Tutorial of the Week

Again another web site/ Podcast Church Media Design. This guy is knowledgeable and he covers a wide range of topics. I have been watching since about week 4 and he has taught me a ton. If you are interested in any area of Church media design check this Brad Zimmerman and the Church Media Design Podcast out.

Inspiration of the Week

This weeks inspiration is a website full of awesome videos. Shilo.tv is a web slap slap full of off the chain videos that they created. Take the time to look through the videos. If you are not inspired you need to check your pulse.

Top 10 Tuesday

Evey Tuesday I list 10 of my favorite things in a category so can get know me a little better and maybe learn something.
Today's list is my top ten favorite online services. These are services that are provided online and for the most part are free.

1. Google Reader- All of your feeds one place. The best feed reader out there if you ask me which nobody did.
2. Evernote- There Slogan is remember everything and they really do help you remember stuff
3. Remember the Milk- Speaking of Remembering. This task list will email and text you as many reminders as you like. Great Iphone app too
4. Gmail- Now we have come to the Google portion of this list. Gmail is my mail service and I would not have it any other way.
5. Google Docs- Microsoft Office Online wherever you are! Kind of.
6. GCal- My online Calendar and Planner
7. Ebay- Sell your stuff and get cash. Now if they could just lower those fees.
8. Paypal- More than just Ebay payments trust me.
9. Blogger- I know there are other blogging sites this is just my favorite.
10. You send it- Large Email attachments? You send it will send them all.

Learning Leadership Part 2

Okay so I have decided to start some series in this blog starting with today's blog. This series is called learning leadership. I am not a great leader and I am not ashamed to admit it. I am new to being on staff at a church and I am new to the role I play in my church. Most of my life I have been the one to do the work and let others take the credit. I love it that way and I would not have it any other way. I do not like the lime light and I enjoy criticism. I know I am weird. I do however enjoy when my team does a great job and people recognize it. That said being a leader of a team at Discover Point over the past year had taught me a ton lessons. Don't get me wrong I am still learning everyday but I thought I might share what I am learning.

2. Can't dodge tough choices
You can't, there is no getting around it. The second you dodge a tough choice everyone knows it and you lose credibility as a leader. On top of that the longer you let what ever it is go on the worse it gets and the harder it gets to change things. Everyone that you are leading gets frustrated when they see what is going on and it makes it tougher to lead them. The is probably one of the hardest life lessons I am having to learn is that leaders even if they are not in charge cannot dodge the hard decisions. I am not saying you should not pray about them or think long and hard before making them. Consult with people you trust but in the end you must make the choice and go with it. Some times that may mean hurting someones feelings, it may mean you have to do more work but in the end what is best for the mission is the choice you have to make. This is by far the hardest thing I am learning but the tough choices are not easy. So are you a leader or just another person in charge?

Social Networking and the Church Part 1

For some reason I have been speaking a lot lately about social networking and the church. God has given me some really good ideas about how to use social networking and I have tried some things that just have not panned out. So for the Friday series I thought I would give you guys an idea on the success DP has had with social media and the things that just did not work. Please remember that social media is about interacting and connecting with people not advertising. Social Media and the church should be a long term effort and not a short term fix. I fyou are expecting to out up a facebook group tell your member about it and expect them to run right to and tell all of their friends. It just does not work that way. So understand when I write about these things in social media that we have tried they are a ongoing experiment and my finding may not be the same as your findings.

Facebook Group
When you use social media you must have plan in mind going into it. Youy can't just throw something up there and expect it ot work. The purpose behind the Discover Point Facebook Group is to 1. Give people who are searching a place to connect with us before they come to church 2. Give our regulars a place where we could meet during the week and interact with each other. Please don't misunderstand me I don't want this groupto replace real face to face interaction but as busy as we all are it is nice to have a place you can talk to everyone at once (through the wall post or message board). We also use it as one of many mediums to send inforamtion to people of Discover Point (Through the group email). The most important reason it exsist though is so people have a place to meet us before they come to church. Millions of people are on Facebook. We all have 100's freinds on Facebook. Some of them are searching. If they are already comfortable using the facebook medium then it is a perfect place for our regulars to invite their freinds to come and meet us. They can look at video and pictures and get comfortable with us before they visit us. Now you nmight ask isn't that what a website is for? Sure but like I said they are already on Facebook . Why should we not give people as many outlets as we can to get to know us better. Those are my thoughts What are yours?

Tutorial of the Week

This is a cool website header and the artist was coll enouh to show us how he did created it in Photoshop. See the full tutorial hear

Learning Leadership Part 1

Okay so I have decided to start some series in this blog starting with today's blog. This series is called learning leadership. I am not a great leader and I am not ashamed to admit it. I am new to being on staff at a church and I am new to the role I play in my church. Most of my life I have been the one to do the work and let others take the credit. I love it that way and I would not have it any other way. I do not like the lime light and I enjoy criticism. I know I am weird. I do however enjoy when my team does a great job and people recognize it. That said being a leader of a team at Discover Point over the past year had taught me a ton lessons. Don't get me wrong I am still learning everyday but I thought I might share what I am learning.

1. You can't blame the equipment.
No matter how old, not matter how broken the equipment is you have to make it work. I have that when things are their worst is when I am most creative. You can't sit around waiting for more money you have to rely on your team and your own creativity to make things work. Right now we are waiting to move into a new building and we are getting some great new equipment and as hard as I am preparing to move into the new building I am working just as hard to make next week our greatest week ever. I find myself brain storming for ideas for the building we are still in. The equipment we have is old and broken but we make it work and we have great services. Heck the large concrete gym we meet in is a acoustical nightmare but you never hear that used as an excuse anymore (we did for a little while) and trust me its bad. Long and short if your standing around waiting for something to happen it never will. Work with what you have be creative and the other around you will follow.