[Kid Inspiration]

Found via Kathryn a great online tool for devotion. It seems pretty fresh and simple, but that means it does what it does brilliantly!

EXAMEN.me is a simple-to-use web site that fosters your personal interaction with God. This modern approach to ancient devotional practices guides you to examen your life as you meditate on scripture, pray, and journal all of your reflections. No matter where you are in your pilgrimage with Christ, EXAMEN.me will help you interact with God.

Just heard the first episode of a new podcast called CM Edge from Henry Zonio

Love it! I really feel like the voices are growing in support of our current generation of children!

More and more people speaking, many more listening!

Loving it — check it out: cmedge.com

I just lost three months of posts on my blog – which is why the last post is from Nov last year.

Not happy!

I have a small glimmer of hope that my hosting company has a backup that is later than mine – Jan 8 2009…

Why does it always take a disaster to make me see the light!

Automatic backups people!

Anyway, I will hopefully have them back soon! Amen!

One of the things that fascinates me about this time is the demise of old school media. Mainly because of the fact that our kids are growing up with a radically different view of news and media than me.

It’s not (very) obvious right now (you can still buy Time Magazine at a news-stand), but like a sub-prime mortgage crisis it will hit all of a sudden when there are no advertisers left to pay for any of the printing of magazines.

• Since 1994—and the release of the commercial web browser—newspaper audience penetration has fallen a third, from 23% to 16%. In that time, circulation fell 14% (59 million to 50 million, according to the Newspaper Association of America) while population rose 20%.
• Since 1994, newspaper print advertising revenue fell on an inflation-adjusted basis by 10% (from $34,109 million in 1994 dollars to $42,209 million in 2007 dollars, says NAA).
• Since 1994, the number of newspapers in America fell from 1,548 to 1,422, according to NAA.

You can read more in one of my must read blogs Buzzmachine by Jeff Jarvis

The way our kids get their news and how they relate to media is one of the biggest cultural influences on them, so it is vital to understand HOW they see the world around them… because it is DIFFERENT to you and me.

It will be like talking about the crackle of a needle on a vinyl record during a message to kids to talk about the evening news soon (The median age of network evening news viewers is 61 in 2008, according to Magna Global USA.).

…

P.S. People will still want news in the future… its just that no one making the decisions at Fox News/NY Times/Time Warner is 9 years old. The way we get it will change and a bunch of big business will crash and burn.

P.P.S. There were A LOT of horse shoe makers in the 1920s… Did we give them big loans to continue making horseshoes while Henry Ford was cranking out some new fangled cars?

From New York Times

EVERYONE knows that babies crawl before they walk, and that tricycles come before two-wheelers. But at what age should children get their first cellphone, laptop or virtual persona?

Read On

[UPDATE] Front runners are: Karl $10 on childrensministrypodcast.com and Andy $100 on childrensministryblog.com | auction closing in one week.

[UPDATE] So no-one wants the podcast domain? You can get it for ten bucks and support a worthy cause!! Auction closing in one week and 3 days!!

[UPDATE] First Bid is in. I accidentally disabled comments for this post!! But they are reinstated now! Thanks Andy!

So I have a couple of domains for sale.

1. CHILDRENSMINISTRYBLOG.COM
2. CHILDRENSMINISTRYPODCAST.COM

I bought these a few years ago to link to my blog and podcast. After moving the blog and stopping the podcast they are just sitting there gathering dust (if that is possible online).

“Imagine being the life of the party, the envy of your friends
and enemies as you blog at these two exclusive domains”

Now domains are worth pretty much what someone will pay for them, but I did go to dnScoop to get an appraisal.

childrensministryblog.com

childrensministrypodcast.com

So I am going to run a little auction for both of them… see the top for updates!

A couple of years ago I had in mind a site that could have all the planning elements for a service in one place. I’m not exactly sure but it seems that it might just have happened!

I got this link from another CM blog in the UK, but can’t find which one… but definitely check it out, if not just to get inspired!

LightLive puts a wealth of Bible-based activities and ideas for your work with children and young people at your fingertips.

You can:

- plan and manage your group programme like never before!

- dive into the ‘virtual filing cabinet’ of activities and ideas

- enrich your programme with multi-media activities

- search, save and print resources – all from one website

- and so much more…

Check it out here! Light Live

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?

This week brings around our annual Colour Conference!

Thousands of women at the Acer Arena for a few days of maximum estrogen.

I love the concept of live blogging (real time commentary), but that kinda only works if you are attending the conference, so I thought I would live blog the experience for the kids we are putting on!

So follow me on twitter if you have it.

http://twitter.com/kidinspiration

If you don’t have an account, click here to get one free!

Twitter is a unique approach to communication and networking based on the simple concept of status. What are you doing? What are your friends doing—right now? With Twitter, you may answer this question over SMS, IM, or the Web and the responses are shared between contacts.

I read a lot of stuff…

In fact in an effort to read more, I am currently reading a book on speed reading… its just taking a long time. (Ha!)

(I apologise… now back to your regularly scheduled program)

The music industry is something I have been studying for some time now. I am in some way a small part of it because of our Hillsong Kids Albums, and it along with the Media industries have a lot of cultural impact on our children and families.

So David Byrne’s Article for Wired Magazine is a fascinating read.

David Byrne’s Survival Strategies for Emerging Artists — and Megastars

What is called the music business today, however, is not the business of producing music. At some point it became the business of selling CDs in plastic cases, and that business will soon be over. But that’s not bad news for music, and it’s certainly not bad news for musicians. Indeed, with all the ways to reach an audience, there have never been more opportunities for artists.

Read on

There are so many implications for the kids we minister to. Here is a list of some of them… which may or may not have come from this article:

Dave’s List for a new world:

1. Unlike the consumer culture you and I grew up in , our kids are growing up in a participation/collaboration culture
2. Music is digital and free in our kids minds
3. The ‘experience’ (events, concerts, meetings etc) will only increase in importance
4. Most of the families in your church (and probably you) are breaking copyright law in some way — which suggests to me that the law needs to change.
5. We as ‘grown ups’ need to change NOW, in order to understand the natives in this new world (our kids).
6. The video screen is the 21st Centuries stained glass window
7. Media is being produced where an audience of 100 is success, not just the blockbuster million dollar movie
8. The cost of producing excellent media will only decrease (it’s practically nothing already…if I had the skill, my home studio could produce anything from a music album to a movie score
9. YOU don’t get it yet, (neither do I)
10. Sharing a song by email/or whatever comes/and will come as naturally as breathing to kids (thereby breaking current law)
11. One of the major file sharing websites in the world went down for about a 24 hour period late last year and internet traffic in Europe went down by 35% in the same period
12. Don’t EVER put a computer or a TV in your child’s bedroom, if you do so, you are inviting porn and violence into their lives — kids get lessons before they swim, they need to know HOW and what to avoid online.
13. As kids leave my ‘Children’s Ministry’ and move in ‘Youth Ministry’ I don’t just want them to know about God, and have a deep relationship with Jesus, but also HOW to filter the world around them. Recognise and understand the culture they live in. What is beneficial and what is harmful, and how to engage culture… not to picket and denounce it!!!!
14. Harry, the Compass, Da Vinci… don’t be scared by the boogie man. In fact having your child read the golden compass during their teenage years may be one of the greatest tools to help your child identify other world views and develop a healthy response to them!
15. (What ticks me off about The Golden Compass is that the books have been around for over ten years and yet it seems that cinema is still the great evil of the Christian world, as if other forms of art ie. books, don’t matter and aren’t relevant).
16. God speaks through a donkey, he CAN and WILL speak through Britney, Madonna, The black eyed Peas, Hannah Montana, U2 — any kind of Art can be transformational.
17. Please don’t let your kids treat ’secular’ (hate that word), art as to be avoided, you just condemned them to a life of irrelevance.
18. I have connected with some kids better through Nintendo DS than any other way
19. Somehow help your parents, to understand that the eyes are the window to the soul.We must protect that window jealously, I still remember vividly remember the first ‘inappropriate’ material I saw as a very young teenager… who was in the room, where I was, who let me see it… your kids will too… especially your boys… PROTECT THEM.
20. I am out of thoughts…

You may be wondering how I got all that from 1 article, the truth is that it was a collaborative effort from the results of much reading and study… especially blogs.