There’s a buzz in the air at encounter. I do believe everyone’s looking forward to the “State of the church address” today. Brian plans to answer the question, “Where do we go from here?” this morning during his message. I’m excited. I really believe that I’m right where God wants me right now, including at encounter. I’ll be getting married in less than two months to the most amazing woman you’ll ever meet, I’ve just started a new job with Ellis County and I’m working with the church on the media team and heading up our new focus on community groups. I can’t wait to see where God takes us (and me) next.
Here are just a few of the things coming up…
Read the full newsletter (pay no attention to the picture of the goofy guy halfway down the page).
Beware the Ides of March
Beware the Ides of March (coming soon to a calendar near you) and 15 bean soup.
New direction
Well I started my new job today. I’m really looking forward to it. There’s already loads of work to be done in the next few weeks/months. It will keep me busy and looks like I’ll start at 7 every day rather than 8. Don’t mind that so much because I’ll be leaving by 4 but it will take a little getting used to. I definitely won’t miss working late nights.
So how was your day? Anything exciting going on?
More props
Since I’ve been dropping a couple props today I figured I don’t want to leave anyone out.
Here are a couple more things I’m enjoying as of late thanks to great friends and family:
- Two new dress shirts for work (Thanks to Mom, Dad and my grandparents)
- A new bluetooth headset for my cell phone (Also thanks to Mom, Dad and my grandparents)
- A great framed photo of my sister and I from her wedding (Thanks to Kara)
- A four pack of Monster drinks to get me going in the morning (Thanks to Jose and Sally)
I mean seriously I have some great friends and family. And that doesn’t include all the wedding gifts we got on Saturday that are just waiting to be used.
Real time traffic data
Well if you’re not lucky enough to have local traffic broadcasted to your car radio every four minutes (thanks to Sirius and Laurie), Google maps can save you a ton of time thanks to their new traffic updates for US Metro areas.
Green means go. Yellow means slow. And Red means no.
Pretty basic. I’m assuming grey means no information.
More from the Google Blog
See current traffic conditions in Dallas/Fort Worth
The church as a community hot-spot
An interesting question was posed today… Is there a way a church could take advantage of Wi-Fi being made available during a Sunday morning?
Some ideas that were mentioned are for encouraging people to bring their own laptop so they could:
- * send instant emails of comments, questions about the message that we could be responded to later by staff
* search the web-site for community group info
* search the web-site for info about all ministries
* go to the blog to respond to the message or other ideas
* link up to a Bible program with different translations to follow along with the text
Here are some of my initial thoughts…
I dunno. It’s an interesting idea. And three things come to mind:
- * power plug access is limited
* will it be more of a distraction than a help?
* will is separate more than unite?
I find that I can be easily distracted myself sometimes just with my cell phone or other people’s cell phones via text messages or random phone calls.
Also, I thought about this last night during our community group meeting and wondered about it. I used an e-mail survey that members of our group had forwarded and answered earlier in the week as an ice breaker (one of those answer these questions and forward to your friends to see their answers e-mails).
I thought it would be fun to see what people remembered about each other and knew about each other. Yet as we discussed the questions and answers I felt bad for those who didn’t have e-mail or who hadn’t accessed their e-mail during the week.
It was like we had some sort of “exclusive” that they were left out of.
Same thing for Valentines Day – I felt a little bad asking, “What was your favorite V-Day gift” and having two single guys in our group not really answer.
Several people with “mates” didn’t mention a gift from their mate but I felt like the single guys were left out because they were single – and most singles tend to be anti-Valentine.
What if instead of everyone bringing their own computer we set up free e-mail accounts for members with the church’s domain?
I think that can be done pretty easily (if not free) with Google handling the mail.
Then we could set up several computers with limited access so people can search the blog, respond to email etc., before and after church.
Computers could be set up in the lobby or our meeting room and let people take 5-10 minutes to check their e-mails.
It would also give us away to communicate announcements with folks who don’t have Internet access at work or home.
I can’t find specific numbers for America but I would guess that around 25-percent of our regulars don’t have Internet access or e-mail.
We don’t want to leave them out or make them feel left out. But if we could provide a service to them then maybe they would feel even more included.
Also, the numbers with laptops may even be less.
I don’t know if we should discourage people from bringing their laptops, but I don’t know that we’d want to encourage it.
So what are your thoughts? Is your church taking advantage of Wi-Fi technology? Has your church become a community hot-spot? Why or why not?