Childrens Ministry Online

Innovative use of technology for a conference

Posted on31. Aug, 2010 by Kenny.

As I posted earlier today, we held an annual Church Leadership Weekend at our church. For the last several years, we simply gather 400-500 of our leadership core in the auditorium for vision, worship and prayer. However, someone had the brilliant idea to try something really creative.

Rather than assemble the masses at the church on Friday evening for dinner and opening sessions, we decided to distribute the meetings around the city. Close to 30 leaders opened up their homes to host the opening session in their houses. People came to houses where they had relationship already or some people came to specific houses because the house was close to where they lived. Most of the houses were pot luck dinners, so the food and fellowship was amazing. Every house connected a laptop or computer to a large screen TV or projector and connected to our church’s live stream. During dinner, music was playing and occasionally our internet campus pastor would come online and give updates on when programing would start.

To connect everyone together with what was going on in the larger context of the city-wide gatherings, people were submitting photos of the groups at their houses as well as funny pictures of celebrity look-alikes. At a specific time, the live feed came online and our internet campus pastor and co-host welcomed everyone with funny dialogue and color commentary of the pictures submitted of home gatherings as well as celebrity look-alikes. It was a lot of fun.

Following this stuff, one of our teaching pastors kicked off the first session with a 15-20 minute message about what the weekend was to be about, where we are as a church and hints of where we are headed. I was absolutely amazed by how powerful it was. Around the crowded living room, 32 people were engaged in what was being said on the TV, being delivered live through the internet feed. Amazing to think that 400-500 others were engaged in the same experience all over Austin. I know my wife, who was home sick was also watching, so no telling how many people who couldn’t be at a house were still connected as well.

After the session, we had some live worship followed by a guided prayer time that my team and I led for our house gathering. For those that didn’t have live worship, one of our worship teams led worship through the live feed. We turned our TV off due to us having live worship, but I’m pretty sure the web version was just as powerful.

We all know that conferences and such are moving more and more to the online world, but I don’t think many people would think to host a local church leadership weekend (at least part of it) online where participants could gather in homes to experience the kickoff in the warm and inviting environment of someone’s home. It was very powerful and a total success. I know we have some similar things up our sleeve, I’m just looking forward to them right now.

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Your Sunday morning playlist: Welcome Music

Posted on31. Aug, 2010 by Kenny.

Music is a powerful tool. It has a powerful affect on environment. I remember walking through UpStreet Kids at North Point Church for the first time a few years ago on a Sunday morning and they had High School Musical booming loud through the hallways. Upstreet had a great decor, but the music literally put a little extra bounce in my step. Amazing how it affected me.

So, what music are you playing in your environments as the kids are coming in? Do you play music in your lobbies or hallways? If so, what is on your playlist?

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Leadership Weekend Review

Posted on31. Aug, 2010 by Kenny.

This weekend was Gateway’s annual Leadership Weekend. Every year it’s a Friday night and most of the day Saturday event where the core of the church comes to worship together, pray, be challenged and hear the vision for the upcoming year and engage in how God is leading us. This was my third such event at Gateway, and it was absolutely phenomenal. This year we laid out some pretty major challenges for the leaders of Gateway. The staff has been in an organizational restructuring for the last 6 months and the full plan of why we restructured and what the new structure is setting us up to do was revealed. It was met with excitement and zeal. The energy surrounding this weekend was absolutely contagious.

What’s really exciting is to see all the progress. I remember sitting in an off site meeting with our directional team a little over a year ago as we got stuck while talking through some issues. It was during this frustrating meeting where some ideas were brought up for the first time that led to where we’re headed right now. I also remember sitting in another overnight off site last Fall when early ideas were presented to the group, ideas that might address problems we were facing as an organization. Many people have prayed, fasted, discussed and strategized for thousands of hours to come up with what was presented this weekend. I’m totally excited about where we are heading as a body and it was thrilling to see the buy in.

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I need help with a report

Posted on30. Aug, 2010 by Kenny.

Okay, I’m crowdsourcing a problem I’ve run into. I found the PERFECT volunteer report for Fellowship One. We check all of our volunteers in every Sunday. We keep up with our volunteers as well. If one drops out, we make their ministry assignment inactive. This way, I can run a report and pull up the names of only those who are active. Likewise, I can pull the same report of those who are inactive to see who isn’t serving anymore.

As PERFECT as this report is, it’s got one little problem. Actually, it’s big enough to make it report frustrating. I’ve sent in a request to have this enhanced, but I’m hoping that someone out there can help me before I hear back from the fine folks at Fellowship Tech. So, I figure that one of three people could help me out. If you’re one of these three types of people, then read on. If you’re not, then feel free to move along unless this just sounds absolutely intriguing.

• You work for Fellowship Tech and you’d like to have mercy on me and pass my request to the front of the line to have it fixed before the end of the day. (Hey, it’s worth a shot, right?)
• You’re a Fellowship One ninja and know of another report that will get me the same information (or enough to satisfy my needs).
• You’re an Excel genius that can help me extract the information I need that is already in the report, just not in a convenient way to access.

So, I’m betting that at least one of you three are reading this post and are going to have a solution for me. Here we go:

The report is M3739E. It’s a fantastic report that spits out the names, addresses and communication information of all active or inactive volunteers for a ministry. In addition, it tells me where they serve, what their role is as well as the RLC they’re assigned to. Best of all, it shows volunteer requirements, such as when they had a background check run as well as if they’re filled out an application. It’s beautiful!

However, the problem is that this report puts all the communication information in one cell. Every phone number and email in once cell. So, if I want to run this report and quickly cut and paste 200 emails, I can’t becasue all the phone numbers are mixed in as well. At first I thought this was a simple fix as I could just do a “text to columns” split, but the contact info doesn’t appear to be separated by commas, spaces or anything else… so I can’t seem to divide the individual contacts. The only way I’ve been able to do this is manually cut and paste.

So, any advice? Is there a similar report? Anyone know an Excel trick that will do this for me? I need to get an email out to all my volunteers later this week and I totally don’t want to have someone cut and paste 300 emails.

Here is a sample of the report. The names, addresses and such have been changed, but it gives you something to play with to see if you can work your excel mojo on it.

UPDATE:

Within an hour of this post, my friend Mike Niebuhr, both a F1 Guru and obviously an excel ninja created a custom fix. So, if you’re curious about using this report, which you should becasue it is awesome, then you can use this fix as well.

Insert a new column between “communication” (column C) and “work address” (column D). Now column D is an empty column. In column D2, paste the following code:

=MID(C2,(SEARCH(“E: “,C2,1)+3),LEN(C2))

This code/function will extract the email (if there is one) from the C column and put it in column D2. Brilliant, right? To quickly add this function to all the rest of the cells in the D Column, click on Cell D2 and in the bottom right corner of the cell you’ll see a little box. When your cursor hovers over the little box, it turns to a solid black “plus sign” instead of what was a “hand” or white “plus sign.” Click on it (and hold down) and drag it all the way down Column D. This will populate the function in every cell in this column.

Thanks Mike for your help!

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Do you know of any great Bible Songs?

Posted on26. Aug, 2010 by Kenny.

Okay, I’m going a little old school here. I’m looking for some really good “old-fashion” Bible Songs. Cheesy instrumentation is okay. Before you disown me and unsubscribe from this blog, let me explain… please.

Every night when I put Titus to bed, we read from his Bible and something that has been significant is singing together. For close to a month, we read the story of Joshua and Jericho because he really likes the song. I know that he’s learning the story and falling in love with his time in the Bible even more because he loves singing the songs. A few weeks later we started reading the story of Zacchaeus and he really likes that song as well. This week, we’ve been reading Daniel and the Lions Den, but I don’t know a song for that. However, I know that there are hundreds of simple Bible Songs and maybe there’s one about Daniel and the Lions Den.

So, do you know of a great resource for simple Bible Songs? Simple is okay, we just need to learn them some we can sing them during our Bible time. If the music is a little cooler and up-to-date, then that’s a bonus… but I’m not interested in techno or rap versions of these songs… my son is 3.

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The social church database: what to watch out for

Posted on25. Aug, 2010 by Kenny.

If you’re reading this, you’re probably a Kids Pastor or somehow involved in the world of kidmin (although I know there are others as well… including my mom and other extended family). So, I need to throw you a serious line of caution. Don’t miss this… seriously.

When it comes to your role and what you’re responsible for, these social church database tools are the icing on the cake. I do believe that both tools (and those yet to come out) will enhance our ministry to our volunteers and better equip them to do their jobs. However, the people who are really going to get excited about these tools is everyone in your staff outside of the children’s ministry. Actually, they’re all going to go nuts, especially your pastor, small group pastors and the like. They’re going to be ready to make the switch yesterday. My word of caution for you is to hold the line.

We’ve actually been on the search for something like this for a few years now. Over two years ago we flirted with a company that allowed us to have a facebook-like experience that wasn’t very expensive, so we moved on it to check it out. They had plans to integrate (share the API) with a church database system so that all of it would fluidly talk together. The software turned out to be kind of crappy (totally not user friendly) and the church database system they were integrating with had some major deficiencies in areas that were essential to us as a church. So for them, it was a no-go. I wonder though, if this software we were looking at was as good (or better) than a facebook-like experience, would we have given in to the not-so-great church software and compromised? That’s where you might have to hold the line.

When looking at the new social church database tools on the market now, you need to evaluate what it offers as well as what it doesn’t. They may do some incredible things that you’ve not been able to do up until now, but what price are you willing to pay for this new found functionality? Here’s the scenario that is likely to play out. The new tools may be the answer to everything your small groups pastor needs, but making the switch will be a major sacrifice to the finance team as the financial tools are not as good as what they were previously using. Or in our case, the tool is a big win for small group connectivity, but is a step backward when it comes to check-in or something that affects the Children’s Ministry.

Does that make sense? Moving to new tools like this will affect the whole team. Make sure you know what the implications are with the tool you’re looking at. If it negatively affects kids, then know what it is and SPEAK UP! If it doesn’t, then all is good!

In the end, it’s an exciting time for our churches. I love the tools that are developing and it’s going to be cool to see what develops next!

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The social church database: who is doing it?

Posted on24. Aug, 2010 by Kenny.

Yesterday I started a new series about the social church database. If you’re like me, you got excited about the possibilities. So, who is already doing this? How do I get more information?

I’m by no means an expert in this stuff, but I try to keep up-to-date with what’s out there. So here’s what I’ve learned these last few months.

The first instance I’ve seen of the social church database is The City. It’s gotten a lot of buzz the last few months, a connectivity tool developed at Mars Hill Church in Seattle. Several big churches have moved to it and more are looking at it. I totally understand why… it’s beautiful. I’ve spent many hours on The City and it is what’s been missing. It’s a powerful tool to connect people to each other and to communicate information to the entire body in clear and concise ways. It’s a tool you don’t have to “lure” your people to use, but something they’ll want to use on a regular (if not daily basis). Seriously, The City is a bold step forward for connecting with the people who attend your church.

The second instance I’ve seen of the social church database is Fellowship One’s Table Project. I actually watched a demo last week and I’m equally excited about Fellowship Technologies solution to the social media problem. Where The City is an approach to a new database for your church, the Table Project is a tool that connects to your already existing Fellowship One database (assuming you already use Fellowship One… or plan to move to F1). The Table Project is an outside tool that has partnered with Fellowship One and seems to offer most of what the City does, just in different ways. I’m a big fan of Fellowship One and seeing this demo last week was very encouraging, something I’m really excited about.

Here’s the bottom line. I’ve gotten really excited about both of these projects. Why? Because they’re addressing a huge need that you might not have even known you had. People are slipping out the back door of your church and these tools WILL help people get connected at your church as well as stay better connected. Honestly, I love that there are two solutions out there right now. This kind of competition breeds innovation and that means a better product for you and me. Bottom line, I just want a tool that makes my job easier and to a degree (in certain ways) these tools will.

Tomorrow I’m going to conclude this series of the social database with a very important warning. Contain your excitement for one more day!

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The social church database: a new concept

Posted on23. Aug, 2010 by Kenny.

In case you haven’t noticed, we use a social and interactive web. Unless you’re one of those uber conservative (are we still using the word uber?) “I don’t put myself out there on the web” type people, we’re totally intertwined with the web. Between Facebook, Twitter, blogs, RSS feeds, forums and everything else, we’re constantly interacting with both people we know and people who bring value to our work and lives. Just recently, we’ve seen this same move with church database software (kinda).

Think about it, you’re Church database holds the records of hundreds, thousands of tens of thousands of people who have attended your church. More than likely, most of that data is wrong or outdated. Typically, the only way to get more accurate data is to get church attendees to fill out a new card and then manually update the data which is often can be confusing. The ideal solution is to have the average church attendee fix their own data. I know, there have been solutions for many years for people to log into specific pages where they could see all their stuff and update it, but rarely was there a strong/compelling reason for people to take the steps to get online just so they could keep their info up-to-date. The truth is, there hasn’t really been a compelling reason for people to do this except to occasionally sign-in to check giving records or sign-up for an event. However, in these cases I’ve seen people not really change incorrect data when in there and this is such a small penetration of the church who is doing this.

However, we’re on the verge of something totally new. It’s the social/interactive arm of your church’s database.

MOST people are searching for community. Not online community, but real community. Some of those already in community are looking for ways to enhance it. That’s where the social CMS is changing. They’re creating a space online where attendees can interact online with each other and the church in easy/non-threatening ways. There is space for actual small groups to continue discussions, pray for each other during the week and plan upcoming serving projects or socials. There are tools for serving teams (such as your 9:30 toddler room volunteers) to discuss how the weekend went, discuss policies and adjust their serving schedule without having to use email lists. The best part is how easy these systems let visitors explore and interact with your church before taking that risky step of setting foot in a small group. Again, this isn’t a “virtual” community, but a reflection of community that already exists. When attendees have this kind of interaction and value from a tool like this, they’ll keep their data up-to-date. From the church point of view, not only will you have up-to-date information, but you’ll see their involvement, how they’re connected and if you think there is some data that’s not correct, you can simply message them through the community software and have them update it.

Sounds great, doesn’t it? We’ll explore more tomorrow.

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A big thank you to some sponsors

Posted on20. Aug, 2010 by Kenny.

I just wanted to say thank you for the sponsorships this site has recently gotten. I really appreciate it. Other than some Google ad space and some Amazon affiliate love, this is the first time I’ve ever had money come in this direction when it comes to my blog. I didn’t start blogging as a business venture (it doesn’t really pay all that well… at least for me anyway). Over the years I have logged thousands of hours writing becasue I believe in what I get to do and I want to help others in any way I can. If a little green comes my way, then I count that a blessing.

So, this month I picked up God’s Kids Worship and Christianity Cove as advertisers. Thank you so much for partnering with me and this site.

God’s Kids Worship is a great resource for elementary production. If you need great worship tracks for your worship, then they’ve got what you need. I’ve not been able to sample these personally, but I’ve spent some time on their site learning about them. I like what I’ve seen. They have a huge selection of songs and a plan to keep your song list fresh (I think I did Big House every Sunday for the first 7 years of my ministry). What a great resource! Be sure to check it out (click the ad to the right).

Christianity Cove is a comprehensive site of Sunday School, Home School and Church teaching resources. Mary-Kate, the owner and director, has been at it for years and there are hundreds and hundreds (maybe thousands) of games, crafts, lessons and articles. Although this resource is a little different from the kinds of resources I usually promote, I know there are many readers of this site that could benefit from this resource. So, jump on over and ad check out what the Cove is all about (Click the ad to the right).

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Have I sold out?

Posted on20. Aug, 2010 by Kenny.

Okay, this is a little awkward. Recently I’ve posted some ad space on this blog and I’ve gained a few advertisers. I just thought I’d throw it out there. If someone wants to buy and ad space, I’d be more than glad to sell it to you. This blog is a passion of mine and I’ve put thousands of hours into it. However, I’m not the type that thinks if you sell ads you’ve somehow “sold out.” Actually, the more money I gain in ad space, the more my wife will tolerate all the time I spend writing. Okay, I made that last part up, my wife is very supportive.

I’ve actually told my wife that every dollar that comes in from the ad revenue will go to our “replace one of our crappy cars” fund. At this rate, we’ll have a less crappy car in 17 years. I kid… more like 15 years.

Most ads will probably tie in to what I write about and what I believe in. Some may not, but that’s okay. It’s not pushy or in your face, just right there on the side. I’ll probably write a post every now and then thanking my advertisers and highlighting them for you. Feel free to ignore them if you want. However, I do encourage you to click on the ads and check them out. It may be a product or resource you didn’t know about that will be of great value to you. Then again, maybe it wont. If that’s the case, do it for me. I’m not sure my crappy cars can hold out for 15 more years.

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