Technically Speaking

Reading Through the Bible - MidPoint

Gregory Davis — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 12:31:40 +0000

At the beginning of this year, with some encouragement from a friend, Mike Silliman, I made an ambitious goal for myself - to read through the Bible in a year.

Beyond the notion that it was something I ‘should’ do, I was inspired to do it because I wanted to go on a bit of a spiritual journey. I wanted to go somewhere spiritually I had never gone before and I knew that to get there I’d have to do something I’ve never done and that it woudn’t necessarily come easy. However, I also new I needed strategic approach to make it possible.

The answer: A chronologically arranged Bible in an easy to read translation. As I have reached the half-way point and spent the past 6 months in the Old Testiment, having the events arranaged sequentially has dramatically helped me not only get through some of the most confusing books of the Bible, but even allowed me to appreciate the story of God’s love for His people even more.

It is has been amazing to me to see how OT events have come to life more vividly and significantly when I read them chronologically. It just seems to make so much more sense. Now, I’m not saying there aren’t still confusing chapters and passages, but that is where having a modern English translation such as the NLT has also helped.

Personally, I like to journal, and this year the Digerati Team from LifeChurch.tv have also made some major enhancements to the popular online Bible - YouVersion.com. For some of those more difficult passages, YouVersion has a very handy feature where you can put multiple translations side by side for comparison. There is also contributions from others to help give you insight and most importantly for me, the ability to create a personal and private journal linked to key scripture. This is has been very useful in allowing the Holy Spirit to stretch me and time for God’s Word to really start to sink in. Before this year, I could have never imagined being able to journal so much about Old Testament passages.

If you have never tried reading through the Bible in a year before or maybe tried and failed after only a few short weeks, I encourage you to try again - but try it with the a chronlogically arranged Bible. There are several different ones available and in different translations. Find one that is easy for you to read. Also don’t worry that this almost July and not January. You can start any time - not just for a New Year’s resolution!

10 Ways Not to Shipwreck Your Faith

Gregory Davis — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 14:37:45 +0000

If you work or volunteer on a church ministry team, you are not immune to the spiritual dangers that others face. In fact, probably just the oppposite - you are even MORE AT RISK! There are many stories of well known ministry (and even secular) leaders who have suffered from public moral failures. We need to always be on guard - don’t become “lion food” (1 Peter 5:8).

Earlier this past week, Geoff Surratt (@GeoffSurratt) spoke at the All-Staff Meeting for Seacoast Church. He outlined 10 steps all ministry leaders need to do to help prevent a shipwrecked life. I’ve summarized them below, but I encourage you to watch the session for yourself (I’ve embeded here or you can watch on Vimeo).

Seacoast Church; All Staff, Geoff Surratt from Seacoast Church on Vimeo.

Attend a church service!
You need to experience corporate worship and hear the Word of God preached. Just because you work at a church doesn’t mean you don’t need the weekend experience.
You need to be in a Small Group
* They are not just for “those people”, they are for you!
* They are messy and that is where you can grow
Prioritize personal Worship
* Not the ‘professional’ stuff, but the personal 1 on 1 thing
* For staff, this happens outside your ‘work time’
* How are you connecting with God?
Grow your faith
* Are you growing or just in a comfy zone?
Give generously
* Shows obiedience
* Clubs the selfish demeon
* Opens the door to God’s provision
Nurture your family
* Ministry will destroy your family if you let it
* It doesn’t have to be that way, but you have to stay on top of it
* You need nights were church doesn’t enter the conversation
Participate in a mission
* God opens you up in a uniqe way
* Could be local or foreign, but must be outside your ‘normal job’
Volunteer outside your ministry
* Our nature is to focus on the area we get paid to be responsible for
* You need to do what we expect others to do, work full time, but still have an area where you volunteer to serve.
Forgive Quickly
* You work with flawed jerks, just like the rest of the world
* The church (and the staff) is not perfect, you need to learn to forgive
Believe the Best
* Your coworkers are not here for selfish reasons
* They (like you) have good motives, give them a break
* They did what they did because they thought it was best. Sure they might have been mistaken, but assume the best about them, not the worst.

Twitter in the Classroom

Gregory Davis — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 02:49:15 +0000

Twitter (and social media in general) is about 2-way conversation. Sure, it can be used as a megaphone, but that misses the real intent and purpose behind it. Here is a great example of how one university professor is using Twitter in the classroom to generate discussion that otherwise would not be possible.

What creative ways can you see Twitter being used to help generate conversation in a group setting?

Expand Your Mind - Google Reader

Gregory Davis — Thu, 21 May 2009 12:00:02 +0000

I have mentioned before about the benefits of having a blog (RSS) reader to help make life easier to keep up with your favorite people, company, web sites, or news. Personally, I recommend Google Reader. It is simple and easy to use. If you have not yet tried it, now is the time! Here is a new welcome page they have released that will help you get started!

Google Reader helps me keep up on what is going on in the world of technology, the church and friends blogs. Without a reader I would be forced to visit every site individually (if I remembered). This way, their updates come to me and I can read them on my schedule, like a customized and home delivered electronic newspaper or magazine! The best part is I can access it anywhere, even from my phone!

Not everyone can (or should) write a blog, but everyone can benefit from reading them! Through a blog reader like Google Reader, you can readily have access to authors and content that would have been impossible just a few years ago. What are you interested in? What hobbies to you have? Find the sites & people you are interested in, subscribe and start to expand your mind!

Never Forget a Password Again!

Gregory Davis — Wed, 20 May 2009 02:31:38 +0000

This is something I have been waiting to see for a long time! Finally a secure, easy to use (think web 2.0) utility that helps you manage all of your passwords that you have across so many sites and systems. Passpack is an online tool that allows you to store up to 100 passwords for sites you need to use a login.

Forget about having to search through spreadsheets, emails or other places to find login information that you forgot. A very handy feature is the ability to link directly to the site from your Passpack dashbord and then by using the “Passpack It” toolbar button, have it login automatically for you! Sweetness!

Passpack will allow you to create unique passwords for every site (better for security) and even has a utility to suggest passwords for you. I encourage you to take the tour and try it out for yourself! It is free to use (with optional upgrades) and just may take away one of the big hassels of today’s growing online world. Watch this video for an overview.

Life. Money. Hope.

Gregory Davis — Thu, 14 May 2009 18:54:47 +0000

I am very excited about the new 3-part series that we are starting this Sunday at Fellowship - “Life. Money. Hope.” taught by Dave Ramsey (via video).

There are many people worried about their finances in these troubled ecomonic times but even if your job is secure (right now), there are sound biblical principals that everyone can benefit from. How much better to get your house in order while the ship is still afloat!

If you are one of those struggling and are feeling like there is no way out or that it is too late - don’t believe it! God’s Word is full of wisdom and He is greater and more powerful than any of your financial problems. But don’t delay in getting help. Don’t let pride or ignorance get in the way of taking that first important step.

In this series we will hear about:

The Baiscs of Biblical Finance
Breaking the Bondage of Debt
The #1 Myth About Money

The church needs to be a guiding light on how to avoid personal economic disaster. I encourage you to be there and to invite your family & friends!

One Prayer 2009

Gregory Davis — Thu, 14 May 2009 02:29:00 +0000

I am excited that the One Prayer iniative from LifeChurch.tv is happening again this June. It is a great way for churches all across the globe to unite together regardless of denomination and life out Jesus’ prayer that we would “be one”. This year’s theme is “God is…”. If your church has not heard about or participated in OnePrayer last year, I encourage you to check it out and consider it for this June!

One Prayer 2009: One Prayer began in 2008 with a simple idea: We pray to Jesus asking Him to answer our prayers – what if we became the answer to His? He prayed that we would be one, and One Prayer is an opportunity to see what can be accomplished when the Church works together.

Last June, thousands of churches formed unprecedented partnerships across cities, continents, denominations, and cultures. More than two million believers stood together to learn, pray, fast, and love others. This year, we’ll be joining forces once again as we go out into the world to share, serve and give during One Prayer 2009.

Is Your Calendar Working for You?

Gregory Davis — Tue, 05 May 2009 19:30:19 +0000

The idea of online calendars is not new and many have had a electronic calendar for years now. However, not all use them to their full potential. Let me illustrate with an example from Planning Center Online and Google Calendar.

PCO is a popular online tool used by churches to plan their services and schedule volunteers. One of the handy features available to the volunteer is that your volunteer schedule is available to you in webcal (iCal) format.

On the main screen of PCO on the left hand side is a calendar with some links under it. The last one is the link your your webcal url. Simply right click on this and copy the link location.

This can be used for Outlook as well, but in this example we will use Google’s calendar as the place we want to import this into.

Next you will go to your Google Calendar and on look for the section on the left hand side titled “Other Calendars”. If you have never added any other calendars before you won’t have anything in the list. Since I have done this for many calendars, you see them shown in this example.

At the bottom of this you will see a link “Add” that you should click on. This will give you a pop-up window with a few choices. Select the “Add by URL” option.

You will get screen like the one below. Simply paste in the URL you copied from the other site (PCO in this case) and click the “Add” button.

Now go back to your calendar and you should see it in the list. It may have a funny name like “webcal://” but don’t worry you can change that. Simply look for and click on the drop-down button directly to the right of the calendar in the list. Here you can change the color (if you don’t like the one Google assigns) as well as update other settings. Click on the ‘Calendar settings’ to do this. (See example on right).

You will then have a screen that shows you the details for you calendar where you can change the name as well as the default notification options. Just like your default calendar in Google, you can have reminders set for email, SMS, or pop-up (or any combination).

What is nice about adding / layering your Google calendar like this is that you have easy to see colors for each calendar on your schedule. You can also choose to share individual calendars and not others. You can even give important people in you life the ability to update certain calendars (think family life)!

Hoot! Hoot! I'm Digging HootSuite!

Gregory Davis — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 16:17:57 +0000

I recently discovered a free online producted called HootSuite for managing Twitter posts and I have been very impressed! The summary from their web-site reads,

“HootSuite is the ultimate Twitter toolbox. With HootSuite, you can manage multiple Twitter profiles, pre-schedule tweets, and measure your success. HootSuite lets you manage your entire Twitter experience from one easy-to-use interface. “

I am using it for both my personal twitter account as well as our church’s. It is easy to set up and you can have many different twitter profiles that you might manage or contribute to. Think about personal, church, ministry, etc. You can simply click on which profile(s) you want to tweet from and yes you can select mulitple at once!

If you have a Twitter profile that muliple people should be allowed to tweet from, no problem! HootSuite gives you the ability to add users without you having to share the Twitter account’s login creditials - a good safe guard!

A couple of built in features I really like are the ability to pre-schedule your tweet and the URL shortener. When you click the “Send Later” link, you get an expanded window like you see below.

You can then pick the day and time you want the tweet to go out and if you want a confirmation email.

The URL shortener uses the “http://ow.ly”’ format. Here you see the connection to “hoot” and “owl” get it? Any way, while there are many and various URL shorteners available, what I like about this one is the built in stats integration with HootSuite.

Every time you create an ow.ly short URL, HootSuite will track it for you and report back some pretty cool statistics for you. See this example summary by day:

You can change this report to show you by day, week, month, or any date range you like. It is flexible and easy! But that is not all - you can also get it broken down by region (where people are from who click on your links) and by source (which site did they click on your link from). In HootSuite, when you hover over the graph it shows you the number assicated with each section.

Even more, HootSuite will tell you which of your ow.ly tweets had the most clicks:

And if this wasn’t enough, HootSuite will also allow you to easily import your blog RSS feed, so that new posts will be tweeted automatically from HootSuite with a ow.ly URL to your post! I have switched from TwitterFeed.com to HootSuite for this function.

Read more about HootSuite here and give it a try! You’ll be “hooting” in no time!

MinistryTECH 2009

Gregory Davis — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 18:36:44 +0000

I had the opportunity for the second year to join with other church technology geeks at the National Church IT Conference, MinistryTECH. This year’s conference was held in beautiful Colorado Springs, CO.

On the first day we got to hear from Brad Sheriff, Vice President of Brand Technologies for Sonic Industries. He was able to share some interesting insights from the commercial world and how they use technology not as a toy but as a critical part of their business model. He encouraged us to look at common everyday situations like Jerry Seinfeld and to look for ways to be innovative.

Brad also explained the importance of IT leaders to communicate their vision with the rest of the organization. When is comes to understanding the importance of this he challenged the group with these questions:

Who is defining where your organization is going technically?
Can your senior leadership team tell you your technology strategy in 30 words or less?

In the day 1 breakouts I attended, I got some good insights on project management from Ben Jordan, and video streaming on the cheap from Ian Beyer. Ian has mad networking skills and much of what he said went over my head, but there were several interesting things that I made note of from his talk that will be good for the future.

Another valuable breakout was given by Steve Caton on Empowering Ministry Throught Building Community. Borrowing a fair amount from Seth Godin’s “Tribes” book, he talked to us about the principles of turning your crowd into a ‘tribe’. The idea being that tribes are more of a community, linked together for a common purpose. The goal of churches is to get their members to become more like tribes and less like crowds. Technology and tools have a vital role to play in helping do that and I’m excited to learn more about what Church Community Builder has to offer.

Jeff Wilson closed out the first day with humour and insight on the subject of Social Networking in Ministry. I loved the way he used Prezi.com to make his presentation. This looks like an interesting tool for anyone tired of PowerPoint and Keynote software. Jeff was definitely an encouragement to us to continue our work with pastors and church staff to understand and take advantage of social media tools.

Day 2 we stared the day by hearing from David Drinnon, Pastor and Director of Information Technology at Second Baptist Church in Houston, TX. He challenged us all about making sure our focus stays on the message and not the medium. At the end of the day we heard from Mike Gold, CIO at Willow Creek Community Church in IL. Mike did an amazing job of how technology has an important role to play in Sociology, Integrity, and Justice.

In between those two were Church IT Roundtable (CITRT) breakouts. These proved to be very valuable as we get to talk about issues that we want to talk about and learn from each other in the process.

The biggest take away for me from this year’s event was the meeting and networking with many that are also interested in technology and the church. Many were IT Directors and on paid staff from their respective churches, but several were volunteers like myself. The best part is that we will be able to stay in touch now after the conference via twitter, blogs, and other social media.