I am a life-long church member, and love being involved in ministry. I have worked as a volunteer or on staff in a variety of different roles in churches throughout my life. My favorite verse about ministry is Ephesians 2:10 - "For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do."
This is GREAT news! We have Google Apps at the free level for our church, and it's GREAT! Here's some of the ways we use it (just adding some examples to ways already mentioned!)
- Shared calendars. Our entire calendar is embedded on the church website, but individual ministry leaders have access to their calendar to update events for their ministry. The great thing is that once updated, the changes are immediately visible online, there is no additional step at the church office to keep the website up-to-date.
- Google Docs. This is excellent for sharing documents when more than one person needs to have access or update something, and everyone sees the changes immediately. For example, our Worship Director maintains a monthly schedule that includes everything from each week's song choices to who is serving that week. Our Secretary may access it anytime to update it with the Pastor's scripture and sermon titles, and viewing the information for creating the bulletins. You can set the sharing settings for any single document or group of documents so you know who has access.
- Email addresses with our domain name. All staff have an email address with @crossroadscrc.com. We use the same naming convention for all addresses, so that everyone knows they can reach someone using the formula firstname.lastname @ _________.com.
I work in ministry part-time and in my other part-time job, I use google docs at a for-profit company, so I'm using it literally every day somewhere. Highly recommended. :)
Thank you for writing this. I've heard or read before about it being a mistake to consider deacons a "stepping stone" to the "more important" role of elder. Clearly, these two offices could be blessed by people with quite different sets of gifts and skills.
At our church, we are trying to be more intentional about identifying our gifts and then making a connection between giftedness and where we serve. I hope as we grow in this, leadership ministries will be just one of the areas in which we affirm God's gifts in each other and grow in serving in ways where our gifts can be greatly used.
Excellent! So glad you posted about this, and that I saw your post featured in today's CRC News email. Just in time for me to catch "The Psalm Project" concert in about an hour. Thanks!
Welcome, Jerod. Looking forward to hearing more from you. I'm working on boosting our church website, and have enjoyed following the Church Juice blog and the other resources there.
I read this post last week and have been thinking about it off and on since then. Not only do I think you are right about this in terms of youth ministry, but I think there is wisdom here for ALL ministry: be present, invest in relationships (as Albert said), and provide a safe place where people are accepted as they are.
For the sake of the staff I work with, I am going to beg: is there any way that the brochures you mentioned and/or any other materials might be made available online? :)
Our church has also recently made the decision to allow children at the Lord's Supper and just this morning we met to begin talking about how this will affect youth ministry and how we can best guide our youth in faith. We are hungry for resources and help, and would be so grateful if any of this information can be shared.
That would be terrific! I know our part time staff is not always able to attend these events at the original presentation time, but I know these are archived and we would appreciate being able to access the archived version.
Michael and others at the Network - it's no secret I'm a big fan of the Network, and I will add my thanks to the others already offered for the terrific work to build and create this site. I think you've done great work towards meeting your two stated objectives.
Every week, when I get the email with "what's new on the Network" I always find at least 2-3 articles or posts to read that help me with my ministry or that I can share with someone else. Greater even than a helpful tip is the idea that I'm not alone out here, there are plenty of other people thinking about ministry and challenging themselves and others to think about it and do it better all the time. I've posted questions and received helpful advice and I've been able to help others by sharing what we do or have learned at our church. More than once I've printed an article or sent a link to someone at my church to read. Although many at my church have signed up and some read articles regularly, I do know many are still hesitant to post.
I think the suggestions made are good ones when it comes to continuing to encourage participation and greater integration with other social sites (Mavis, I will be considering your suggestion to link to the network more often on our church Facebook page!). To that, I would add a suggestion that the agencies and ministries of (or affiliated with) the denomination get more involved in using the network as a means of distributing information. For example, the World Hunger Sunday materials were just made available and samples were mailed to our church. CRWRC could also post about this in the Deacons forum. Another example, our church recently received word that Youth Unlimited is hosting a Youth Worker Retreat on the West Coast (http://youthunlimited.org/retreats/westcoastusa.html) and this information could be posted in the Youth Ministry Forum. (I did just peek to see if these had been posted and didn't see them, but my apologies if I overlooked them in error!)
I would encourage the BOT to continue to support this effort, and I hope they will. I think as others have pointed out, it is still a very "young" initiative at 18 months, but I believe in it's potential to be a valuable resource for many who love and serve the church.
Our worship team is using google Docs. Our worship director works from home most of the time, and can easily update it from there, then the office team can check online to get the information to update bulletins and get the music ready for rehearsals. It's definitely so much easier than emailing files back and forth!
Posted in: Webinar Voting = No More Guesswork
Thanks for the reply! I think this is a really great initiative, I'm so glad to see there are more webinars on the schedule!
Posted in: Google Apps Free For Churches (Again)
This is GREAT news! We have Google Apps at the free level for our church, and it's GREAT! Here's some of the ways we use it (just adding some examples to ways already mentioned!)
- Shared calendars. Our entire calendar is embedded on the church website, but individual ministry leaders have access to their calendar to update events for their ministry. The great thing is that once updated, the changes are immediately visible online, there is no additional step at the church office to keep the website up-to-date.
- Google Docs. This is excellent for sharing documents when more than one person needs to have access or update something, and everyone sees the changes immediately. For example, our Worship Director maintains a monthly schedule that includes everything from each week's song choices to who is serving that week. Our Secretary may access it anytime to update it with the Pastor's scripture and sermon titles, and viewing the information for creating the bulletins. You can set the sharing settings for any single document or group of documents so you know who has access.
- Email addresses with our domain name. All staff have an email address with @crossroadscrc.com. We use the same naming convention for all addresses, so that everyone knows they can reach someone using the formula firstname.lastname @ _________.com.
I work in ministry part-time and in my other part-time job, I use google docs at a for-profit company, so I'm using it literally every day somewhere. Highly recommended. :)
Posted in: Webinar Voting = No More Guesswork
The odds for me are definitely better at that time. :) (Sorry I didn't reply to this sooner!)
Posted in: Deacons: An Elder Training Ground
Thank you for writing this. I've heard or read before about it being a mistake to consider deacons a "stepping stone" to the "more important" role of elder. Clearly, these two offices could be blessed by people with quite different sets of gifts and skills.
At our church, we are trying to be more intentional about identifying our gifts and then making a connection between giftedness and where we serve. I hope as we grow in this, leadership ministries will be just one of the areas in which we affirm God's gifts in each other and grow in serving in ways where our gifts can be greatly used.
Posted in: Calvin Symposium On Worship - Live Webcast
Excellent! So glad you posted about this, and that I saw your post featured in today's CRC News email. Just in time for me to catch "The Psalm Project" concert in about an hour. Thanks!
Posted in: New Guide for Church & Web
Welcome, Jerod. Looking forward to hearing more from you. I'm working on boosting our church website, and have enjoyed following the Church Juice blog and the other resources there.
Posted in: Measuring Youth Leader Success
I read this post last week and have been thinking about it off and on since then. Not only do I think you are right about this in terms of youth ministry, but I think there is wisdom here for ALL ministry: be present, invest in relationships (as Albert said), and provide a safe place where people are accepted as they are.
Posted in: Children and the Lord's Supper: One Church's Journey
For the sake of the staff I work with, I am going to beg: is there any way that the brochures you mentioned and/or any other materials might be made available online? :)
Our church has also recently made the decision to allow children at the Lord's Supper and just this morning we met to begin talking about how this will affect youth ministry and how we can best guide our youth in faith. We are hungry for resources and help, and would be so grateful if any of this information can be shared.
Thank you!
Posted in: Children and the Lord's Supper: One Church's Journey
That would be terrific! I know our part time staff is not always able to attend these events at the original presentation time, but I know these are archived and we would appreciate being able to access the archived version.
Thanks!
Posted in: Next Steps for Me...and for The Network
Michael and others at the Network - it's no secret I'm a big fan of the Network, and I will add my thanks to the others already offered for the terrific work to build and create this site. I think you've done great work towards meeting your two stated objectives.
Every week, when I get the email with "what's new on the Network" I always find at least 2-3 articles or posts to read that help me with my ministry or that I can share with someone else. Greater even than a helpful tip is the idea that I'm not alone out here, there are plenty of other people thinking about ministry and challenging themselves and others to think about it and do it better all the time. I've posted questions and received helpful advice and I've been able to help others by sharing what we do or have learned at our church. More than once I've printed an article or sent a link to someone at my church to read. Although many at my church have signed up and some read articles regularly, I do know many are still hesitant to post.
I think the suggestions made are good ones when it comes to continuing to encourage participation and greater integration with other social sites (Mavis, I will be considering your suggestion to link to the network more often on our church Facebook page!). To that, I would add a suggestion that the agencies and ministries of (or affiliated with) the denomination get more involved in using the network as a means of distributing information. For example, the World Hunger Sunday materials were just made available and samples were mailed to our church. CRWRC could also post about this in the Deacons forum. Another example, our church recently received word that Youth Unlimited is hosting a Youth Worker Retreat on the West Coast (http://youthunlimited.org/retreats/westcoastusa.html) and this information could be posted in the Youth Ministry Forum. (I did just peek to see if these had been posted and didn't see them, but my apologies if I overlooked them in error!)
I would encourage the BOT to continue to support this effort, and I hope they will. I think as others have pointed out, it is still a very "young" initiative at 18 months, but I believe in it's potential to be a valuable resource for many who love and serve the church.
Posted in: Worship Planning on a Cloud
Our worship team is using google Docs. Our worship director works from home most of the time, and can easily update it from there, then the office team can check online to get the information to update bulletins and get the music ready for rehearsals. It's definitely so much easier than emailing files back and forth!
Posted in: Sharing Sidebar [Feature]
This is a great addition!