• IMC #4 The Hotel Hunt

    Those who know me well will appreciate this story. This is a typical Adam story.

    I came to Grand Rapids tonight with no plan. Basically I just got in the car earlier today and drove over here
    and figured it would all work out. I was pleasantly surprised to see that dinner was free and as I entered the Prince Center someone from Gospel Communications took me over to the dining room and I sat right down and started talking to folks.

    So the session ended and I wasn’t sure if we were supposed to hang out or not. I did for a little while and then figured it was a good idea to find a place to sleep.

    I went to Days Inn    … too expensive.
    I’ve stayed at the Motel 6... let’s just say I slept in my sleeping bag that night.
    I went to Marriott... $160!
    I went to Hilton… yeah right.
    Then I came to the Quality Inn…

    First off, it’s way nicer than the Marriott. With a name like "Quality" my expectations we awful. But it turns out that it’s a very nice place. Free breakfast. Free wireless. And a great price.

    Turns out not doing my reservation through the convention didn’t cost me anymore than the old AAA card got me.

  • imc #3

    Keynote Thursday Night Brian Atkinson

    Brian started by sharing a personal story of how he reunited with his birth family and was actually re-adopted and culminated in changing his name.

    This was painting a picture of how gci describes online ministry and online ministry success.

    More than content Context is everything… Are you doing something indespensible. Is it changing the minds of people before they have established a worldview apart from christ? It should point users where they need to go. Is the goal clear? The site should be clear in goals measurable goals and are you having positive effect. Does it form a community? It should. Are you doing online ministry together with others or are you alone? Brian introduced the new impact reports area for alliance members. They are going to kind of force this issue. The general idea is thed alliance members need to help one another.

    We got a great mention by brian as a new member. I was actually thrilled how well he communicated who we are. The guy sitting next to me asked if I paid for that plug… Pretty funny.

  • imc report #2

    well I am here. so far all I’ve done is get fed.

    weird food too… but I didn’t know meals were included so that’s a bonus.

  • I love companies that don’t take themselves too seriously

    No, this isn’t about the merger between Sonlife and YouthFront.

    This is about Woot! The company that only sells a single product per day… until they run out and then they go home.

    Their slogan is "One Day, One Deal." Well… they asked members to submit off the wall new take offs on their slogan. Here is my favorite.

    One Day, 72 Virgins
    Wootfun
    Check out the rest.

  • Everything Glorious

    With the Crowder CD, Remedy, about to come out… I’ve seen a huge upspike in the traffic to a video we posted on YouTube back in January. Church folks will remember that we used these as part of our
    Genesis series in January.

    Just so we’re clear, the song we used to create this was from the Passion 06 CD… it was a live version. On Remedy, we hear a studio version of the same song. So while the song may seem "new’ it’s been out a little while.

  • Mea Culpa: What does it mean?

    Dan_ratherMaking it’s rounds this morning is the story of Dan Rather. The former CBS news anchor is suing his former employer for $70 million and saying that he was forced into an apology he didn’t mean. Story

    Here’s the deal. It doesn’t matter if the original story was true or false anymore… though Rather is wanting to use this opportunity to "vindicate" his position that the story was true. Perhaps you remember the story… Rather cited allegedly forged documents in saying that our current president was a poor performer in the Air National Guard. His point seemed to be, in the story, that if George W. Bush was a bad Air National Guard member he is a bad commander-in-chief. Even if those stories of a very young Bush were true the story was a low-blow and he should have apologized. What’s the point in dragging up a story from 30 years ago to attack someone? It was an attack story, he got busted, and he apologized.

    That is, he apologized until he got fired. Apparently Rather thinks he has a right to a $24 million contract. Viacom, CBS’s parent company doesn’t think so. In their opinion, for $24 million they can put whoever they want as the news anchor. Just like they had the right to fire (and compensate, by the way) Dan Rather as their news anchor, they have the right to hire Katie Couric as their news anchor.

    What is this really all about? It comes down to… "What does I’m sorry mean?"

    (more…)

  • Working Together to Teach Students

    Recently I submitted an article to our ministry friends at Simply Youth Ministry about communicating a single complimentary message from the church as opposed to many competing messages. And I am pleased to see that they have decided to publish it. Here’s a sneak peak:

    On a staff retreat last
    summer, a light bulb went on for our team. After reading a series of
    articles and books about strategic leadership, we came to a simple and
    profound conclusion: We are going to teach complimentarily and not
    competitively across ministries in our church from now on. I’d like to
    walk you through our team’s process so that you can see both how we did
    it, and how our students have benefited as a result.

    Click to continue reading the article

    A funny sidenote: I kept wondering if they were going to ask me for a picture since I knew they would use the article for their email newsletter. To my surprise they chose a picture from my blog here that Megan took. Funny surprise.

  • Google Docs launches Presentation

    Google_docs_logo
    First off, I love the word "Launch." All products/services/and ministries should launch.

    The folks at Google have gone and done it again… they have created something so cool and forward-looking that the average web-user will not even notice or think that they need until that one day they see it in action. This time they’ve launched a product called "Presentation."

    That’s right boys and girls. They have mastered the collaborative document, spreadsheet, and calendar… now they are looking to master collaborative presentations.

    The new collaboration features will allow several users to view and edit a
    document at the same time, tracking changes and alerting other users in real
    time when someone is making a change.

    Multiple users can also view a set of slides while a moderator controls the
    presentation, and work on or present presentations through Google’s email, chat
    and calendar applications all from within Google Docs.

    I will readily admit to being addicted to Google docs. For YMX it is perfect. We have authors all around the country submit articles, reviews, and other stuff… and all of it goes on Google docs. Why? For Amy Sondova, our managing editor, Google docs solved some major headaches! It’s a single platform and we can invite collaborators to edit an article and finalize it before it goes live on the site. Then once they are ready I literally can cut/paste the text into the site and publish a document in 5 minutes. As little as 12 months ago an article took 45-60 minutes to publish and now I do it in 5 minutes.

    Googlepresentation
    What use will this have for youth workers?
    First off, it’s a price that 100% of youth workers can afford. Free. Secondly, as long as you have an internet connection where you are doing your presentation… you can do a presentation without any software. Simply drag the presentation browser to the display screen and your good to go. Third, this is perfect for meetings that exist in multiple venues and various times. I don’t know how often this is happening just yet… but there are a lot of different meetings and such I can see happening this way. Simply publish the presentation and your done. Same goes for sharing your stuff with parents, just publish and send the link out… you look like a pro. Lastly, this is the perfect tool for teams. I know most youth workers think of themselves as Lone Rangers… but for the rest of us, we work together. This is a tool that allows that to happen instantly and free.

    What uses can you think of for Google docs, and especially presentation?

    HT to Patti Gibbons

  • Internet Ministry Conference: report #1

    Internet_min_confLater in the week (early Friday morning or Thursday night) I’m headed over to Calvin College to attend my first Internet Ministry Conference.

    Since this is my first real entry into "Christian internet world" I have a whole bag of assumptions. And since I’m going to the event to learn, network with fellow nerds, and evaluate if I’ll ever go back… I thought it would be best for me to just write out what I am expecting at the conference. Wouldn’t any good sociologist do the same?

    Assumptions and pre-conference thoughts
    Revenge_of_the_nerds
    Remember Revenge of the Nerds? The 1984 comedy where a group of nerds ended up living in a college frat house together… finding friendship while the "cool kids" ran around going to wild toga parties and picking on the defenseless nerds. Remember that movie? That’s about how I feel going into this. We’re a bunch of nerds, laptops in tow, Starbucks on our breath, and the latest Google Analytics of our website floating through our minds as we check into Calvin for 3 days of embracing our inner geek.

    I expect to see "funny" t-shirts. I expect to see guys in ties. I expect to see folks wearing gear that represents their company/ministry. And I have a feeling there will be superhero’s represented. Can’t explain that one, just preparing myself for it. Superman, Spiderman, and others on adults… breathe in through the nose and out through the mouth.

    Looking over the schedule, I’m not sure what most of this has to do with YMX.     It seems like stuff is either "way below" or "way above" of what I’m interested in. But I do see some useful stuff for romeochurch.com. But maybe I’ll be surprised? As far as "value" goes I’m hoping to get more out of it than what I’ve seen from the pre-conference stuff. There must be something more to it than I’m seeing.

    I expect to meet a lot of new people.     Being a newbie Alliance member also means that I expect to say "Youth Ministry Exchange is an online community for youth ministry volunteers and staff" a heck of a lot. And I expect to hear people say, "Oh, that’s nice" a lot as well.

    I expect the release of Gospel.com to be a wow moment.

    I’m looking forward to putting a lot of faces/email addresses together with the Gospel Communications staff.

    Vacancy
    I’m hoping to find a place to sleep.     So if anyone in Grand Rapids wants to hook me up I promise to be a good boy. Otherwise, I’ll be driving around looking for a place to sleep during breaks. Why is it that this always happens to me in Grand Rapids? If all else fails, I know a few good places to camp.

    I’m hoping this isn’t one of those conferences which is a "you either know people or you don’t" kind of things. I am really hoping that people are friendly and welcoming… even to a newbie.

    Revengenerds1
    More than anything.    .. I’m interested in figuring out how all the new stuff that’s out there… too much to list… is going to help me encourage our users at YMX reach people with the life-changing gospel of Jesus Christ.

    That said, if I see a single person wearing a cape or a Darth Vader mask… I’m out.

  • Artists care about hurting students

    You know… sometimes mere mortal youth pastors like myself can’t express our desire to help the hurting. We truly do want to be there. These guys are just better at showing you how we feel.

    HT to Tim Schmoyer

    HT to serialyouthpastor