8 Traits of Digital Kids, originally uploaded by jcisonline.

Over the next few days I’m going to talk about a portion of the breakout that I’ve prepared on Digital Kids. While all 8 traits come from a book called “Grown up Digital” by Don Tapscott. It’s a great read for anyone involved in either Children’s Ministry or Student Ministry and I highly recommend it to anyone with an interest in how media and technology are affecting our youngest generations.

Sit tight and we’ll get rolling pretty soon!

The Fail Boat, originally uploaded by Certified.

I posted a video that was meant to be fun today. Watched til what I thought was the end and thought it was funny and posted it.

Was Not the End.

The video ends with a totally inappropriate phrase that should hav e never been on this blog. Totally unlike me to let something like that slide but it happened. Thank God for Grace and for letting me continue to get some humble pie on this one. Big thanks to Todd McKeever from Take 2.0 Ministries for letting me know about the questionable phrasing at the end of the vid. Thanks for keeping integrity a high value and doing it in a awesomely humble way. I am thankful….

Sorry to all who saw the vid til the end and experienced the whole thing. Stinks that this happened but it did and I apologize.

“It takes many good deeds to build a good reputation, and only one bad one to lose it”
-Ben Franklin.

Bad Parenting 092307, originally uploaded by masterthon2004.

It’s a super tough thing for people in Children’s Ministry. Trying to get parents to jump the hurdle and just invest in their kids spiritual walk. Transitioning from a drop off mindset to one that is creatively leading their child’s spiritual journey is way more than a baby step walk. But how do we get them to step out where they may feel uncomfortable.

I think this blog from Seth Godin gives some great insight. He talks about the marketing of a unicycle. Basically you go from failure to success in what seems like an instantaneous change. It’s an incredibly great read and like most everything Seth does takes 2 minutes.

But from our side. How in the world do we “Create non-unicycle moments” for Parents? How can we get them to celebrate what may seem like a meaningless failure? How can we get them to push forward even though the only thing that continues to be in their face is failure?

What opportunities can you take to Get Parents to recognize the influence they have on their kids, while they stare in the face of failure?

Michael Jackson - Sold Out !!, originally uploaded by Lu-Gu.

Now I know what you’re thinking. Some other guy posting about Michael Jackson. Well not exactly what this post is about. In fact, it’s not what the post is about at all.

But really this post is about being Sold Out. And not the cliche “Sold Out for Jesus” even though you should be.

But what about events? Do you ever sell out events in ministry? I mean it’s one thing to desire to sell out but do you sell out.

Like do you let people in at the door without tickets or something? Let me tell you a story.

We had an event at a local water park that we capped out at a number of people for comfort and experience. We sold tickets and our advance publication let people know that tickets will be sold out and they will not be able to get in without a ticket. We sold out this Sunday before the event on Thursday. We had a ton of people call day of and wanted tickets even though we had already sold out. We let them know we were sorry but that we didn’t have any tickets left.

Now up to this point I’m sure everyone in ministry has been here. You’ve sold out an event and we’re ready to go.

But what about those people that show up unannounced “clueless” that they needed a ticket. Where do you draw the line between communication and ministry?

This time it came down to the fact that we felt if we sold tickets at the door we would be saying one thing (no tickets available to those that called) and doing another (selling tickets at the door) over holding a hard line and possibly hurting some families in the process that didn’t receive, understand, or were even unaware of the message about needing tickets.

But where do you draw that line? Where do you cross the line for giving to people and yet making sure that people understand the communication is there for a reason and that they need to make preparations for it?

Tough one to do but where do you draw that line?

Little Big Planet has finally landed!, originally uploaded by Tengaport.

I saw this article in USA Today talking about how Little Big Planet a game for PS3 with the tagline “Play, Create, and Share” has received over 1,000,000 levels to play online.

Just goes to show you that media creation is at an all time high. With only 2.4 million (insert overstatement joke here) people playing this game. That is a great ratio of level created to player.

This is where our KiDs and Students are headed. How can we develop this and put some structure behind it without totally killing their desire to do so?