Part of the Glue

Last week I had the opportunity to visit with Rob Shiflet, one of the directors with Liberty Christians’s new online school.  After a lot of research and coordination, Rob decided to partner with Liberty Christian and offer online classes to students practically anywhere.  In this online enviornment, teachers will instruct via webcam and special teleconferencing software in a new and very interactive way.  After hearing about this idea and seeing the demo first hand I was really blown away at the potential this online education really has to offer.

Online education of this kind would be ideal for students in the following areas:
1. Students that don’t live close to a private Christian school and desire to attend one
2. Students that attend a private school but are unable to enroll in a certain class due to inadequate number of students enrolled in a certain class
3. Students that are home school that would like to take certain subjects that may be too difficult for their parents to teac

etc….
For more information about the program click HERE or to watch the newscast click HERE.

We just finished a week long local mission trip for our youth ministry called Lead 222 Servant Leadership and one of the things we did this year for it was blog daily on our website.  Doing this helped parents, other students and anyone else who was interested in the progress of the trip see how we were doing.  We posted pictures, videos and wrote about certain experiences.  The hardest part about doing something like this is being disciplined and proactive to update everyday. Because we use drupal as the content management system on our website, setting up the blog was relatively easy.  If you don’t have a blog on your website or don’t have a website you can always get a free blog from wordpress or other blogging sites.  I personally would consider buying a domain name that offers wordpress hosting through the hosting provider.  It really doesn’t take more than 15 minutes to update everyday and doing this really reasures parents that their kids are having a solid time and can get a glimpse of what they are experiencing. After doing this blog we plan to do the same thing with our camp and other events coming up so that we can better tell the story of our ministry.

“EXAMEN.me is a simple-to-use web site that fosters your personal interaction with God. This modern approach to ancient devotional practices guides you to examen your life as you meditate on scripture, pray, and journal all of your reflections.”

After first hearing about this from a friend I signed up and started using the service to see what it was all about.  What’s great about this online tool is that it really forces you to stop and think and respond.  There are about 5 steps for each devotion and you can spend as short as 7 minutes or as long as an hour to go through it.  After you complete an examen it saves all your information so you can look at that particular devotion in the future.

Working and volunteering with teenagers, a common spiritual hurdle I have often noticed is one of spending regular focused time with God.  Teenagers today are bombarded by so many noises that their ability to really be still and quiet is in constant competition with their cell phone, tv, internet and nearest friend.  What’s great about examen is that it tells you exactly what to do and allows you to really process what you have read.   I can remember reading the bible all the way through in high school and reading it just to read it.  I wasn’t able to process what I read because I didn’t know what kinds of questions I needed to ask myself and I was trying to read too much…

I plan to use this site with my middle school guys small group and really challenge them to complete X number of examens by a certain date where we will share what they  have learned and what God is teaching them.

I hope you encourage the teens in your ministry to utilize this tool. Consider putting a link on your youth website or on your facebook fan page.  Students will most likely not find this site on their own, however they may respond positively from a spiritual mature adult who honestly cares about their devotional life and can head them in the right direction.

We had a vision casting meeting this past weekend with all the leaders in our youth ministry.  I got the chance to present to our team information about our fairly new website www.lyf.net.  We created this website to tell better stories not necessarily to give calendar dates although that is on there as well.  If you visit the site you will notice video stories of how students are able to get_connected – go_deeper – on_mission and in_leadership. We also have written stories published where students share of how their lives were changed.  Once logged into the site you can access online groups and see the stories inside those groups.  I challenged our team to help me tell stories.  I asked them to upload their pictures, submit their stories and to participate in helping us tell a better story.  I truly believe what organizations need the most is not a powerful marketing campaign, but an arsenal of real authentic contagious stories.

We finally launched the new sugarcreek.net website today at my work.  This site has been in development for nearly a year and was created using drupal 6 content management system. Be sure to check out some of the creative videos here that are on the site.  Even though we launched the site, there is still a lot of work to do before the hard launch hopefully in February.