[Kid Inspiration]

Slowly but surely every single person on the team at Hillsong Kids is becoming a blogger…  its my theory on growing a volunteer team… if every single team member will become a blogger, then maybe, just maybe every single blogger in the world will become a volunteer!

Not sure exactly on the logic yet, but it’s a work in progress.

Carlos Dyonisio (aka Cadu), is just one of the most passionate people I know about seeing the lives of kids changed for the better! He is from South America and came to Australia a number of years ago and has found himself serving here at Hillsong Church!

He is an uber nerd… I mean I am nerdy, but this guy has Linux installed on his laptop with no graphical interface… just think back to the days before windows on MS-DOS and you can imagine how he runs his computer.

His new blog is For One Child and already has some great content up.

P.S. Don’t read the post entitled Running the Race unless you really want to read about his bladder movements.

P.S. I am kinda serious about the blogging theory, the more your team can see their lives invested into being a voice for childhood the greater impact your Church community will have!

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.

Here are a few posts that hit it out of the park in the last few weeks!

Pudge on Leading for Tomorrow

A bunch of posts from Henry Zonio about the Conspire Conference Rewiring Ministry for the Digital Learner,  Spiritual Formation in Children

Fascinating stuff from The Connecting Church and Home Conference from Jared Kennedy via Doug

Shane Hipps on Technology from the Q blog! MUST WATCH! Hipps discusses how technology shapes your faith and offers a critique of the cliche “the methods change but the message doesn’t.”

How to Blog 101 from churchrelevance.com

So it’s time to introduce you to three new blogs.

I am a little apprehensive about two of them, but am confident about the third for reasons I shall now disclose.

The Good Life by Nathan McLean. Now Nathan is another children’s pastor here at Hillsong who has many good intentions about blogging but has issues following through. Although he has no problems following through in other areas.

He has just had his first baby and loving being a father. Hopefully this little pump will encourage him to put down thoughts on his blog. (of course I may just need to email him is login details for the 7th time)

Vogelpedia by Mike Vogel. Mike is a U.S. Maryland native who made his way over here to our Bible College three years ago and has since become an invaluable leader in our ministry. He runs the Voltage ministry (pre-teen) in our City Campus and is just the epitome of a great follower, which makes him a brilliant leader! I am hopeful about his blog, mainly because he is almost as competitive as Nathan and will make sure he wipes the floor in the regularity and quality of blog posts after this announcement (won’t you Mike)

Kathryn Joy by Kathryn Macdowall. I have a little more confidence in recommending this blog as Kathryn has probably tripled my boys blogging in just a few weeks. She is our Hills Campus administrator and curriculum writing guru, and very single… (see I am trying Kathryn — just putting it out there).

So here are three new blogs for your reading pleasure and hopefully just enough impetus to enable some brilliant thoughts to emerge from within their capable minds!