I love Planning Center Online. It Rocks. It runs my ministry. The awesome tech support I have received has been amazing. I could go on and on but you have to check it out. They just made some more updates today. Read about it here. My favorite is text messaging! AH YEAH!
Here is what we use it for:
Manage Band
Manage Tech people
Manage all volunteers for before/after and during our services
Manage all Lifegroup leaders
Provide training materials as a downloadable attachment
Plan services
Communication between Adult and Student Ministries
Communication to all our volunteers
I encourage you to watch this video to get a small taste of what PCO can do.
**UPDATE** Here is another example of Twitters Awesomeness!
I twitter. I love it. You would love it. Follow me on twitter here.
I get asked all the time, “What’s the point of twitter?” Here we go. 4 reasons
Friends/Family - Since I have recently moved across the country twitter is a great way for me to stay in touch with my friends and family from Virginia and my new friends here in Texas. Also every day twitter sends all my “twit’s” for the day to my blog. My family and friends can see what I have been up to.
Archiving my life - I have 3 kids. I wish I had twitter when my first 2 were younger. I can twitter things my kids do and will be able to back and search to see what day they started walking, first time they flew, etc. Any milestones in their lives. Also I can know what day I went to that conference, special event, etc.
Ministry Resource - I follow a lot of people on twitter. They each have different jobs but they give me ideas that I can use in ministry. See list below to start following some of my followers.
Ministry Tool - A lot of people in my ministry use twitter. It’s just another way to connect to people if I can’t get a hold of them.
Recommended twitterers:
Tech/Video/Media related
AVCLUB
terrystorch
blankenship
WorshipTechie
EBOWES
motionhouse
AVCLUBBREAKOUT
Mstanley
Youth Ministry
DOUGFIELDS
JOSHUAGRIFFIN
BCooP
DanielHarper
outsideallday
daveyblackburn
Jakerutenbar
kurtjohnson
Worship/Music
mcdzl
DanielHarper
lincolnbrewster
davidcrowder
Ministry - General
perrynoble
Rickwarren
JimmieDavidson
scotthodge
KEMMEYER
MarkBatterson
TPMORGAN
MarkMatlock
Newspring
TimAStevens
To follow these people txt “follow TimAStevens” or whichever of the usernames from above you want to follow. *_OR_* go to twitter.com and search for their username and if you have a twitter account, click Follow button.
Twitter doesn’t make any sense until you start using it. Go create an account and then start following some people. Leave comments below of some of the people you follow that people should know about.d
Back in the day I used to listen Greg Laurie on tv late at night on Saturdays. I always enjoyed his messages when I was a struggling teenager. It saddened me to hear about his son dying. Please take the time to watch these videos. You will be touched. The first one is the best!
WOW. Speechless with tears in my eyes! This is amazing. Love to hear stories of God working in people’s life. Props to Newspring for presenting it in such a moving way!
Visualize what it is you’re trying to build. (Cast a vision) don’t duplicate another church
Question - within the next 5 years what would you like to see happen in your ministry? (services, volunteers, leaders, vocals, instrumentals, musical styles, level of musicianship, fellowship, discipleship, musical growth, spiritual growth)
Communicate your vision in a compelling way
remind them often
you are recruiting people to a mission, not yourself
Build your ministry one volunteer at a time
not once in all of his years of ministry did he sit back and say, wow I’ve finally got enough volunteers
challenge musicians to reach out to their talented friends
Pray
adopt a “go after them” mentality - Jesus went after his peeps
Build your ministry around strong people
Make sure your ministry is a safe place for an artist
Encouragement is huge in an artists life
Prov 3:27 - do not withhold good from those who deserve it
Moses hired artists - when done he blessed them - he inspected their work and encouraged them
Implement processes that work
Constantly evaluate our processes
Music selection
if one person selects all the music it will lack variety
use a team to select music
have one non-musician
make time to listen to new music
Music preparation (meetings, rehearsals)
spend time making sure everything is setup a head
Think ahead of time about the layout of the rehearsal
start with easy songs (ones they know) then throw the hardest one at them.
if you can work with vocalist and artist separate that is the best in his opinion
tell the vocals at what you want them to sing
Evaluation
This is how speak to each other
Give your ministry a letter grade in terms of its processes. What can be done to improve the area that scored lowest?
Is there anything you’re doing that’s inhibiting the ministry’s effectiveness in song selection, preparation and evaluation
Don’t ignore problem, fix them.
Question: are there any problems within your ministry that you’ve been putting off? How can you address them?
A lady just asked I have a problem - I’m married to the Senior Pastor
BE CONSISTENT
The way we talk to each other is extremely important
Utilize volunteers to help you manage your ministry more efficiently
What do I need the most help with right now and are there any volunteers who could assist you in that task?
Invest in the lives of your people
do life together
phil 2:19-20 - Paul was frustrated because he didn’t have others who cared like Timothy.
Don’t be too busy doing God’s work that you’re not doing God’s work which is dealing with people
Looking back on his ministry the people is the best thing that stands out, not a song, book, cd, event, etc.
What specifically are you doing to invest in the lives of your volunteers?
Live a sustainable lifestyle
There is a crisis in our ministry today. People are working way too many hours.
from me - Learn to say NO! enjoy the video below from Doug Fields I heard at a youth specialites concert
Don’t stop being a musician just because you’re a leader
Need to be theologians - we need to know who we’re worshiping
met his wife and asked her, “who has the sexiest adam’s apple” it worked. they started dating.
point of story. He had no idea ahead of time of what he was going to say to her. We need to know what we are communicating
Need to be disciples
do you love the Lord passionately?
do you have a love for the word of God?
Do you exemplify the fruit of the Spirit in your life?
Need to be artists
We do ourselves an injustice by just learning the chords to the top 20 worship songs
God calls us to do more than just get by.
Need to be Leaders
It’s in our title, “worship leader”
God is not calling us to be the Chris Tomlin, God is calling us to be ourselves
Book from Parker Palmer quote about burnout that was way too long to type out.
“Is the life your living worth …” sheesh I keep dazing out. I’m tired.
Three questions asked
Who am I?
What about God am I most uniquely suited to reveal to others
How is that meaning best lived out?
Think about what is the world going to miss out on if you die today?
Man he’s going fast and there isn’t a handout.
3 things (don’t know what)
knowledge
talent - identify your unique talents and find other ways to make up for your lack of other talents
?
Hedgehog example from “From Good to Great”
3 circles - find something in all 3 circles where they overlap
what are you deeply passionate about
what can you be the best in the world at
What is the church/people “hungry for”
Q&A
How do you create boundaries
What techniques do you use to prepare on sunday morning for worship? They sing a song backstage prior to service to worship together
How to be a worship pastor vs song leader? Be sensitive to the spirit of the room. Last night he felt like “Here I am to worship” was a great moment so instead of going straight into next song, he just acknowledged the moment
How do you feed your artistic talent? Stretch yourself musically. Try different styles
They hope people leave saying three things
I connected with God
I laughed a little
I can’t believe they did that
creativity because our God is creative - not for creativity sake
How do you encourage participation from stage
Pastor is encouraging the people - saying, “we are a singing congregation right?”
Worship Leader is reminding them
How do you discover your style?
Start watching people and ask yourself is there some things they are doing that you feel comfortable with. Also take note of things you don’t feel comfortable doing.
Drama - Rom 7:18-19 - lady who can’t stop lying at work, guy addicted to porn, teenager who binge eats in bathroom and throws up - then broke out into a song. Awesome Drama!
Can’t sing a “new song” until we acknowledge the pit we are in.
Time for reflection - what kind of pit are you in now or if not in a pit, what pit might the devil use to catch you?
vs 2 - David tells us that God pulled him out of the pit
Nancy’s pit is usually laziness and apathy
How many times has God rescued me from a pit - some I may not even know about (what happened to my bullet)
We need to put ourselves in a place of surrender and a place of waiting on the Lord - to sit and hear his voice - his still small voice
move from solitude to surrender to ministry
When we realize, during that time of solitude, we are reminded of his awesomeness and surrender to Him again
Last part verse 3, 9, 10 - He taught me how to sing the latest God-song.
We need to remember the people at our church may look ok, but they are in a deep pit.
We need to offer them our new song God gives us - whatever that may be. Song, poem, lights, video, message, testimony
What happens when we do that? A Miracle
Mark Batterson - “If we are not careful we will do ministry out of memory instead of imagination”
Where are all the new songs? At a panel at last years conference one concern was all the new worship songs sounded the same
Chased a rabbit
What are you proclaiming to your people? What new songs are you proclaiming? He loves the church more than we do.
Craig’s Story - very creative, voice over video of b/w scenes featuring craig with dancing on stage
Everyone else is putting this on their blog, so maybe I should too!
Allthough I am on staff @
The Met the thoughts/views/opinions expressed on this site are my own, and in no way reflect the views of The Met or its staff.
Blog/Tim Lemons
Myspace/timlemons
Facebook/Tim Lemons
Last.fm/timlem
Digg/timlem
Flickr/timlemons
Linkedin/Tim Lemons
Twitter/timlem
YouTube/timlem
Pownce/Tim Lemons
GMail/Tim Lemons
Recent Comments