For years I used Google notebook as a way to collect various pieces of info from the net. I would come across random sayings, e-mails, quotes, ideas and other related things that I wanted to save for later. Of course, I’m not too organized and I never knew how long I would save something before I needed it and before I knew it I had thousands of items saved in my notebooks. Everything was great, I had a little button I could click in firefox to auto save selected items into google notebook. Then I get an e-mail from Google informing me that they are discontinuing the Notebook project. I was seriously freaking out until I found Evernote. It was truly a life saver. Not only did it do mostly everything that Google Notebooks did, it also came with desktop clients for my mac and windows box and an app for my blackberry. I use prism to load evernote on my linux machine and, all of this was free. If you know me at all you know that if it’s free then it is for me. Need a way to take care of your note-taking needs? Check out evernote at www.evernote.com
Some Thoughts on Contemplative Youth Ministry
I’m currently in the process of reading a book titled “Contemplative Youth Ministry” by Mike Yaconelli. I figured I’d take a few minutes to share my thoughts. After reading numerous reviews (good, bad, and ugly) on this book I decided to read it for myself. I found the book to be very well written and to be based on a premise that is easily accepted by most people – we live in a fast paced world. In one story shares that a young boy decided to name himslef president of the “Slow Club”. This boy, by making a commitment to take things slowly, was able to see many things that others in this multi-tasking world would normally miss. Although some portions of this book suggest things that I wouldn’t necessarily feel comfortable with (use of holy words, icons to help you focus) the overall message that I received is to simply slow down. Another big message that came through was the need for prayer not only in our ministries, but for our ministries. Not just prayers, but intentional focused prayers for ourselves, our leaders, and our students. Overall I would recommend this book with slight caution to the methods used in the meditation portions. Great book.
