Church Location Feature

Among many of the great features that the iMinistries church CMS has to offer, a few of them really stand out as powerful tools for a church or ministry to use. One of them is the location feature--a dynamic Google map that marks your locations.

Three of our clients use locations especially well. Check out their websites below, and you might be inspired to use this feature for your church or ministry.

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Iowa Association of Regular Baptist Churches

First on our list is a Baptist organization in Iowa called the Iowa Association of Regular Baptist Churches (IARBC). According to the IARBC website, their mission is:

"The purposes of this Corporation shall be to maintain an association of sovereign, Bible-believing, Christ-honoring Baptist Churches; to promote the spirit of evangelism; to spread the Gospel; to advance the Regular Baptist educational and missionary enterprises at home and abroad; to raise and maintain a testimony to the truth of the Gospel and to the purity of the church, and to raise a standard of Biblical separation from worldliness, modernism and apostasy." 

The IARBC chose to use our location feature to give it's website users a clear and easy to use method of finding churches. In addition to that, they were seeking a simple way to update this list. Because the page is database-driven, there is no special coding or HTML knowledge involved with creating the web page. Updating the location is as simple as updating a few form fields, saving, and letting the CMS do the rest. It's that simple.

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Harvest Bible Fellowship

Let's now take a look at Harvest Bible Fellowship (HBF). Here's a description of HBF from their website.

"Harvest Bible Fellowship is the church planting arm of Harvest Bible Chapel. Passionately pursuing the fulfillment of Jesus Christ's promise to build His church is what we're all about. Founded by Pastor James MacDonald, the Fellowship trains, equips and coaches men to serve as Harvest Bible Chapel Senior Pastors. We oversee the development and launch of new Harvest Bible Chapels and the replant of existing churches into Harvests. We support every Harvest Senior Pastor through ongoing equipping and training throughout the life of their church."

Harvest attendees traveling on vacations or moving to new areas have used this feature to find a church wherever they are. Harvest Bible Fellowship plants churches all of the world. The location map they've created displays that nicely, and allows for visitors to easily visualize the depth and breadth of their global ministry.

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Entrusted Ministries 

Another creative implementation of the location feature can be found on the website for Entrusted Ministries. From the Entrusted website:

To impart to parents a personal, God-honoring vision and biblical plan for family life which acknowledges that they have been entrusted with the nurturing, training, care, protection, discipline and discipleship of their children for the glory of God, while stressing the need for a precious connection and understanding of their child's heart.

The location map for Entrusted shows locations of local churches where studies are held. Displaying a dynamic Google map is more useful to users than making them sift through location lists.