[Kid Inspiration]

My first ever CPC just happened in San Diego.

Here’s the thing.

When you come to a kids pastors conference in Australia, maybe only 25% of the delegates would be paid in any capacity. Now that lends a unique feel to a conference, and it is beautiful to see the volunteering, sacrificial attitude that so many people have.

So to get into a room with so many full time/family pastors/even preteen pastors was awesome!

Five things about CPC that were cool!

1. The Resource/expo/exhibit hall thing. It was massive! So many publishers and resource providers I totally geeked out and got every free sample I could possibly get.

2. Meeting my fellow bloggers. So I have been blogging for a lifetime in internet years now (9 years) and have never met many of the authors of other great kidmin blogs. It was great to finally meet them… and the great thing about it was realising we had so much more in common. They were on the same ‘wavelength‘ as me and connecting was really easy. So thanks @dalehudsoncm @mikefjohnson @samluce, @mattmckee, @kidologist, @jonathancliff, @jimwideman, + others I have just left out for sure.

3. Michael Chanley. You gotta question, @michaelchanley knows who can answer it. It was fascinating watching him negotiate and lead his first CPC… (I  love observing people in leadership positions – especially new ones)

4. The Lakewood guys. While I was at CPC my pastor @BrianCHouston was speaking at Lakewood Church and I was having lunch with Lakewood champion pastors @claytonhurst and @craigjohnson5 and talking about possibly the most important question for children’s ministries right now – special needs. (6 million kids in the US!)

5. My underground secret breakout session. So my breakout time changed from Thursday to Tuesday morning and no one really knew. I was talking about creativity and leadership and stuff and one of the 12 people who attended was Mike Johnston from Fellowship Church, creator of Elevate Curriculum and general all around long-term pastor legend was one of them. Oh man. What do you do? Well you just go for it! (I was an honour Mike, thanks for taking the time)

I will be posting the notes online from the session soon and the recording will probably be available from the INCM website.

About 9 minutes ago Jamie Doyle posted this tweet:

“has it occurred to anyone that CM is about the here and now as well as the future?” dilantin no prescription target=”_blank”>Jamie Doyle

I love thinking about the future, I love to speculate where our culture is going, where the challenges and opportunities will be.

I know of a lot of futurists whose immense intellect is focused on what might be. But I don’t just want to be so caught up in the future that I miss the present… today… the now.

In fact my new question for you and leaders I might meet is not “what is the future of children’s ministry?”, but “what is the now of children’s ministry?”.

Hi, I’m Dave and I’m a nowist.

So there is a twitter competition going on right now! In fact it just started.

Check out the official BIG website here: http://hillsongkidsbig.com/news/10/01/big-release-competition

All the rules and everything you need to know!

Oh and here is the latest on the release of Follow You!

Earlier in this year of our LORD two thousand and nine we ran a competition and you can read about that here.

Well after many lots and dozens of the people variety voted the results are in and I am happy to announce that the winner of the Bad Ministry Acronym (or #BMA) with 22% of the vote goes to:

Funny Man Dan

Disciples In Spirit Practicing Patience, Eagerly Awaiting Rapture! I wish they would just DISAPPEAR! (@funnymandan)

Congrats cymbalta online Dan!

Here’s what I wrote on twitter on 12:39 crestor prescription medicine 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)

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 cozaar 25 mg 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.

Twittered this thought a few days ago, just thought I would put it here in case you missed it:

I am not here to grow my Children’s ministry, I am here to grow my Church BY building coreg generic forms my Children’s ministry.

It’s a shift in thinking. I really want to see our whole Church family move forward!