I know I have lots of loyal readers out there. It has been 4 great years but I wanted to wait till Orange to announce that I am moving my blog to samluce.com If you could adjust your feedreaders I would appreciate it.

Thanks,
Kenny

I’m not talking about solid color labels you can get instead of white, but maybe a white label with our ministry label already printed on it in full color? I don’t think I’d be able to use it in our Children’s Ministry since we print both name tags as well as security tags. However, our guest services team is thinking about using Fellowship One to print name tags for their volunteers and they’s really prefer not to use a generic solid color tag, especially white. Has anyone else done this with the thermal labels?

One way I’m thinking about doing this is kind of a hack. If you turn on your printers after you launch check in with Fellowship One, the ministry logo wont print on the labels. Usually this is an accident. However, if I do this on purpose, we could design a label with some color on it, specifically with the ministry logo on it.

Any thoughts?

Speaking of the Orange Conference, did you know that you can register today. Do it NOW!

For those of you who are thinking about attending the Orange Conference in 2011, I’m going to give you 5 reason today why you should attend. I’m thinking that at least one more more of these reasons will push you over the edge to go ahead and register this week.

2011 Orange Conference Promo from Whisper Productions on Vimeo.

So, a few weeks ago we held an “All-Pray” service where the evening was dedicated to prayer. In this All-Pray, we had stations set up around the room where people could pray about the topic at that station and even write their prayers on the paper. We decided that we’d take advantage of the service and offer the same experience for elementary-aged kids. We created a kids prayer guide to mirror the adult prayer guide. In all honesty, parents didn’t need the adult one as the content was virtually the same.

It was so cool to see kids scattered around the auditorium, writing and drawing pictures on the paper represnting prayers they prayed for people with their mom’s and dads.

Here is the adult guide and here is the kids guide.

The only downside is that there weren’t very many kids. I think that parents made the assumption that their kids wouldn’t like it or that it would be too much trouble brining their kids to a prayer meeting. Hopefully we’ll be able to take some of the stories from this all-pray and really promote the next one. It was a great shared experience.

Today all the buzz is location-aware tools and software. Where you are and who you’re around is what counts. Whether you’re playing foursquare, gowalla or using facebook’s new “check-in” feature, you’ve seen the benefits of this trend. Maybe you’ve just been playing the game and haven’t actually noticed the benefits, but you’ve seen the potential (kinda like when you first started using twitter). Well, it’s no different with ministry. Where you are and who you’re around is so hugely important. I think one of the biggest misses for ministry leaders is when they do ministry for years and never truly connect into the larger ministry community around them. Sure you can drive down the street and knock on every church door you see, or you can use the tools available to you online.

So, the coolest location-based tool I’ve seen yet is the site I mentioned last week: Imakidmin.com. It’s not GPS enabled or an app you install on your iPhone, but it’s a powerful tool for networking. Actually, it could be your first step to identifying both local and affinity based networks. When I wrote about this last week, I was marginally excited about the potential. However, after speaking to creator Michael Chanley twice this weekend and hearing his plans for the site, I’m really excited about what is next.

So, stop what you’re doing right now and head over to imakidmin.com and put yourself on the map. You can put yourself on the blog map, twitter map, facebook map if you want, but at the very least, put yourself on the US map and your state map (if it’s available yet). You need others as much as others need you, so please don’t do it for yourself, do it for the community around you. In 3 minutes you’ll be done and in the coming weeks as the maps fill in, you’ll begin to see the benefits of this new community.

Tell me your story. What’s the most creative or effective thing you’ve done to recruit a boatload of new volunteers? What made it so successful? I’d love to hear some new and creative ideas and strategies that we can implement as we recruit. I’ve found that strong exposure/communication as well as creativity tend to yield great success.

This year I already know that I’m going to miss one breakout and one preconference workshop. The workshop I’m going to miss is Preconference 2: Thinking intern by Darren Kizer. I really wanted to be in that session, but I can’t. Is there anyone out there who’s planning to attend that workshop? I’d love to get your notes and maybe get the general rundown from you. Let me know and I’d be eternally grateful!

If you want to go to the next level in personal leadership, take a good look at having Jim coach you through Infuse. It’s probably best way you can spend any “personal development” funds this year. Click here to read more about what Infuse is all about.