Encouraging Words from Cary Schmidt » media & tech

Why Ministry127.com?

caryschmidt — Fri, 14 May 2010 23:17:34 +0000

Two months ago, we launched a new website—Ministry127.com. It has had a wonderful start. Friends and co-laborers from all over the world have written and expressed appreciation for the site and the resources it contains. Contributors have continually sent in submissions that are practical and helpful. The site has been overwhelmingly received and used in just these first two months. And this is just the beginning!

To me, it’s one of the most exciting projects I’ve ever had a part in, and I wanted to share with you the “why.” Why would Pastor Paul Chappell invest the time, the staff, and the resources to create such a website—and then make it FREE? What’s the motive in building a site that isn’t “about our ministry” and isn’t generating income? What’s the point behind Ministry127.com?

The simple answer is that it’s a true reflection of Pastor Chappell’s heart and philosophy of ministry. As long as I’ve known him, he’s a man who avoid politics and stays focused on local church ministry, and equipping others for ministry—soulwinning, discipleship, and service. He’s a man who desires to bring people together around solid biblical values. He’s a man who loves to encourage pastors and church leaders. But beyond that, there are some core values that drove the decision to create Ministry127.com. Here are just a few:

We believe in local church—this site is designed to help facilitate and encourage ministry in local, New Testament churches. Each article and resource is chosen to breathe life and ideas into local churches. And the heart is especially to help and encourage smaller local churches who may have limited staff and resources. We believe in God’s work in your local church.

We believe in the value of encouragement and edification—there’s plenty of carnality and bad attitudes among Christian leaders today, and for those genuinely desiring to serve God, that carnality can be discouraging. And for some reason, the internet became the default parking place for much of that carnality. We felt it appropriate and biblical to launch an entire site committed to the purpose of encouragement and edification.

We believe in the principle of synergy—independent Baptist churches have a lot of success stories happening all over the country. Many of our leaders are being greatly used of God, but often out of the “limelight”—their stories are not heard the way they should be! Our prayer is that Ministry127 will bring great content from many dynamic voices that others may benefit from what God is doing in many places.

We believe in the value of ministry resources—we’ve experienced first hand how difficult it is to find trustworthy resources and fresh ideas for ministry. What better way to share ideas and glean from ministry successes than a website like Ministry127? Whether it’s a sermon idea, a graphic, a video, or a challenging article—we believe there is great value in the things we’re adding to this site.

Bottom line—Pastor Chappell really has a heart to help equip and encourage spiritual leaders in the ministry. Pure and simple, Ministry127.com is an online outpouring of that heart. As God has blessed our local churches, we desire to bring those blessings to a table where others can use them as well. To that end, we sincerely pray that Ministry127 will be a destination for your team for years to come—a place where you can find encouraging friendships, trustworthy ideas, and powerful resources for your local church.

To TV or Not To TV?

caryschmidt — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 13:00:32 +0000

To TV or not to TV? Many Christians wrestle with this question. Many choose to not have a TV at all. Others choose to have limited TV and tight controls. Yet others open the floodgates completely. Regardless of where you are on the TV decision, this experience was too powerful not to share.

For several years we’ve had cable TV’s most basic set of channels—primarily to occasionally watch sports or news, and that with heavy blocks, controls, and caution. The only other things we watched were Andy Griffith or a parentally supervised kid’s show.

A few weeks ago, one of my boys approached me and said, “Hey Dad, why don’t we just cancel the TV service? We hardly use it anyway?” The question was seemingly out of nowhere. I glanced at Dana who nodded approvingly, and a few seconds later, the four oldest members of our family decided unanimously we would cancel the cable. I was thankful for a son who pushed the rest of us to take a helpful step.

Haylee was the only one who hesitated a bit because of one show that she enjoyed after school. But after a moment of explanation, she accepted the news and emotionally moved on. Later that day, it was officially disconnected.

A few days later in Haylee’s Sunday School class, the teacher asked the kids to share one of the best gifts they had been given. Without hesitation, she raised her hand and said, “The best gift I’ve ever gotten was the cable TV being disconnected.” When I later asked her why she said that, she replied, “I’m just really glad we did that.”

Turns out the only one in the family who wanted to keep it felt deeply freed and impacted by its absence! It makes me wonder how many other times in my life my kids were hoping I would make a godly decision—waiting for me to take the step. It also reminded me that doing the right thing isn’t always popular at first, but is always blessed later!

Since then, not one of us has missed a single thing about TV, and every child in our family has shared positive impacts of the decision. Lesson learned—I should have done this long ago.

Second lesson learned—I could have saved a lot of money at Christmas by just giving Haylee a pair of scissors!

New Data about Kids and Media

caryschmidt — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 22:33:52 +0000

Several days ago the LA Times reported on a Kaiser Family Foundation study that showed kids are now averaging 53 hours per week in digital media, including TV, video games, cell phone, computer, etc. This does not include when kids are multitasking—perhaps using their phone and watching TV at the same time. When factoring those numbers, the usage jumps to about 75 hours per week—an astounding number.

The most interesting fact presented was the impact of parental oversight. When parents engage, set boundaries, and train their children, those same kids averaged 3 hours less per day—21 hours less in a week. That’s a pretty powerful difference.

God’s Word teaches us in Proverbs 29:15, “…a child left to himself bringeth his mother to shame.” The clarion call to parents in the midst of such a media saturated society is “train the children!” So many parents literally leave their children to themselves, turning them over to a reckless onslaught of harmful content coming from multiple directions. Kids left to themselves just don’t know what to do with this.

Removing all devices from our children’s reach is not the answer—that merely condemns them to eventual temptation and perhaps failure. How we must engage as parents—set limits, teach values, provide oversight, manage accountability, and train our children how to guard their hearts. If you allow it, you must understand it, manage it, and train your children how to honorably and biblically use the tools of the day.

Are your kids spending the equivalent of a full-time job using media? If so, it’s time to re-engage as a parent! Someday they will thank you for expressing such courageous love.

You can read the full LA Times article here: LA Times Story—Young People Spend 7hrs. 38 minutes on TV, Video Games, and Computer.

7 Ideas for Your Personal Planner System

caryschmidt — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 15:21:49 +0000

This fourth and final post on an annual planner is just for ideas. Please contexualize this series properly—I’m certainly not the expert on this stuff. Like you, I just enjoy comparing notes with others and gleaning helpful ideas. Thank you for the positive feedback. If you’re coming in late to the series, previous articles are as follows:

You might also find these articles helpful to this topic:

Throughout this series, I’ve referred to a personal system—the tools you will use to manage information and remind yourself daily of the plans you have made. There are many helpful tools, especially for computer users, but here are the ones I find most helpful and how they are used. Perhaps you’ll find an idea you can use:

1. A Leather Binder—it’s portable, convenient, and never needs recharging. It contains as little as possible (I hate clutter).

First section—personal ministry: information on those I’m reaching, ministering to, following up on, etc.
Second Section—teaching or preaching: notes for any upcoming speaking times.
Third section—my work day: this is the very center of my binder and always has a bookmark so it is easily opened. On the left is a page for today’s notes, on the right is always the most current project list for easy reference and constant perusal (and prayer!). Just behind the project list is a page that lists every priority for that month.
Fourth Section—information by ministry: a tab for each ministry, a flow chart, and any information needed. This section also has a tab for major events like Leadership Conference.
Fifth Section—calendar: printed two months per page, two years worth, primarily for quick reference.

Anything that doesn’t have to be in this binder isn’t. If I can get to it through the phone or some other way, I try to leave it out of the binder. The binder is for things that must be referenced quickly or physically (like teaching notes), and it’s a landing place for items throughout the day—a place to jot notes, store things, and generally process information to other places.

2. iCal Calendar—there are plenty of good calendar solutions. I use iCal which syncs with my iPhone and also is available online from any computer through MobileMe. It’s very ubiquitous, which makes it very functional. If you are not familiar with “cloud computing” and getting your calendar into a subscribable, ubiquitous format, it’s well worth learning about.

3. Things—there are many good solutions for managing projects, tasks, and details, but this one is just awesome. Every task and project ultimately finds its way into this part of my system. This is the heart of point 2 in the last post—where tasks and details are placed on specific dates to be remembered at the right time. Things handles tasks, projects, people, areas of responsibility in a way that’s very fluid and simple. It also syncs with iPhone.

4. iDisk—this is only one of many useful solutions for online document storage and accessibility. All key documents are stored on iDisk, synced to all computers that I use, as well as accessible from iPhone. Many things that used to be in my binder were removed because they can be accessed from iDisk through the phone. Having files on iDisk keeps them backed up, sycned across multiple locations, and accessible from basically anywhere.

On iDisk is a simple folder structure (four to be exact). They are as follows: Ministries (wherein resides a folder for each ministry, more for long-term storage), Current Projects (where anything related to a present project or event rests), Key Docs (a folder containing the documents used most frequently), and Teaching Notes (a folder with all outlines). All other files are archived elsewhere.

5. Evernote—worthy of its own post! Evernote is a free service that allows you to store almost anything: text, files, webclippings, audio, photos, etc. It’s simply incredible! The Evernote team is amazing—having developed a web client, a desktop (Mac or Windows) client, and mobile clients for all the popular platforms. Presently I’m using Evernote for all dictation (which means dictation can be done from anywhere and my secretary has access to it immediately over the web), phone calls (by simply creating a note of all calls that need to be made or returned), trips/itineraries (a place for all information related to any travel), receipts (stored snapshots of any receipt I need to keep), and writing research (notebooks for saved research related to upcoming projects).

To be honest, Evernote is so awesome, I’m barely scratching the surface. It’s like having another memory. I’m still in the mode of trying to retrain my brain to think of new and better ways to use this tool. It’s an incredible resource, and it’s free!

6. Project List—this is a simple, less-than-interesting excel spreadsheet of all open projects. It’s updated and printed for the binder every couple of days and serves as a constant, ever-present course corrector. It also resides on iDisk and can be accessed easily there as well.

7. Current Items Folder—this is a plain manila folder where I throw every material thing that matters. If I can’t get to it online, then it goes in here for later reference or access.

These things, along with a contact program and a cell phone basically comprise my current system. It changes regularly as life demands. These all boil down to information management—putting information where it is safe, retrievable, reliable, and accessible. In the information age, this is a moving target because we have so much stuff flowing toward us constantly. The more sensibly you can manage information, the more clutter-free and manageable your life will be. I hope these thoughts and this series of articles have encouraged you!

Your turn! What’s in your system that others can benefit from? What questions has this post raised? Add a comment below…

Implementing Your New Year Plan

caryschmidt — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 17:03:34 +0000

The “final article” on the new year planner has become two. First—let’s discuss putting it into practice. In the next article—thoughts on developing an organizational system that works. (Click to read the first and second articles in this series.)

So you’ve spent several hours or days mapping out vision, goals, projects, events, calendar, details, and tasks—now what? Do you hit “save” and close the file, sending it into “Neverland?” Do you print it, bind it, and place it on your bookshelf to collect dust for the next twelve months? What brings the plan into a functioning reality? What will prevent it from merely becoming good intentions that grew older?

Without making it practical and practiced, building a planner means we’ve spent a lot of time accumulating a well-described wish or even a fantasy.

Not only is this final part of the process the most fun (at least for me), it is also what makes stuff happen. So let’s dive in:

1. You Must Have a Daily-Life System—I don’t care if it’s a pad of construction paper and some crayola crayons, or if it’s the latest, greatest techno-gadget that vibrates, beeps, and dresses you in the morning; you must have something that you will live by and look at every day. And this system needs a place for every day of the year—a spot where you can park things reliably and not have to remember them until you need to. Two essential rules about your system: you must look at it every day (or you won’t trust it) and you must not leave anything on yesterday (or you will only increase your stress exponentially). Your system should work for you, that’s all that really matters.

2. Every Project, Task, Detail from Your Planner Should Be Placed into Your System—yes, this is really simple work (sort of mindless) but WOW is it liberating! It might take you a few hours, so find a comfortable spot, make some coffee, build a fire, play some music, and settle in for a while. Start with the first page of your planner and enter every single “pre-planned detail” into your system on the day you want to remember it. Give yourself some lead time! Don’t enter it on the due date. Enter it on the start date. This is very important. Otherwise, you’ll go through the entire year only remembering things on the day they are due! That’s enough to make anyone self-destruct.

3. Live By Your System—If you’ve done your planner correctly, then you know what day you need to purchase your wife’s birthday present, what day you need to line up a guest speaker, and what day you plan to begin preparing a new series of messages. If you’ve given yourself lead time, then the exact day isn’t all that important. Living by your system means you can give yourself permission to forget all those things and focus on right now. Most of the things you need to be reminded of will show up in your system when they need to. Until then, look at today, this week, this month, and press ahead.

Once everything is entered into your system, the actual planner basically becomes a dust-collector. You might read through it periodically. You might reference it for next year’s planner. But now you live the plan by referencing your system on a daily basis. Just remember, if you don’t look at it and live by it every day, or if you leave things behind on yesterday (and the days before) you are merely building a stick to beat yourself with.

And finally, I can’t over-stress the importance of margins—lead-time. In every event, think of how much lead-time you want, need, and how much is reasonable. Too much lead-time means you will be reminded of something too soon and simply disregard it. (ie: “I don’t need to do that anytime soon…”) Too little means you’ll be living in a state of constant urgency with little flexibility. (ie: “Aagghh!”) Just a lovely way to live!

Your turn! Consider sharing this series of articles or posting a helpful comment below…

Do Social Networks Change Behavior?

Cary Schmidt — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 00:33:26 +0000

USAToday published an interesting article today about the impact of the internet and social networking. Here are a few of the statistics they shared:

How social-networking services affect the everyday behavior of millions of Americans:

An Ohio State University study links Facebook to lower grades. According to a survey of 219 students, published in April, those who said they use Facebook had grade-point averages of 3.0 to 3.5, and studied one to five hours a week.
Non-Facebook users had GPAs of 3.5 to 4.0 and studied 11 hours or more a week.
Nearly 80% of Facebook users said they believe it had no impact on their grades.
Corporate employees may fritter away nearly 1.5% of office productivity by using Facebook at work, according to a Nucleus Research study announced in July.
The University of Melbourne, however, says people who use the Internet for personal reasons at work are 9% more productive than those who don’t.
Fourteen states have passed measures to ban texting while driving.

Read the full article here: Real-time Web keeps social networkers connected – USATODAY.com.

Defeating the Media Monster-Part 2

Cary Schmidt — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 23:44:20 +0000

Media will eat your family alive unless you tell it not to!

In part one we uncovered five challenges that modern media brings into our lives and homes. To beat the challenges, tame this monster, and prepare your children to have discernment and wisdom, may I make the following suggestions:

1. Build healthy relationships committed to purity and godliness—this is the foundation. Teach your children biblical principles of holiness and honorable living, and engage their hearts with real and abundant time together.

2. Get on a media learning curve—Just like driving a car—first you learn, then you teach. The principle is the same with media. Simply—if you allow it, you must learn it. You can’t afford to have media outlets or gadgets in your home that you do not understand. For instance, you must know everything your child can do with his cell phone—and if you allow it, you must teach it as well (text messaging, etc.).

3. Train your children in the proper use of each media tool you allow—Again, like driving, you wouldn’t toss your sixteen-year-old the keys and say, “Go figure it out.” A learner’s permit requires that you ride along first, showing the way and correcting the mistakes. While this is annoying to the teen and harrowing to the parent—staying alive makes it ultimately “worth it.” Take the same approach to media. Get in the experience and teach and train along the way—correcting, instructing, and nurturing with biblical wisdom.

4. Set ground-rules, protected entry-points, and check points—teach your child the rules of the road, install filtering software, and grab that cell-phone and ipod periodically just to monitor how it’s being used. This is essential, and there is a wide variety of services (some for free) that help parents monitor their children as they use tools like email, instant messaging, online activity, cell-phone texts, etc. In addition to this take advantage of helpful resources like review sites that inform parents of the content of movies, TV shows, etc. Get informed and stay informed.

5. Be familiar with every form of media in your child’s life—trust nothing when it comes to media—not disney, not the family channel, and certainly not internet friends. Know what music they listen to, what books they read, what shows they watch, what people they follow, and what they post. Make no apology—for you cannot train up a child unless you are immersed in this world with them.

6. Provide clear and biblical boundaries and limitations—you may opt completely out of one form of media or another. You may restrict emails to a short list of people you know. You may limit access to only a few websites. You will definitely need to set time limits. I can’t answer all of the possible scenarios, but the Holy Spirit can guide you to set the right limits on the way your family uses these forms of media.

7. Provide healthy alternatives to media—help your kids stay in balance by practicing moderation (Philippians 4:5). Lead your children to read, play games, learn an instrument, play a sport, develop a hobby, or find interests that don’t involve screen-savers and tweets.

8. At times, just unplug on purpose—have times when media is just put away, turned off, unplugged, or even taken away. For instance, if you really want to get a feel for how powerful your child’s cell phone is, take it away for a few days and read the text messages that come in. If this creates world war three, then Houston, we have a problem. If your children can survive without these things and if they don’t mind you looking at their world of communications, that’s a good sign that they are learning appropriateness and moderation. If they freak out—then that’s a good sign you need to be a lot more involved in the “train up” stuff.

Media will eat your family alive unless you tell it not to. Parent, it is possible to tame the media and technological tools of our lives. Better yet, it is possible to use them for good and for God. I hope you desire, as I do, to train up the next generation to use media in a way that pleases the Lord and advances His purposes. Don’t let the media monster rampage through your home. Bring it into containment—tell it where to be, what to be, and how to be—and don’t ever back down, even for a second! God speed in your quest!

Note: Share your insight below and any ideas you might have in dealing with media challenges! Also, think of someone you know who could benefit from these thoughts and encourage them in this area!

What’s a Podcast?

caryschmidt — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 02:32:23 +0000

Introducing Our Ministry Podcasts and How to Use Them

When it comes to technology and helpful tools, I’ve decided to quit making assumptions. After all, there was a day when I asked this same question—what in the world is a podcast?? (If you are already familiar with the concept, you might want to skip down to the descriptions of our present podcasts.) If you’re new to the word, then keep reading—this is really cool!

First—What’s a Podcast? A podcast is a broadcast that can be downloaded to your computer and music player (iPod, phone, etc.) and listened to at your convenience. Podcasts are free and the software to play them is free. They are easy to use, convenient, and give you access to a wealth of content! Frankly, podcasting has changed the world of broadcast media—giving access to audio and video programs on demand from our computers or handheld devices.

Second—How do you use a Podcast? Most podcasts are available through Apple’s free software iTunes. iTunes runs on both windows and mac computers. It can be downloaded here for free. Once iTunes is installed, you can search for a podcast. For instance, you can find all of our podcasts by simply searching for “Paul Chappell” in the iTunes store. Here’s a link to the Spiritual Leadership Podcast. From within iTunes you can subscribe to a podcast and tell iTunes (via settings) how often to check for and download new podcasts.

From there, you can sync iTunes with an iPod or iPhone and take your podcast programs with you. Once it’s set up, the whole process is seamless and frankly, awesome! Podcasting gives you control of your own content and makes it all available on demand—no matter where you are.

Introducing the Podcasts of Lancaster Baptist Church and Ministries:

Presently, our ministry offers four podcasts. They are offered freely as a resource for your edification. We have a great team of people who labor weekly to produce and publish these podcasts:

The Spiritual Leadership Podcast—for nearly 10 years, monthly subscribers have paid for this lesson and outline. Thanks to podcasting, we can now offer it at no charge. This monthly release features a challenging lesson on spiritual leadership, an interview with Dr. Chappell, and a complimentary outline that can be emailed to you. You can subscribe to the outline here.

The Daily in the Word Podcast—this is Dr. Chappell’s 26-minute daily radio program (also heard on 450 radio stations across America) and features Bible preaching and encouragement.

The Lancaster Baptist Video Podcast—this is the video of our weekly services—Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday nights—and is posted within a couple of days of the service.

The Lancaster Baptist Audio Podcast—this is the same as the video podcast but it’s only the audio. The files are smaller, for faster downloading.

If you haven’t started benefiting from podcasts—now is a great time. You can get them right now on your computer for free, or you can pick up an iPod and take them with you. Stay tuned to Lancaster Baptist Church and Striving Together Publications as we plan to expand our podcast efforts. Until then, we hope all four of our present podcasts will greatly encourage you!

Are you listening to our podcasts already? If so, let me know your thoughts. And maybe you know someone that could benefit from this article and our ministry podcasts…

A Great New Resource — www.thebaptistvoice.com

Cary Schmidt — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 16:48:36 +0000

One of my primary goals in maintaining this blog is to share two types of resources—those that I found helpful personally, and those that we are laboring to provide for others through our ministry. This is one of the latter, so at the risk of sounding like a commercial, I hope you will use and enjoy www.thebaptistvoice.com. Here’s the story behind it:

Almost a year ago, we launched the first magazine edition of The Baptist Voice—a subscription based magazine with an amazing amount of labor, research, and development behind it. Response across the nation has been overwhelming!

A huge part of Pastor Chappell’s vision and heart is to help, encourage, and equip others in ministry. And our whole team at Striving Together Publications and West Coast Baptist College shares that vision in a huge way.

Due to focusing most of our attention on other resources, books, and things like the Spiritual Leadership Conference downloads, we haven’t said much about this site. A great team of guys have labored behind the scenes to bring The Baptist Voice online! On the site you will find a growing archive of articles and research that was originally published in the magazine. The entire website is complimentary, and over time, we pray it will become a helpful tool in your resource library.

Now—before you click away—stop and think of a few people who might benefit from this site, and consider sharing this article with them.