So last week I started this post in my drafts folder all about how I thought we were starting to see some real traction in the social media/internet world with relation to the non-geeks starting to use technology tools to communicate. But then Sat night happened… I cut back on the amount of blogs I read dramatically. I have done this once before, but didn’t touch the Children’s Ministry ones because I kinda felt I wanted to keep up with all of them… those days are over.

I made some tough (well not really compared to fighting in world war 1), decisions and just stopped following about half the CM blogs I used to (I follow them in Google Reader).

Having blogged for many moons now I have seen the landscape change and shift; in obvious ways like the rise of twitter, and in watching blogging grow, plateau and maintain.

But blogging still seems to be the way that great leaders can communicate, converse and contribute to a wider conversation – and spreading it through twitter.

So I wonder if the little niche of ministry to Children has reached its peak with blogging contributors and time will soon present a much more mainstream option?

The bottom line is that we should have FAR more people involved in contributing! Too many leaders doubt their experience and feel like they have nothing to say. Everyone has something to contribute.

Leader: Don’t waste your experience. Grow your influence.

You are already giving out to your team, just make that content go further, find a way to share! Believe me, as you give you will receive, pressed down, shaken together… you know the rest.

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)

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)

Here’s what I twittered today.

• The Church used to be great with technology. We nailed it with the printing press. Why are we so slow to see the potential of technology? Link
• twttr still seems lk the latest thing in the Church but old news 2 the world? Link
• So 746 Tweets about #hillsong this week. Not bad. 1,097 about #swineflu and 22,309 about @iranelection Link

(In reverse order just like twitter presents them)

Check out this great Time Mag Article: How Twitter Will Change The Way We Live

This is what I ultimately find most inspiring about the Twitter phenomenon. We are living through the worst economic crisis in generations, with apocalyptic headlines threatening the end of capitalism as we know it, and yet in the middle of this chaos, the engineers at Twitter headquarters are scrambling to keep the servers up, application developers are releasing their latest builds, and ordinary users are figuring out all the ingenious ways to put these tools to use. There’s a kind of resilience here that is worth savoring. The weather reports keep announcing that the sky is falling, but here we are — millions of us — sitting around trying to invent new ways to talk to one another.

If your question is: So do you think twitter/facebook/whatever is a useful tool? You are asking the wrong question and have completely missed the point.

It’s not about the specific tool, whether it’s Facebook/Twitter it’s about the technology and the way it changes society and the way we interact/get news/connect/etc. etc.

See you in Las Vegas!

Napkin Conference

View: Conference Promo

YouTube is a site that creates nothing.

All the creators did (before Google bought the site) was put up a way for people to create content and share it with the world.

I mean its not like a news site where people create meaningful content at the employ of the almighty Goog… it’s just a way to put lame videos that SHOULD have been sent to the funniest home video show of your choosing!

And therein lies the crux.

Millions of people have made YouTube what it is today by creating all the content FOR Google (then they make millions from advertising, which is a whole other rant).

This culture, and the culture of our kids growing up is shifting from ‘consumers’ to ‘contributors’.

I watched Macgyver diffuse bombs using a matchbox and three hairpins growing up, I never really considered it possible to make my own episode… even if I wanted to, film was expensive and forget about editing it!

Today’s culture honours the contributors, the creators, those brave enough to put something out there and they disregard the leechers, the whiners, the critics who have never created anything.

You want to have an opinion that is valued, a voice that commands respect…

CONTRIBUTE!

Networking is not so much just about meeting other like minded people, it’s about the bringing value.

The little community of Children’s Ministry bloggers that has grown and developed in the last four years is full of people that CREATE content.

Are you serious about connecting?

Do you really want to build relationships that sharpen you?

Do you want the generation rising to listen to anything you have to say?

Then WRITE something, FILM something, RECORD something… and put it out there for every person in the known universe to read!

(btw: There are at least 900,000 blog posts every day online.)

Please, for your sake: Move from consumer to contributor!

Via Kidscreen Magazine

A new poll shows U.S. parents know how important digital media skills are for their children.

Three out of four parents surveyed agreed that knowing how to navigate various digital media outlets is as beneficial to kids as mastering traditional skills like reading, writing and math.

A full 67% of parents said they did not think the internet helped teach their kids to communicate more effectively; 87% of parents said they did not believe the internet helped their kids learn how to work with others; and 75% do not believe the web can teach kids to be responsible in their communities.

How important are these skills for children?

We are at the beginning of this revolution that has and will impact more areas in our lives with each passing year… Can we as parents really know how to direct our kids towards the more meaningful skills that will help them in the future?

Here are a few posts that I have ’starred’ in Google reader.

They either caught my eye, or my massive nerdy tendencies.

From various blogs all over this earth:

Creating a Healthy Volunteer Environment -Part 2
Yesterday we talked about what an unhealthy volunteer looks like. It’s not as easy as just firing all those who bring a spirit of unhealthiness to our ministries or arena’s; but I can begin to change the environment that all my volunteer exist within.
I present my Top 6 things to Never do or say to a Volunteer

The Elephant Song
If you have young children, or if you’re young at heart, this is the song for you: The Elephant Song by Eric Herman (video created by Eric’s wife Roseann with the help of their 3-year-old daughter Becca. The little girl in the song is Meghan, who was 6 at the time).

Special Needs Ministry for Autistic Children
By its very nature, children’s ministry is challenging, but special needs ministry takes the challenge to a whole new level. Any children’s pastor familiar with teaching special needs children understands the importance of developing a unique approach and relationship with each child. It takes a great deal of effort, but it is well worth it when you can effectively connect and minister to a special needs child.

Ten Questions: Introspection

1. In what area of life have I lost my passion? (What can I do to get it back?)
2. If the enemy were going to “take me out,” what are my three most vulnerable points?
3. What new burden has God given me in the last year?
4. What have I unlearned that has made me closer to God?
5. What new discipline is God calling me to do?
6. What has God asked me to do that I haven’t yet done?
7. Is there something that I think about more than I think about pleasing God? (Money, possessions, ministry, family, recreation, something else.)
8. Do I have an increasing joy in serving Christ?
9. Am I handling the pain of ministry with integrity?
10. Am I still being persecuted for my faith in Christ?

Putting Strength To Work
As always with these meetings, we learned about the child’s performance that has both good and bad. We ended up discussing about the poor results, carelessness, concerns and how to fix them. What Marcus Buckingham shares in this video resonate with us

When I started blogging in November of 2004 there was not much in the way of blogging going on that had anything with ministry to children. I actually blogged only twice that month, but that has since grown to 340 posts, but since then millions of blogs have been added and the list of blogs relating to serving children on this earth has grown.

Technorati lists 1,150 blogs that discuss Youth Ministry, and 232 blogs that discuss children’s ministry. Both those number are lower if we count only those blogs that are strongly focussed on ministry to youth/children.

I now actively follow 50 blogs that relate to CM… some of them loosely related, some fully engaged conversation about how to reach children for Jesus Christ.

But I have been pretty pumped to see the rise in recent times of quality blogging exploding like a coke bottle full of mentos… like an out of control object lesson involving baking soda…

So here are my top ten blogs, some of these are new, some are ancient (more than a year old):

• Jim Wideman’s Blog – The legend, the man, the blog… Brother Jim joins the blogosphere. It seems like Jim has exploded online in the last month or so, first by starting a Podcast, then joining Kidology and posting voraciously and now to top it all off a BLOG! Jim is the Children’s Pastor at Church on the Move and a veteran… the ‘Camp Dad’ of children’s ministry. Generous both with his time and words I love seeing a dude stick around for so long. Staying and building the local church.
• Just Pudge – Just like the aforementioned coke, Pudge Huckaby exploded with some of the best written posts on ministry I have read in ages! Pudge is the Elementary School Pastor at Newspring Churches Children’s Ministry ‘The Majestic‘ (love that name!). After an initial flurry of brilliance, the blog is taking a break, but I fully expect Pudge to return to his former glory and join the pantheon of greatness that he is destined to become a part of!
• Children’s Ministry and Culture – The blog of Larry Shallenberger and Keith Johnson, this sucker has been around almost as long as my own blog. Both are authors of a number of books and contribute to CM Mag. They have great insight into the culture of children and are particularly bright individuals prone to finding obscure research and applying it to work with children and then causing me to think long and deeply about it.
• Karl Bastian (the Kidologist) – Karl… where does one start. The creator of Kidology.org, possibly… okay not possibly… hands down the best forum online to get answers from your peers around the world. The blog is a mixture of personal entries (beautiful adoption story), and a bizarre fascination with Mountain Dew and almost beats me out in the oldness stakes, but not quite (March 2005).
• The Remix of Children’s Ministry – The Children’s Pastor of Horizon Community Church in Ohio, US. Matt is not the most prolific blogger but has some very nice things to say about me, so I thought I should give him a shout-out But seriously when he speaks, I listen.
• Phil Vischer -The creator of the Veggies. Not really a CM focussed blog, but Phil has VERY cool things to say about the media industry and is very intelligent.
• Multi-Site Kids – Tammy Melchien serves as the Executive Director of Kids’ City, the Children’s Ministry of Community Christian Church. CCC is a multi-site church with 8 locations in the Chicagoland area. She has great insight on how to duplicate ministries and blogs very candidly and openly about it.
• P2 – Family Pastor of Ridge Stone Church in Canton, Ga. Another old man in the blog world (Started June 2005), and doing cool things in a relatively new church plant.
• Children’s Ministry by Design – Stephen Posey is one of the Children’s Pastors at Church On The Move in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It’s great to see not only Jim blogging, but his staff getting into it as well! A baby blog started in March 07 but STACKS of great content already!
• Glen Woods – Currently the volunteer Children’s Pastor of Portland Open Bible Church. Another brainy dude who is writing about the intersection of theology and culture in the practice of children’s ministry… I like that… theology and culture.

So there you have it. I have a bunch of other favourites, but they have all been punished because they don’t write enough

The message is clear… if you are reading this and don’t have a blog. Get one… and start writing.

UPDATE: Corrected link to Matt McKee’s blog.

One of the greatest tools you have in working with kids is humour! Stanley Lyndon, author of How to be FUNNY!® This dude lays it out in this awesome ebook.

It’s like having a good friend sit down and show you step-by-step, exactly how to be funny from scratch. You’ll learn everything you’ve ever wanted to know about being funny and it’s that easy!

Check out this book to Learn from a REAL, accomplished professional.