The Super Bowl® has the largest economic impact of any regular human event with literally every demographic engaged in this annual national fervor. While churches won’t be looking to make money on the big game, they will be promoting events to view the classic clash between the Giants and the Patriots in Lucas Oil Stadium, Indianapolis, IN February 5, 2012.

This year is one of the first in history that churches are preparing for Super Bowl® parties without fear of penalties and interference from the NFL for copyright infringement. Even so, it’s vital that church leaders follow important guidelines to stay inside the playing field and make sure they avoid legal risks of infringement.

Over the past several years churches faced warnings and possible legal action if they hosted bowl parties. Thanks to concessions by NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, the NFL will not block religious organizations from hosting Super Bowl® viewing parties. There are some important rules, however, to follow to avoid being tackled with risks of copyright infringement:

Churches must show the game live on equipment they use in the course of ministry at their premises; recordings of the show are not permitted. (For help in obtaining licensing for recording TV shows and film, see CopyrightSolver’s PERMISSIONSplus.) Churches cannot charge admission for the party. The NFL has stated, however, that churches may take up a donation to defray the cost of the event. It’s advisable for churches to call the event a “Big Game Party” rather than a “Super Bowl Party,” as both the “NFL” and “Super Bowl” are trademarked and protected intellectual property. For example, one church last year called their event a “Souper Bowl” party and asked for donations of canned soup for a local ministry.

Here’s a short list of terms that the NFL holds trademarks to:

Super Bowl
Super Sunday
Team Names, not cities (for example, you can say “New England vs. New York” but not “The Patriots vs. The Giants.”
Do not use the NFL, Super Bowl, NFC, AFC, or any team logos in your publications or promotional materials

The road to legal church viewing events of the NFL’s copyrighted broadcast has been a harrowing and bumpy journey. Bipartisan action in the U.S. Senate in 2008 by Senators Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and Arlen Specter (D-PA) brandished enough political ire to elicit a favorable response from NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, allowing churches to legally host viewings of the 2009 Super Bowl event.

In a letter to Sen. Hatch a few weeks after the 2008 Super Bowl, Goodell said that the NFL would not object to “live showings, regardless of screen size, of the Super Bowl” by religious organizations (as long as admission is not charged and the showings are on premises that the church uses on a “routine and customary” basis), according to The Washington Post.

Sen. Specter had introduced a bill (S2591) Feb. 4, 2008 proposing to amend chapter 1 of title 17, United States Code, to provide an exemption from exclusive rights in copyright for certain nonprofit organizations to display live football games, and “for other purposes.”

It took only 13 months—this is lightning speed in the world of copyright deliberations—to render a positive solution. Here’s the stat sheet on how things unraveled.

Just prior to the 2007 Super Bowl®, the NFL intercepted an Indiana congregation’s plans to host a Super Bowl® party Feb. 4, leading many churches nationwide to abruptly drop their viewing parties and tackle the issue of potential copyright infringements.  The controversy blitzed churches when NFL officials spotted a promotion of Fall Creek Baptist Church’s “Super Bowl Bash” on their website in January 2007 and overnighted a letter to the pastor demanding the party be canceled. Pastor John D. Newland said his church would not break the law.  The NFL did not change their position for Super Bowl® 2008, and warned that it would consider legal action if any church allowed a public viewing on TVs larger than 55 inches (this limitation is stated in the U.S. Copyright Law). Goodell then reversed their stance after the 2008 Super Bowl.

The NFL’s action flagged churches and alerted them to the dangers of copyright infringement, especially posting material and notices on their websites. The Internet undoubtedly raises churches visibility, while also increasing their legal vulnerability.

Originally posted at www.copyrightcommunity.com/

Besides the parenting implications of turning a blind eye, observing American’s burgeoning adults will help predict their media habits as they grow older—or so says a study this month from Ericsson ConsumerLab.

“As they get older, teenagers start to use communication tools in the same way as adults,” Ann-Charlotte Kornblad, senior advisor at Ericsson ConsumerLab, said in a press release. “They will continue to use ‘their’ tools such as texting, Facebook and video chat, but at the same time, they understand the need to use voice and email as they move into the next stage of their lives.”

For the time being, however, you can rest assured that most teens think land lines and email are lame, according to the study, which interviewed nearly 2,000 teens ages 13 to 17. Ericsson ConsumerLab said the respondents are representative of teens throughout the United States.

Here are seven useful (or at least interesting) takeaways from the study:

Face-to-face communication is tops among teens. The study asked teenagers to rank the methods of communication they would most miss if taken away, and 58 percent cited “in real life” as No. 1. Here’s the full list:

1. Meet “in person” (58 percent ranked it No. 1)
2. Texting (28 percent)
3. Talk on the mobile phone (5 percent)
4. Facebook (5 percent)
5. Talk on the home phone, email, video chat, chat, Twitter (tie at 1 percent)

They keep their phone calls brief. The study found that teenagers think phone calls are “more suitable for adults,” because they’re unsure about the “unwritten rules of phone conversation.” As a result, they typically keep their phone calls short: 53 percent of teens—59 percent of boys and 47 percent of girls—said their calls last less than four minutes, according to the study.

Video chats are becoming more popular. Twenty-three percent of the study respondents said they were “engaging in more video chats,” and 83 percent of teens who use the platform do so at least once a week. That makes sense—it combines some attributes of face-to-face interaction with the ease of technology. More than one-third of teen video chatters said they use it for homework (just as previous generations primarily used their cell phones and home phones for homework—ahem).

Facebook and texting are important tools for dating. Although teenagers still meet prospective boyfriends or girlfriends in person, they rely on Facebook and text messages to continue the courting process. For instance, after meeting someone in real life, teens will look the person up on Facebook before asking him or her on a date—which is of course done via text message. Here’s the breakdown:

Teenagers use Facebook emotionally. Adults, the study noted, tend to use Facebook as a substitute for other forms of communication. Teenagers, on the other hand, “use Facebook emotionally, as an extension of their real-life relationships.”

The most common Facebook activity for teens is “liking” and creeping. And by creeping, we mean looking at other people’s profiles.

Mobile phones are the new smoking. Not because some studies have said the cell phones cause cancer (at least not in the context of this study), instead it refers to teenagers’ strong desire to belong. “Young people create or adopt their own social tools—which should ideally exclude their parents and older generations,” the study said. “Smoking was once a social tool, a way of belonging. These days, with smoking increasingly unpopular, technology—and particularly the mobile phone—is seen as the most popular social tool.”

This piece was written By Michael Sebastian | and originally posted: January 20, 2012 at prdaily.com 

50-We start the year celebrating 50 years of marriage of Joe and Vicki Ball, my mom and dad. I have had the privilege the past couple of weeks of going through stacks and stacks of old pictures and scanning them onto a jump drive for a media show at the anniversary celebration.  Being able to do this has reminded me what Godly examples they have been, not only to my brother Kenny and me, but to countless others through the years.  We have been blessed with parents who taught us and lived before me the truth of scripture. We will take time to celebrate with family and friends the influence this couple our parents have been on scores of people.

70-My Dad will turn 70 in February.  It doesn’t really seem possible that he can be that age. He can still work circles around me.  We can spend the day cutting and splitting wood and at the end of the day he is still going strong and I am dragging myself into the car to go home. What a legacy his life has been to an entire community.  He has helped plant two churches, been scoutmaster of a local scout troop for over 45 years, is a deacon at his church and is the community gardener and handyman.  This is in addition to raising 2 boys, helping to raise 4 grand-kids and now enjoying the first great grandchild.

21-our son Jordan turns 21 in May and as unbelievable that it is to me that my dad is turning 70 it is even more so that our son will be 21.  It seems like only yesterday that Gina and I brought him home from the hospital and began the incredible journey of parenting a son.  It has been amazing to see God work in him and to hear from his friends the faith they see in Jordan.

30-This fall marks the 30 anniversary of my first date with Gina.  We went to Mr. Gatti’s in Campbellsville following the homecoming basketball game.  Who would have thought that splitting a pizza on a double date with Gary and Sharon would of lead to this incredible journey?

1-in early December we will celebrate the first birthday of Emerson Kate, my great niece and the first of the next generation. Time truly marches on.

50 (again)-This one is mine.  In December we will close out the year by celebrating my 50^th birthday, and of all the things on the list this seems like the most improbable of them all. How in the world will I be half a century old?  There is so much I wanted to do before I turned 50. I wanted to shoot under 85 in golf, own a new truck, hit a home run, shot and skinned my first deer, learned to sail and go skydiving.  And I know that 50 is not the end of the world and there is still the possibility of doing most of these, but it is a significant milestone.

What does any of this have to do with youth ministry? After all that is the point of this space.  In his book, “Shift: What it takes to finally reach families today”, Brian Haynes talks about the importance of recognizing milestones in the life of a family. Some of those milestones are: The birth of a baby, salvation experience, turning 13, commitment to purity, beginning high school, learning to drive and high school graduation.  There are a significant number of milestones built into a student’s life that we can partner with parents and families to help celebrate. These can serve as great times of celebration and teaching spiritual truths to both our students and their parents.  But these will not happen if we don’t have a plan.

As we begin 2012 let’s take some time and look at our calendars and see how we can use the approaching milestones in the lives of our students and their families as times to honor Christ and move students into deeper relationships with each other, their families and with God.

as always you comments and suggestion are welcomed.

So it struck me as odd this week, when on two different occasions I was privy to conversations about learning about the culture of students today.  I think they meant well, but what they wanted was three of four bullet points that would tell them everything they need to know about how to reach this culture of students.  And while I could have easily espoused some of the highlights of this culture: technologically savvy, prefer text messaging to phone calls, service oriented, starving for healthy relationships with adults, etc… When it comes to learning culture, really learning culture there are no short cuts.

If we are serious about reaching this culture of students we have to spend time with them, live life with them, and get to know them in their environment.  The Holiday season provides ample opportunity for us to do just that.

1.  Go to a local High School sporting event.  Several schools have holiday basketball tournaments.  But don’t just go to watch the game, go and watch the students.  Watch the students in the crowd, in the halls, in the concession stands.  See how they communicate with each other, what they are wearing, how they interact with each other.
2. Check with your youth minister/director and see if you can volunteer to help with/chaperone your church’s youth Christmas Party.  Go and help out but more importantly watch and interact with students.  Ask them about what Christmas is like at their home.  See who talks with whom and who isn’t talked to at all.  Ride the van or bus on the way home and see where they live.
3. Spend some time on facebook or twitter, open an account if you don’t have one and ask a student that you know to “friend” you on facebook, or follow some of them on twitter.  You will be immersed in culture in just a small amount of time.  Don’t be a stalker and reserve comments of what you may see for a later time.
4. Talk to the teenagers that you are around at Christmas time.  When you gather together at family functions, don’t let them wander off in a room to themselves. Go with them, sit with them and engage them in conversation.  Ask them about their favorite band, TV show, or store to buy clothes from.  Better yet, invite them to the “adult table” and engage everyone in conversation about life and family.  Ask them about their favorite Christmas, and tell them about yours.
5. Watch a few minutes of MTV of anything on the CW network.  You can learn a lot in a small amount of time. Be careful not to jump to quickly to conclusions, not all students are doing what is being portrayed on these networks, but it is a good look at what your students are facing on a daily basis.
6. Go to the malls, not to shop but to people watch. It is amazing in Louisville the difference in culture that each mall attracts.  Look at what they are wearing, what they are doing, how they interact with one another, where they are eating and you can learn a lot about culture.
7. A couple of internet sites that can give you quick snippets of youth culture information are www.cpyu.org and www.youthministry360.com  both have great sections on culture and you can subscribe to regular culture updates from either site.

If we are serious about reaching this generation of students, we need to do the hard work of learning their culture and then presenting the Gospel to them within their culture. That’s exactly what we are giving to and praying that our international missionaries are doing this time of year. May we join them in the task of taking the Gospel to all the cultures of the world.

So what does this have to do with youth ministry?  I am glad you ask.  If we want to be taken serious as ministers we have to be willing to move to the grown-up table.  One of the recurring themes I hear as I travel the state is that youth ministers want to be respected, want to feel like their ministry matters, that they are no longer banished to the kiddie table.  A move to the grown-up table for youth ministry is two-fold.

1. The church- As a body of believers we must make youth ministry a priority.  We are loosing ground when it comes to reaching students and we have to be willing to do whatever it takes to reach them.  We have to expect more from the people we hire to do youth ministry than to be a glorified baby sitter.

We also have to be willing to let the students be apart of corporate church life.  There is no excuse for students not leading in worship and teaching classes.  They are taking advanced calculus in high school, so I know they are capable of far more than we allow them to do.

We also need to provide quality facilities and equipment for them.  This is the age of technology.  We need to recognize this and take the necessary steps to provide resources that meet their educational needs. We need to make sure that Buses and vans are in good shape and will not break down every time they leave the city.  Our budgets reflect our priorities.

2. Youth Ministers- we cannot place all the blame on the church, the pastor or the parents for us not being invited to the grown-up table.  At times we are our own worse enemy.  We need to have details in place.  Parents want to know that their children are well taken care of, and the more details we can give them the more they will believe that we know what we are doing.  I know it is a whole lot more fun to hang out with students than to be in the office planning the logistics of trips and events, but those details give our church leaders and parents the assurance that we know what we are doing.

Be an example “ both in word and deed”.  Pick up after yourself, or get volunteers to help you.  If you know the senior adults are using the van in the morning, or that it will be used to pick people up for church, then clean it.  Take time to speak to parents after the meeting.  Straighten the youth room; don’t leave it for the custodian to clean up your mess.

Be a good steward of the resources given you.  Your budget will never have enough money in it.  CD players will break, resources will disappear and there will always be students that cannot afford to go.  The wiser we are with spending what we are given the more we will be seen as leaders.

Keep your pastor informed.  He can be your strongest ally.  It is a lot easier for him to deflect detractors if he knows what you are planning in advance. He can be an advocate for you and possibly defuse sticky situations, otherwise he has come find you, talk through what happened while the church member or parent is fuming.

I could go on for a lot longer.  It is time youth ministry got a seat at the grown-up table.  It is time for it not to be seen as a stepping-stone to “real ministry”.  It will take real work from all parties involved for that to happen.

Save us a place at the table.

This post was originally posted Nov 6, 2007 here at the despising none website. To see it and other post at the original blog site click here

What practices do you use to help best manage your time?

The beauty of the autumn days and an outdoor wedding reminded me of those fall break days in Hopkinsville when we would gather what students we could and rake leaves for some of the senior adults in our church.  It wasn’t anything that took a lot of planning or resources, honestly it was more of an excuse to hang out with students, and get out of the office.  Students would show up at the church about 10:00, we rake a small yard or two in town, grab some lunch and then rake some more that afternoon.

Whether this was a one day or multi-day project our last house would always be Violet Wolfe’s.  She lived out in the country, had a little more than an acre, covered in trees and it would take most of the afternoon just to rake her leaves.  It was always our students favorite place to rake for a couple of reasons: 1 we didn’t have to bag the leaves up and haul them off, we could just wind roll them into her ditch and 2, when we were done wind rolling them we got to burn them. Nothing like a van load of students with permission to burn something.  I think some of them would have raked every yard on Antioch Road if they could have set fire to something when they were done.

I thought about those fall days, hanging with students, when we passed Violet’s house coming back to town after Alisha and Dustin’s wedding and the simplicity of some youth and children from Edgewood working together at the home of some of our senior adults.  The bonds that were formed, the familial feel it gave to what we were doing and who we were as a congregation all brought together by a simple time of raking leaves.

That wasn’t all we did to bridge the gap between our students and our seniors. We would go caroling at Christmas, at least once a year the students would program and sponsor one of the PEP clubs monthly meetings, and we would visit some of our shut-ins in nursing homes a couple times a year.  Several of the seniors became grandparent figures, not only for Jordan and Karen, but for the students in our ministry as well.  I think, Mrs. Juanita, our church secretary even attended a couple of grandparent days at school with Karen.

We’ve been gone from Edgewood almost 7 years now, and the Sunday after the wedding when we walked into the church for worship, some of these same seniors came and walked past Gina and I to make over Karen and Jordan, mostly Jordan.  After all he is the one that has changed the most; he was only 13 when we left.  Those relationships that were forged through just being family, they don’t just disappear.

Simple things, no high dollar programs, no hours and hours of time spent planning, not a lot adult volunteer leadership required, just hanging out and that built relationships.  In a world where statistics tell us that fifty to eighty-five percent of students leave church after they graduate high school, and the same research tell us that one commonality among the students that stay is that they have developed relationships with adults in the church, outside of the youth ministry volunteers, maybe it’s time we simplified things and just found ways to be family.

Fall and the upcoming Holiday season are a couple of great places to start.

Join our discussion…what are you doing to call your students to missional living?

Originally posted today on  yahoo.

Tue Nov 01 10:49am EDT

Teen rowers give up medal dreams to help capsized foes

By Cameron Smith

It’s always said that high school sports are supposed to teach young athletes the value of good sportsmanship. Now we all know that at least two prep rowers from Philadelphia are listening.

As first reported by the Philadelphia Daily News, Philadelphia (Penn.) Episcopal Academy rowers James Konopka and Nick Mead made the ultimate sacrifice during their Under-17 doubles race at the Head of the Schuykill regatta on Sunday when they abandoned a promising start to help rescue two fellow competitors who had capsized.

With temperatures unseasonably cold and Philadelphia (Penn.) St. Joseph’s Prep rowers Joe Leonard and Andrew Burrichter struggling with their boat and treading water in the icy river, Konopka and Mead made a snap decision to give up a promising start that could have landed them in the medals to help get the fellow high school rowers to safety, waiting with them until a safety launch arrived to get the St. Joseph’s pair out of the frigid water.

“They had flipped,” Konopka, a 16-year-old sophomore, said yesterday. “Nick said we should probably go back [to help them] and I agreed, so we turned around.”

“They were yelling ‘help’ and one of the kids didn’t appear as if he could swim too well,” said Mead, a 16-year-old junior. “The water was cold and I’m sure their limbs were going numb.”

Considering the fact that the high temperature in the Philadelphia area on Sunday was only around 45 degrees, Mead’s concern about his competitor’s condition was almost certainly correct.

For most teens, that good samaritan act would have been more than enough work for one day. That wasn’t the case with Konopka and Mead, who insisted on turning back around and completing the race.

When the Episcopal Academy duo finally reached the finish line, their coaches were stunned that it had taken them so long … until they found out that the sophomore and junior had helped their capsized opponents. That information changed the Episcopal staff’s reaction from one of mild disappointment to admiration of their own charges.

Clearly, it was the right response, just as Mead and Konopka’s decision to help had been.