In the midst of moving to a new city, expanding our financial support team and getting ready to launch a new metro ministry, my margins have been thin lately.

Five years ago I would have struggled with the stress of this season of life, but right now I’m doing pretty good because of a few things I’ve learned along the way.

1. It’s only a season. Things will either calm down naturally or I’ll start weeding some things out soon.
2. Change and being uncomfortable has an incredible influence on my walk with God. Stepping into the unknown forces my dependence on the Lord. I’m so thankful for that.
3. I don’t need to control everything. My significance is not found how well I have life under control or how many of our pictures we’ve actually hung on the walls of our new house.

Just some thoughts for you. I hope they’re encouraging wherever you’re at. How have you dealt with thin margins in your life?

Socialnomics just updated their video that I’ve posted about a few times. It’s compelling.

I experienced the Social Media revolution yesterday when I tweeted about a bad experience with Belkin and Comcast products and BOTH companies contacted me via twitter to fix my problem. Good job listening by those major corporations!

Today I got a text from a fellow staff member asking for help on leading a discussion about why technology can benefit ministry. For this post I’ll focus in on why Social Media is important for ministry. Obviously this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Here’s what I’d do with 20 minutes in a staff meeting.

• I would show this video on Social Media or this video about Return on Investment and discuss them.
• I believe that we all have an innate desire to connect with others relationally. Social media is social! I would discuss how social media is a tool that spurs on the building of relationships if we’re intentional and not just using a bullhorn technique.
• I would give specific examples of how you’ve seen value in social media. Perhaps you’ve connected with students about something you saw them post online or you can use my examples here and here.
• I’d talk about how you can align your use of social media to your specific ministry goals. If your goal is to connect more people to your ministry or perhaps involving students in evangelism…it can be done online!
• Lastly I’d talk about baby steps. You don’t have to do everything! I’d start with Facebook and figure out how to make a few minutes count each day.

That’s it…easy right? Not so fast… if you’ve got unlimited time I’d make you watch this.

What’s your best argument for using social media in ministry? How do you cast vision and align people to using it?

I have an idea.

If you are on staff with CCC, you might remember the 250 book from a while ago. It was a book that compiled 250 of the best outreach ideas from CCC campus ministries around the nation

I actually used it for inspiration a bunch of times….back in the day.

So here’s my idea. What if we had an online version? What if we had a way for staff in the campus ministry to upload their best evangelism outreach ideas on to one specific site. And let’s get crazy, what if we had the ability to leave comments and rate the ideas like we do on Amazon.com? Think about the engagement you could have. Think about the filtering of bad ideas you could have. You could have categories like 1-1 evangelism or large group outreach. I think it might just work.

As far as I know there is nothing like this. But how cool would it be if I could see what the Boston Metro team is doing, borrow an idea and and tweak it to fit my context. It could spur on new ideas in your context and move us forward quicker.

Sharing is good right?

Does this idea have value? Any problems with it? How could I make this happen?

Photo courtesy of Simon Gurr

Do we use our non-profit status to settle for less than excellence in what we do?

Last weekend I was sitting through ten hours of adoption class.  Saturday the instructor, bless her heart, was filling in for someone on vacation and winging it through a powerpoint presentation. It was rough. It was really rough. At one point while fiddling with the computer she made a joke under her breath about being a not-for-profit organization.

Everyone laughed. Including me.

But that got me thinking. The organization I work for is a non-profit organization. I don’t have all the resources I want. Like an old foundation on a house the disease of settling creeps in.

Business as usual creeps in. Settling for mediocre creeps in because we have an excuse.

I don’t want to lead or follow Christ with that perspective. I don’t want to settle.  I don’t want to use my position as full-time self-funded missionary as an excuse to settle for mediocre. I hope you don’t either.

What keeps you for settling for the status-quo?

Photo courtesy of Voxphoto

If you missed it, the CCC Blogference is off an running. It runs from today till thursday, but I have a feeling the conversations will continue long after. The collaboration across borders, ministries and ministry experience is amazing and it’s only been a few hours. Even Judy Douglass (wife of CCC president) has commented.

Highlight for me so far. Opportunity for people to highlight new evangelistic tools. Discussion on using social media socially and tithing your online time.

It’s so good! My mind is spinning with ideas.

These are the top 5 things that keep me from life-on-life campus ministry (discipleship and evangelism).

• Dealing with ministry related financial rules and regulations
• Conferences/travel
• Responding to voicemail/email/facebook/twitter
• Developing ministry funding
• Planning and logistics for events

These aren’t necessarily bad things right? But they so easily sidetrack me from why I chose my job. Which is to step foot on campus and engage students with the life-changing message of Jesus Christ. Just something I’m thinking about.

What should our perspective be about these things, and how do we deal well with them?

We’re moving today.

Today I’m leaving a place I know, a place I love and the place I’ve lived the longest in my 31 years of life.

Today I’m learning that leading (and following Christ) means embracing change. It means facing unknown. It means being uncomfortable. It’s means a deep dependence on the Lord.

Today is brutal. It’s sad. It’s painful. And it’s exhilirating.

When I discover some snazzy new application the first test I give it is the “Keep it Simple” test.

I must be able to create an account in less that 30 seconds. Even then not having to create an account is preferable.  Interface must be clean… meaning navigation must be simple and easily discerned.

Bottomline, if it takes me longer than 5 minutes to figure out the basics of the application, then I’m probably not going to use it much.

Example Applications that pass the Simple Test

• Picnik – resize pictures
• Tweetie for Mac
• Screenr – make a screencast
• Skype
• NetNewsWire (RSS reader for Mac)
• Tripit – manage all your travel

Do you have any other favorite applications that pass the Keep it Simple test?

Here are my favorite thoughts from The 4-hour Work Week. (besides hiring a virtual assistant in India to check my email for me). These are from the chapter on time management. I’m pretty sure I have experience in all of these… and not in a good way. How about you?

• Doing something unimportant well does not make it important.
• Requiring a lot of time does not make a task important
• What you do is infinitely more important than how you do it. Efficiency is still important, but it is  useless unless applied to the right things.
• Am I being productive or just active?
• Am I inventing things to do to avoid the important?

Effectiveness is doing the things that get you closer to your goals. Efficiency is performing a given task (whether important or not) in the most economical manner possible.

- Timothy Ferriss