Over the last few weeks I’ve noticed that on my blog home page, my title is jumbled up some how. I noticed it but didn’t do anything to fix it as I’ve been busy. Finally I decided to take a look at it. So, I deleted the title of my blog to see what happened. The result?

Apparently my template decided to give itself a name. Yes, my theme has a very "Apple" look, but I am not running the "One more thing" site. If you click on any individual blog posts, it’s blank.

So, until I figure out how to fix it, I’m either title-less or I’m the "One more thing" other site. I may have to go in and edit the code in the template… I just don’t know why it showed up now for no reason.

Please excuse another test.

Unfortunately, I had to take a phone call with my new church right when Louie Gigleo got up to speak. My phone call lasted almost the entire message. I came in just as Louie was talking about some trees in a courtyard in China and who the last verse of Amazing Grace wasn’t written by the original author, but some other guy over 100 years later. Yup, I didn’t make the connection. I’ll search the blogs for someone else’s notes on this message and add them here (or link to them here). If you were there, have notes and want to send them my way, I’ll link to them (or publish them here).

Yeah. I’ve actually never heard Louie and was looking forward to it… but that’s okay. I’m not going to complain. I got plenty of good stuff from Orange.

This session was led by Craig Jutila. Someone said that most of this information is in his book "Daze to Knights." I knew he had this book, but I didn’t think this was about volunteers. I’ve heard Craig on several occasions and I’ve heard most of this stuff before. However, it is good stuff and I really needed to hear it again. Volunteerism is one of the biggest issues in ministry, so everyone could hear this stuff multiple times.

First things:

• You don’t organize people, you align them
• You build people first and programs second
• You understand that without people, you do not nor can you have a healthy ministry
• Without a mission statement, you will never thrive with your volunteers
• We are all made differently

One of the problems we have is that we often try to make everyone do the same about of work. People are different. Our goal should be to help them reach their potential.

Craig talked about the 80/20 rule. 20% of your volunteers are doing 80% of the work. It’s a principle… expect this. Those 20% are your high impact volunteers. Of 100% of your volunteers, here is how they might break down:

• 5% - Influential: Empower
• 15% - Initiator: Energize
• 30% - Independent: Equip
• 50% - Industrious: Encourage

Craig then talked about how Jesus led "volunteers."

• 1 Corinthians 15:6 - Jesus appeared to more than 500 followers. He encouraged them by motivating them.
• Luke 10:1-2 - Jesus appointed 72 and sent them out in groups of two. He appointed them to do a task.
• Matthew 26:20 - Jesus sat with his 12. He spent time with them, they were his friends.
• Matthew 17:1 - Jesus took his three aside. This was his intimate group.

We seen in scripture that Jesus spent most of his time with small numbers of people.. investing in them. Jesus spent the least amount of time with large groups. We need to see our volunteers this same way. We need to have a small number that we’re investing in "big time" where we are empowering them to lead others.

A few last points:

• Resist the temptation to personally "fill holes." It’s not that you’re better than that… it’s not where you belong.
• The volunteers who challenge you because they have their own ideas usually frustrate us…. but they are your best volunteers. They have the potential to lead your ministry. You need to invest in them and leak your vision.
• You’re always going to need volunteers… if your ministry is growing. Synchronizing volunteers isn’t about eliminating your need for more volunteers. However, if you do these things right, you’ll put an end to managing the substitute list every week. Your volunteers will own their ministry.
• Craig says this works… so give it a try.

Like the Rethinking Children’s Ministry, this breakout was more of a round table discussion. On the stage was Mike Clear from Discovery Church in California, Daren Kaiser from Scranton, PA, Dave Fox from Indiana and Reggie Joiner. Each of these men serve as the Family Pastor at their churches (except Reggie of course).

Reggie began by explaining some of the different models of family ministry. One model is the departmental approach. This is where each department (student and children’s ministry) does it’s best to connect with parents. Another model is the supplemental approach. This is where a family pastor is hired to add programs to supplement parents ministry. This pastor more or less informs the other staff members (children’s pastor and student pastor) what he/she is doing. The Orange model is an integrated model. There may or may not be a family pastor (best if there is) that helps family ministry integrate through all the ministries.

Through a family ministry approach (integrated), the goal for teenagers is not perfect attendance in student ministry, but that they become fully integrated into the fabric of the church.

Reggie perfectly answered the question, "How do you effectively make a children’s ministry team and student ministry team feel like a unified team?" The answer? Meet together. Duh!

In an integrated strategy, you remove ministry silos and territorialism. In this strategy, student and chidlren teams work together on budgets, calendars and other things.

Reggie shared that there are three dials that need to be turned in the life of a child. The Wonder Dial, the Discovery Dial and the Passion Dial. The Wonder Dial is the understanding of faith, creation and who God is. The Discovery Dial is the understanding of how I personally fit into this knowledge of God, specifically relating to having a relationship with Jesus Christ. The Passion Dial is understanding my relationship with those around me.

So, when an integrated family ministry operates with the knowledge of these dials, the team can work together to turn these dials at the appropriate times within ministry. For instance, the Wonder Dial will be turned most during the preschool years, and only a little beyond that (mainly for outreach opportunities). The Discovery Dial is turned the most in elementary ministry and and student ministry and the Passion Dial will be turned the most in student ministry. Implementing this in an integrated strategy allows everyone in multiple ministries to be on the same page.

Here are a few more points made by the presenters:

• When you believe that what happens at home is more important than what happens at church, your calendar will slim down (from events).
• Who owns the strategy to "educate" the parents? It’s owned by the whole team, led by a leader.
• Every parent wants to have the right relationship with their kids… every kid needs a right relationship with a parent.

Oh, there was one more thing. Reggie shared four words and said that most parents fall into one of these four categories:

• Acquainted
• Connected
• Engaged
• Invested

Acquainted are usually the parents outside of your church… they don’t come. They aren’t against God or anything… they just don’t come. The Connected parents are attending your church. Engaged parents are ones that assume responsibility for spiritually raising their kids and Invested are those who are actively involved in discipling their kids… they’re doing this regularly.

For church, Easter is HUGE! Obviously the day is significant for spiritual reasons, but its one of those big days of the year where everyone and their brother comes to church. I know that there is a huge temptation to go over the top for Easter since it is such a special day with so many special visitors. However, I’m not sure that we shouldn’t try to resist that temptation.

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Coordinatr is to Evite what Twitter is to blogging. It’s specialty? “Microevents.” Want to invite a bunch of friends over for dinner and a movie? Coordinatr is your tool.

Now I love Evite. I typically use it for something every month or so. Even one I used it for a volunteer training at church. The only downside? I think our Evite page had a Victoria’s Secret ad on the sidebar most times I logged in. Not exactly the advertising I wanted to have for our Children’s Ministry training, but it wasn’t a huge deal. The beautiful thing about Evite is how it allows everyone to get feel the momentum of who’s coming to an event. Coordinatr does this is a very clean and simplified manner. I’m new to it and have only created a few simple invites, but plan to use it in the future. One great feature is that it will add events to participants personal calendars. It also provides a community feel where people can leave comments, discuss things and even post pictures and video. I see a lot of networking and collaboration possibilities (kind of like pre-meeting information and discussion) for non-staff members working on special projects or teams. Best of all, it’s free!

Visit Coordinatr here.

Technorati Tags: Events,planning,meetings,Childrens Ministry,Evite,Coordinatr

Here’s a little light hearted Easter video for you today! Is this what our target audience thinks of Easter?

Technorati Tags: Easter,Funny

I’ve been saving up. I’ve come across several great technology resources that I want to share. So, welcome to tech week. Just about every post this week will concern technology that can enhance ministry. Maybe there will be one or two that are more for the sake of fun. Enjoy the posts. Be sure to comment if you have insight in any of the items I introduce or products like these.

Everyone enjoys a little bit of random funniness… especially kids. This fall I tried to make a point of finding a randomly funny video that I would show every week in out elementary kids church. Each week the kids began expecting the new video of the week… something to divide up the service and it provided a great transition time. One week I found a video that they kids loved so much, they asked to see it again every week. Just one of those silly foreign commercials. There’s nothing like watching a bunch of 4th & 5th grade boys imitating the dance movies of this baby!