@mikekelly09 post accidently went live early. Officially goes live at 10:30ish… Link will work then. in reply to mikekelly09 #

Powered by Twitter Tools

Tell me your story. What’s the most creative or effective thing you’ve done to recruit a boatload of new volunteers? What made it so successful? I’d love to hear some new and creative ideas and strategies that we can implement as we recruit. I’ve found that strong exposure/communication as well as creativity tend to yield great success.

Now this is Fellowship One check-in, but because they’re using remote desktop to accomplish this, they could really use this with almost any check-in system. You can read all about how they did this on the Fellowship One developer’s blog.

In some ways, I see this being a really cool way to offer an assisted check-in that is cool and personable. We currently don’t do any self check-in, but this would allow us to still do assisted check-in without it feeling like the volunteer is on the other side of the counter. I’d be curious if anyone else has seen or tried something like this.

Here’s what I do know. Fellowship One REALLY knows check-in. Trust me, I’ve seen and used many of the other leading check-in solutions and I’ve not experienced any that come very close to Fellowship One. Seriously, I love Fellowship One. Even if you’re not using F1 and it’s unlikely that you will switch, I’m sure there’s something you can learn from the guys who do it best.

So, here are the details:

Free webinar on the Secrets of Check-in For Children, Events and Rapid Follow-Up.

Fellowship Technologies will host its next webinar on July 21, 2010 at 1:00 PM (CDT) about the Secrets of Successful Check-In. This helpful and informative online session will reveal how to use Check-In for children’s ministry, activities and events with rapid follow-up!

The webinar is free, but registration is required. To register visit https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/675236104. This hour-long webinar includes insight from the staff of Fellowship Technologies on helping your church take check-in to a whole new level! One registered webinar attendee will win a FREE Godex DT-4 label printer, courtesy of POS Computer Corporation.

Cue Box is a reinvention of the Family Times virtue packs. The big change is that it’s DVD and Kid driven. Rather than going the route of offering a resource to parents that they “should” use, Cue Box offers a resource that basically does the same thing but because it is Kid-driven, the kids are pushing their parents toward getting it and using it.

Who knows how successful it will be? It probably depends on how you promote it among your parents and how readily available you make it. From what I’ve seen, the production value seems high (personally I think it’s on a significantly higher level than any of their other video content) and I can’t imagine that the content is anything less than excellent.

Click here to visit Studio252.tv and learn more about Cue Box. This resource begins with September’s virtue, so you don’t want to miss your opportunity to get in on the ground floor.

1. I was in absolute wonder and awe of the sheer size of this event.
2. I threw up in my mouth just a little bit thinking about putting on and event of this size

JUMP is a week-long VBS/Day Camp hybrid held at St. Louis Family Church. Over the years it has grown from a small outreach to an event of epic proportions. This year 3,243 participated. Here’s some of what it took to pull JUMP off:

• 987 volunteers (Thank you all!)
• 158 watermelons
• 485 gallons of Gatorade
• 5,700 bags of cotton candy
• 260 pounds and 8,350 bags of popcorn
• 6,928 pounds of ice
• 167 gallons of syrup
• 18,200 sno-cones

Amazing, huh? What spoke to me the most about this is that at Children’s Pastors, we have to constantly be creative and just because we don’t have a resource or staff or facility doesn’t mean God can’t do something utterly amazing through your ministry and church. JUMP is pretty impressive, but it’s a day camp held in the church parking lot. Chances are you have one of those, so what’s stopping you from thinking outside of the box and doing something amazing?

So I just found a killer new app. It’s called Firefox Home. I’m a pretty big fan of Firefox and it’s my default browser. I don’t know if any of you are like this, but I’ve got tab issues. I like to have lots and lots of tabs open at the same time. When I say lots of tabs, I really mean A LOT of tabs. It’s a problem I certainly need help with, but that’s a different blog post.

So, have you ever been on your iPhone and you can’t remember a site you need to go to that you even have bookmarked on your computer at home? Maybe that page is even open on your computer at the office right now. Wouldn’t it be great to actually easily pull up that page you were looking at yesterday on your home computer  on your iPhone? Well, with Firefox Home, you can and it’s pretty impressive.

You have to enable the Firefox Add-On “Firefox Sync” and setup an account. With this Firefox Add-On, you can sync your tabs, history and bookmarks across computers. With the Firefox Home iPhone app, you can have access to all of that data right on your phone. It’s absolutely beautiful!

So, it’s really simple. One page is dedicated to search. Type in any term that may have been on a page you were viewing in the past few weeks and you’ll be quickly given open tabs, history and bookmarks that contain that term. Another page is dedicated to tabs. The tabs are in a list. See one that interests you and it opens up. One more page is dedicated to your bookmarks. I don’t really use bookmarks anymore (which I think is why I have so many tabs open), but they’re all there. The settings page will allow you to sign in and out of your sync account and give you an overview of how many tabs you have open, how many bookmarks you have or how many pages you have indexed in your history.

Just to clarify though. This is not Firefox on the iPhone. Any tab, bookmark or indexed page you click on will simply open that page in a Safari browser within the Firefox Home app. I guess it’s the next best thing to having Firefox on your iPhone.

So, if you use Firefox (and you should) and you have an iPhone, download this free app today.

BTW, I’m laying down another preemptive ban on Smart Alec comments from Jonathan Cliff on how many tabs I have open. This is starting to become a regular thing here.

My wife works at the church now… not in any area I work with, but it's nice to see her around the offices. #

@John_Enright I haven't even heard of McKinney State Park. I'll have to add it to my list. It's a little hot for camping in my opinion. in reply to John_Enright #

97 degrees? That's perfect for an outdoor wedding. #

Powered by Twitter Tools

So, as of last night I had 16 emails that had come in, but zero emails in my inbox. I love gmail’s archive feature. The emails are there, just not in the inbox. They’re searchable and if I click on “all mail,” I can see them all. The idea of starting fresh is really appealing. Do any of you out there use the GTD or Inbox Zero method. Any thought? Any advice?

Don’t make fun of the silly theme (Jonathan Cliff), it’s a temporary thing.

Seeds is filled with videos, music, documents and other resources you can either use immediately or use as a creative diving board to something unique to your church. What I think I like the most is the blog as it contains tips for shooting video, recording and editing interviews and other great things like that. It’s a lot like what Life Church offers through open, but less about specific series and more about ideas. It’s different, but good. Check it out, you’ll be glad you did.