Childrens Ministry Online

Your ministry needs an app!

Posted on 29. Nov, 2011 by Kenny.

My friend Matt McKee just announced something incredible. It’s called 1000 apps for Christmas. His company, ROAR, is offering 1000 free apps in the next 30 days. That means if you want an app for your ministry, they’ll build it for you for free. All you’ll pay for is the hosting. This is an incredible deal. I’ve seen places where you can get apps for cheap, but in most cases, you get what you pay for. ROAR is different. They build quality apps that are fast, stable and current technology. So, if you’ve been thinking about getting an app for that ministry or program… now’s the time!

Click here to get your app!

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Searching for the perfect check-in kiosks

Posted on 28. Nov, 2011 by Kenny.

I’m on a search for new check-in kiosks. A few months ago, we permanently moved our Middle School program to an are we call the Garage which is a great environment for the teens. To accomodate check-in, I just brought in two of the stations we weren’t using for kids. They’re nice looking kiosks (we use them all over the campus), but they have a serious design flaw. They’re made of laminated particle board. We just wheel them in and out of the Garage every Sunday, but going over the door frame and caused one of them to cave in already (another design flaw I’ve found… but I won’t go into details). So, I’m looking for new kiosks for the teens that looks good and is a little more rugged.

So, first of all, if you have some great check-in kiosk you’ve found, let me know. I’m still open to new ideas. Maybe you’re in the same places as me, so I’m going to share a few ideas of what I’ve found out there already. Lastly, I’m going to link to what I’m probably going to pick up at the end of the week, but my mind could be changed if someone lets me know of a better option.

Cornerstone Cabinetry

I wrote about these guys a few years ago. I think that they are associated with Granger Church in IN. We bought 3 of them at a past church I worked at and these were FANTASTIC. However, they we’re really expensive. Honestly, you get what you pay for. They were well made, they looked great and they were going to last a really long time. Read my post about them here. Visit their site here.

Build it Yourself Plans

Literally last week, I saw a tweet from James over at Help I’m A Children’s Pastor. He recently designed and built his own check-in station and it’s pretty cool looking. It feels very “Apple INC” in design. Although they wouldn’t really fit well in my building, they might be a good option for someone out there. James is a really creative guy and these are super sharp. Check out his post here.

From Your Local Sam’s Club

I was touring a local church 10 days ago (I’ll blog about that one later) and I came across some pretty cool kiosks for their Middle School space. They told me they got them from Sam’s Club. I went and they carried the entire line, but what they had at the church, Sam’s no longer carried. A little searching online, and I found them. Here’s a link. The front isn’t really all that impressive, but I figured that I might be able to dress that up a little… but I really like the carts. Honestly, what I like is the whole line of products from Seville Classics. I’m thinking of ordering the workbench for our media table as well as some of their stainless steel lockable cabinets on wheels.

So, that’s what I’m looking at right now. Anyone else got any ideas? I’d love to hear them!

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Web Security

Posted on 31. Aug, 2011 by Kenny.

I’m no expert on internet security, but I thought I’d share a few thoughts about security as a resource to the readers here at CMO. The truth is that most people have lousy security for their online accounts and having something more secure can actually be pretty easy. I was prompted to write this recently as I decided that it was time to change up most of my passwords. I’d been using my primary pasword for several years and I know that you’re supposed to change your passwords on a regular basis, so I figured that it was time.

So, here’s what you might need to know. In 2009, a gaming site was hacked and thousands of accounts were compromised. A study was conducted and here is what was discovered:

• 29,000 compromised accounts used the password 123456 (seriously)
• Many other accounts used a string of consecutive numbers like 111111 or 333333
• The fourth most popular password was the word… password (come on!)
• Lastly, thousands of passwords consisted of first names or simple combinations of abd123

When you hear about hacked accounts, it’s usually because of this. When accounts are compromised, passwords like the above are usually broken within seconds (computer software submits thousands of potential passwords to hack in and these simple passwords are the first used). Having a stronger password is really, really easy.

So, every password needs to have upper case letters, lowercase letters, a number and a symbol. Never use a password again that doesn’t contain at least one of each of those. Remember, every letter you add makes your password 26 times more difficult to break (since there are 26 letters). Add numbers and the breaking difficulty is increased. Add a symbol and you’re golden. There are 1500 potential symbols to use, so just using one symbol just make your password 1500 times more secure.

Here’s and example. Say your password is “moose44.” Hacker software can crack that password in less than one second. However, if you added some symbols and make the password “moose44!.!.!.!” the same software would take an estimated 200,000 centuries to hack it.

Convincing? So, here’s a system you might want to use. Pick a name, object or place that has some meaning to you. Maybe not something that would be published on Facebook that would give people ideas. Maybe it’s a character of a book you liked or a place you’ve always wanted to visit. Maybe it was a TV show you liked as a kid. Here’s mine.

GummyBears
GuMM4B3ar5!

See what I did. I used a good mix of upper and lowercase letters. I substituted a 4 for the Y since they look similar, a 3 for the e and the 5 for the s. I thew a ! at the end just for fun. What would have been even more secure was to put an @ in pace of the a. So, you’re turn. Plan out what you want to use and change one of the sites you sign in to regularly and get used to typing it in. Eventually, you fingers will memorize the code and it will be very natural. Eventually, change your other passwords as well.

Tips:
Okay, here are few remaining tips.

• This isn’t the most secure, but I use the same password for many accounts. However, I do have 2 or 3 separate passwords that I might use at any given time. One passwords might be used for financial stuff, another one for social media and other stuff.
• I also keep a stupid password in my back pocket. Every now and again there is a stupid website that won’t let you use symbols or restrict your password to 6 characters. I don’t like being put on the spot to have to create a password (I’ll forget it), so I have a stupid password for these occasions.
• I also keep a sharable password. It is inevitable that you might have to share a password with someone because they are helping you do something and they need access to your account. I have a password that I share with people that is still pretty secure but I don’t mind sharing with people. If I know they are going to be logging into a site to do work for me, I’ll change the site’s password to this one and then give them access. When they’re done, I change it back.
• Oh, I also have a password that I used for work related stuff. It just helps me to keep that stuff separated. If it’s work related, I know what password I used. That way, if I ever need to turn stuff over, I don’t have to change all my passwords in order not to compromise personal stuff. I also tend to share work passwords with co-workers.
• Because I only use three or four secure passwords, if I hit a site that I forgot my password, I just have to cycle through the 3 or four that I have.
• Never share your passwords. I don’t care who they are, don’t share them. I have 2-3 passwords, a few of which I have used for 7-8 years. The only person who knows them is my wife. Period. Much of your identity, security and financial data is all sitting behind these passwords… take it a little more seriously.

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Add Spotify to your Ministry tool chest

Posted on 03. Aug, 2011 by Kenny.

About a month ago, Spotify became available here in the US and invitations for use were going out here and there. I think I’d gotten one, but by the time I sat down to try it, I couldn’t find it. I bit the bullet and paid $9.99 to sign up for the monthly subscription. After just five minutes I have this advice for you.

Sign up for Spotify.

Sam Luce wrote a great article about his impressions of Spotify right here. One thing he said is that having Spotify gives you an opportunity to preview music before you buy it. He was referring to the free version. I’d take that a step forward and say, if you subscribe to Spotify, you never have to buy music again (kinda).

I would say that over the past 7-10 years of ministry, I’ve probably spent more than $50 t0 $100 a year on music. Whether it was some new music to play for walk-in music, fun music for game times or even a song here or there for use in an illustration. If you’re spending money like that on music, why not just spend the $9.99 a month and have access to any song at any time. With the paid app, you can download the music to your iPod, iPad or iPhone and play all the music in your playlists without the need of internet streaming.

Also, if the money is an issue, consider splitting the subscription fees with the student ministry. Their need for new music is voracious and Spotify is a great solution for them as well. Also, with other Kidmin leaders using Spotify, you can check other people’s playlists to discover new music. It’s a great tool and you’ll be hooked once you sign up.

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Systems, Processes and the great F1 outage of 2011

Posted on 31. Jul, 2011 by Kenny.

So, if you use Fellowship One, you know that there were significant issues with Check In today. Even if you don’t use F1, you might have seen the traffic on twitter about the issues. I know that for some churches, the slow-down was crippling. Most of the morning, I was watching the twitter stream and saw all kinds of tweets. Most were encouraging, some were certainly frustrated. I thought that it was interesting that today happened the way that it did because I’m in the process of finalizing my outline for a workshop I’m leading at the Kidmin Conference in Chicago and the subject of the workshop ties into what happened today.

Here at Gateway, check in was as fast as it always is… maybe even faster. It actually didn’t really matter than Fellowship One was down because we had a backup plan. About 2 years ago we bought those over-priced church nursery, two-part stickers to use in the event of an internet outage or issues on F1′s end. In the three years I’ve been at Gateway, this is the first time we’ve not been able to use electronic check-in. Being that this was the first, everything went pretty flawless? Why, because many years ago we put a system in place to anticipate what would happen with a check-in failure and today we put the system in process.

I’m sure there are people who are really upset with Fellowship One right now. I bet they’ve already gotten some mean-spirited phone calls and even a dirty email or two.

Was Fellowship One at fault? For not being able to provide electronic check-in… absolutely!

Were they at fault for churches having a bad check-in experience today? Absolutely not! I’m pretty sure that in documentation and training, they clearly communicate how important it is to have a back-up plan. If churches had a horrible check-in experience because there was no back-up plan or the back-up plan was poorly designed, that’s no one’s fault but the leadership over that church’s check-in.

This is the beauty of systems. Anticipate what is or is likely to happen and put a plan in place. When you become aware of the systems your organization needs, ministry becomes more efficient, effective and immune to road bumps like F1 users experienced today.

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Do you use Things?

Posted on 26. Jun, 2011 by Kenny.

I don’t mean to confuse any of you with the title. More than likely only some of the Mac users understood my question right away. I’m wanting opinions and thoughts on the task management software – Things. I remember hearing many say good things about it in the past, but I wanted some details. Anyone using it now who swears by it? Is it worth the money? Why is it better than Remember the Milk or other similar systems.

I just finished a good book on productivity and I want to take my to-do list to the next level and it looks like Things could help me do what I need it to do (with tags and such).

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated!

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Wired goes iPad all the way!

Posted on 25. May, 2011 by Kenny.

I love Wired magazine. It’s one of the few magazines I read and probably the only one I read cover to cover. The problem with me is that I’m just not a big fan of magazines anymore. The media I take in is almost 100% digital now. I read my books on my iPad, I get my news from blogs and watch TV and movies through Hulu, Netflix and other services. Someone tell me, why are we still printing magazines? Oh yeah…. so we have something to do on airplanes when we’re not allowed to have electronic devices on.

Well, about a year ago, Wired Magazine began publishing their magazine on the iPad. It wasn’t just scanned images from the magazines, but actually additional content as well as videos and links… the way an iPad magazine should look like. The only problem is that the were selling each iPad issue for a couple of bucks. I love Wired, but I’m already paying for the print subscription.

Well, that all changed yesterday. IPad subscriptions and because I’m a Wired subscriber, I get all the iPad issues as well. Score! I’m a very happy man who is trashing all my unread magazines in my backpack and on my nightstand.

My big question to the Kidmin world. The iPad has been out for more than a year now. Where are the iPad friendly kidmin magazines? Where are the iPad Kid’s Bibles? Not only is there a great need, there’s a great opportunity. Somebody get on it please, we’re waiting!

Click here to read the article!

Click here to subscribe to Wired!

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Exporting contact info from a VCard

Posted on 22. May, 2011 by Kenny.

Last week someone sent me a VCard with a group of contacts. If you’re not sure what a VCard is, click here. Essentially, someone was sharing with me a group of contacts that I needed their contact info from, but I didn’t necessarily want to add them all into my general address book. So, how do you get all the contacts off of a VCard into something handy… like a CSV or spreadsheet? Here’s how I did it (sorry, I’m a Mac user, so if you’re on a PC, I’m sure there is a way… I just don’t know how).

I initially tried to import the VCard (which has a file extension of VCF) directly into excel. That didn’t seem to work. When I selected “Open With,” one of the only programs my computer suggested was Address Book. I don’t use address book, but I figured that this would do the trick. Since I’ve not used address book before, all the contacts fromt he VCard populated my address book. Even if you do use address book, I’m pretty sure you can import the VCard into a group and later delete the group after you get the contacts you need.

I did a quick Google search and found a free utility called “Address Book Exporter 2.1.2.” Since the only contacts in my address books were the contents of this VCard, I just exported the entire address book; however, you can address individual groups. It simply exported into a txt file that I could open in Excel with each contact in individual cells. Perfect!

So, if you ever find yourself in my situation, hopefully this solution will work for you as well.

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Navigating changes in Gmail & Google Apps

Posted on 10. May, 2011 by Kenny.

If you have a gmail account as well as mail accounts through Google Apps, you might have recently encountered issues with logging into your various account. I have three separate gmail accounts, one through Gateway, a long-time personal gmail account as well as an account for this blog. Last week I got notifications about migrating some new updates through my Google Apps account. The idea behind this update is to give Google Apps users the same access to services that gmail users get. What I didn’t realize was how in one browser, I could only be logged into one account at a time. Typically I’ll have one tab open for each of my email accounts, but with the migration changes, you can only log into one account at a time. It’s been an irritating mess for the last 3-4 days. Well, I just found a solution.

If you’ve experienced what I described, you can now enable “multiple sign-in.” Just go to google.com and log into any one of your google apps/gmail accounts. Once you’re signed in, just go click on the “down arrow” to the right of your name/email. Select “account settings.” There you will see a button to click to enable “Multiple Sign-In.” By default it is off. Just click edit and turn it on. Now when you click on the down arrow by your name/email, you have the option to sign in an out of multiple accounts. You can switch back an forth between accounts or simply have a different account open in separate tabs.

Not sure if this has affected anyone else, but if it has, here is a solution. Click here to see a little tutorial that I found.

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How are you using QR codes?

Posted on 25. Apr, 2011 by Kenny.

Only a few months ago I wrote posts about both Microsoft Tags as well as QR Codes. Today I flew from Austin, TX to Atlanta, GA and have seen no less than a dozen QR Codes and one Microsoft Tag. They’re everywhere. Even on Saturday, I posted a video where in the video there is a guy holding a giant QR Code and if you scan it, you’ll get a bonus video.

They’re at restaurants, in magazines, on billboards and everywhere else. Right now I feel like these things are like twitter in the early days. They’re really cool, but I’m not sure if they’re going to stick around or if they’ll die out.

Regardless of their longevity, how are you using them right now? Are you using them? Why not?

As communicators, we have a message that needs to be heard. If people are intrigued by anything with a code on it, why wouldn’t you put the important things you need people to know on a code? I challenge you think about ways you can incorporate it into your communication this summer.

• Take home sheets
• Announcement slide
• Program announcements
• Postcard to new families

You know they are free to set up, right?

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