Some of you out there may be avid bible readers, others may casually browse it, and some of you might be so intimidated that you haven’t started because you just don’t know where to begin. If you fall into one of these categories, I want to introduce you today to a really cool new tool to help you, no matter which category you’re in – YouVersion. There are a variety of ways to go about reading the Bible, and YouVersion.com offers 21 plans to choose from in order to help you. You can read the Bible through chronologically, a combination of Old and New Testament readings each day, or a variety of other methods.
One of the main goals that we would like to accomplish on New Media Ministry is to provide youth ministers with some new tools and resources so that they can in turn get to work in implementing these into their ministry. Chris Faddis wrote two weeks ago about the importance of connecting through text messaging, and I hope that many of you have given a shot at trying text messaging in your ministry. If not, read the post and try out the service for free that we recommended.
I wrote a review of a cool product last week called YooStar. YooStar is basically a video kit that allows you to superimpose yourself in the place of some of your favorite characters in videos. This is a great product for creating hype and promotion in your ministry.
I wanted to take a quick look today at a few ways that you can and need to begin utilizing video in your ministries. You might be a little intimidated to try and get involved in ministry because you think cameras are real expensive and editing takes a lot of knowledge, etc. But times and technologies are changing. We’ll cover this later on down the road.
I have been in ministry for twelve years now. Most of that time has been spent working in parish youth ministry. One of the best things about parish ministry is the long term investment in people’s lives. Getting to know not only teens, but families and watching them grow. It is amazing how time and presence can lead to some incredibly life-giving relationships. I still am in touch with so many of these teens and families from over the years, and while I wish I would have been a little better at keeping in touch with more of those beautiful people that I’ve encountered I am ever grateful for those who I have been able to keep in touch with.
As a Catholic speaker it is very different. You go into a parish or event, you spend a couple hours, or maybe a day or two with a community and hopefully inspire and enliven their community. Then, you leave. Sometimes you come back, but most times you don’t. I often felt a bit of guilt going into a community and then leaving with no way of keeping in communication. I would leave a community and feel a longing to keep in touch, to leave behind something to help them continue the journey. Some communities didn’t need that because they had vibrant ministries going on to serve the people, they just needed a little spark or spiritual boost. For some communities, they didn’t have much going on in the way of active ministry for teens or adults. Often, this was the only retreat they got. I often wondered about the teens and adults that I would meet at these events, those who came forward for prayer or wrote to me later. I often wondered how they were, where they were, and if they were still on the journey.
Unless you have been living in a soundproof cave for the past few weeks, you are probably well aware that Wednesday was what I like to call another “Stevenote,” or an Apple product launch keynote. There has been tons of hype growing in the interwebs over the last month or so about whether or not Apple will be launching a tablet, what the features will be, pricing, availability, etc. Below, we’ve taken a a closer look at the hype and how the rumors have resonated on Twitter, YouTube and blogs over the last 30 days. According to data provided by Sysomos, for example, Twitter users sent more than half a million messages – with an average of 6,545 tweets per hour – with both words apple and tablet in them.
Sysomos also found almost 50,000 blogs posts. The post that resonated the most in the blogosphere, according to Sysomos’ data, was yesterday’s article on the Guardian’s Technology blog about Terry McGraw leaking information about the tablet on CNBC.
If you’ve been following our new site for the last few weeks, you’re well aware that we’ve shared some great articles and resources with you (at least we think we have!). But, being in that we’ve all been involved in ministry in some way shape or form, we are all well aware of what you’re first reaction is – It sounds great, but I would rather spend my small budget in a better way.
Well, I’m here to tell you today why New Media needs to be one of the top items in your budget.
The biggest hesitation that I’ve run into both socially and professionally with my own clients’ hesitation to invest time or money is that they see things like Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, Youtube, etc. as a fad. In their minds, as soon as they finally spend the money and finally get around to launching, everyone will have moved on to the next greatest thing. If you’re one of these people, I invite you to check out the following video. This video is put together with facts and data from Summer of 2009, but the numbers are astonishing. Simply put, you can probably be safe just doubling each number to find current data.
