After getting feedback about the Gift Card Ministry (formerly Scrip), we decided it would be beneficial to highlight this ministry for Christmas. Here’s what it looks like:

Some thoughts on the design:

• I went simple on the design, using the motif of a Christmas tree. The explanatory text continues the image of the tree, making it appear like a larger tree.
• The catch phrase “serve others in Jesus’ Name” is accented in red. This is consistent with the next flier we’ll release in February/March.
• I intentionally focused on gifts people might give, not every card available. It seemed breaking them out by price group was the way to go for listing those options.
• The order form looks very different from the front page, but matches our regular order form. My hope is that when people see the “usual” form, it will be familiar once they get this flier.
• You’ll notice an extra line at the bottom of the order form for gift card wrappers. We’re giving away wrappers with every card valued at $10 or more. We’d lose money on cards that are $5 or less. There are currently only about 5 cards that we sell that are below that threshold.

Look for the finished product in a church mailbox near you this weekend. In case others would like to use our work, grab the originals in Illustrator (Front) and Publisher (Back).

Not too long ago, David Crowder came out with a new CD titled “Church Music”. It’s been a regular in my music listening since it came out. Now I’m grooving to Matt Redman’s newest CD. Not sure which I like more right now.

Two tracks from Matt’s CD that stand out to me:

This Is How We Know (YouTube Video)

The opening lyrics:

This is how we know
This is how we know what love is
Just one look at Your cross
And this is where we see
This is where we see how love works
For You surrendered Your all
And this is how we know
That You have loved us first
This is where we chose
To love You in return

You Alone Can Rescue (YouTube Video)

Some favorite lyrics from this one:

Who, oh Lord, could save themselves,
Their own sin could heal?
Our shame was deeper than the sea
Your love is deeper still
You alone can rescue, You alone can save
You alone can lift us from the grave
You came down to find us, led us out of death
To You alone belongs the highest praise

Any good ones you’re enjoying right now?

Thanks for all the feedback on the Scrip program over the past couple days! Here’s a summary of what I heard, both online and off, from this group of readers and research in other programs:

• Increased visibility of point-of-sale. It’s hard to find it and when you do, it’s really crowded. A sign would be helpful. Also signs to help navigate from the information center to the ministry support center.
• Increased awareness. People forget it exists, don’t know it exists, or just plain don’t know what it is. Fliers, skits, video commercials and more are options to help here. We also want ways to easily share the information with friends/family that might be interested in partnering with us. Quick access to what’s in stock and what needs to be ordered is helpful as well.
• Incentives. Gift card wrappers at Christmas (and possibly other times), key-chain Sharpie marker with purchases over X dollars, one entry into a drawing for a $25 gift card of your choice for every X dollars.

Today’s questions then:

1. Check out these gift card wrappers. Most are 16 cents per wrapper when ordering 1000. At best, we can order two designs. Do we go with one more generic “A gift for you” type card, a Christmas themed one, or one of both?
2. Here’s a flier about the Gift Card Ministry. It answers three basic questions about the program: Why, What and How. It’s intentionally emphasizing the “why” we do it and frames profits in terms of how many trips it paid for. It also draws the “why” into the “what” and the “how” using the recurring phrase “serve others in Jesus’ Name.” We do it to help students serve in Jesus’ Name and when you purchase gift cards, you serve in Jesus’ Name through us. The back side is not done yet. Any wording that’s confusing? If you can, show it to someone who’s never heard of Scrip and see what they think about it.
3. Which incentives would get you buying cards?  Most are self-explanatory. The marker idea was so that people could have it with them to track the balance. Also, what should X be for pens and drawing entries? Markers cost around $1.20, so we’d lose money on sales of $25/50. We’d make money at $100 on all cards except Wegmans/Tims/Target where we essentially break even.

I’m looking for ways to increase sales for our Scrip program, one of three ways we pay for Short-Term Missions around these parts. I’m starting to work on two publicity pieces for people:

1. A new “What is Scrip and Why Should I Care?” type of brochure. There are still lots of people who don’t know much about the program I imagine.
2. A Christmas Scrip flier.

So I’m looking for some help:

• What are questions you have about Scrip?
• What are things people who’ve never heard about it would like to know?
• What gift cards are especially important to have in stock at Christmas?
• What would make cards sell better at Christmas?

Really, any ideas you have for raising awareness and/or sales, I’d love to hear them, so post them in the comments, please!

One of the things about blogging that seems to be true is that the more you read, the more you write. I suppose it’s true for other forms of writing too. I’m certainly finding it to be true myself.

One of the reasons I haven’t blogged much in the past two months is that I haven’t been reading many blogs in that time period. There are lots of reasons why, but I can certainly see the truth of the statement. Lately, I’ve been reading blogs again and find myself with more to say. Huh.

Here’s a snippit from an interesting post I read the other day, from Craig Groeschel:

When I meet people from our church, they often tell me more with their words than they realize.

They almost always say one of two things:

• “I go to your church.”
• “I love our church.”

People who respond the first way generally just attend the church. People who go the 2nd route tend to be the church.

The spiritual connection: Are we attending or being church?

For a while now, I’ve Tweeted (and by extension, Facebooked) my blog posts. They’ve taken the format:

Blog // Title of a Post // Address to find it

I’m uncertain if this is a good practice. Instead, I’m going to try asking a question in a Tweet that might get people to tune into the blog. I’m trying to help people find valuable content that’s relevant to them rather than just shamelessly promoting myself.

Hopefully, if people are interested in the question, they’ll click through. If not, that’s cool too.

I’m not sure you wanted to know this, but now you do.

One of the interesting things about our recent super series titled People Matter was the daily devotional. We asked people to limit their devotions to 500 words or less. Having a cap on the text forced people to get to the point—to trim the fat and leave the meat.

I find that I use lots of unnecessary words. I’m trying to be better at self-editing, especially on long emails or letters. Trim the fat and keep the meat. I believe people are so over-exposed to information that they’ll thank me for it. (Unnecessary aside: please don’t actually thank me for short emails.) Whenever possible, I like to follow the five.sentenc.es way of doing email.

As a church, we probably need to “trim some fat” from our communications. The extra words can sometimes cause the message to be lost. We’re working on it, by the way. We’re still working with a consultant to improve our communications strategy. It’s an incredibly long (and sometimes frustrating) process. But I think it will help us communicate more effectively.

So here’s the theological question: Are there areas of our life where we need to “trim the fat” to better communicate the Gospel?

St. Francis of Assisi thinks so. He wrote:

Preach the Gospel at all times and when necessary use words.

By the way, this post has 228 words, including these.

I know not every job is like this, but one of the interesting things about my job is that it is very integrated with my life. Here’s what that means. There aren’t a lot of clear boundaries as to when I’m working and when I’m playing (play here is defined as not work).

Now, generally speaking, I certainly major in work while at work and major in play when at home. But, largely because of technology, my work and play bleed into one another fairly regularly. Some examples:

• Email: Despite the fact that you can email me at my work account (an @FirstTrinity.com email) or my play account (@gmail.com), it all goes to the same place. This means I process both work and play email every time I check my email. This is why you may get a work-related email from me at 11 p.m. or a play email at 1 p.m.
• Blogging: Generally speaking, I read blogs when I have an opportunity to do so. It’s easier to divide work and play blogs, but I read both types in both places. I also do some play blogging at work and work blogging at play.
• Twitter: One of the things about Twitter that I love is that I can get small bits of teaching wherever I am. I can also get Fantasy Football news and information. And updates on my friends’ lives. Work and play co-exist.

Sometimes it’s best to have a clear divide between the two things. For me, that’s often on Mondays, which is my “day off”. Very rarely do I respond to work requests on Mondays. Occasionally, but not often. There are also times where I need to erect a barrier so play things don’t interrupt me at work. Usually this involves shutting down my email/twitter/blogging software and focusing exclusively on work.

So here are two theological questions associated with this:

1. Is your relationship with God integrated with your life?
2. When do you build a barrier to keep out the world and focus exclusively on God?

Of course, God wants both: Life integration and moments of exclusivity.

A while back, I wrote about my Top 5 Promises of God. It regularly shows up in my stats as a page people find while searching the internet for stuff. I’m going to be preaching this weekend and again on October 24/25, so I’ve decided to revisit the promises in more depth.

Up first: Rest, Presence and Forgiveness.

It seems like there hasn’t been enough “nerd” around these parts lately, so…

For the past week or so, I’ve been playing with TweetDeck, a Twitter (As an aside, if you aren’t sure what Twitter is, check out this great video that explains Twitter in Plain English) client available both for the desktop and for the iPhone. I’ve been using Twitteriffic for a while now, but I decided to give this a shot. I’ve always heard great things about it, but never got into it.

Overall, I like it. Some of my favorite features:

• Organize those you follow into groups. Then you can swipe from side to side to switch groups. My current groups are “Usual Suspects” (people I read all the time), “Sports” (news and info about my favorite sports), and “The Others” (the people who don’t fit in groups one and two).
• Groups are then synced between your desktop install and your phone. I don’t find it incredibly useful, except for setting up new groups, which is much faster on the desktop.
• It looks clean and feels fast. Important in a Twitter client.
• You can tweet to multiple accounts with a single post. Great for those times when you want to push information out on your own account and a group account (@JasonTheDCE and @FirstTrinity in my case).

Of course, as with anything, there are a few issues I’d like to see resolved:

• Scroll down to the first unread tweet on the iPhone. The desktop client can clear all seen tweets, making it easy to find where you left off.
• Sync the read/unread status for tweets between the desktop and iPhone. It’s a pain to “catch up” when I get to the office or go mobile.
• Make hash tags clickable so they lead to a search for that hash tag.