As a pastor, one of the most challenging privileges I have ever encountered is ministering to a family that experienced the death of a beloved little child.  The late Dr. J. Vernon McGee experienced the death of his firstborn child and authored a booklet entitled Death of a Little Child.  This powerful resource has provided a great deal of comfort to some in my congregation who were stricken with grief.  It is available in printed form for a small fee or can be downloaded in .pdf format free of charge from the following web address:  http://www.thruthebible.org/site/c.irLMKXPGLsF/b.4104243/k.B4BD/Booklet_Downloads.htm

this is a veritable grab bag of FREE (well, mostly) goodies for your church.  In about the past 12 months these have become revolutionary and/or fun and interesting (at least) for ministry-related stuff @ Xenia Naz. Let’s get the “captain obvious” ones out of the way first…

Facebook - is anybody NOT on facebook yet? (my grandma is.)  we’re all on there, so link up with us if you are too.

Twitter - we are slowly figuring out how to use this rather odd “micro-blogging” platform in a constructive way. (follow us @xenianaz and @xenianazworship - while you’re there, check out the screencast I made using the next resource)

Okay, now onto the less buzzed-about…

Screenr - create a 5 min “screencast” for free…great for how-to’s. can’t begin to tell you how cool I think this is.

Planning Center - it’s not free, but oh my, is it worth the price…in the past 3 weeks, this has already become a total game-changer for us when it comes to worship planning, scheduling, preparation, etc. They do offer a free 30-day trial, so I guess it’s kinda free

Dropbox - online file syncing/storage/sharing – up to 3 GB for free. makes life easier for those of us who wind up using multiple computers, which for me = church desktop (PC/win Vista), church laptop (PC/win 7), my old laptop (PC/Linux), wife’s laptop (Mac iBook)

COLLIDE magazine – if you’re at all interested in the convergence of media, technology, pop culture and Christian ministry, well worth your $16 subscription. (their free blog is excellent, too.)

Google Apps – I haven’t yet persuaded our office staff and IT folks to migrate us over to Google Apps, but if your church is about to spend money on software for intra-office networking (MS Exchange), email, office/productivity applications (MS Office), stop right there and check out Google Apps. It’s web-based “software-as-a-service” (also called “cloud-computing”), which has a lot of advantages over the old (and dying) paradigm of buying and installing software on every machine within a company or organization, e.g. access from any machine; operating systems make no difference; automatic updates/upgrades. Best of all, Google Apps is FREE for non-profit organizations with fewer than 3000 employees. I won’t gush on about this, but seriously – if you have needs in this department, you must explore this option.

(p.s. I also really like Google’s new web browser, “Google Chrome” – links are all over the place on Google’s pages – check it out.)

That’s more than enough to keep you busy.

Well, okay, one last one…give those boring staff photos on your website a groovy, vintage vibe with Poladroid – also free (can you tell I like free stuff?), and one of the more fun programs. I won’t ruin it for you: download and install it, and then “shake-it, shake-it, sh-shake-it like a polaroid picture!”

Have fun!  Let me know if you put any of these to good use (hit me at brannon(dot)hancock(at)gmail(dot)com or on twitter @brannonhancock).  Or post other free stuff you love in the comments - let me know what I left out (like Open Office, or Audacity, or…).

WorshipHouseMedia.com has 12 free videos you can download for free in the month of December.  You’ve missed the first 6, but you can get the last six.  Most of these are high quality and normally 15 -20 dollars.

Click here to go to the 12 Freebies page.

We started Life Groups in September and they’re going well.  I just wanted to share our documents so that if you are looking to make the same leap… or are thinking of changing your focus… you’ll have what we have.

The other thing that (so far) is working well… is that our Life Groups meet on the 1st and 3rd Sunday Evenings of the month.  That way, we don’t cancel our Evening service… but we do only have it twice per month.  It’s turned out to be a good balance…

First… here is the way our Life Groups work…
Life Groups Outline

Second… here is our Life Group Covenant which every member of a Life Group should sign.
Life Group Covenant

Finally… here are the last two Life Group question sheets for example…
SpiritualWarfare5 Questions
SpiritualWarfare7 Questions

I know we all have our own membership class stuff….but  I thought I’d include what I’ve used in the past.  If any of this is helpful to you, please flatter me by stealing it.

I divide the class into three sessions.  I’ve done them all on one night and I’ve done them on seperate nights…I like the one night thing the best.

First session—What’s A Nazarene?  I talk about the history of the denomination and the beliefs we have as well as how we are structured.

Second session–What ‘s A …fill in the name of your local church here.   I talk about the history of the local church…our core values and mission statements.  I also talk about how our giving is handled and where the money goes.

Third session–What’s A Church Member?  Here I speak to the value of church membership…what it does and does not mean…as well as the membership covenant.

I’ve linked these below…I did not include the second session since that is particular to the local church.  I give out a booklet for people to follow along as I lead the class.  I’ve linked the answers to the fill in’s. 

Here’s the link…Membership class stuff

I’m always looking for new videos and I’ve found a great one that we’re using this week as we continue our Spiritual Warfare series.  It’s called “Lean In” and it’s from Floodgate Productions.  It’s a bit pricey, but you can get it in a pack of videos from Floodgate’s site (http://www.floodgateproductions.com/)

View the video HERE.  (make sure you watch the entire video because there’s a great twist at the end)

The first article paints a negative picture. The two links i have now (provided to me by my D.S. Doug Van Nest) are a great follow up.

http://www.naznet.com/inerrant.htm

http://www.nazarene.org/files/docs/Strange%20Bedfellows%20The%20Nazarenes%20and%20Fundamentalism.pdf

This is an article on the infallible status of the Bible and how the church (technical) teachings and beliefs. Your comments are appreciated.

http://reformednazarene.wordpress.com/biblical-inerrancy/

We had an old slow computer we were about to “put down” and had an idea.  You see information kiosks all over the place… so why not the church.  We put the old computer where no one could see it (behind the Ministry Center) and bought a cheap flat panel (17″ will run you about $90).

Powerpoint has a kiosk mode, where powerpoint will take the entire screen and it can only be exited by pressing escape (so we hid the keyboard) and the user gets around with the mouse.  You can then walk up to the kiosk, grab the mouse, and find out information on our nursery, Sunday school, 2 services, adult, teen and children’s ministries, and where everything is located in the building.

I’ve included the original powerpoint file that we used.  If you’d like… use this as a springboard for your own kiosk, or use this one and just change what you need.  When you’re done editing, “save as” a powerpoint show… put it in the “start up” directory of your old computer… and you’re off.

Kiosk < Download

We use countdowns for both of our Sunday morning services for multiple reasons.  They help everyone know exactly when service is starting… they create an expectation that something big is coming (which our services are!)… they can help with the morning’s focus (like a countdown on Father’s day… or on Spiritual Gifts)… and because they’re cool.

Anyway… we use them all the time and I like to keep them fresh… but they can be expensive.  So what we do, is we make our own out of other videos we take… or own and have used for something else.  And the program we use is Countdown Creator.  It’s 34.95 and it makes making your own countdown about as easy as it could.  Select the video, input the time, type the “save as” name and your countdown is ready in minutes.

Here’s a link: http://www.thecountdowncreator.com

Next month I’ll teach Preaching II on the district…we’ll have 22 students in the class.  Preaching II puts great emphasis on sermon delivery…while Preaching I was about sermon construction. 

Can you give me some ideas that you feel may help the students on delivery.  Things you have observed…things people have told you…things you think you need improvment in…whatever has to do with delivery.

Thanks for your help!

hey friends,

Any ideas on smooth transitions from one sermon series to another.  I just finished a series on “New Beginnings” (Clever, right?) and am starting another on “What if I choose to follow Jesus?”  I’ve never really focused much on the switch itself.  It seems that the movement through the preaching calendar becomes abrupt without a plan.  Any thoughts?

I’ve just finished reading Preaching the Story that Shapes Us by Dan Boone.  Throughout the book he reminds us to ask this question as we’re preparing our sermons…where’s the good news in this passage?  While that may seem like the most elementary of questions I feel that we as preachers…and me in particular…don’t do well here.

As I look back over 14 years of preaching I have to say there were sermons that were void of good news…I preached the Bible…challenged the people to live lives that pleased God…but many times did not do what I am called to do…declare the good news.  God forgive me!   Help me Lord to continue to challenge…to continue to preach and teach the Bible…but not to forget the overarching message of good news that permeates every chapter of the book.

I’ve just finished teaching Preaching I on our district and many of the sermon outlines the students wrote were “good newsless” as well.  Many of these sermons were scriptural..good bible sermons…but they were full of do this and do that and contained precious little of what God has done for us.  This is not a putdown of those students…I think it’s an indication on what they think preaching is and what type of sermons they’ve heard throughout the course of thier lives.

I’m resolving to be a good news preacher…that does not mean fluff or a bunch of cheap grace…because there’s no good news unless they is corresponding bad news.  But I don’t want to ever preach a text again unless I can find some good news in it.  As Spurgeon said…no matter the text, he tries to cut cross country to the cross the first chance he gets.

God help me not to be a preacher of “do this and do that, pray more, give more, do more”…but a preacher of good news…of what God has done for us.

In our last message in the series Blue Jean Theology, we’re talking about Hell (great way to end, right?).  I realize that Hell isn’t a popular topic right now, and I realize that opinions within the Christian Church vary somewhat on what, how and when, which are addressed in the message (that I’ll attach later to my Blue Jean Theology post), and that Hell isn’t exactly something that we’ve experienced (A month at the in-laws doesn’t count), but this video simply poses the question… What if Hell is like the Bible says it is?

Hell

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right-click to download

I am only posting the link to the exact article, which is a must read for all holiness pasters.

http://www.drurywriting.com/keith/dead.footnoted.htm