Archive for: July 2008

Liquid–5 Episodes, 1 Story

Posted by Jeff on Sunday, July 27th, 2008 | Comments (2)

Finding good, well-written, easy to follow, creative curriculum is always a challenge. When involved in youth ministry, there were many options, but I rarely found material I really liked. I often bought material and spent as much time modifying it as it would take to write my own!

Good resources for young adults were scarce when I first began working with this age group. As churches in America begin to address the obvious disconnect with younger generations, finding material for young adults has become easier; but Read More→

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Categories : book reviews, curriculum, young adults
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from Sunday School to Dunkin’ Donuts

Posted by Jeff on Saturday, July 12th, 2008 | Comments (0)

We’ve been doing a young adults (18-35) Sunday School class almost since we started the young adults ministry here. But, we’ve been wanting to try something new for a while, so we’re taking it off campus–to Dunkin’ Donuts. Tomorrow morning will be the first trial of this, so we’ll know more in the morning. I’m excited.

Things I’m wondering…

How much will the change in location change the nature of what we we talk about?

How will the social dynamics change outside of “class”?

Will new people feel more or less comfortable coming?

Will it help young adults be consciously aware of how “church” integrates with their “real” lives?

Will I have to buy everyone breakfast tomorrow?

UPDATE: So far the experiment of having class off-site has been fun. People are much more talkative outside of a “classroom” setting–and it feels more “real” in some way. We also run into other people we know while off-site–but not many young adults. We haven’t had any new people so far, so I’ll have to update everyone on that later. The downside is that time constraints are defintely tighter and I am spending a lot more $ at Dunkin’ Donuts than I am used to spending…

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Categories : young adults

Jott

Posted by Jeff on Monday, July 7th, 2008 | Comments (1)

As I’ve mentioned before, I love technology, but I’m not a programmer, but I can get by with some help from friends, good problem solving skills and Google. So, I love when I find technology that makes my life simpler, but doesn’t take me hours to set up.

My desk is normally covered in papers and post it notes. I try to carry my pda with me at all times, because I often need to write down appointments, tasks or notes. Inevitably, I find myself without paper, pen or pda. I used to leave myself voicemail or text myself, until I found Jott. In order to Jott

1. Set up a profile on Jott.com
2. Call their number, when the prompt asks, “who do you want to Jott?”, reply “myself”
3. Leave yourself a voicemail and hang up

Jott then transcribes your voicemail and emails it to you. If the transcription isn’t right or deosn’t make sense, simply click on it to listen to the audio. You can also Jott other people who you define in your address book and many other services–including Twitter, WordPress, Amazon, etc. When it beta, everything was free. Now, for a fee, other services such as Google Calendar, Vitalist, Remember the Milk, etc. can also be used. For a complete list of applications/links, check out Jott’s getting started link.

jott expressJott Express is a nice addition to Jott. It allows users to sync and organize their Jott’s offline. Since I jott a lot, it makes it easy to maintain multiple Jott “to do” lists.

Jott for iPhone allows iPhone users to use their iPhone like a voice recorder and access their Jott’s, which are synced with Jott while online. Of course, I don’t have an oPhone and have to settle for iPhone envy…

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Categories : technology, wordpress