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Disconnect to Reconnect

June 18, 2011 in Family, Social Media with 0 Comments

With Father’s Day coming quickly upon us I want to put a challenge out there for my fellow fathers. As many of you know I am deeply connect with the digital world. I keep my life on my iPhone, I have opened myself completely to the services of Google and I spend countless hours writing and working on my laptop.

On a recently blog post from Phil Cooke he writes that

*65% of North Americans spend more time with their computer than with their spouse.

**45% of workers say they can’t go more than 15 minutes without an interruption.

**50% of people leave their mobile phones on when they go to bed.

Phil is putting out a challenge to fathers. He is calling it to Disconnect to Reconnect. He shares:

Mobile devices, computers and social media are wonderful things, indeed. They’ve transformed our lives and our world in countless positive ways. But make no mistake, while we’re more connected than ever (and maybe because we’re more “connected” than ever), we’re more disconnected than ever from our families.

I know that I have to be very purposeful to stay off my phone and off the computer while I am at home with my family. My time with my kids is email free. But I know I can do a better job at disconnecting when I am at home. The world that we live in we need to be connected via the internet — we have to be intentional about the communities that we are gathering and growing. However, our call to community does not overtake our call to our families. Now here is the challenge. Father’s out there, tell your children and your wives that they are important, don’t only tell them with your words, show them with your actions. On this father’s day disconnect yourself from the world. Stop checking your email, don’t write that needed blog post. Take care what you need too today and then spend the day with your family tomorrow.

Here are some tips from Phil:

1. Before going to bed the night before Father’s Day, check your e-mail one final time, turn off your mobile device and put it in another room. You may get the shakes, but you’ll get over it.

2. Plan the day well. Alcoholics are very susceptible during periods of boredom and it’s no different with an internet junkie. Plan a day of special activities with your family, so you’ll be less inclined/tempted to check email or go online. And, if the family takes you out, leave the mobile device at home! (You may be shocked, but yes – there was a time in ancient days when we actually left the house without a phone).

Remember – your kids watch your behavior more than they listen to your words. And when they see you unable to disconnect from email, text messages and Twitter? You’re telling them that what’s on your phone is more important to you than they are.

So, think about how much time you spend online versus how much time you spend face-to-face with the people you love you the most. And, at the very least, for 24 hours on Father’s Day, think about which connection is the most important to you.

Are you planning on disconnecting? If so, leave a comment on how you plan on disconnecting.

Top 5 Tools for Ministry {31dbbb}

February 3, 2011 in Social Media with 4 Comments

The web is a great resource for churches. Not online is it important for churches to have a web prenece but their presence needs to be easily accesible to most people. This means that we need to be where people are and we need to be innerconnected with one another. The web is also a great resource to pastors in their ministry. The web can help pastors in so many ways (and nonpastor folks as well). Far too many churches and pastors do not take full advantage of what the web can offer. I believe it is important for churches and pastors to have some sort of grasp as to what is out there and why it is important. Here is a list of what I believe are must have’s for successful online ministry.

1. Facebook Page

Even if you don’t like or see the personal value of Facebook, you have to admit most people out there are active on Facebook or at least have a page. I think it is vitally important for all churches to have a Facebook presence. It is a very easy way to share what is happening in your church. Not only can you let people know what is going on at your church but you can provide an opportunity to minister to your followers by posting Bible verses, inspirational quotes or other ways to enhanse people’s lives.

2. WordPress.com

The wordpress platform is great to have and it is very versital. If you are interested in blogging, or posting your sermons online then this is the perfect tool to use. I am actually transferring the churches website to woredpress.com. When you are working with a minimal or non-existent budget this is the perfect service.

3. Dropbox

Dropbox has quickly become one of my most used apps. It is primarily a file syncing service. Dropbox lives as a folder on your computer. Any file you put in the Dropbox, syncs to the Dropbox website as well as any other computer or mobile device you have Dropbox on. I am no longer needing to email documents back and forth with the church office because all of the primary documents that the church uses is on dropbox and I have access to them wherever I go. If I am in a meeting and I need to look up something in a document and I know it is on the church computer I an pull up the dropbox app on my iphone and get the information that is needed.

Dropbox provides 2GB of space for free. You can earn extra space, up to 8GB, by referring your friends. In fact all the links in this post are referral links for myself. If you click the link and sign up, we will both get and extra 250MB. You can also purchase extra space, by I’ve found that the free space is enough to save most people’s critical files. This is one of those services that has really added to my productivity and provides extremely convenient access to my files.

4. Evernote

Evernote is another great ministry tool. Evernote is a note taking application that enables you to capture and organise everything. It’s available on pretty much all devices that you can think of, from phone to computer and syncs all notes up into the cloud. Evernote is free to use but you can upgrade to a premium account which gives you much more space to upload per month, image recognition, and offline notebooks.

I have found Evernote has revolutionised the way I store and organise information that comes my way, everything from paper to verbal communication to ideas that pop in to my head. I also use it to create prayer lists, store contact details for people or organisations, write up sermon notes and the ability to take pictures of books, DVD’s and other resources just to name a few.

5. Reqall

I have tried many list managers over the years. Most of them do not work for me not because there is something wrong with them but I am not the best at keeping all the things I need to do in the application. Reqall is different because there are a number of ways I can input information so it is easier for me to use. I can imput information through a phone call, through email, using my voice on the iphone app, on the web, or through typing the information on my iphone. It is great and it really helps me in my ministry.

Have you used some of these tool? Do you have others that you would put on the list?

Resolutions

January 2, 2011 in Care for Names, Miscellany, Receptivity of God with 3 Comments

Another New Year is upon us and a question often asked is “Do you have any New Year’s Resolutions?” I have gone back and forth when it comes to resolutions. For the longest time I have made them and by February I have forgotten about them or I can’t keep up.

So last year I decided to create action words instead of resolutions. For 2010 my action word in my personal life was: Community

I wanted to create intentional community in my life. I wanted to focus on building an online community through this blog, and other social networks and I wanted to create more of a personal community in the area that I live in.

I feel like I was moderately successful. I have almost tripled the readership of this blog as well as connected with more and more people on Facebook and twitter. I also made some great connections with people not only inside the church in which I serve but outside as well. I hope that I can continue to build upon that that this coming year.

Professionally my action word was preaching. I enjoy preaching, but coming out of seminary I did not feel like I really found my preaching voice. I did not know who I was as a preacher. While my internship really took me out of my comfort zone when preaching, I was not allowed to experiment with different styles of preaching too much. So this past year I really worked on my preaching and tried to find my voice, I read books about preaching and listened to podcasts and did all I could to figure it out.

Well I feel like I made giant strides in finding my preaching voice and I am at a place now where I can only grow and become a great preacher. I am grateful for the feed back that I have received from people and I look forward in continuing that journey.

Over the next week or so I will fill you in on some of my action words for this year. I am looking forward to sharing some of the things that I want to accomplish personally and professionally.

But until then I would like to share with you some action items given to us by Coach Urban Meyer. I feel like Coach Meyers has done some soul searching and realized that there was nothing more important in his life than his family. So he left it all, he decided that time with his family was more important than fame, fortune or anything else. To have the resources and the courage to do something like that….I really admire him.

I will post my resolution words for 2011 but for now think about your life and what changes you will make this coming year.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8fvLqvHag0&feature=player_embedded