[Kid Inspiration]

I am heavily indebted to Rags and his post – How Leaders Should Spend Their Time

And by indebted I mean I am simply ripping him off and reposting it.

I am going to talk to our team about this and do a little bit of self-checking in this area… becuase owing to the current season I am getting a lot of ‘doing’ done. (Ha… doing done, I crack me up)

The leader should spend their time:

• 1/3 Reflecting – The leader do the necessary reflection, thinking, reading, learning and planning

• 1/3 Doing – The leader do the laborious work of doing after planning

• 1/3 Developing – The leader spends time training and developing others

Anyway, have a look at your life and evaluate your balance!

Every few months a new version of the famous “Shift Happens” video is released, with startling stats and eye opening facts, and bowel moving predictions… here is the latest:

The latest version of the “Shift happens” videos updated for autumn 2009, developed by XPLANE in partnership with The Economist. This Did You Know video focuses on the changing media landscape, including convergence and technology.

Youtube Link: Shift Happens

I just added a Subscribe by email box on the right hand column of this blog (looks like the box below).

So now you can receive edification and justification through email every time I post!

Yay.

Check it out! Big News from UNITED!

On Wednesday, November 4th, popular Australian musical sensation Hillsong United will appear on movie screens across the US for an exclusive One Night Event featuring a performance by the internationally recognized worship band and their much-anticipated documentary, hosted live from Australia.

“We’re All in this Together”- Part apologetic, part documentary, part call to action, the film is a story made up of many stories, told by many voices, no individual voice any more or any less important than any other, yet every voice working together to ultimately tell the ONE story – A story that involves everyONE; that seeks to capture our collective and idiosyncratic purpose in ONE.

The deepest craving of human nature is the need to be appreciated. – William James

This is an excerpt from When “Thanks” Isn’t Enough – 3 Steps to Gratitude that Empowers from the blog of Keith Ferrazzi.

…His favorite version of the Power Thank You was inspired by Heidi Wall, the co-founder of the Flash Forward Institute here in LA. It has three steps:

1. Thank the person for something specific that he or she did for you. (It can also be something the person refrained from doing that would have hurt you.)
2. Acknowledge the effort it took for the person to help you by saying something like: “I know you didn’t have to do _______” or “I know you went out of your way to do_______.”
3. Tell the person the difference that his or her act personally made to you.

Mark writes, “If a person performs an extraordinary act of kindness or assistance and all you say is ‘thanks,’ you create a mirror neuron receptor gap because emotionally you’re not giving back as much as you received. Saying ‘thanks’ is better than nothing, but it’s not good enough” (emphasis mine).

Read On

Here’s what I wrote on twitter on 12:39 PM Sep 17th from Twitterrific

@funnymandan I challenge U to a #twitteroff. Category is ‘bad ministry name acronyms’: Super Passionate Eternal Warriors – SPEW #kidmin

What started as mere horseplay between friends turned into a cultural tour de force with hundreds, dozens, lots of, numbers of fellow twitters joining in to clash their language knowledge in a battle of wit and writing…ness.

Over the next two days many a bad Acronym was created, some merely awful, others… puerile nonsense.

Finishing at Australian Eastern Standard Time on the 19th of September in the year of our Lord two thousand and nine it is now my distinct and quite specialous honour to present to you the best of the bunch, the cream of the proverbial crop for your voting edification.

The winner will go on to recieve the glory that comes from such a win and a small basket of fruit which they will procure from their nearest Grocery establishment at their own expense.

May the Best Acronym Win! (MTBAW)

I would love to highlight one of the main reasons we use media with our kids during weekend services.

When I grew up in New Zealand there were only two TV channels, the appropriately named One and Two, so my friends and I watched the same TV programs:

Macgyver and Knight Rider

(I cried when Kitt ended up in the acid pool and they had to remake him. Episode 314 Junk Yard Dog).

It united us as kids and has given us a common language and reference.

This has all changed with the stunning width and breadth of media available today. Our media choices are used to differentiate and separate us into tribes/groups. Are you an emo kid, do you like Hip/Hop, or are you a fan of ?

One of the many reasons we use media in our services is to create a shared experience.

No matter which campus I go to, which of our extension services I attend there will be children who I share a common language with… not about just Disney or Nickelodeon but with our curriculum and the Big Message videos. We could talk about Funny Man Dan and his latest exploits or some song they saw last week and as the media is created to point towards our theme and (hopefully) toward Jesus the relevance to their lives should immediately obvious.

And just like today as the mist of time clouds my eyes as I think about Macgyver diffusing a bomb with a toothpick, or Michael Knight foiling an international plot I hope that our kids today will remember with fondness and hopefully understanding what they experienced as a child.

(This may turn into a series methinks)

WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?

No seriously, you’re reading the blog of a Children’s Pastor… and seemingly remaining interested… unless you just searched for the term ‘Don’t Do Normal’ and this page came up, which raises two very important points… 1 Thanks Google, and 2 Why can’t people who are searching for ‘How to give away one million dollars’ come here?

(Hmm… just writing that down has increased my chances)

So what are you doing here?

You are set apart not just as a believer in Jesus Christ, but a person who may be called to minister to children! You are like a statistic within a statistic, a piece of a piece of a pie.

• You are unusual
• You are counter-cultural
• You are different
• You are standing out
• You are separate, distinct and set apart
• You are peculiar, unconventional and too some, strange
• You are contrary not to the Word of God, but to the world
• You are an visiting alien here for a specific purpose and goal
• You are opposed, not to the world but to anything that exalts itself against the Kingdom of God
• You are anything but average

YOU’RE A DEVIATION FROM THE NORM

Once you become a follower of Jesus normal just isn’t good enough anymore. You are part of the world that is to come… The Kingdom of God is here… and yet to come. The Jews were not expecting Jesus. They expected a conquering king, a strong soldier. He would free them from all their enemies. He would change the way that they lived. There would be freedom from the rule of their enemies.

This is what the religious leaders got in Matt 5… the beatitudes

• The way up is down
• The way in is out
• The way first is last
• The way of success is service
• The way of strength is weakness
• The way of security is vulnerability
• The way of protection is forgiveness
• God’s power is made perfect… in our weakness
• Want to become great? Become least.
• Want to discover yourself? Forget your self.
• Want to ‘get even’? Bless and love them.
• Jesus didn’t just tell us to turn the other cheek we have to turn our hands and heart toward the other and do good.

You’re not normal, so don’t pretend to be.

Anyway, different is far more interesting.

Brooklyn will have a younger brother coming soon in Feb 09. Yay!

Been while (Sept 08) since I posted a joke, but here it is!

A patient says: “Doctor, last night I made a Freudian slip, I was having dinner with my mother-in-law and wanted to say: “Could you please pass the butter.” But instead I said: “You silly cow, you have completely ruined my life”.”

Ministry can be often intense.

You very infrequently look back at an experience and wish you were angrier… now maybe you think of a great comeback line, but that’s just being too clever too late. Unfortunately for my temper I admire the leaders who respond with grace in a situation. When some old pastor guy (using the term loosely) tells a story about the time when a group of angry congregation members/protesters/motorcycle gang, wrote a strongly worded letter/protested/punched while quoting scripture/burning an effigy of the pastor/killing bunny rabbits and they responded by taking them all our to lunch/praying and they took him out to lunch/getting all of them saved and one member turned out to own Harley Davidson and giving hundreds of bikes to the Church Men’s Ministry… well I always repent of my angry ways and promise to do better in the future.

• Irregardless of circumstance does the Church have your heart?
• Irregardless of leadership do the children have your heart?
• Does time make the heart grow fonder?
• Does time make your heart grow colder?

Guard your heart.

So I spoke at the Kidshaper conference last week about keeping perspective in our lives… here are some great quotes about perspective and a summary:

• In order to keep a true perspective of one’s importance, everyone should have a dog that will worship him and a cat that will ignore him.
• Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts. Albert Einstein
• Every generalization is dangerous, especially this one. Mark Twain
• I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life and that is why I succeed. Michael Jordan
• Won’t you come into the garden? I would like my roses to see you. Richard Brinsley Sheridan
• A penny will hide the biggest star in the Universe if you hold it close enough to your eye. Samuel Grafton
• When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. But let him sit on a hot stove for a minute – and it’s longer than any hour. That’s relativity. Albert Einstein
• There is no burnt rice to a hungry person. Philippine Proverb

GIDEON: Judges 7:1-8

• God bought about a victory from an army too small (Midianites 135,000 = 450 to 1)
• With weapons that were completely inadequate (empty clay jar, a torch, a trumpet)
• And a leader who was determined but felt completely insignificant (Judges 6:11)

There is pretty much one conference I attend each year that I have nothing to organise and that is Kidshaper. It is the national ACC children’s ministry conference in Melbourne Australia.

I get to just attend and enjoy it!

Except this year I had the honour of speaking as a keynote to the hundreds of awesome men and women of God who sow their lives into the kids of Australia and New Zealand and the world!

You can read a report from the official blog of Kidshaper CM1234

And follow Rob Bradbury (national grand poo-bah of Kids R Us) on twitter.

But from a personal perspective it was such a great few days receiving leadership and wisdom from Papa Smurf himself Jim Wideman and so many other leaders around this nation.

I really felt God speak to my heart about great steps forward both personally and for our church. It was a profound week and I love seeing the same faces each year knowing there are so many volunteers out there running ministries with a heart for God and kids.

If you are one of those people who perhaps is out there running your ministry as a volunteer without a big network of like minded people around you:

1. Find out who is close by you from Kids R Us… make contact and make yourself known. I know Rob and his team would love to support you.
2. Contribute – it’s the greatest way to connect. Write a nice comment on someone’s blog, reply to them on twitter. Connection is not all about the phone and face to face anymore. As you give you will receive. Send a resource to another Church, help them out. You may just find a lifetime ministry friend.
3. Come to Kidshaper next year and say hi.

Thanks Rob and team!

As my friend Giusepe rightly noted, I wrote this in my last post:

You all (and so many others) made our adventure forgettable! Thanks so much!

I really did mean UNforgettable!

He he.