• Simply Youth Ministry is Getting It

    I consider the folks over at Simply to be my friends. I will admit that when I first started to get to know them they were a bit intimidating. But they are great folks that any youth worker should get to know.

    They are a couple of year’s into a competition with Youth Specialties for convention dollars. YS has run the very popular National Youth Workers Convention for years and then Simply partnered with another publisher to create the National Youth Ministry Conference. Let me make a quick observation about Simply’s marketing efforts.

    YS has found an edge (in the Seth Godin kind of way), their conference goes after the arts and goes after social justice and those types of things. From a marketing standpoint that’s their angle and they are doing quite well with it. The Simply/Group folks have found a different edge as they try to catch up to YS. They are going to appeal to their audience with silly stuff and videos like the one below. They must have discovered that this is what their audience likes.

    When it comes to marketing, there are two initial things that have to be done before you can succeed.
    1. Define your audience, including what they like.
    2. Define your competition

    HT to Andy

    This post was edited on 2/27 to clarify what I was saying a little better. It could have been misinterpreted, and for that I’m sorry.

  • Kristen’s Dream Bed

    igloo bedMy wife is a bookworm. While I struggle to finish books before they are due at the library, Kristen reads 4-5 books per week. In turn, Kristen has turned my children into bookworms as well and the highlight of their week is the trip to the library to pick up new books and take back the old.

    Her dream job would be to run a children’s bookstore or work at a library or somehow find herself surrounded by books 24 hours per day.

    So when I saw this I instantly thought of Kristen. When I showed it to her she said, “Oh I want that!”

    HT to Cory Doctorow

  • Notre Dame is a Lock for the Big Dance

    notre dame logoAs a Notre Dame fan there hasn’t been a lot to be excited about for football. But with the basketball team things are looking great. At 21-5, Mike Brey and his Irish team have pretty much sealed the deal for getting into the group of 64 for March Madness.

    I’ve watched them in about 4 games this year. In each they have been in control, working together, and are always displaying great sportsmanship.

    The hope is that they make it to the Sweet 16 or beyond. It’s awful fun to have something to cheer about out of South Bend.  

  • Adam’s Rules for Blogging

    Rules for BloggingWhen it comes to posting things online, you’ve got to be careful. As soon as you post a post or comment you’ve created a digital record that may go on living online forever.

    With that in mind I thought it was a good time to revise my Rules for Blogging. Whether you are new to blogging or a seasoned veteran, consider following these hard earned lessons to help keep your blogging life positive.

    These are the rules that I follow at adammclane.com and I suggest you adapt them for your own blog.

    Rule #1 Don’t ever write something you wouldn’t want your mother to read. Some have a false impression that their blog posts are private or that if they haven’t invited someone to read it, they won’t. Don’t make that mistake. If you journal on a blog it will eventually be found by people you know. Everything you publish online is public.

    Rule #2 Opinions are like…. bellybuttons… everyone has one. The cool thing about blogs is that it gives you an inside look into what someone is perceiving from their point of view. The bad thing about blogs is that you are only getting a snap shot. It’s their perception, their raw and unedited thoughts at a specific time. It’s perfectly OK to have an opinion and express it on your blog. But it’s always a good idea to save a controversial post for 24 hours to think about it before pressing “publish.”

    Rule #3 Don’t throw gasoline on a fire. I would highly recommend that if you read something about you or your blog or your people that is negative… just do yourself a favor and don’t hit that “comment” button or send that person an e-mail, OK? Just leave it lie. I’ve made this mistake too many times… I’ll see something someone wrote about me or YMX and I’ll want to “vindicate” myself by commenting or dropping an e-mail to the author to address the “attack.” The truth is that it is always better to let that sleeping dog lie. I can’t think of a single good thing that has come out of me doing that.

    Rule #4 Give credit where credit is due. If you want to post something you saw somewhere else, that’s cool. Just make sure to give that other site credit. If you read blogs you’ll see the acronym “HT.” That means, “hat tip” and is a polite way to acknowledge your source. Bypassing this rule makes you look like a jerk. The same rule doesn’t hold true for pictures. Unless an image is specifically marked as copyright protected, feel free to use it for your blog. The biggest etiquette with pictures is to host that image on your blog instead of hotlinking it to the place you found it.

    Rule #5 Beware of Trolls, learn to love Lurkers, reward contributors. A troll is someone who reads your blog to get information about you to use against you. A lurker is someone who just wants to read your blog to get to know you. A contributer is someone who participates in your blog somehow. Maybe they mention your blog to you in person or they post comments often. Find ways to reward them for their loyalty to your blog.

  • Saturday Tunes

    saturday tunesA quiet Saturday planned for our house. I’ve got some reviews to finalize and stuff like that, I’m going to work on the podcast for YMX… but other than that, I’ll probably just be doing normal Saturday stuff all day. My big trip out is going to be for water softener salt. You know you’ve got a lame day planned when that’s on the agenda.

    As I drink my coffee and get ready for the day, here are the next 10 songs being piped into my eardrums courtesy of iTunes. As always, I’m just hitting the shuffle button and writing down the next 10 songs that come up, ratings included.

    1. How Come You Don’t Call Me by Alicia Keys ****
    2. All Creatures of Our God and King by David Crowder Band ****
    3. Yearn by Shane & Shane ****
    4. Beautiful Day by U2 *****
    5. Shine on Us by Phillips, Craig, and Dean ****
    6. Sunday Bloody Sunday by U2 *****
    7. You Are by Todd Fields ****
    8. God He Reigns by Hillsong ****
    9. Beautiful Disaster by Jon McLaughlin *****
    10. Loose Lips by Kimya Dawson *****

  • Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian Images

    Prince Caspian Ben BarnesI know a lot of people are excited about the May 16th release of Prince Caspian. As the pre-release buzz begins Grace Media, the PR firm that is trying to get church leaders excited about Prince Caspian. They recently hooked me up with this link to some early images. There is some good stuff there. Rather than reposting all of their images, just follow the link and check it out for yourself.
    They’ve even bundled them all into a nice zip file for your convenience. Enjoy.

    Below is the cast information and movie synopsis. (more…)

  • Sticker Shock

    Kristen handed me something labeled “assessment” from Bruce Township. My heart sank a little bit as I read it. When this arrived in 2007 I learned that our house had been assessed at about $20,000 more than we paid for it in 2005. While typically, this is a good thing. In Michigan there just wasn’t any way.

    To my delight our SEV went down by 14.6% for 2008. Amazing. The boa constrictor of my our tax bill just got a little bit more palatable. At least for the next 12 months.

  • Jimmy Savage | Everything

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  • Pastors and Friendships

    Super FriendsSometimes you come across a blog series and you are just in awe of it. So obvious. So true. Wish I had written it. Here’s a current series by Craig Groeschel of Lifechurch.tv.

    Craig speaks from 20+ years of experience as a pastor about something that is hard on a most of us, friendships.

    If you’ve ever wanted to pull the curtain back and see one of the many stresses that I deal with, take a few minutes to read Craig’s posts.

  • Is the Church Headed in the Wrong Direction?

    I want to talk about something that isn’t about my church. I want to react against something that I’m hearing about “the church.” As in, churches like ours on a national and worldwide level.

    wrong wayThe phrase I’m hearing is something like “The church is headed the wrong direction as they worry too much about being relevant in the culture.” It comes across in different ways, but if you look through my comment section you’ll come across it in its various forms.

    Here is what they are really saying: “The church should be about Christians more than it is about non-Christians.” Here is a sermon that seems to push this view. In fact, Jesus’ church has a two-fold mission– Reach the lost, teach the found.

    Here is what Jesus says about people who think they own God: Matthew 23

    Here is why they are saying this: Fear. There is great fear among “church people” about people who are not Christians. They think that “they” will corrupt their children. They think that “they” will change their polite and sterile world. They are afraid new people in their lives will change how they feel in a church service. They are afraid “they” will effect how they spend their ministry time. In short, they are afraid of being effective and doing the ministry of Jesus. And their fears are mostly true… if you live like Jesus instructs in the Bible it will ruin the safe life they want.

    Here’s how they scare people: They say people like me mis-interpret the Bible. We may have gone to the same schools… we may have sat in the same classes… but we heard two different messages. Their message is that Jesus is for people like them. The message I heard was that Jesus was for anyone. They heard you should contextualize Bible teaching to the church. I heard I should contextualize Bible teaching for the people I’m trying to teach.

    Here is why it is sad. I’ve told people about the exciting out-pouring of God at places like Mars Hill and Elevation where thousands of people have been introduced to a life-changing, life-flipping relationship with the Living Christ and instead of praise on their lips they cast scorn and doubt at the leaders. I learn ministry skills from good men and women at places like Willow Creek, Saddleback, and North Point and people say “But they do something unapproved somehow… you are a bad person for learning from them. You shouldn’t go learn from them or read what they write or do ministry how they do it.” Yet they’ve never met those people, attended their services, or examined anything for themselves. What they think of these churches is based purely on fear-mongering. They are fearful that something like that could happen in their “safe church.”

    Here’s what I think: I think that the church, including my own, should use redemptive analogies to reach people. I think the church is called by Jesus to engage the culture. I think Christians are called to be like Jesus, who modeled incarnational living. (That’s fancy church talk for… Jesus came from Heaven and walked among us, ate among us, and was “like us.”)

    What do you think? Even if you never go to church. I want to know what you think. Even if you are one of “them” I want to know what you think. (Really, I meant Pharisee in a nice way!)