Wondering What Happened with Elemental Children’s Ministry?

Hey, come on over to http://www.elementalcm.com and update your RSS feeds (that for your newsreeder like Google Reader or Bloglines) to http://feeds.feedburner.com/elementalcm

Same blogging goodness… new address!

New place for the Elemental Children’s Ministry Blog!

I have moved the blog over to http://www.elementalcm.com

Please update your RSS subscriptions and links. Then come on over and continue the conversation!! See you there.

Great Place to Get T-shirt Screen Printing Done

If you are like me, then you like to get T-shirts done for various children’s ministry things like camp or volunteer drives and other things! I remember starting off in CM and not knowing where to go or what to do. A friend of mine, Brian Marshall, referred me to someone at his church at the time. The guy’s name is Terry Matthews.

Terry runs Terry’s Tees out of Owensboro, KY. He is a great guy, who has since become a friend of mine as well. He does quality T-shirt screen printing for a reasonable cost and even has someone on his staff who can help with graphics!

You might be wondering why I am promoting Terry. Well, Terry is one of those guys who still understands what customer service means and I’ve enjoyed working with him over the past 5 years. So, if you need someone to print T-shirts (or hats, or sweatshirts, or whatever) for you and you don’t already have someone you work with, give Terry’s Tees a call at 270-683-9369. Andrea, Terry’s wife, usually answers the phone and helps you with the initial order. Say hi to her and Terry for me if you do call.

More on Leadership

photo by Shenghung Lin

After posting about building leaders of leaders yesterday, I ran across this post from Eric Bryant’s blog. It has three great quotes about leadership (including one from Dwight Schrute!) Hop on over there and take a gander.

Keeping Focused

I really like Seth Godin’s blog as you can probably tell from this previous post. I just read his post for today. You can check it out here. He just posts some thoughts on losing focus and how easy it is to stop being remarkable for the sake of expediency. It just had me thinking about ministry and how so many times we try to do so much to “meet the needs” of people. We start programs here and there without having the time or energy to do them with excellence. Better to do a few things with excellence and be extraordinary rather than a lot of things with mediocrity. That sometimes means cutting back on the number of “outreaches” that are done or the number of programs or events that are done. It means constantly evaluating what you are doing in ministry, making sure that what you are doing is done with excellence. As that happens, bring people on board expecting excellence from them so they can contribute to what is done and build it as well as being built themselves…

What are your thoughts on Seth’s post? How does it apply to your ministry?

Attitude Check for CPs When It Comes To Parents

I just read this honest and thought-provoking post from Christine Yount’s blog. Christine is the Children’s Ministry Champion at Group Publishing. She serves as the editor-in-chief of Children’s Ministry magazine.

Christine is currently attending CPC in San Diego and was hit by how CPs applauded and cheered for a derogatory remark about parents in their role as a spiritual leader for their children. I appreciated her honesty about where she is in her role in the spiritual upbringing of her children. I may not agree with everything she does, but I do agree that we, as CPs, need to get beyond trying to turn parents into some form of us calling that family ministry. Family ministry needs to be holistic and needs to help parents live out their faith with their children rather than giving parents take home activities and regimenting some sort of contrived routine.

Read Christine’s blog post. What do you think? What do you do in your CM to partner with parents?

New Survey Sheds Light on Religious Habits of People in the U.S.

The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life recently released a survey study of people’s religious habits. You can take a look at the USA Today article to find out more information on it.  I’ve already read two blogs and two newspaper articles on this survey, so you can expect to see more of it in days to come.

One of the biggest things that came out of this study is that 44% of people have chosen not to stick with the religion they grew up with and have either moved to another one or dropped out of religion all together. Also, most evangelical Protestant churches are in decline according to this study.

I can already hear people crying out that the church will be extinct if this trend doesn’t stop. War talk will pop up; cultural war, that is. This action will only further alienate people who have not made a commitment to following Christ. It just seems so easy for evangelicals to see the glass as half empty when they hear stats like this one.

I read Eric Bryant’s blog about this article that really resonated with me. This “fluid faith” as the USA Today article calls it can be very beneficial because it opens the lines of communication about spirituality and life. I like Eric’s perspective that this study shows that a new day is dawning rather than believe that it’s the end of the world.

What do you all think about this?

Ignore the Sticker

I just read this wonderful post from Seth Godin’s blog. He talks about how all electronics come with stickers that, in essence, say, “You’re too stupid to fix this so don’t.” He goes on to say that we start seeing the whole world from that point of view and don’t try anything new. Godin encourages us to “ignore the sticker.”

How many times do we in ministry get bogged down by warning stickers telling us that some things work and others don’t. We use our God-given talents to figure things out, and then an “expert” or conference or new model comes along to set us right. We put our ideas on hold in deference to those “who might know better” than we do. I say along with Godin, “Ignore the Sticker!” Try things, figure things out. I say if it isn’t broken, then you aren’t trying hard enough. This calling to ministry is about reaching out to people and helping them connect with a loving and transforming God so we can all impact the world around us. In order to do that, we have to take risks… we have to step out on the ledge… and sometimes we need to just jump and figure out how to land after the fact.

Now on WordPress

I’ve moved this blog over to WordPress. The new URL is http://elementalcm.wordpress.com

Please make the appropriate changes to any links you might have. For feeds the link is http://www.elementalcm.wordpress.com/feed

Seth Godin Marketing Blog

Seth Godin is well-known in the business world when it comes to marketing and getting your product/service noticed. He has written books with some unique titles such as: Permission Marketing: Turning Strangers Into Friends And Friends Into Customers, Purple Cow, Free Prize Inside, and Meatball Sundae.

Seth has a blog that has a lot of great ideas and thoughts that I’ve found helpful in my thinking in how I “market” our ministry. Check it out.