that subscription period?
Rohn Gibson (00:31:14):
Yeah. So the first thing with the domain is to understand you never own it. You're actually leasing. So you can't go and purchase a domain name and own it for all of eternity without paying any more for it. It doesn't work that way. So you're actually leasing a domain name on different leasing periods. Just like if you were to lease anything, an apartment, an office, church space, whatever that might be you're leasing it. So what I would recommend is that a couple of things, number one you're going to the minimum is going to be a year. And any reputable domain name provider, it's going to be a year. So you have a couple of options. I actually recommend for people to when they get their domain name to go ahead and pay for it for multiple years, unless there's some extenuating circumstance financially or otherwise go ahead and actually purchase it for years.
Rohn Gibson (00:32:10):
One of the reasons for that is from a search engine optimization perspective. People don't realize that there are many, many ranking factors in Google. One of them used to be now it's, it's still very undefined as is it now or not? They would actually go and look and see when your domain would expire to really see is this a legitimate website? And they would then give you some extra scoring factors based on that. So I'm not going to say that is the case now, because it's way more than it used to be. But the point there being, if you can go ahead and register it for two or three years out and financially you're in a place to do that, I would encourage you to do it. The second thing is especially with like Namecheap or any of these other mainline providers just set it to auto renew, then you don't have to think about it.
Rohn Gibson (00:32:55):
You're never going to lose it. The last thing you want to have happen is for you to go out and promote it. It's in your bulletins. If you do those it's on door hangers, it's on business cards, it's on all these different resources, maybe above the door, you know, at your church or on your sign. The last thing you want to have happen is for that domain to expire and somebody else to come and pick it up and basically hold it hostage, by the way, there's bad people out there that do stuff like that. Like they make a ton of money off of holding domains captive. It just, I mean, it's, it's sad. But just make sure go and register it for multiple years, as well as set it to auto renew and you'll be squared away there. So number one, your leasing costs again, Kevin just gave us a great thing there. Let me see where to go.
Isabelle Faletti (00:33:44):
And he said that he hasn't actually bought that domain. So whew, glad to hear that, Kevin. Well, we're happy to save some money.
Rohn Gibson (00:33:53):
There we go. So, awesome. Good job, Kevin. We're glad you're here. See there's value right now and we're saving you money. This is awesome. So awesome. So so yeah, let me go back here. So costs definitely not a 220 whatever dollars I'm less than $20 a year, for sure. In many of them, they get you in. So they'll start. So like even named chief, I believe it's like $8 and 88 cents to get started and then there's taxes and all that stuff, but you're going to be paying less than $20 a year for your domain. So do not pay anything more than that and don't buy any of the extra things that we provide to you for free, like a security certificate security certificates can be very expensive, cause there's all kinds of levels of encryption and things like that when it comes to security certificates. So you don't even have to worry about that. Always opt out because we've got you covered on that space.
Isabelle Faletti (00:34:47):
Yeah. And if you are, again, if you're a ChurchSpring customer and you are going through the process for the first time I bind your domain name and you aren't sure if you should buy a certain, add-ons just send us a ticket in your website and we will happily answer any questions I love when we get those questions from customers. Because then typically the answer is no, because again, we do offer the SSL certificate. We have a secure server. We, it is secure, encrypted, all that fun stuff. But yeah, reach out there's, that's why we're here for you. We want to serve you. We want to help you save money and use your website. Well that reminded me Rohn. So when you do purchase your domain, you are on your annual renewal, two things that you need to be aware of when you do set up email, some providers will have you verify the email on record.
Isabelle Faletti (00:35:43):
And if you do not verify that email within a certain number of days, that is dependent on that provider, your domain name will no longer work. So yes, you will have purchased that domain, but since you didn't verify that email, they will actually stop for lack of better words that domain from pointing to your website. So that is something that I see. Well, it's something that I learned working in with ChurchSpring and with customers. So when you get that email verify that email and that will save you some time, some stress in the long run. And then the other thing that I thought of when you were talking, Rohn was updating your billing information. So if you would have your domain on an auto renewal, that is great. That is step one. And making sure that you don't have to think about it a lot. However, if you get a new church card or if someone new is managing this, your you may have a failed payment for the auto renewal. So once you get a, again, once you get a new card, if whatever's happening with that, always make sure that your domain provider is kind of on your short list of resources to update with that billing information. And if you do that, you'll be smooth when once that auto renewal comes around.
Rohn Gibson (00:37:04):
Perfect. Yeah. And there there's multiple contracts. There's multiple contacts when you registered domain name. So make sure that if a volunteer in your church, if they are the ones that get that, that they do make one of the contacts like an administrative contact. And I forget all the different contacts there's multiple, depending on your provider, but make sure that it's actually somebody that's on staff at your church is one of those contacts. So if something does happen like a billing issue, then they can follow up there.
Isabelle Faletti (00:37:32):
Yeah. And sometimes it's best just to have one of your general email addresses for the contact info. So like admin@yourchurchname.com. So then if whoever's managing that, if that changes hands you'll typically always have your admin email or your contact desk, contactus@churchspring.com or something. So yeah, for that, for all of you who are listening, Rohn, and I can talk a long time,
Rohn Gibson (00:38:02):
We can just talk a long time, let alone about it. So anyway was a quick transition cause I know you're gonna, you're gonna show us some stuff. Yeah. And actually I want to talk about a quick action item, but man, these are so encouraging. Thank you all for joining us today. Thank you for your encouragement. You all know this in ministry many times. You're just, it's, it's a challenge. It's, it's, you're persevering, you're, you're being faithful to what God's called you to and you don't get, you know, some of the blessings of whether it's something, someone coming to know Christ or that may be, and man, it can just be really well we're human. It can be discouraging. Yeah. So I just want to really just thank you all for showing up today, showing up in your ministries during just these very difficult times.
Rohn Gibson (00:38:50):
So thank you all for what you do. And we just truly feel blessed to be able to be walking alongside you in your ministry. And we truly do count it a true privilege. So I thank you all for what you do. So an action item, every episode, we will have an action item of what is the next step that you can take based on what we've just discussed. So the action that we want you to take is that we want you to go, if you do not currently have a high quality domain name. So one that fits the factors that we've just defined go out and purchase one. Okay. So you don't look at Facebook, that's not your website, that's not your, your digital address, a subdomain. If you're a customer of ChurchSpring and you're using the staging site, that is not meant to be your main digital address of your domain name.
Rohn Gibson (00:39:36):
So go and purchase a high quality domain name. And again, we recommend Namecheap.com, but you know, whatever, there's a lot of great providers out there, but that's one in particular that we would recommend you go check out. Secondly, based on one of the comments that was mentioned here was if you haven't purchased the other extensions of your domain, go and see if they're available and purchase those too, right? Like for example, if you just own the.com version, but you don't own the .org .net, maybe .church I wouldn't probably go too crazy beyond that. Right. But if you don't own those and they're available, I would encourage you to purchase them and then point them to your main domain, which again, we recommend,
Isabelle Faletti (00:40:18):
Yeah, we have a good question from Benjamin that I do want us to quickly address he's asks sort of off topic maybe, but kind of not. So good question, Benjamin, "What are your thoughts, advice on domain emails versus something using something like Gmail or Yahoo?" That's a packed question.
Rohn Gibson (00:40:37):
It is. It is. And it's a really, it's a really good question. Let's go ahead and just dive into it. So just so everybody knows, we in general, want to try to keep these to 30 minutes we're way more focused on you and adding value to you and answering your questions. Then we are some artificial timeline cause ultimately that's what we're in this for. We want to serve you. So let's go and dig into this. So number one. Okay.
Isabelle Faletti (00:41:02):
Real quick to add on that this video will be available for a rewatch. So if you do have to hop, hop off that's okay. You can go to our website, church, spring.com and you will be able to watch the rewatch and you can hop in exactly on 40 minutes or wherever you left off. So just FYI.
Rohn Gibson (00:41:20):
Perfect. Perfect. So, one thing to understand is that there is email hosting. So we've talked about domain name hosting. We've talked about website hosting. Well, it's a similar thing with email there's email providers out. There are many types of email providers out there. A, we absolutely recommend that you get email at your domain. It's not a requirement. It is a little bit of a nice to have thing. But it just continues to reinforce your digital address really. So I would recommend that you do that. There's a lot of great providers out there, so you can go out and utilize a place like Google apps. That's actually what we use the ChurchSpring. So we use Google apps as a provider. Google apps actually has what's called Google for nonprofits where you can actually go and sign up for that.
Rohn Gibson (00:42:17):
There's a little application and if you meet the requirements, they will actually give you their services for free. So you're basically getting a powerhouse, digital communications platform, email Google docs Google drive, all of those things for free. But there's also ones where many times you can actually just purchase email services through wherever you purchase your domain name. So if you don't really care about all the bells and whistles, depending on your specific organization you know, you can just get email at your domain through the place that you purchase your domain. I know Namecheap does that most domain name providers do that as well. So I hope that answers your question, Benjamin. Let me just make sure here. Yeah, so I would say it's ideal. It's not like you're not doing something awful if you don't, a lot of churches just used regular gmail.com. But it's definitely a good thing to have it at your domain name, if you can.
Isabelle Faletti (00:43:18):
Yeah. And Rohn, I think you mentioned this, but I wanna clarify ChurchSpring, we do not offer email hosting email management, email provider. So as you mentioned, Rohn that can come through your domain provider or Google. So ChurchSpring, we do not, we did not offer that service.
Rohn Gibson (00:43:39):
The reason we don't just, just to tell you, like, did we just not because we just are trying to be difficult. Actually the exact opposite we could easily offer email hosting, but it would be inferior to a lot of what many, many times is free solutions out there. Right? So we do as, unless we can do something better, we just say, we're just going to send you to the place where you can get it. You can get the best thing at the best rate. So that's what we don't do. And there's many reasons. That's one of the primary reasons we don't do email hosting is when you can go out to Google Google for nonprofits or even your own domain registrar, and they give you a great platform to use for email. And we can't do that. Why we don't want to offer it because we would recommend you go use one of these other providers, cause you're going to be way happier.
Rohn Gibson (00:44:28):
And it's going to be a way better solution for your needs and communication. Obviously how many difficulties in ministry and personal relationships it's like, Oh, it's communication comes down to communication. So your website is a component of that. And your email is definitely a component of that. And we want you to have a great provider and that's what we strive to be on the website side. And we will recommend you to so Google, if I was you, it's what we use. So I'm practicing what I preach here. We use Google apps. It's an incredible tool. And if, if it's a right fit for your ministry, that's what I would recommend you check out or go through your domain name provider.
Isabelle Faletti (00:45:05):
And we will in, in our show notes, we will link to Google for nonprofits. How you can learn more about that. Otherwise you can literally Google, Google for nonprofits and that'll pop up. So be looking for those resources. Okay. These are really good questions. I'm I just love seeing all these questions come period. Do we have any other questions from our live attendees here before I kind of shift?
Rohn Gibson (00:45:29):
Yeah, I'll look back through some of these, but let's go ahead. We'll do some more Q&A here at the end. Let's go ahead and jump into some How Tos...
Isabelle Faletti (00:45:35):
Yep. That sounds good. So I'm going to share my screen here. Thank you. Perfect. And I will log in show our current customers. So if you're not yet a customer, this is kind of a sneak peek behind the scenes. What a ChurchSpring website really is like how easy it is to use. I promise this is true. And I want to show you how you can update your staging site name. So in ChurchSpring, we call that a sub domain name. So you, you will probably hear me use both of those terms, but when I say sub domain name, that is the same thing as a staging site, I will show you how to update that really easy. And then I also want to walk through, what does it look like to update your domain name and the backend of your ChurchSpring website and how you can go through the correct steps to update your domain name, to point to your ChurchSpring website, whether you want to submit a request to our support team, or if you want to do it yourself, we have options for both. So that is what I will cover here. If you guys have any questions, put it in the comments below Ron, he'll be keeping an eye on that. And Ron, you can just interrupt me and let me know. So I make my screen a bit larger there.
Isabelle Faletti (00:47:01):
All right. So I am showing my, my website here is on the flourish plan. So the flourish plan does, that's kind of our top level. The settings is on a different panel here to the left side. So if you're a current customer and you are on the grow or the sprout plan, your settings will be on the top, right? But your settings is the, it's the same thing on the back. So don't be alarmed. If when you log into your website, it's a different layout. So to change your sub domain name, you will click settings and I am experiencing experiencing some slow wifi. So, and I'm live streaming. So as you view my screen, you may see that it's a bit slow. And that is because my computer is trying to do a lot of things at one time. So thank you for having some grace and patience for everybody listening to me here.
Isabelle Faletti (00:47:58):
All right. So when you go to your settings, you will see a couple different tabs and it's automatically set to you to go to your dashboard. We have a header here called website domain information. This is where you will update all of the information for your sub domain name and your custom domain. So to update your staging website name or your sub domain, it's super simple. You will update or click into this text box and make any updates that you want. So when you first get your ChurchSpring website, we do give you an automatically created sub domain name. It is a bunch of letters and numbers and kind of difficult to remember. I would recommend when you first get your website, change your sub domain name here so that it is super easy for you to remember and for you to type him. So if you want to change your sub domain name, I will change this to Isabeldemosite2020.
Isabelle Faletti (00:48:57):
And you can also click the check ability, check availability button to make sure that the sub domain name is available and that there's not someone else internally using that sub domain name. And if it is available, it'll check green. If it's not our system, our system will let you know. So once you've decided on what you want your sub domain to be, you can simply scroll down and click save information when you do change your subdomain. And when you click anywhere else, you will notice. And I'll do that right here in real life that your website will actually log you out. And it'll go back to church from.com. That's okay. Do not panic. That is because you just changed your website name. So instead of it being what it was, the default subdomain, you updated it. So you simply have to put in your new subdomain name.
Isabelle Faletti (00:49:55):
So I'll do that right here, org. And then it'll bring up your website. You will also receive an email again, this is for customers. You will receive an email with your new subdomain link. So if you typed in your new sub domain name and you don't really remember what you actually did, that's okay, go check your email. If you don't see anything right away, then give it a couple of seconds and you'll be able to update, or you'll, you'll be able to view your new subdomain URL. So I'll log back in here. And then I want to show you how you can update your custom domain name. So as we talked about already, there are really two parts of updating your domain name. Obviously you, you need to purchase your domain name and then you will need to direct your domain name to your ChurchSpring website.
Isabelle Faletti (00:50:53):
So step one is to go into your website, again, click on settings. And then on this dashboard, scroll down to where it says custom domain. This is where you will simply type in your domain name that you have. So let's just say my domain name is Isabeldemo.com. When you type in your domain name and your website, just put exactly the format that I have. Don't put www before it don't put an HTTPS have this exact formula. This is what is needed for your DNS records to find your website here with ChurchSpring. So once you type that in, you'll scroll down, click save information, and let's see if my wifi, there we go. It will save. And then that's all that you need, you need to do on your church, spring website. So then the step two would be for you to decide.
Isabelle Faletti (00:51:53):
Do you want to update your DNS records and your domain provider to point to your church string website? Or do you want to submit a request for our team over at ChurchSpring to do it for you? There is no right or wrong answer, whatever you're comfortable with. We are happy to help answer any questions and happy to accommodate you. So we have a really awesome support article set up of how to update your custom domain. If you, you can find this article, you can just go to our support library and that's at ChurchSpring.com/help. And you'll see, I believe we have frequently asked questions and we have how to update your custom domain and our top section there. So you will be able to find this link and then I'll also include it in the show notes. In this article, we have a, I mean, we have a really advanced step by step option of how you can update your custom domain.
Isabelle Faletti (00:52:51):
So you'll go to option two here, update your custom domain yourself. We talk about the records that you will need to update. So you'll need to update one scene name, record, and two A records. Again, as you can see a lot of details there, I won't go into all those specifics. However, if you do want to, if you want your us ChurchSpring to update it for you, we're happy to do that. All you have to do is go to option one and this support article, click the, fill out the secure form and send us your request is what we need is we need your email, first name, your church name, and then your custom domain, so that we can know which domain you want us to update to point to ChurchSpring website and your registrar name and your log in information. So your registrar name, this is what we were talking about before actually where you purchased your domain name.
Isabelle Faletti (00:53:50):
So that could be Google. That could be Namecheap wherever you're logging in and you see your domain name and then we also need your login, username and your password for your provider. So what I recommend is before you submit your request to our team here, simply go to your domain provider. So let's say it's, Namecheap you go to namecheap.com log in, make sure that the username, the password that you think is correct actually is correct. Make sure that you do not have any two step verification setup. So then when you do submit your request to us, we can easily log in and, and we won't have to go back and forth on, on getting the login information. The one other thing that I wanted to review here is what if you don't know what your domain or who is your domain name provider? So let's say you have your domain name, it's First Baptist of Colorado.com, but you don't actually know where do you log in?
Isabelle Faletti (00:54:53):
How do you get access to this? And we can probably talk for 30 minutes on that. I'm sure. However, the first step that I recommend is to go to who is that. And that is also in our support article that we have, who is.com and you can actually type in your domain name. So let's just do ChurchSpring.com and this will pull up your domain provider. So a technical name for that is registrar. So when you see your registrar or domain provider, that is the same thing. So registrar right here is GoDaddy. So that would be your first hint of alright, GoDaddy or Namecheap or a Google. They have my, they have access to my website. I need to try to log in to my provider. And you can kind of start that process of getting your information. So I know that was a lot of information that I just gave. Do we have any questions from customers about updating your staging site of oops, sorry about that. Updating your domain or any other questions from our live attendees?
Rohn Gibson (00:56:13):
Yeah, we actually have a really good question from Tanya. So I'll go ahead and jump on that. And that question is, do I have to update my custom domain every time ChurchSpring updates? So they answer that question is no. So I want to give a little context. I'm I think Tanya, you may be alluding to recently, we actually did a migration. So just because of the massive growth that we've had over the last several months, we've actually migrated from servers. So we went from one server to actually we're now on what's called Amazon web services, which is, I forget the percentage of the total internet that runs, but last I'd heard, it was like 50, some percent of the total internet. So really good hosting provider. So in that instance, because we migrated server servers you had to update your DNS and for many of our customers, we actually did it for them.
Rohn Gibson (00:57:04):
However for moving forward, Lord willing, we don't plan to migrate servers anytime soon just because Amazon web services is just a, such a rock solid environment for us to really continue to serve more ministries in. So when we just do, we're going to be rolling out tons of product updates. I can't even tell you how excited I am about some of the things we're talking about and the impact that it's going to make on your local ministry. But when we push out those updates, you're not going to have to update your domain name provider and Lord willing. We won't have to do that here ever again. Obviously extenuating circumstances may determine otherwise, but we're in a really solid place to really help us continue to serve more ministry. So no, the short answer is no, you don't have to do that.
Rohn Gibson (00:57:54):
And that's great news, isn't it? Cause then you don't have to go through that process is about thank you for, for breaking that down for us. That was a mouthful and a ton of very technical information as far as domains and how they operate and how to solve some of these really frequently asked questions. We get 'em every single day. So anyway, let's see if there are any other questions here. I think that's the majority of them -awesome. Very good. Well, that's good because we've been going now for 58 minutes. I'm going to go ahead and take that off. But have you have any other questions, feel free, go ahead. Throw them in the comments. We're happy to answer 'em whatever that is. Great question. How long does it take for ChurchSpring staff to update the DNS Uh for my custom domain?
Rohn Gibson (00:58:46):
So there's two things to consider here. Okay. There's number one. When you submit the form, our team going in and making the changes and then the second piece, which actually can take the longest part is actually DNS updating across the internet. Okay. So I will let Isabel circle back on the first part of that because you can impact that better. But the second part of that question is it can take up to really 48 to 72 hours. Once the changes are made for them to go into effect. Now that's not normal. Many times it is much faster than that. However, we don't want to set your expectation that all it's going to be, you know, like within five hours, because that's totally out of our control. We submit the update and then it's up to all the servers across the internet. And depending on where you're located, some people may see it sooner than other people, literally Mike curly, who's our cofounder. We're like a mile or less from each other. And literally I'm not even kidding. He'll see something before I do after we make a DNS change. So that part, once we've made the change, it could take 40, 48 to 72 hours for that to actually take effect across the internet. Well, why don't you once they've submitted that form, what should their expectations be?
Isabelle Faletti (01:00:04):
Yeah, so typically it does take about one to three days for us to update your domain. It really does take us, I should say business days, one to three business days. So if you submit it on Saturday we are available eight to five central Monday through Friday. So first thing, when we come in on Monday, we will pull up any domain requests from the weekend and we'll get that done for you. If we do experience any login information, when we're trying to log into your account, we will send you an email at the email address that you submitted your request to with the note and in that email, actually that says a little bit about why we're unable to update your, your domain. So typically the, the frequently the issue that I see often is that the log in info is just not correct.
Isabelle Faletti (01:00:59):
So be looking at those notes. Sometimes there's a lot of technical issues that may happen. And so we may recommend talk with your domain provider for next steps as they are the ones who they are managing your domain, and they'll be able to actually get you towards the solution that is needed. So be looking for that email. And then when we do update your domain, we will send you an email letting you know that it's been updated. If you haven't noticed already, when you go to your domain, it's pointed to your ChurchSpring website, like Rohn says, it can take some time for that to update. So I would say, plan ahead, if you're wanting for your website to go live on end of the week on Monday, just send in a domain update request to our team. We will get to that as soon as possible. Hopefully if everything goes well, logging information is correct. Your provider updates, you, you may be able to be live on Tuesday, even, however, if there's any login info issues or if it does take 72 hours to update, then we want to make sure that you can go live on the time that are on the day that, that you really want it to.
Rohn Gibson (01:02:11):
Yeah, no, that's great. And I think the main key thing is and then this does happen pretty frequently and that's why we're stressing it help us help you, right? We genuinely want to help you get it over as quick as we can, because we want you to start getting the benefits of, of your ChurchSpring, a new ChurchSpring website. So do this for us, make sure you actually go and log into your domain name provider with the information that you're providing us to actually see that it works. And again, I'm not trying to insult anyone's intelligence here, but it just happens frequently. So make sure you go, you log in, you verify the username and password that it works. And not only that it works, but then that domain name is actually under that account. So we've also had issues where people have given us username and passwords and we've logged in and that's not even where the domain name and a volunteer actually purchased the domain name under their personal accounts.
Rohn Gibson (01:03:03):
It's not under the account that we've been given. So you know, obviously we're not trying to insult anybody here, but we just want to say, we want to help you. And that really helps us get you to the finish line as quickly as possible. Peter's got a great question here. And it's specifically related to we were able to update their domain name. It sounds like. And then why is it necessary to submit a new ticket to have it permanently to my custom domain? So I would recommend just reach out to us. Let us know more of those details. Once you update a custom domain you don't have to do that again. Now, what we have seen happen is, and you can imagine with as many churches that we work with, we see kind of a lot of everything, but one of the things that we have seen happen is that somebody inadvertently went in and changed some DNS records that that person wasn't aware of maybe related to something else, or maybe they just didn't know what was going on.
Rohn Gibson (01:04:00):
And they just clicked a button that said, park my domain, or revert my DNS. And it automatically goes back and change it. So, Peter, I'm not going to say that that's the issue I'm in that situation, but regardless once we update it, you're going to be good to go. You're not going to have to update it again. So if you're still having issues with that, please reach out to us through a support ticket and our team will be all over that and get that remedied for you once and for all. And with that, make sure that you know, who has access to your domain, if it is an issue of somebody going in there and making changes after the fact, we just have that happen. I'm not gonna say it's like an everyday occurrence, but obviously when you go through the hurdle of getting it updated, you just want to be done with it. And we second that feeling. So just make sure that you are aware of who's getting in there and that they know don't make any changes to our DNS because it's how it needs to be. Okay.
Isabelle Faletti (01:04:56):
And really bottom line, if you have questions about your domain provider or DNS records, send us a ticket, we want to help you. And we have an amazing team on staff. I mean our cofounders, Rohn here, and Mike, they have a lot of knowledge, our support team. We have a lot of knowledge. And so we between all of us, we're going to answer a lot of questions. So if you have questions, you're there, there really, isn't a dumb question. So reach out, we want to help make this process as smooth as possible.
Rohn Gibson (01:05:28):
Absolutely. And the thing I say with that, there absolutely is no dumb question except the one you have that you don't ask, we want to serve you. So please let us help you. You're very welcome, Peter. It's our Peter, it's our pleasure to, to answer your question. If you have any others, please don't hesitate. I don't see any coming in at this moment. Awesome, cool. That I'm going to,
Isabelle Faletti (01:05:48):
Ah, thanks, Benjamin.
Rohn Gibson (01:05:50):
There you go. Love it, Benjamin man. You just, you fill my cup brother. I really appreciate you. Jumping in here, you guys have just been a, yeah, it's actually kind of emotional. I'm not gonna lie now. I'm kind of a softie, so I'm really appreciate you all. Yeah. Alright. So let's go over to prayer requests, if there's any other questions. Definitely don't hesitate to ask. But we're going to jump into some prayer request. I haven't seen any come in yet. We do actually have some that have come in. You'll get emails from us periodically asking for prayer. We truly want to be your partner in ministry and at the end of the day, we're all on the same team trying to reach a loss world with the hope of Jesus Christ. And we absolutely want to pray with you.
Rohn Gibson (01:06:44):
So if you have any prayer requests, please, and then just the next minute or so, go ahead and submit those. And we do have two requests that have come in and I think it's just relevant to everybody. Let's see. It looks like pastor white mentioned pray for discernment and guidance as we navigate to return to our church. So we're absolutely going to pray for that today. Cause I know that's across the board. It looks like Jason Whittaker, I'm asked for peace in our nation. I don't think there's a single person not only in our country, but across the world. That would just a thing that's going on right now. Whether it's related to all the things that are going on right now from COVID to the, the conversation on equality there's just a lot going on right now and praise God, our hope is in him.
Rohn Gibson (01:07:41):
But we absolutely want to pray for our country, want to pray for the leaders of our country and want to pray for every church. Every pastor, every church leader that's represented here as well as across the world, that God would continue to really give us a burden and really break our hearts for the lost and give us a love for the lost cause let's be honest that this is sin. This is the sin curse. And you know, we have a job to do, God has called us to go into all the world. When we talk about, you know, we're committed to the great commission, we are absolutely committed to the great commission yes. Through providing the the software tools and resources, but also through the power of prayer, the gift that God's given us communicate with him directly. So we absolutely want to be praying for you.
Rohn Gibson (01:08:32):
All right. Looks like we've got a couple of questions that have been answered. I don't see any prayer requests unless I'm missing something there, Isabel that has just come in. Okay. Awesome. Well, let's go ahead then and wrap up with prayer, but I just want to pause for a moment. Anything that I'm missing Isabelle or we look good to go. We are good to go. Okay. Let's go ahead and pray, dear God, I thank you for today, Lord, I thank you for your love for us, Lord. I thank you for your calling Lord on our lives and Lord on those who are watching and we'll be watching in the future Lord, we, or just humbled that you and your great love and mercy and patience, Lord that you choose to use us.
Rohn Gibson (01:09:20):
So Lord, I pray that you would continue to give us strength and endurance Lord during these difficult days. What I pray that you would help us to truly be a light for you Lord in our local communities, as well as in around the world, God, I pray that you would again go before us strengthen us or to help us to be filled with your spirit. Lord, help us to be led and help us to be obedient to how you lead us Lord and you're calling in our life. So what I pray that you would be with a prayer request, Lord, I think of Pastor White there, and I know that this is echoed, Lord, to my own heart. And I know in pastors across our world, Lord of navigating the local gatherings Lord. And what does that look like now? And how do we do certain things?
Rohn Gibson (01:10:07):
So Lord, I pray that first and foremost Lord, that you would lead us and that you would guide us and that you would help us to be in tune with you. Lord, I pray that you would give us and fill us Lord with a love for others. That for those that maybe don't feel like it's quite time yet Lord, that you would give us grace or that you would help us to love them, where they are and Lord, to minister to them where they are in order for those that do choose to come back and gather locally God that you would again work. And that Lord that ultimately that you would be honored and you would be glorified because of how you lead us and because of our obedience to you. So I pray that you would help us to be a light during these dark times. So Lord, I pray that you would be with our country or be with our world. Lord, we Lord, we are finite. You are infinite Lord. We know that nothing going on right now is outside of your control. That is not a surprise to you and God. I pray that you would help us to genuinely obey you Lord, based on your word that we are to love you fully, completely Lord and were to love others, not based on their,ueconomic status, not based on the color of their skin,
Rohn Gibson (01:12:17):
Lord, but because it's your command to us and Lord you've modeled that for us. Lord, you first loved us. So Lord, I pray that you would work in our country, work in the hearts of those that don't know you Lord draw them to yourself. Lord help us to be faithful or to each one of us to continue to cast the net Lord and to minister to those that you bring across our path. So again, God, I just thank you for the encouragement today. Lord, that Benjamin and so many others have been. Got it.
Rohn Gibson (01:13:01):
Yeah, just overwhelmed. Just overwhelmed with your goodness. So God, we thank you for your love. We thank you for the calling on our life. Well, we just, we thank you for who you are. So our work in us would work through us to accomplish your will Lord help us to live fully surrendered to you. In Jesus' name. Amen.
Rohn Gibson (01:13:52):
All right. I'll promise. I promise to try to keep the tear count down, but I can't I can't promise that too much cause man, when you get to talk to the creator of the universe, man, it's awesome. Yeah. Okay. So to wrap up here thank you all again for joining us again, just overwhelmed with your kindness, your goodness. We truly counted a privilege. Those aren't, it's not just words. We truly do count it a privilege. All of us at ChurchSpring to minister, to you, to serve with you, to partner with you, to reach your local community and to reach our world with the gospel. So our next show will be next Thursday, 10:00 AM central. I don't know every time I say that line, it makes me think back to my childhood of the old Batman movies, same bat time, same bat channel. So anyway, now you'll be thinking about that. But anyway, so Thursday, 10:00 AM submit your questions. So we will schedule an event prior to the live, feel free to jump on there. We'll send out an email for free, feel free to ask your questions and we will answer as many of those as we can. Yeah. And yeah, we're here to support you. So God bless you all have a wonderful rest of your day and we'll look forward to connecting with you all next week. See you next week. God bless everyone.
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