Does it feel like the label “Christian” is a stumbling block to sharing your faith. Early Christians (before the term even came about) called themselves “Followers of The Way” What do you think? Is “Christian” becoming a word that is upsetting or uplifting?
Images
Heaven??
I used to think that this was going to be what heaven would be like. Thank God for Christian maturity to help me realize that worship doesn’t have to be boring.
Videos
This is a video post
Saw this on stuffChristianslike. Crude at times, but definitely has a point.
Links
Evernote, getting organized?
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
Articles
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.
Links
Free Group Text Messaging from your website
This is a simply amazing plug in for wordpress. If you run your church or youth group website on wordpress this could potentially save you $60 or more a year. As a youth minister I’ve tried various ways of keeping in contact with my students. I’ve gotten myself a facebook, signed up for twitter, log-in to msn/google chat on a regular basis, gotten a phonevite account (see post on phonevite), adn send group e-mails. Yet nothing can communicate with teens like txt can. At first I signed up for 300 txts a month, that was a bad idea. The few services I found charged a nominal amount per month. But then I realized that $5 a month still adds up to $60 for the year. So I was lef t with no idea what to do. How was I going to communicate with all my students on a regular basis easily? Wordpress came to save the day again. I found EasySMS which allowed me to integrate the system into my wordpress site and communicate with all my teens though the wordpress dashboard. It’s a really easy system to set up. Simply install the pgin and activate the system and the widget. Put the widget into your wordpress sidebar or footer and viola! it’s ready to use. You can then sign up and get started. EasySMS lets you put subscribers into groups and send any number of messages for free. Did you catch that last part FREE!!!. Check it out for yourself. Don’t have a wordpress site for your ministry? Check out ShareYourChurch.com or BanyanData.com to get started.
Free Wordpress Plugin SMS EasySMS Group Text Messaging from your website | Mister Nifty.
Articles
More Americans “Pro-Life” Than “Pro-Choice” for First Time
More Americans “Pro-Life” Than “Pro-Choice” for First Time .
Now this is amazing. When our media tells us over and over again how much our culture is turning away from Christian morals and beliefs we see something like this. Granted 51% is not a phenomonally overwhelming number it is still officially over half. While not a resounding majority, it is a shift in thinking. It makes me wonder what is causing this change? It is certainly not church attendance or government influence. So, what do you think is causing this difference? What can we attribute this to.
Articles
Church Marketing Sucks: Churches Should Learn to Shut Up Too
Church Marketing Sucks: Churches Should Learn to Shut Up Too.
I was just reading this article the other day and thought “Huh, this is good stuff”. Of course, then the question arrives of how do you share this information with others without it seeming like you’re pointing out flaws. I’ve been a member and minister at small congregations my whole life and this seems to hit the nail on the head for most of them. We all tend to over explain everything, especially when there are visitors. By explaining we feel as if we’ve helped them to understand something about our church, when in reality we’ve started them down a path of wondering what else we’re not telling them. So, what do you think? Is this common in all churches, or just small ones? And how do we approach the subject with church leadership in a kind and gracious manner? Let me know.
Links
EXAMEN.me (an awesome resource)
I’ve been hearing about the practice of examen for awhile now. I’ve briefly looked into it and thought it looked good, but never really delved deeply into it. Then, an God-send came in the form of a web-app. I know, I can hear it now. Why do you need the internet to worship and study God’s word? Well, I’ll tell you. EXAMEN.me brings the whole concept of “examen” to the masses. It comes in two versions, free and registered. The great thing is that both are free. The only difference is that the registered version allows you to journal and keep your notes saved on the website as well. Personally I would rather journal in a seperate notebook and simply let the site lead me through the process. This past week I used it in my Sunday School class. I printed out a sheet that gave each teen five different passages to choose from and led them through the same process found at EXAMEN.me. The students were not only quiet, but actually spent the entire Sunday School time digging deeper into God’s Word for themselves and were able to share with each other after class what God had pointed out to them. The site puts “examen” into an easy to understand process. I for one endorse this site fully.
Link: http://www.examen.me
