SWO Pastor's Common

Death of a Little Child

John Waters — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 15:02:56 +0000

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

tools of the trade

Brannon Hancock — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 07:55:33 +0000

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…).

Free Worship Videos

Josh Cougle — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 14:36:34 +0000

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.

Starting Life / Small / Cell Groups

Josh Cougle — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 19:47:10 +0000

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

Membership class materials

mcatherton — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 16:40:41 +0000

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

Great Service Starter from Floodgate Productions

Josh Cougle — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 21:58:08 +0000

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)

Follow up: Biblical Inerrancy

James Newsome — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 14:33:06 +0000

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

The Bible’s merit

James Newsome — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 11:24:07 +0000

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/

Information Kiosk at the Welcome Center

Josh Cougle — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 20:53:44 +0000

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

Custom Countdowns are a Snap!

Josh Cougle — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 20:22:31 +0000

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