Category: YMX

  • YMX Investment Club

    Invest
    It’s no secret that I think Kiva.org is super cool. The idea of little people like me giving microloans to people in developing countries so that they can improve their business… that just rocks.

    A few months back we started talking at YMX about forming an investment club. Not the type of investment club that invests money in stock… but an investment club that seeks to help people in developing countries get ahead.

    So today the investing began. Here’s our homepage and here is our Kiva portfolio. Any YMX member can join… send me an email and ask me how.

    Not a YMX member and interested in starting an investment club with Kiva? Shoot me an email!

  • New stuff is in the air

    There must be something in the summer air that has got me going… but there are all sorts of things swirling around my head.

    Sometimes I pray "stupid prayers" to God. I asked Him to take what I’m doing and blow it up for you. Maybe that meant "destroy" or maybe that meant "make it cooler than I can imagine." But He’s God and He is in the process of blowing some stuff up in my life.

    Let me narrow it to two categories.

    1. Light Force. I’m not satisfied that we are missing close to 3100 students from the schools we’re supposedly trying to reach. I’ve been praying about that a lot lately and seeking Godly counsel. I’ve come to a simple conclusion that flows directly out of what I taught for the last 28 weeks in Acts. We need to get busy spreading God’s virus in a dead and dying world without Christ. All that to say… in the coming weeks I plan on exploring a lot and meeting with a lot of people to talk about developing a new "foyer" environment for 7-12th graders in Romeo.
    2. Website-o-rific. Holy cow… I’ve made a lot of websites in the last few weeks. Most of them are still "shells" for what is to come. In the coming weeks I’ll be completely moving all of the churches sites/subdomains from fbcromeo.org to romeochurch.com. In the process of doing that I’m launching several brand new additions to the church’s family of sites. So there will be loads of cool new things to look at as we develop sites for our leadership teams, kids ministry, student ministry, young adult ministry, married couples ministry, and even our main church site. Holy cow… that’s a lot!

    As I  reflect back on 6 weeks ago… I was completely worn out and exhausted. I’m praising God that with a little rest and time away, I’m feeling charged back up… more creative and carefree than ever.

    God’s loyal love couldn’t have run out,
       his merciful love couldn’t have dried up.
    They’re created new every morning.
       How great your faithfulness!
    I’m sticking with God (I say it over and over).
       He’s all I’ve got left.

    God proves to be good to the man who passionately waits,
       to the woman who diligently seeks.
    It’s a good thing to quietly hope,
       quietly hope for help from God.
    It’s a good thing when you’re young
       to stick it out through the hard times. Lamentations 3 (The Message)

  • A weekend at camp!

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    This weekend I am off to upstate New York to help out at a great retreat. I’ve never been to this part of the world, so I am pretty excited to see what "the camp capital of the world" is really all about.

    I also don’t get to go to a lot of retreats… so this is going to be fun. (Our group kind of lost interest.) I’m looking forward to encouraging the students of the Albany Diocese, making new friends, and connecting face to face with Patti’s family.

    As I’ve been reminded. It’s bad of me to travel on my wife’s birthday. Naughty, naughty boy. But it’s all for a good cause!

    Here’s a blog post from my buddy Jason about speaking at this event last year.

    I look forward to being back in Romeo Sunday night. Lord willing next week will be back to 100% normal.

  • Left for Dead? Keep the stories coming

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    I’ve gotten a couple of email responses to my article, "Left for Dead by the Church."

    Keep them coming. I know just last week of 3 people who were either fired or had to quit because work conditions had deteriorated beyond something tolerable. There are hundreds of stories out there.

    Sharing your story is important. Maybe you just need to get it off your chest or maybe you believe that sharing your story will help change things. Either way, your story needs to be told.

    Think that it’s not healthy? Of the stories I’ve read… not an ounce of bitterness. Sadness. Frustration. Yep, but not bitter.

  • Troll problem?

    Troll problem?

    We created YMX as a place where youth workers could come and talk freely about their ministries. We knew in creating it that way that “freedom” comes with a nasty risk.
    Trolls.

    In an online community like YMX, there are two types of trolls. One is annoying and the other is dangerous.

    1. Trolls who stir up the community for fun. This is really just a breach of etiquette more than anything. We actually have seen this fairly rarely during YMX’s existence.
    2. Trolls who gather information on a member to destroy them. Believe it or not, there are people working in churches as volunteers and paid staff who are evil trolls. Just like Richard Nixon wasn’t a crook to the core, church politics will make leaders do evil things even if they are overall good people. They will scour the internet looking for incriminating evidence against a staff person. It’s never innocent as the “stumble” across something as they are clearly looking for a justification to fire someone when they’ve already decided to do it.

    Why am I writing about this?
    YMX has always taken precautions against trolling since at our previous host a couple of members had been the victims of trolling. For instance, we have different levels of services and different levels of service will show different areas of the forums to different people. In other words, we don’t allow Google to search the forums making what is written there “ungoogle-able.” Second, for someone to receive access to “premium” areas, they have to pay us. That allows us to know who they are beyond a shadow of a doubt. This forces the troll to identify themselves and proves they aren’t “stumbling” on something accidentally, but showing malicious intent by actually paying to troll.

    That said, a truly intent troll can get through and troll if they don’t appear to be violating the terms of service. Has this happened? We don’t know. But my admin/mod team is a good bunch of “troll busters” and if it has happened, we’ll take precautions to root it out.

    There are times when my soul just aches because of the working conditions that some churches operate under. The politics of the local church drives many away from the church. It’s sick.

  • We’ve hit 1000 members

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    I’m always looking for something to celebrate, and here is a big milestone for Youth Ministry Exchange: 1000 Members.

    In honor of this momentus occasion, I’ve posted our first "State of YMX."

    One thing I didn’t mention… Derek and I have still never withdrawn a penny for ourselves from the site. We are firmly still in the "reinvestment stage." Profits may one day grow to a point where the site generate income for us… but that’s still on the horizon.

    Below is the text of my "state of YMX" that will explain the diagram to the right.

    (more…)

  • Please sponsor me

    Xxx_church
    Next Monday morning I will be playing 100 holes of golf for a good cause, Hackfest. (I know… tortured really.) But this is a very special cause that I think is worth me asking this little question:

    Would you be willing to sponsor me?

    What is Hackfest?
    Hackfest is a golf fundraiser for Fireproof Ministries. You may not be familiar with Fireproof, but you are likely familiar with their main ministry, xxxchurch.com. Simply put, Fireproof does ministry and shares Jesus with people and goes places that most Christians are too squeamish to even consider. They reach out to people caught in pornography, prostitution, and the sex industry. These are ministries that are important and I think they deserve our attention and my day off to help raise a few bucks to keep going. If nothing else, I want to be a practical encouragement to Fireproof.

    What’s my goal?
    Well, they would like me to raise $25 per hole. ($2500) I don’t know if it’s possible to get that many pledges in such a short amount of time, but here is my plan. Kristen and I are committing $3/hole and we’d at least like to match that. If… by some action of God… I will commit to doing something that makes the cow commercials look completely dignified by comparison. (I’ll even take suggestions for that!)

    My disclaimer about giving!
    Just like in anything else I would ever ask about giving money… please don’t commit to giving something in place of what you should give to your local church. This would qualify as something "over and above."

    Thanks for considering supporting Fireproof, xxxchurch, and all the other incredible ministry they do.

    If you are interested in sponsoring me… even $.25/hole would be great… just drop me an email. mclanea@gmail.com

  • Rate Your Stuff

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    Over at Youth Ministry Exchange I finally got around to finalizing the launch of a cool new feature called Rate Your Stuff. Honestly, it’s the coolest feature I’ve ever added to the site. I think that it may actually become as or more useful to youth workers than the forums themselves.

    Basically, it’s the only spot I know of where youth workers can submit and rate the stuff they use to do their ministry. The reality is that there is just mountains of stuff available for us to purchase for our ministries and we have a hard time telling what is good and what is just… for sale. "Rate Your Stuff" is just a simple place where youth workers can tell other youth workers what they thought of a product they’ve used. Since we’re not linked up with a publisher… we think that our users will pick up on the fact that "user ratings" are really and truly independent. For me, when I see a review of a book or resource in a magazine and it’s advertised or even publishing that resource, books, DVD, CD…. I always wonder if that review is reputable.

    Plus, I want to know what my friends think about what I’m thinking of buying.

    Want to help get this thing off the ground? The #1 way people can help is simply to go to the site and rate a few things. We’ve got books of all sorts, movies, and a bunch of "to be filled" categories. All you have to do is be a registered member of the site. (Free) If 4-5 members would review 3-4 things… that would help greatly.

  • YMX Hosting goes live

    This is only significant and fun for me, but YMX Hosting has gone live. (Beta testers still needed though, got a sweet discount just for providing feedback) I spent a little time Saturday and Sunday working out the final bugs. Getting the YMX Hosting site to talk nicely to the domain registrar and to automatically set up folks accounts, collect funds, issue invoices/receipts.

    I created this thing hoping that we could help youth pastors launch whatever site they needed set-up for a great price. I think that $60 for a years hosting and domain registration is a super deal. I suppose the only way to truly know if it is super is to wait for feedback from customers. A product that makes YMX Hosting unique is that I’m willing to do everything if you’re willing to pay a small service fee. (Like moving your site from one host to another, for simple set-ups this is just $30. I’m just floored at the amount of small business and churches getting hosed by their low-ability, high cost web hosts.) Of course, another thing which I think makes YMX Hosting unique is that if you needed more service than I can provide, I’ve got no problem referring someone to a host they’d be happier with.

    OK, that quickly turned into a commercial. I suppose that was just me telling myself my sales pitch.

  • Raising Lazarus taking shape

    Back a few weeks ago I posted a mini-manifesto as we created the Hurting Youth Workers Fund. (Hence the chip-in widget to the left) The last 2-3 weeks since then have been amazing. My friend, Patti Gibbons, has taken to the task of setting up a charitable organization to handle the fund raising and care for youth workers left for dead by their local churches.

    What is happening?
    Well, in the past two weeks Patti has written the by-laws and dug through hundreds of pages of paperwork to file with the State of New York and the federal government to get 501c3 status for the fund. This means gifts given are tax deductible and it also protects us from getting taxed personally for the funds given. (Phew!) She’s also in the process of assembling a board of directors, teams of people to offer help, places where hurting youth workers can go and rest free of charge, on and on.

    Anything for me to look at?
    Sure… check out the Raising Lazarus website. This isn’t anything fancy yet. But as Patti gets everything official you’ll see all the basic information about Raising Lazarus plus two incredible features.

    1. Stories from the hurting: I’ve had the honor of getting a few of these, they will shock you.
    2. Stories from the recovering: As we help the hurting, we’ll share their success stories.

    What about the church?
    I am very careful how we go about this since I would never intend to harm the church. (Not the local church I work at, they are great employers… I mean "the church" bigger than that.) At the same time, I think the church should be called to accountability, especially the ones who habitually harm their staff members. We’re not going to be out to attack the church in any way, but it’s our hope that a by-product of helping the hurting will be an attempt to educate and restore churches doing the damage.

    Are you for real?
    Yes, Raising Lazarus is for real. We realize this isn’t one of those top 10 crisis in the world today… but as people encounter the stories people will see why we felt like we needed to do something. If offering counseling, financial assistance, and a place to rest is all we can do… than we will do that.