Monday Ministry Tip: Back everything up

April 2, 2012 by · Leave a Comment

Since 1997 I have kept record of almost every Sunday or Wednesday night that I have done in ministry.  I have notebooks on my bookshelf with every lesson plan from 1997-2006 on hand written sheets.  After 2006 I started to do everything digital.  The main reason is so I have a copy of games, song set list, and talk outlines.  Its also been helpful for when old students have come back and asked about scripture about a talk they heard when they were in youth.  Yes that has actually happened a few times!  And the students wanted to know so they could use it for a group or bible study that they were a part of in college.   Being organized like that also keeps me from repeating a series.  It helps when I want to find out what I said a year ago and how I can build on it with a similar topic.

I know backup my macbook to a external drive and also save the outlines on dropbox, so if I ever had a hard drive go bad or if something were to happen, I would always have them.  I also bring another hard drive from home once a month to back up my office hard drive….just in case.  At some point in the near future I plan on going through my old notebooks and scanning them to have digital copies of them.

How do you keep record or back up your work in ministry?

Filed Under: church, God, Monday Ministry Tip, technology, Youth Ministry Ideas · Tagged: ,

Too Connected?

February 28, 2012 by · 1 Comment

I have noticed over the past couple years with myself and other friends in ministry that we are too connected.  And I’m not talking about students as much as I am adults and parents in contacting.  I have noticed that some parents and adults will cause a fuss if you do not answer an email, phone call, or text message within a small time frame.  We live in a instant response society which can take away our private lives at times.  There are many times that I have heard from others that they have been “talked to” for not responding instantly to an email or text.   The parent or adult felt that there question should have been answered right then instead of the next morning.   And talking to my friends in ministry 90% of those questions could have been answered if the parent or adult would have gone to the ministry website, Facebook page, or weekly email.  There are things that can wait till the morning…

From observing different parents and adults, many of them do not set up their own boundaries in their jobs and answer emails and texts all the time while they are having family time.  Many of these responses could have waited instead of interrupting family meals or quality time.  For us in ministry we have to be careful and make sure that our parents and congregation know that yes we may own a smart phone, but there will be times that we can not respond immediately.  We must set healthy boundaries.  If we fail to do so, we will set ourselves up for complaints from not only the people we do not respond to in their time frame, but also our own families.

Filed Under: church, Current Affairs, God, just sayin, Personal Care, Soul Care, technology, Youth Ministry · Tagged: , ,

Live Curriculum: Part 4 Real Life

February 17, 2012 by · Leave a Comment

If you can’t tell…I LOVE LIVE CURRICULUM!   And no Matty did not pay me a dime to say that….But seriously you cannot go wrong with this curriculum.  Take a look back at my posts for this series and you will see how great it can be for your church and your ministry.  And over the next couple years, it will transform your ministry.

For me it was a great kickoff for small groups in both churches that I have used it for.  It was very easy for me to start and hand off to my adult small group leaders.  It took very little training for me to get them going.  At both churches, the students got on board really quick.  And they both loved it.   It went from boring typical curriculum to great real life conversations.  And with the variety we used it also for our Sunday School material as well.

But my favorite part of my LIVE story is that I have seen it change one adult’s life in particular.   Two years ago I was preaching on youth sunday at my former church on “There’s an APP for that” and I pleaded that we needed help in our middle school sunday school class.  As you know, getting someone to teach middle school sunday school is more than a task…its a special calling.   I really wasn’t sure if the pulpit was the way to ask for help on this, but I figured why not.  And after the service was over I had one of my parents who I played softball with tell me that he was interested.  I had already known that this guy had a past and was just getting back into church.  He was also already on my radar for a possible volunteer, but there was no way I wanted to run him off by throwing him into teaching middle schoolers!    So he asked how hard it was…And I told him it wasn’t tough if he had a computer a love for middle schoolers!

The next week he stopped by and I walked him through the calendar of lessons and how to print things out.  And he was sold!  I was still very hesitant, but decided that I would give him a try here…So off he went!  A month later I had several other middle school parents tell me how excited they were that their middle school students were enjoying sunday school and that their students were coming home telling what they had learned.   A few weeks after that my volunteer stopped by my office and thanked me for giving him the opportunity to get back in church and help with the youth group that he had grown up in.  He went on tell me about his divorce and several other things from his past few years.   He explained to me that this opportunity to teach brought him back to God!

Now almost two years later he is a very strong leader in the church and in the youth ministry.   I’m very thankful that LIVE was an instrument into helping my friend find his calling in volunteering but more importantly changing his and the students lives.

Give Matty a call and see how LIVE can change your group!

Filed Under: church, Friends, God, technology, Uncategorized, Youth Ministry, Youth Ministry Ideas · Tagged: , , , ,

Live Curriculum Part 3:

February 16, 2012 by · Leave a Comment

There are so many great benefits to LIVE Curriculum.  As I stated in my previous blogs on LIVE, the possibilities for your group(s) are endless.  So let’s start off simple, if you just purchase the high school plan…That gives you 4 years worth of material.  Now if you add JR High, you have 6 years of planning taken care of for your students for whatever venue you decided to use it.  On top of that you can add Books of the Bible and have another 2 years of material.   But here is the really cool benefit…Are you ready?  Simply LIVE is in the process of working on Children’s and College Curriculum to their sets of options to be released in the next year!  SO now you can team up with your Children’s pastor and have Curriculum plan that builds upon each other through your entire church.

Another great benefit, that I like to point out is that there is only one type of theology in LIVE….its JESUS!  Its not Calvinist, not Pentecostal, Liberal, Reformed, or Wesleyan…Its Jesus!  Matty will call from time to time and ask me to give someone a call who has a question about the theology of LIVE from someone who works at at Methodist Church.  I’m glad that some people actually think about that before they buy their material of any sorts instead of just buying the greatest and latest item out in the youth ministry curriculum world.   So bottom line is that, its safe and its great for whatever church you work for!

I love how the team at LIVE is always taking suggestions and always updating the curriculum.   There is an area in each lesson where you can leave feedback for their team.  You can tell them of video clip you used or any other add on and they will look at it and will update their lessons.  This is great because as the years go by, they will always be relevant.  LIVE looks into the future and just will not be another irrelevant curriculum that we all used to use.

So what else can I say…

Well if you are a techie, there are some really cool things.  You can access the site from your smart phone or tablet.  If you have an iPad or iPhone, there’s an APP for that!  We use the APP to present our lesson.  But you can also print the lesson.   All the lessons are available on PDF and Word form, so you can download it to almost any device.

LIVE is LIFE CHANGING!   Its life changing for not only students but also the adults who teach it.   Tomorrow I will close out this series on LIVE with how LIVE has changed lives in our students and adults.  LIVE is an amazing tool that shapes the story of God in so many ways!

 

 

Filed Under: church, forms, Friends, God, just sayin, misc, stuff, technology, UMC, Uncategorized, Volunteers, Youth Ministry, Youth Ministry Ideas · Tagged: , , , , , ,

PC LOAD LETTER! Corrupt file…

February 15, 2012 by · Leave a Comment

 

Sorry Part III of LIVE CURRICULUM will have to wait until Thursday.  I made the mistake of using my PC laptop at home and completed Part III last night…Today when I tried to open it on my MacBook it was a corrupt file!  So I’ll be re-writing it from the earlier draft tonight and will post it in the morning.  Just another reason why I can’t wait for all of my computers to be a Mac.  So far I haven’t had any issues with my other Macs with corrupt files.  Next time I’ll stick to my Mac and Dropbox instead of a thumb drive.

Filed Under: just sayin, technology · Tagged: , ,
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