Archive for December, 2008
Google Video Chat
Posted on 18. Dec, 2008 by Kenny.
I remember visiting the Sharper Image store when I was a kid and playing around the video phone. I don’t know if it really was an actual product or just a gimmick. Well, the video phone never really caught on like it was envisioned in the 80′s, but video conferencing is alive and well. I first started dabbling in this five years ago using an external web cam and yahoo chat. In recent time I’ve used skype to video chat with my missionary friend in Burkina Faso, West Africa. Now that I have a Mac, I absolutely love iChat for the 2 or 3 people I use it with(except it’s only available for Mac users… come on Steve Jobs. I’m not drinking your cool aid and your closed and proprietary products don’t impress me, no matter how “great” they are. If Apple was bigger, they would rival Microsoft in evilness – rant done). Then a few weeks ago google launched Google chat. As long as you have a webcam, you can chat via video through gmail. I pretty much always have gmail open on my machine, so it is actually my preferred method of communication with Sara while at work. I get to look at her pretty face while I talk to her. I’ve had a few video chats with Matt McKee as well.
So, if you haven’t tried it yet, you really should.
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Children’s Ministry in Portables: Part 3
Posted on 18. Dec, 2008 by Kenny.
We found our portables.
There is one main reason why I dont’ love portables. They’re freakin’ ugly. We picked out two portables that looked very similar to each other. They’re used portables from Colorado. Enjoy the pics.
My favorite part is all the wood paneling. Honestly, do they make these things ugly on purpose. It was only a few years ago that someone had the bright idea to make a computer a different color than beige. Now it’s almost impossible to find a beige computer. What’s up with the innovating trailer colors. Not really a fight I have any interest in taking on though.
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What happens when youre baby sitter is a photographer?
Posted on 18. Dec, 2008 by Kenny.
This week Titus went to the sitter’s house while Sara went to a meeting. The sitter is a friend of ours as well as a photographer. Later that day she send me this link. How awesome is that?
I rarely post pictures of my family on this blog. So here is my little boy that makes his daddy so proud!
For more information on our photographer, check out her site here!
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Gateway Church: South Campus Remodel (Part 1)
Posted on 17. Dec, 2008 by Kenny.
Okay, I have need of a little collaboration. I had the opportunity to go to the South Campus of Gateway Church today. It had been about three months since I last attended and a visit was long overdue. Since we started small group up north, I’ve been preoccupied on Sundays. I know that I need to head South every other week if possible. They are without a Children’s Pastor right now, so we have a part time coordinator who is keeping things going.
So, I have some money to spend, specifically to spruce up the facilities. I probably have a greater need than money, but I think I’ll be able to do a lot and make some significant improvements. I know that environment is so HUGE and right now it’s one of the things we’re missing right now. My wife hasn’t been to the South Campus yet. She looked over my shoulder while I was importing the pictures and after seeing just two pictures she said, “wow, that’s un-inviting.”
So, I’ll post a series of pictures and explain the situation… maybe even some things I’ve been thinking already. Feel free to make as many suggestions as you’d like.
This is the Kid’s hallway. We have these banner displays in the hall and in front of every room. We do check-in with two laptop computers. The wired internet connection is new since my last visit. I want to pick up one of those rubber wire covers for the floor as the taped down wire was less than lovely.
Above is one of the preschool classes. I walked in the room and basically turned clockwise, snapping pictures until I got all the room. This is a band room and we use both sides of the room for two preschool classrooms. One thing I did notice is the clutter that isn’t moved during setup. There were some unused tables, chairs, podiums and other “school junk” that needs to be pushed off to the other side of the dividers.
Here’s what I’m having a hard time deciding. I can get the 3 foot high pipe and drape that will hide most of the junk around the room, but I wonder if I’d be better served using the 8 foot high drapes as the room is so incredibly cluttered. I also thought about using the primary colored vinyl panels that hook together, but then again, it doesn’t blog all the things you can see over it (only 4 feet tall). We’re also probably going to be getting some portable preschool tables and chairs as well. Right now they just have the carpets.
This is the other side of the band room. I walked in and turned clockwise. We used the travel crates and bookshelves to do a lot of our “walls.” Not more to add to this as it’s the same situation as the other side. Any suggestions?
This is the nursery area. We use one room that is also divided in half. We are using road cases, dividers and those vinyl panels to divide the room. At the back of the room, school desk are tipped forward to create a boundary (this drives me crazy). At the front of the room is this huge green platform that cuts into both sides. They use this as a diaper changing station, however the toddlers on one side of this room are prone to explore and climb the platform. Again, do I simply invest in those vinyl panels and create room walls with them or get the pipe and drape and go higher?
This is the one room that isn’t horribly cluttered. We’re using it as the elementary room. Right now the kids sit on the chairs on the risers. They do small groups on the floor in front of the chairs. The rest of the room is pretty empty. What I’d like to do is get rid of all the chairs, use pipe and drape to section off the risers and put the large area rugs on the floor for small groups. I’d rather the kids be on the floor on the rugs instead of the chairs. Whether I do the entire room or just parts of it in pipe and drape, I totally need a tall and wide backdrop in the front of the room to the right of the screen. It would allow me to have some “backstage” space as well as cover up all the junk in the front of the room. What are my options on a large banner or display as a backdrop? I know you can print on material that I could probably hang from the pipe and drape, but would it be too translucent and see through?
Any other suggestions here?
Well, tell me what you think. I’m open to all kinds of suggestions.
A friend of mine from Life Church Sent these to me:
These pictures were really helpful. They showed me what could be done with simple pipe and drape. In some of the classrooms, they used horizontal bars at the bottom of the drapes as well to prevent kids from simply crawling under the drapes the the next “room.”
A friend from Corpus Christi sent me these pictures:
I loved these pictures. I feel like there is an amazingly inviting environment. They used some pipe and drape to separate the kid’s area from the adult area, but used the vinyl locking walls to create the rooms. I love it.
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Sharing the comment love
Posted on 17. Dec, 2008 by Kenny.
I just found a great new WordPress plugin. It’s called commentluv. If you have a self hosted WordPress blog, I totally recommend loading and activating this plugin. The beautiful thing about blogging is the inter-connectivity of most blogs. It’s like a giant web of connectedness. Most of the blogs I follow I’ve found through reading comments on other blogs or through links. Comment love takes this to another level. When you leave a comment on this site, you have the opportunity to type in your website. If your website has a RSS feed (like your blog) commentluv will try to find it and post a link to your most recent blog post as an attempt at a little cross promotion.
I’ve only had this plugin active for a few days and it appears to be working on a few of the comments (I haven’t explored why it does with some and not others). So, leave a comment and check it out.
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Help me build my worship playlist
Posted on 17. Dec, 2008 by Kenny.
Okay, I’m planning to take a solitude day on Thursday. Gateway gives full time employees one paid solitude day a month. Guess how many I’ve taken so far. Yeah, that’s a big fat ZERO! I know I need this right now and I need it to be a discipline in my life, so I’m going to practice this on Thursday. It’s going to be in the 70′s, so I plan to find a place to hike and practice this thing. I’d like to spend some time in personal worship, but I haven’t gotten any new worship music in over year. If you were going to build your personal “extended” worship list for a day alone with God, what would you include?
Some songs I’ve already added to my mix:
- You never let go – Matt Redman
- Everlasting God
- Enough – Tomlin/Giglio
- Some songs from Fee
- Sweetly Broken – Jeremy Riddle
- Maybe I’ll try out Joel Ague
- Definitely some David Crowder
- Jeremy Camp of course
Who else do I need to take with me? What else is new (released this year) and it absolutely amazing?
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Josh Kornberg and Give a Kid a Christmas 2008
Posted on 17. Dec, 2008 by Kenny.
Okay, this post is really about a simple video you’ve gotta see. It’s a powerful audio and visual demonstration of lives being changed in Africa. So, take five minutes and watch the video, you’ll be glad you did.
Now this video is a little of my “worlds colliding.” You’ve seen me post quite a few times about my friends Joel and Heidi who serve as missionaries in Burkina Faso, West Africa. Well, this summer my intern, Josh Kornberg (you an call him Korndog) met Joel and Heidi and decided to go to Africa to participate in Give a Kid a Christmas. You may have seen me write about Josh, or more notable, Karl Bastion, as he made a HUGE deal out of the Korndog at Kidology U as described in this post. Yeah, that’s a lot of connected people. But, what’s really important is the video. Good stuff is happening in West Africa!
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Children’s Ministry in Portables: Part 2
Posted on 17. Dec, 2008 by Kenny.
I’ll be frank. I hate portable buildings. I think it sucks that we have to move into them. There, I said it.
However, there is another side to this. I love that we have to move into portable space. That means we are growing. I’m also glad to be a part of a church that is willing to do it right. I’ve seen some crappy looking portables and I thank God that by the time we move in, these portable rooms will be very similar to any of the other rooms in our kid’s area.
The first thing we had to decide was who would go into the portables. Typically I don’t know that my first choice would be early childhood. The kids are younger and it’s more likely that we’d have to call a parent or have issues like that. However, the way our building and programs are set, it just makes more sense to put the oldest kids in Early Childhood in the portables. Since we’re doing large group production and small groups with elementary, portables didn’t make as much sense. Also, the two rooms that we’re using that weren’t supposed to be used as classrooms are the two oldest rooms for Early Childhood. So we’re moving both of these rooms to the portables. All kids 3.5 through kindergarten will be in this space. The portables consist of four rooms that each have a capacity of 30 kids. So we’re creating space for 120 kids per service. By moving the two oldest Early Childhood rooms, the portables will start with 75 kids (yeah, the oldest Early Childhood room consists of 50 kids). That gives us room to grow by 45 more kids per service. Since kids promote every month in the early childhood department but kindergartners only promote at the beginning of the year, the 45 empty spaces will slowly dwindle. This is all theory, so we’ll let you know if it really ends up working out this way.
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My Multi-Site Makeover
Posted on 16. Dec, 2008 by Kenny.
Probably over a month ago I created a new page on my blog and posted pictures of Gateway’s South Campus. It needs a SERIOUS overhaul. I went in about 6 weeks ago, took picures, uploaded them to this page and had some people (people doing the portable thing right now) give me suggestions. Some people sent me pictures, so I included them as well. You can check out this page right here!
I have a limited amount of money to spend right now, so I’m tackeling this thing one room at a time.
I’m actually going to take this page down and turn it into a blog post. As I spend the money, order furniture and equipment I plan to put that information on the blog here… so it fit better as a series of posts instead of a static page. However, I’ll replace the page with new page titled “Kids Environments” where I will link to posts of interest.
Yeah I’m in the middle of installing portables and remodeling a portable campus at the same time. Fun stuff!
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Soul Revolution at Gateway Church and the 60-60 Experiment
Posted on 16. Dec, 2008 by Kenny.
The following article was just published about the 60-60 experiment we just wrapped up as a part of Soul Revolution. I know I’ve written about it some in this blot, but this article sums up what happened very nicely.
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