Ministry Business Services

Are you looking for relevant information about ministry? Ministry Business Services has it for you!
Approximately 100 free articles provided simply to help you accomplish your ministry goals while freeing you from distractions.

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Copier Buying Tips

Do you need to replace a copier?
Here’s a great article by Nick B. Nicholaou.

“While at the NACBA National Conference last year I was talking with Rob Leacock, Christ Church Fort Worth’s business administrator. We were talking about his recent decision to replace their copier, and his process was impressive and effective! Especially how much money he saved! Here are the details.

“Starting At The Beginning
Rob wasn’t happy with his copier, so he set out to find the best replacement copier for his team. The challenge was to get objective information, not opinions offered by marketers who want you to buy the systems they offer.

“He started by contacting other church administrators, but found that process to not be very helpful since everyone seemed to love and/ or hate different machines! “I knew there had to be an objective resource out there,” Rob said.

“He found an organization known as BLI (Buyers Laboratory, Inc., www.buyerslab.com) whose website states:

“For over 45 years, Buyers Laboratory Inc. (BLI) has been the leading source for unbiased and reliable intelligence for the imaging industry…. BLI is completely independent in all of our testing processes and subsequent reporting. With BLI, you can count on unbiased data and information. All of our product evaluations are conducted by highly experienced employees in our on-site testing facility where we evaluate and report on hundreds of new copier, printer, fax and multi-function (MFP) products each year.

“There are several BLI reports on each copier, and there are also reports that compare manufacturers against each other. Though they were all helpful, he found the most helpful to be the benchmark tests.

“A problem, though, was that getting access to BLI’s reports was expensive. A one-year license for access to their online database costs $1495, which is prohibitive for most churches. So Rob contacted the copier manufacturers’ distributors and asked them to provide their BLI reports, which they were happy to do at no charge!

Read the full article at: http://www.mbsinc.com/copier-buying-tips

50 Ways to Build Strength

Need practical, actionable strategies to reach people more effectively?
See the popular 50 Ways to Build Strength series provides tips for building strength in areas of ministry that are vital to church growth.

Inventory Form

Preparing an inventory of church contents is clearly one of the best ways to obtain better value from your insurance coverage.

“Do you remember how many folding tables were stored in the closet next to where we have our church suppers?”

“There were a couple of beautiful oriental rugs in the session room. What do you think they were worth?”

“It was a wonderful library. Was there a catalog of books that was not destroyed?”

These questions, as well as perhaps hundreds of others like them, will be raised and somehow answered by some energetic and dedicated member of all congregations whose churches experience serious theft and fire losses – if they had not previously put some of that concern for their church into preparing and maintaining an inventory of church property.

Unfortunately, the most dedicated efforts to reconstruct the numbers, descriptions and values after the loss occurs will fail to find the truth with the claims adjuster, even when he or she totally trusts the church’s effort. Even though the loss adjustment is regarded as fair and equitable, the lesson from the effort to determine what was lost will never be forgotten by those who had to make it.

See the inventory form here.