Just How Many Curly-Cues Does One Need?

I have a subscription at SermonVideos. I purchased it when we switched our worship visual presentation at church to EasyWorship, in order to have a good supply of motion backgrounds to use.

Don't get me wrong. I think this is a create, cost effective resource, and I use their backgrounds and illustrations a lot. It seems like recently, though, there have been a lot of flower - and - curly-cue type motions. Maybe its the season, with spring and Mother's day coming up. But I just don't know how many of these I can use.

I suppose I could have a similar conversation about "how many backgrounds of worshiping people with their hands in the air do I need".

Church-iberish

I've been following the series at Church Marketing Sucks on Lessons in Not Sucking. In the Common Communication Mistakes lesson they refer to "church-iberish" and refer to this Dunkin Donuts commercial.



I've used the word "church speak" before; I kind of like "church-iberish". I tend to notice it because I do worship visuals at our church and come across some good ones in hymns ("unction", anyone?).

I love the expressions on the customers' faces in this video. I can imagine them as visitors to our church and saying "My mind can't find these words".

I also do our church's web site. I came across an article about Church speak and mission statements at digital.leadnet.org. We've had several discussions about mission statements, and this article hits close to home for me.

I'm pondering what to do about our web site. I know I can (and should) do better, but it's one thing to recognize it, and another to deal with it from a church-wide viewpoint recognizing the needs of a visitor.

Spiritual Mileage

As a new Prius owner for the past couple of months, I've been paying close attention to my mileage. I've been getting between 47 and 52 MPG for my first few tanks.

There's even a website where you can track your mileage and display it as an internet "badge"

After I filled up for the first time, I was going to post here how happy I was with my mileage. However, that got postponed, and then the second tank came and went, and then the third tank.

I then had to come to the grim realization that I just haven't posted here much. It occurred to me while my car's mileage is great, my "spiritual mileage" is about as low as it can get.

Like with the GreenHybrid link above, it would be interesting to track the ups and downs of my spiritual mileage on a chart. I have had periods of high mileage; right now its kind of low.

I can recognize it - I'm burned out. Even the smallest of tasks, like putting new information up on the church's web site, becomes a huge burden. I haven't really had a "Sunday off" in about 20 months, and it's very lonely as the web and media volunteer at our typical "aging demographic" Lutheran church.

I've been following a few online chat forums for Prius owners. Some owners are pretty enthusiastic about finding the best techniques for getting the highest possible gas mileage. What I need to to is figure out good techniques for increasing my spiritual mileage. I find great comfort and nourishment in the many online blogs I follow; that helps for sure. But for today, I think I'm just a bit "out of gas".

I've been Simpsonized

The Simpsons Movie is out today. I've always been a moderately casual fan of the show. I like the cultural references and social commentary the most. I'm not sure if I'll head out to the movie to see it, since my initial opinion was the same as the review in the Arizona Republic this morning - why not just wait to watch it on DVD?

Anyway, I recently stumbled on simpsonizeme.com, which will transform any personal photo into a Simpsons character. I tried it with my usual avatar, and this is what came out. I was actually pretty surprised at how well it worked. It even added a smile. I guess living in Springfield can make you happy.

From Blue to Green

New Prius
Originally uploaded by Andrew_Sandstrom

I recently experienced a saddening loss - that of my beloved 10 year old Jeep Cherokee. It was the best car I ever had: practical, modest, and always faithful. Unfortunately, I made a bad decision in lane changing and my Jeep paid the price.

I was short on ideas when deciding how to replace my Jeep. I didn't want any car that was too fancy (or too plain either), or a car that wasn't practical (I've got a lot of musical instruments to lug about). The Toyota Prius was kind of in the back of my mind but I didn't really think about it too seriously until somebody at church mentioned it to me as a good environmental decision.

So, in the end, this has become the new me. Still modest, still practical, and now, more green. Its not just the gas mileage (still working on my first tank after a week, but the computer is telling me about 43mpg so far), its also an AT-PZEV (Partial Zero Emissions Vehicle).

From the Christian perspective, I think its also a good choice, as far as being a good steward of God's creation (I even found a web site asking"WWJD - What Would Jesus Drive?).

Now, to be honest, I don't want to make this out to be the best thing ever. Its not like I've become entirely environmentally "pure" overnight. The Prius still does use gas, and there have been some studies questioning the entire energy consumption from"dust to dust", factoring manufacturing costs and other things. And I have discovered there can be a "holier than thou" attitude among Prius owners that I'm not particularly fond of.

But I do feel good that I've at least taken a step in the right direction. There are some passages in Jeremiah that describe the consequences of our poor actions and decisions. But I liked what Jeremiah 6:16 says:

Stand at the crossroads and look;
ask for the ancient paths,
ask where the good way is, and walk in it

I feel like I'm at the crossroads in this instance. Any major change can only start with small steps. I feel like I'm starting with some small steps.

We just recently saw Evan Almighty. In that movie, Evan wants to change the world but doesn't know how to accomplish it. God (Morgan Freeman) tells him that big changes start with small Acts of Random Kindness. So in Phoenix, the Valley of the Sun, where a car is by default mandatory for survival, I'm hoping this one small act of kindness for the environment.

(PS In the movie, I did notice that when Evan is sitting in a huge Hummer, there is a Toyota Prius behind him).

Bad Powerpoint....baaaaaad powerpoint

Considering I do worship powerpoints at church, and do your 'typical business' powerpoints at work, this one strikes pretty close to home...

23 Squidoo!

Sometimes my head spills over with all the new ideas I stumble across on the web. I recently found Swicki, a combination web search and wiki - its a search tool that you can optimize and tailor, and train, and then allow your community of users to improve by giving feedback.

Here is a test swicki I've created.

I'm also still trying to get my head around Squidoo. Its a web site that allows you to create Lenses, or unique views on different topics. The lens is a web page that can point to lots of different resources and web sites devoted to that topic.

It would seem useful to have a lens devoted to a church, which could highlight the church's vision, mission, programs, and ministries. I did a very brief search this afternoon and didn't find too much. I did find Church! At Bethany

http://www.squidoo.com/churchatbethany/

I like the ideas behind Swicki, Squidoo, and del.icio.us because they allow you to place another viewpoint over existing web structures. It allows for alternative ways to access info, and allows for community participation in making a web site stronger.

For now I'll keep thinking this one over

Phoning It In!

OK. this isn't the world's most exciting photo. Its a picture I took a while back on my phone at a Chris Tomlin concert (from the back row at the Dodge in Phoenix).

The cool thing is that I created this blog entry from my phone (well not the whole entry, I sent in the picture first in order to get it "claimed" and routed to my blog, and then I went and edited this after the fact to add the text (I have no mobile-typing mad skillz).

I got on this small sidetrack after finding a church youth group blog here on blogger (weareonetour), chronicling a mission trip for Katrina relief, and having a "V8" moment. Our church's youth are currently on a mission to Mexico, and something like this would be a great way to share the trip. I'll have to get this worked out for the next one....

Volunteer Coordination through Blogs

We were recently having some discussion at church about how to handle scheduling and signup of volunteers for Sunday mornings.

I recently finished reading The Blogging Church by Brian Bailey and Terry Storch. It is a terrific resource for learning about using blogs for many different uses in church life, and I'm hoping to write more about it later; but one use for blogging mentioned was using a blog for sharing news of ministry teams. The book suggests using multiple (and free even, like this one) blogs for sharing information.

I came across an example of this - a blog used for scheduling Sunday morning worship. The media team for Lake Pointe Church uses several blogs to schedule media team volunteers for multiple campuses.

You can see the schedule gateway here. Choose a campus, and you'll see a blog like the one I've shown here. There is one blog entry per week. Volunteers can view the current schedule in the entry and add comments to volunteer (or change status).

Its a very simple and elegant concept, and an effective use of blogging.

I believe the same concept can be applied over at our church's forum. In fact, I'm currently using the forum to list songs for each week for the Praise Team. It would be pretty easy to extend this concept to scheduling.

The one big drawback is that it requires volunteers to actually use it; and I'm not sure our congregation may be ready for this.