The following is a guest post from Aaron Helman at Smarter Youth Ministry. His goal is to reduce your frustration so that you can stay in ministry forever. Grab more of his communication tips here.
You already know how pervasive social media has become. It’s become a primary tool for communication, relationships and community. So if your ministry wants to “meet people where they’re at,” you’re going to have to invest heavily in social media, right?
From Socialnomics.net:
When people stand by our grave sites (and there will be far fewer in attendance than we think will be there) people will reflect on an discuss our lives. And they’ll be engaged a bit of an evaluation: Was ours a live well lived? Did our life matter in some way? And, crazy thing, all of the evaluation tools at the end of life of what it means to be ‘great’ are not in the least connected to work.
The following is a guest post from Aaron Helman at Smarter Youth Ministry. His goal is to reduce your frustration so that you can stay in ministry forever. Grab more of his communication tips here.
If you’re working in youth ministry in the year 2012, you’re probably trying to do whatever you can to get your message out to students and families. The Internet was supposed to make this easier, but it didn’t and right now your communication strategy probably looks like this:
One of the new realities for conference organizers, hotel owners, universities, businesses, and even city managers is the accessibility of the Internet. Indeed many people choose where to eat, stay, and live based on ‘coverage’ and get more than a little cranky when the internet goes down…. or the connection is slow. For those of us who grew up watching the Jetsons, Star Trek, 2001 A Space Odyssey, and thought the game Pong (play it online here) was cool, we have realized a world dependent on connectedness for communication and work, but also for knowledge and identity.
So, while over 73% of the world still does not have access to the Internet, for many of us it’s an expected right now. We’ve become dependent on it and while it’s a great tool (look, I’m using it right now), I think there may be some problems with the dependency. So, this has been a challenge for me and I quickly listed five dependencies. read more…
Steve Argue recently commented on Twitter that he doesn’t wear headphones because – I don’t want to distract myself from facing ‘me’. Most of us who run would understand the situation he described. Good running pushes us through our barriers, past our limits, and flushes out toxins (both physically and emotionally). Good running strips away the pretty exterior, the excuses of inactivity, and fosters a prolonged period of combined physical strain and repetitive silence. I find when I run, it feels as if I’m overcoming depressed feelings, laziness, and anxiety, reminding body and mind that they are to be alive, vibrant, and active.
Steve’s comment also points to the ongoing internal conversations with self that often take place during extended exercise. These therapeutic reflections help us process problems, reflect on past conversations, and engage in creative thinking (if only we had a pen to write those down!). In fact, the old creative adage is that we have our most creative thoughts at one of the three “B’s” – bath, bed, and bike. We have some of our best ideas just before we go to sleep or while in the shower or while outside biking/running.
Maybe I’m affected by the end of another academic year at the college. Or maybe it’s that I’m behind a cup or two on the coffee intake this morning. Perhaps it’s something else that prompts a bit of ‘preaching’ today. I know we live in postmodern-ish times (whatever that means anymore. I know some argue that we’re actually in hyper-modernity), but I’ve noticed a trend among bloggers, even Christian bloggers, to take material from others and re-present it without a nod to the original source.
In my world, that’s called plagiarism. And that practice will get you kicked out of college because it’s dishonesty and lacks integrity (colleges’ words, not mine).
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