Saturday, March 2nd, 2013
If you are in Student Ministry then you are aware of something that most in the church do not give a great deal of thought to – the extensive calendar that affects your life. As a student minister, your life and your ministry to a great extent revolve around a school and ministry calendar.
Appropriate ministry events or happenings are used to attract students, sustain momentum or generate anticipation and excitement on an entry-level. A well-done ministry event can also produce a huge spiritual impact and catapult students towards deepening discipleship in their life.
Too often though student ministries suffer from TWO extreme calendar mistakes. Either they have no calendaring strategy, very little on the calendar and consequently enjoy no traction towards a maturing, purposeful ministry event. The other extreme is to fill a student ministry calendar so full that there is literally some sort of ministry event all the time. It’s like trying to put 50 lbs of cement in a 20lb bag.
Now those you who have read Simple Student Ministry by Eric Geiger and Jeff Borton may have adjusted your ministry towards the middle and become healthier in the process.
But there are many in student ministry who mistakenly applied an extreme version of Simple Student Ministry and slashed their ministry events so far back that the only students still attending are those ready for deepening discipleship or those who have no choice in their participation. A healthy youth ministry is has a leader who endeavors to create strategic fun and deepening discipleship within the same ministry.
The 336 Strategy
I want to share with you a brief but helpful strategy for calendaring your life and ministry. Its called STRATEGY 336. The title simply reflects the number of months represented in each segment of the strategy.
It looks like this:
3 months = CONCRETE
3 months = TENTATIVE
6 months = SKELETAL
Now before we jump into that first let me share a few verses with you to help convince you that JESUS is honored in your planning efforts and smiles when you apply planning to His kingdom work. Now we know about the advance planning of Nehemiah and his advance planning and organization skills applied to rebuilding Jerusalem. We could stop there but. . .
I Corinthians 14:33 tells us that “
God is not a god of confusion”
Luke 14:28-30 ask us to consider the truth of planning and organization saying
“For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.’
The plans of the diligent lead surely to abundance, but everyone who is hasty comes only to poverty. Proverbs 21:5
Prepare your work outside; get everything ready for yourself in the field, and after that build your house.
Prov. 24:27So, strategic calendaring with purpose is practical and biblical.
The First Three Months
The first three months are CONCRETE! Just like it implies, these are 3 months of calendar that should never be deleted or dropped unless an emergency arises. In other words, they are “set” in concrete. The larger the church the more months that may be applied to each segment but for the sake of explanation lets just go with 3,3,6.
Three months CONCRETE = Name of Event or happening, the date is set, the purpose of the event is established, the specific target audience is determined, the cost is printed and the place booked. You know what programming is being planned and any speaker is booked and other elements set. Also if you use Lead Teams, A Lead Team coordinator and Lead Team members are already enlisted.
The Second Three Months
The second 3 mos are called Tentative! Just as it suggests, there a few ministry decision or elements that “in-process” they are TENTATIVE. During these three months of calendaring, you have most of the details but not all. The date is firm, your purpose is defined, and you know the approximate cost. At this stage, the location is being finalized, but you may only have an LTC and not a full Lead Team yet. Maybe you have a speaker or two as options and trying to settle it out. Or maybe you are looking at your budget to see if you will be able to book a guest speaker or band or what elements you can weave into the event. During this phase of calendaring, you have enlisted an LTC but not a full team. In other words, some things are concrete and some things are in-process or TENTATIVE.
The Last Six Months
The final segment is for six months. This is the SKELETAL period. During these six months, you may only have a date and an idea. For example, you know you are going to camp and it is locked into the calendar but you don’t yet know where or what the theme is. During this period you may have a cost range or target price you will charge but that might change. You are busy establishing the major elements of the ministry event but the details are just in the planning stages. You may not have an LTC yet but you are recruiting both an LTC and an LT to begin the work.
Remember, it takes longer to plan things the larger your group is. Because you may be coordinating a ministry calendar with several other ministries within the same church, you may need more time. So your 336 strategies maybe a 6-6-12 strategy.
Guiding Principles
There is no set standard but there are some principles that should guide your calendaring.
1st – Make sure you schedule your calendar with Purpose. There should not be anything on your ministry calendar that does not require a ministry to pull it off.
2nd Don’t over or under-do it. If you plan a lean or slim calendar it will be full by the end of the year. If you plan a packed calendar your leadership and you maybe pleading for relief by the end of the year. So plan lean, and execute well.
3rd. Don’t become a lone ranger! Involve people in the whole process and give the ministry away.
If you’d like to learn more about ways to positively impact your student ministry, make sure to take our
Ministry Excellence Assessment and learn more about how to benefit your ministry!
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Friday, March 1st, 2013
| Survey results Shock MTV |
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A groundbreaking survey from an unlikely source backs up what family groups and youth ministers have been
saying about kids all along. The survey reveals that teens are highly influenced and attracted to role models and family.
While not extremely suprising to those in the youth ministry trenches, this is really good news. The MTV/Associated Press poll shows what kids really desire is TIME with family.
Four areas of the survey are outlined below.
The survey question was: What makes you most happy?
The top response garnishing 20 % from teens age 13 to 24 was spending time with family.
Seventy-three percent of teens are somewhat or very happy with their relationship with their parents.
Many parents wrongly assume that teens simply do not want to spend time together. The truth is, they want their
space and they want their family too!
Lead Parents and Teens to make time for both!
50% ot teens also said that one or both parents are their heroes.
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Friday, March 1st, 2013
| by Coupon Companion Plugin”>New Words for a New Generation |
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One encompasses more than 165,000 entries. The other allows for just 140 characters. No matter. The
Merriam-Webster Dictionary has found it in its loquacious soul to allow the word tweet into its newest edition.
Tweet, referring to the brief missives sent on the popular micro-social networking service Twitter, joined more
than 100 new words and terms in the 2012 edition. Americana, referring to a style of music, got an entry.
Cougar got an extra definition (that referring to an older women who has a thing for younger men).
Bromance made the cut, too, as did helicopter parent and boomerang child. (AP)
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Thursday, February 28th, 2013
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Tattoos: A skin-deep reflection
of adolescent life
Although a little hard to see, she never forgets. She wears the discreet tattoo of a small tree on her right shoulder.
When asked to tell the story behind her tattoo she replies, “After I was born, my father planted this tree in our
backyard in honor of my arrival. He was so proud of me. At 10 years of age, he walked out on us. When I turned
16 I got a tattoo of the tree to remind myself that at one point in my life I was very important to my dad. I
haven’t seen him in years and the tree is gone, but he can’t take my tattoo away.”
Young people get body art for many reasons. Some do it because they want to fit in, while others succumb to
peer pressure. Many are a testimony to the power of media to influence our choices. For some, it is a mark of
shock and rebellion, while tattoos make others feel sexier. Some simply see tattoos as works of fine art to adorn
Every generation has had a mark that distinguished it from previous cohorts. Over the past 50 years, prior
generations have left us reminders of their passing—ducktail haircuts, cramming phone booths, rock’n roll,
transistor radios, long hair, dropping drugs, dropping out, bell bottom jeans, platform shoes, polyester pants,
pet rocks, disco, baggy pants and backwards hats, hip hop, rap, sex without boundaries, body modification, and
So what is left to make this generation unique when they are looked back on by history? They will be the
generation remembered for creating the most personal form of media there is—a permanent story painted on
Many of today’s youth will look back on this decade and remember it, not with fondness, but hesitation as they
recall their struggles to simply survive. They will remember words such as divorce, separation, fatherlessness, abandonment, abuse and blended. In many ways they are a generation who lost their most special place in that
There is another reason why some kids have tattoos. For a generation of kids consumed by the media, it has in
many ways become their closest friend, understanding and listening to the issues many adults miss. In their
identification with the media, they in turn have become the medium. If you have a story to tell then why not put
it on your body? Why not put it out there for all to see in the hopes that someone, anyone, might take time to
to read? At least this is one thing your family can’t take away from you. And it is permanent, always there, unlike
your family. It is the most personal form of media there is. The medium is the message. You are the medium.
Desiree, 20, says “Getting a tattoo is a right of passage in a time when we’ve lost all the traditional ones that a
kid usually gets in a normal family.” Des, as her friends call her, has a pair of angel wings on her back. Growing
up in a home where her dad went to jail when she was 18 months and returned when she was 18 years old provide
d lots of challenges. It was life with a single mom that she could only describe as “hell.” Entering her second year
of college, the wings are a constant reminder that there isn’t anything she can’t “rise” above.
Meaghan, 20, sees it similarly: “A tattoo is about me. It is a form of personal expression; part of the culture shift.
Tattoos fill a void for meaning in a postmodern culture. We need permanency in world of constant transition. It
forever expresses how I felt at that moment in time. It captures a point in time when I was alive. It is our longing
for permanence in a world of disposable everything.”
Tattoos can reflect the journey, beliefs, values and hopes of any young person. Many different “chapters” are
represented by their body art. One of those “chapters” is the family.
Chanel’s father was an executive chef who took his family all over the world. She didn’t move between cities; she
moved between countries and cultures. Putting down deep roots at any one time was not the norm as they lived
in Houston, the Bahamas, Vancouver and Jamaica during her first 14 years. Chanel’s father was always busy and
had little time for her. One Christmas, she recalls, he only spent two hours with her.
At 15, Chanel fell into a deep depression. She felt she wasn’t wanted and having a mother who yelled, “I wished I
never had you,” didn’t help. As usual, her dad was never around and being left to her own, using her own
judgment and strength seemed the best she could hope for.
This was the beginning of her rebellion. With her green hair and a fondness for the wilder side of life, she made
friends with many guys and fell into a life of alcohol, drugs, sex, angry music and disappointment. Korn, The
Beastie Boys and Nirvana spoke to her empty soul. Her dad was living 7,000 miles away and her mom worked
long hours. The words, “It’s all for you!” rang empty because all she wanted was a family that cared. Even a
short relationship with Jesus didn’t help her.
Chanel got her first tattoo at 17 and now has 10. All her tattoos reflect her life’s journey, values and interests,
including a pair of X-wing fighters from Star Wars on her stomach. Another is of a robot boy who never really
knew his father—just like Chanel.
Perhaps the most amazing tattoo of all runs the full length of her right side starting just below her shoulder and
ending just above the ankle. It contains the complete lyrics to “Waiting for the Great Destruction” by The Matthew
Good Band; a song that questions relational happiness and longs for truth. Chanel says it is a song about her
male relationships and how many of them she has ruined. She sees herself as the great destruction in having
lost many friendships during her short lifetime. It is a reminder to her about the importance of relationships
including those with her mother and father.
Scot’s name seems quite appropriate for a boy born in Scotland. He is 21 years old and has inherited his dad’s
artistic talents. Scot and his dad were very close and shared many wonderful memories. Sadly, Scot’s father
James died a couple of years ago. Shortly before he passed away, he was quite impressed that Scot had his
father’s initials tattooed on his arm. However, his dad was too afraid to get a similar one.
Two months after his father’s death from lung cancer, Scot wanted to find a way to remember his father. The
gravestone has the picture of a white dove with a Scottish thistle in its mouth. Scot decided to pick up on that
theme so he drew a childhood picture of himself releasing the dove as a picture of his father’s freedom. It serves
as a daily reminder of a father he loved deeply and misses greatly.
For Jennifer, age 20, a small rose speaks of healing and wholeness in a life that was once marked by depression
and hopelessness. It is a reminder to never give up.
Jen’s life began to crumble when she was in eighth grade, beginning with her grandmother’s death. As Jen
says, “My grandmother was a very, very strong piece of my life.” Three weeks after she died, her grandfather
had a stroke. A few weeks later, her adopted sister decided to move back with her birth parents for a short period. At about the same time Jen switched high schools, a traumatic enough event, and soon suffered a sports injury that meant
she could no longer compete.
Jen says she “bottomed out with depression” in ninth grade when her sister left for good. She still misses her grand
mother and feels the pressure of trying to keep the family together. Jen was also sexually assaulted during her
later high school years. In her own strength, Jen began to look for ways to heal. It was then she remembered a
saying she used to share with her sister, “every rose has its thorn,” from a song with the same name by the group Poison.
Jen shares how she arrived at just the right location for her blue rose tattoo, the color of the rose she laid on her grandmother’s coffin. As well as being her grandmother’s favorite color, blue also signifies Jen’s love for swimming
and water. She says, “Everyone has burdens to carry and everybody carries them in a different way. My grandmother always said you carry the stones on your shoulders and you carry the bull on your back. The bigger the p
roblems are, the bigger that bull is. And when I started getting rid of my burdens I realized she was right. And
just as a reminder for her, I had the rose put on my lower back.”
If a picture is worth a thousand words, how many books may well be written on youthful bodies? We only have
covered a few stories in abbreviated format. What we cannot capture is their tone of voice—one moment filled
with pain and despair and the next minute full of joy and hope. We cannot look into their faces. We cannot feel
what they have been through. However, we can be more understanding by realizing that some painted people
are not who we think they are.
Next time you see a young person with a tattoo, why not ask them to share the story behind it? You might be
amazed at what you hear … and be better off for it.
The Center for Parent/Youth Understanding grants permission for this article to be copied in its entirety, provided the copies
are distributed free of charge and the copies indicate the source as the Center for Parent/Youth Understanding.
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Thursday, February 28th, 2013
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Thursday, February 28th, 2013
| Facebook – who founded it and how many use it |
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Facebook, formerly The Facebook, is a free-access social networking website that is operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. Users can join networks organized by city, workplace, school, and region to connect and interact with other people. People can also add friends and send them messages, and update their personal profiles to notify friends about themselves. The website’s name refers to the paper facebooks depicting members of a campus community that some Universities and prep schools give to incoming students, faculty, and staff as a way to get to know other people on campus.
Mark Zucherberg founded Facebook while he was a student at Harvard University. Website membership was initially limited to Harvard students, but was expanded to other colleges and Stanford Univeristy. It later expanded further to include by Coupon Companion Plugin”>any university student, then high school students, and, finally, to anyone aged 13 and over. The website currently has appx 518 million active users worldwide.
Facebook is seeking more partnerships with wireless-service providers and phone makers, according to a statement from the company yesterday. About 23 percent of Facebook customers access the site using their by Coupon Companion Plugin”>phones, the company said.
Facebook already has applications on devices such as Apple’s iPhone and the BlackBerry, which let users post updates and send messages to their friends. The company is working with phone makers to tie Facebook more closely to by Coupon Companion Plugin”>mobile devices, allowing users to merge their phone contacts with their Facebook friends.
Planet earth has 6,845,609,960 humans with 2 billion internet users and at the beginning of 2013 over 1 billion Facebook users
Put another way: about 7% of the world’s humans are on Facebook.
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The figure is as of September and was disclosed Tuesday in Facebook’s quarterly earnings report.
Facebook also says it had 584 million active users each day on average in September and 604 million using Facebook from a mobile device each month.
Here is a look at how the number of active users at Facebook has grown:
1 million — End of 2004.
5.5 million — End of 2005.
12 million — End of 2006.
20 million — April 2007.
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Thursday, February 28th, 2013
| How to capture, download and use YouTube video |
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Option #1 go to http://youtubedownload.altervista.org/
After downloading the program, go to Youtube.com and copy the link in the browser while the video you want is currently playing.
Click on the Downloader program and paste the link inside the box. It will probably appear automatically and you will not have to paste the link. Inside the lower box (Paste) the link and change the destination where you want to save the video.
This will save the video in a quicktime/apple format.
If you want it to play well with other kids (like by Coupon Companion Plugin”>windows) you may prefer to convert it to a wmv format. I like to use AVS, FLV or PRISM.
Option #2
Go to www.youtube.com and select the video you want to capture.
Right click and copy the URL ex: (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anxkrm9uEJk)
- Open another webpage and go to http://kej.tw/flvretriever/
- Once you are at FLV retriever website, paste the URL address into the box from your Youtube video selection. Once pasted into the box, click on RETRIEVE NOW!
- After you click Retrieve Now, the video file address will be captured for conversion.
- Choose the option: save as a new file and then you can rename it as a .flv file
- When prompted, save the file to your by Coupon Companion Plugin”>desktop or your video file folder.
- Once it is saved, simply go to the file, right click on it and choose rename. Then rename the file you want it to have AND add the file ending .flv (that’s .flv) Once you have renamed the file and saved it as an flv file, you can now convert it to a useable format of your choice.
- Open up a converter program such as (www.AVSvideoconverter)
- Use the Browse button to retrieve the video that you just renamed to an .flv format file.
- When the file has been retrieved, select the format you desire to convert you video to – such as WMV for using by Coupon Companion Plugin”>Windows Media Player or MOV for using Quick Time Player. Then click on Convert Now!
- Once the conversion is complete, locate the new video to test it out. Now you can delete the flv file (chances are you will not use it for anything else unless you use an flv video player.
- Finished
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Thursday, February 28th, 2013
| You Are Facebook’s #1 Commodity |
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Is Facebook Using You ? The rate of FB growth may have leveled off with 13-19 year olds but that does not mean they are through using you.
In early February 2012 Facebook filed documents with the government that will allow it to sell shares of stock to the public. Currenly the stock is estimated to be worth at least $75 billion. But unlike other big-ticket corporations, it doesn’t have an inventory of widgets or gadgets, cars or phones. Facebook’s inventory consists of personal data — yours and mine.
Facebook makes money by selling ad space to companies that want to reach us. Advertisers choose key words or details — like relationship status, location, activities, favorite books and employment — and then Facebook runs the ads for the targeted subset of its 845 million users. If you indicate that you like cupcakes, live in a certain neighborhood and have invited friends over, expect an ad from a nearby bakery to appear on your page. The magnitude of online information Facebook has available about each of us for targeted marketing is stunning. In Europe, laws give people the right to know what data companies have about them, but that is not the case in the United States. Facebook made $3.2 billion in advertising revenue last year, 85 percent of its total revenue. Yet Facebook’s inventory of data and its revenue from advertising are small potatoes compared to some others. Google took in more than 10 times as much, with an estimated $36.5 billion in advertising revenue in 2011, by analyzing what people sent over Gmail and what they searched on the Web, and then using that data to sell ads. Hundreds of other companies have also staked claims on people’s online data by depositing software called cookies or other tracking mechanisms on people’s computers and in their browsers. If you’ve mentioned anxiety in an e-mail, done a Google search for “stress” or started using an online medical diary that lets you monitor your mood, expect ads for medications and services to treat your anxiety. Ads that pop up on your screen might seem useful, or at worst, a nuisance. But they are much more than that. The bits and bytes about your life can easily be used against you. Whether you can obtain a job, credit or insurance can be based on your digital doppelgänger — and you may never know why you’ve been turned down.
Material mined online has been used against people battling for child custody or defending themselves in criminal cases. LexisNexis has a product called Accurint for Law Enforcement, which gives government agents information about what people do on social networks. The Internal Revenue Service searches Facebook and MySpace for evidence of tax evaders’ income and whereabouts, and United States Citizenship and Immigration Services has been known to scrutinize photos and posts to confirm family relationships or weed out sham marriages. Employers sometimes decide whether to hire people based on their online profiles, with one study indicating that 70 percent of recruiters and human resource professionals in the United States have rejected candidates based on data found online. A company called Spokeo gathers online data for employers, the public and anyone else who wants it. The company even posts ads urging “HR Recruiters — Click Here Now!” and asking women to submit their boyfriends’ e-mail addresses for an analysis of their by Coupon Companion Plugin”>online photos and activities to learn “Is He Cheating on You?” Stereotyping is alive and well in data aggregation. Your application for credit could be declined not on the basis of your own finances or by Coupon Companion Plugin”>credit history, but on the basis of aggregate data — what other people whose likes and dislikes are similar to yours have done. If guitar players or divorcing couples are more likely to renege on their credit-card bills, then the fact that you’ve looked at guitar ads or sent an e-mail to by Coupon Companion Plugin”>a divorce lawyer might cause a data aggregator to classify you as less credit-worthy. When an Atlanta man returned from his honeymoon, he found that his credit limit had been lowered to $3,800 from $10,800. The switch was not based on anything he had done but on aggregate data. A letter from the company told him, “Other customers who have used their card at establishments where you recently shopped have a poor repayment history with American Express.” adapted from an article By LORI ANDREWS / Published: February 4, 2012
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