Topic: Manage Resources
Title: Where Is Your LIFE Savings?
Text: Matthew 6:19-21
Theme: Time

Read the Text: "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. 20 But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

Illustrate: Imagine that you are holding your piggy bank, and in it is all your life’s savings. You are walking to the bank and on the way there you trip on the sidewalk and a few coins fall out. You quickly gather the coins before someone else can snatch them up, then you continue on your way.

You make it to the bank without anymore mishaps and you stand in the back of the line that is twenty people long. You wait for your turn to deposit your life’s savings and just as you reach the counter, you hear a scream and a man demanding you to hand over your life’s savings. All that you had is now being taken from you, and there is nothing you can do about it.

Challenge/Connection: Our treasure on this earth is fleeting. It may disappear from theft, waste, investment, or giving. Your life is the same way. You are not guaranteed tomorrow. The time you have can be wasted, invested, or given away.

Instead of taking your life to a bank you are building up a spiritual bank account. The things you do on this earth are being added and subtracted by the “Supreme Banker.”

This is a bank that can never be robbed and you can never loose the investments you place in the heavenly bank. Take joy in the investments you are making into the kingdom and look forward to receiving your heavenly bank account.

Receive Offering: One thing you can do with your life/time/resources is to invest it into the kingdom. Tonight, don’t just give in the offering, but commit to pray for the missionaries and love the lost.

Guest Contributor: Kim Pfitzer

I've posted my session from the North American Children's Ministry Conference.  Feel free to listen in.  My notes and keynote slides are available as well.

The audio file is just over one hour in length.  The goal of this session is to inspire children's ministers to focus a measure of energy on expanding their influence into the home as well as give some practical ideas to help accomplish this goal.

Pay attention, class is in session. The guys over at Simply Youth Ministry have done it again with a great "instructional" music video just for youth workers.

I recently found (recommended by friends, I have not personally tested) some software that will allow you to talk to your computer for creation of documents.

Introducing Dragon (PC, iPhone) and MacSpeech (Mac) by Nuance.  Nuance has perfected the speech to text software for the computer.  Their software allows people to create documents speaking naturally at three times the pace of the average persons typing speed.  And it doesn't misspell words or miss punctuation.

Think of the possibilities.

25 Ways To Win With People (Maxwell & Parrott)

I believe one of the most mis-valued things in life is our relationships.  As leaders, we must always be doing what we can to maximize the value we place on others.  In 25 Ways to Win with People, we discover some great insight to what leadership guru John Maxwell uses.

Here's a sample.

1: Start with yourself.  You have to become a winner.  Before you can truly give value you have to be healthy and growing.

2:  Practice the 30 second rule: Say something nice to everyone you meet within the first 30 seconds of your conversation

4: Create a memory and help visit it often:  Find ways to make memories and use tokens, images, and stories to relive those highlight moments

8: Encourage the dreams of others:  Too often we are trying to get people on board with our dreams.  But the reality is, if we are truly going to win with people we must invest in their dream and try to get them on board with ours.

19: Remember a persons story: Listen to their story and remember it when you talk with them

22: Learn the mailman's name: SAVE Method (S) Say the name three times in conversation, (A) Ask a question about the name, (V) Visualize the persons prominent physical or personality feature, (E) End the conversation with their name.

25: Help people win!

The full list of 25 is worth the read.  Enjoy!

I had the honor of teaching a session at the North American Children’s Ministry Conference in St. Louis on March 3, 2010. Here are the notes and keynote printout from that session. I hope to make the audio available down the road.

You have my permission to utilize this content for training sessions in your church or ministry region. If you need additional information or sources of information, feel free to contact me.

Presenter Notes
Keynote Presentation

Topic: Make Money
Title: Give to the Company
Text: 2 Thessalonians 3:7-10
Theme: Get a Raise Pt4

Read the Text: 7 For you yourselves know how you ought to follow our example. We were not idle when we were with you, 8 nor did we eat anyone’s food without paying for it. On the contrary, we worked night and day, laboring and toiling so that we would not be a burden to any of you. 9 We did this, not because we do not have the right to such help, but in order to make ourselves a model for you to follow. 10 For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: “If a man will not work, he shall not eat.”

Illustrate: The most satisfying job opportunities are those where the employer takes care of the employee because he/she knows that an employee is adding value to the company.

When you view your job as, “How can you add value to the company?” You become an asset to the employer. If your only role is to show up for your scheduled time so you can take home a paycheck your time there may be short lived.

You will not be hired because the company needs to give their money away - you are hired because they see that you can add value to their organization.

Challenge/Connection: People who never get a raise view their paycheck as what the boss and company owes them. People who get raises and promotions view their paycheck as a thank you for time spent investing into the success of the company.

Receive Offering: Pray and Receive Offering

Announcing the launch of the redesigned and updated SDAG Summer Camp website.  Register and make a minimum payment online by April 15th to qualify for a free 2010 Camp DVD!  VOTE NOW For Your Choice of Camp Shirt Designs!

Three easy steps to register:

1.  Get a username and password
2.  Add your kids to the account
3.  Register those kids for camp

Need additional help - watch this tutorial video for a demonstration of how to use this site.

This week John Flemmer and I will be attending the North American Children's Ministry Conference in St. Louis.  Be watching this blog and my twitter updates for items of interest as it relates to reaching the children in your community.

Later on this week we'll be a part of the national BGMC conference, "Shake it Up!"

I look forward to sharing great ideas with you as a result of this conference.

Things: Task Management Has Never Been This Easy

If you're anything like most leaders in an organization, from time to time your to-do list is longer than there are hours in a day.  So, if you aren't able to hire multiple assistants, and managing volunteers seems to be just another thing to add to your plate - how to you continue to be productive and keep your mind at peace?

I use Things

Things is a Mac/iPhone app that helps to manage not only simple tasks, but major projects, staff, and areas of your organization.

Here are a few ways that I use Things to increase productivity and reduce the amount of stress in my life.

1.  Things inbox is my catch all.  This usually happens when I'm out of the office, so having Things on my iPod touch is essential.  I can be walking through the grocery store and have a great idea about a printed piece for an upcoming event, or the name of a potential speaker for a training session we are hosting.  I immediately get out Things and enter it as an action:

- Find the phone number for Speaker Name or
- Design marketing post card for event promotion

Later when I get back to my computer, I sync this with my computer so I have the current information on my desktop.

2.  Tag and File each action: On a regular basis I go through my inbox and assign tags and file each action into the specific project.  for.  On "Find the phone number..." I would use the tag "research" and on "Design marketing..." the tag "Design Required" seems to fit.  Each of them would then be added to their appropriate project.  A deadline - if appropriate - is added to give me a reminder of when it's due so I don't miss an important deadline.

When I have time to spend design, these tags help me call up all "Design Required" elements to batch them at one time.  Or, because it's grouped by project/event I can work on one many different "tags" for a specific project.

Here are some of the tags I use most frequently: Design Required, Email, Phone Call, Meeting Content, Publish Online, Blog, Research, Office Work

Regardless of the tags you use - I find these tags work the best if they help me define exactly what needs to be done in order to complete a certain task.


3.  Utilize Hot Keys:  By going into the Things Preferences, you will find options as it relates to "Quick Entry" (see image below).  These hot keys are great when going through your email inbox or doing initial research from the web.  When in my email I hit my Control+Space and a quick entry box pops up where I can immediately enter the action, add tags, a due date, and file it in the appropriate project.  The great feature about the "autofill" hot key is that it will place a hyperlink in the Things task so you don't need to take time to enter all of the information from the email.  This works on multiple programs and allows you to keep your tasks more organized in less space.


For more tips head to the CulturedCode website