by Brandon Gross
Here is a great website for all of you who wish you were a little more polished on your graphic design skills. This company provides good looking stock layouts that you can purchase and use for a wide array of projects. I have a ministry friend who just used this company to purchase a template for the Sunday Morning Bulletin. If you are interested you can go to www.stocklayouts.com to find out more.
Tags: bulletins, newsletters, church graphics, church graphic design
by Brandon Gross
I was talking to a youth pastor a while back about his need for youth ministry software. At the time he wasn’t using anything to keep up with his kid’s information, but he was having a hard time seeing why he needed software… Whenever I get a response like this I always enjoy it because I get to search for what I call the “click”. I generally ask a few questions and then…. simply…. wait to hear the “click” (now I know what your thinking… your thinking I’m waiting to hear them hang up on me… no, that’s not it… so you can stop laughing inside your head now)
The click I listen for is silent… it happens when I know they just gave themselves the answer they were thinking was going to come from me… I love it… all I do is just sit and watch for it. Sometimes it takes a few questions… in this case it only took one.
I asked, “Mr. Youth Pastor man… tell me about how well you do with remembering your kids birthdays with birthday cards” <simple enough huh> well, the answer I received was, “you know I’ve tried that before but I just have so much to do and stay so busy that I have not been able to do it” (This is the part where I was listening intently!!) After a few seconds it hit him… he just answered himself on why he needed a youth ministry software… he was already so busy that the simple things looked like such big tasks. (At this point, inside myself, I was doing CARTWHEELS and SHOUTING AWH, YESSSSS YOU ANSWERED RIGHT DANIEL’SON)
What’s the point of this short story. Like many other youth ministry pastors and workers, you are busy. Teaching a lesson is just a grain of sand in what your week looks like. But it can seem like the simplest of things (aka. birthday cards, email’s, we missed you letters, postcards, or just simple phone calls) can seem to take a back-seat to “other” ministry items (aka. trying to find out who has not paid for the upcoming event, for example) … seems a little backwards huh? Effectiveness in ministry should not be limited because of a lack of time. Products like youth management software can help to speed up time consuming administrative tasks, even do them better than without software. Effectiveness in ministry happens from being obedient to God and a good steward of the resources you have… time being one of them.
Who’s ready to be more effective???
To demo the leader in youth ministry management software, head over to www.youthassistant.com
by Brandon Gross
If I can just take a minute to say, this has been one of the fastest summers ever for me. It’s amazing, in youth ministry, how the weeks can fly by and before you know it your right back in the school season. After all the summer camps, mission trips, and 100ft freestyle slip & slide parties (this one was great for our kids:) ) it’s almost time to kick back in gear for the school season. So, my question for this week is, "Are you ready?".
One of the great things about school season starting back up is all the new faces that come with it. I love it when school season kicks back into gear, but at the same time it can quickly turn into a organizational nightmare… unless you are prepared. Come on, you know what I’m talking about… as a youth pastor your opportunities increase and as those opportunities increase so does the administrative work that comes with them… blah…. I don’t think I met any youth pastor that just loves, with an intense passion, administrative work… they do however love being with their kids and helping them grow. Tracking event money, attendance, pictures, names, phone numbers, email addresses, and all the other gamuts of information can quickly suck up your time, unless you have the right tools.
I try to think of if like trying to repair the broken screw on your car with an old butter knife… it just never seems to do the job like the right tool would. The same thing applies with administration in youth ministry… spreadsheets and word doc’s just are not the right tools for the job. Sure, they can work… I’ve been there… I actually love spreadsheets and formulas and functions… but they are time consuming… and there is a better way. The answer…. get software designed especially for youth ministry admin. This will not only save you time… but it will make you more productive… and I know being more productive is something we all would like to be in youth ministry. A good youth ministry software will easily track pictures, names, addresses, phone numbers, event money, attendance, and more. But what makes youth ministry software shine even more is the ability it will give you to search the information in the database.
If you need to find all the 8th graders who signed up for next weeks event but still have not paid all the money, or just simply the youth who have a birthday coming up… no matter what it is a good youth ministry database will make these tasks a breeze…. oh, and you shouldn’t have to know any programing language to do this. What I have listed here is only the tip of the ice burg of what youth ministry software can do for you. So, That’s why I will be starting this series on "Why Youth Ministry Software" Keep an eye out and if you have questions be sure to post a comment and I will get it answered for you.
In the mean time, head over to www.youthassistant.com to see the leader in youth ministry database software.
by Brandon Gross
Most of us have been in a situation where we needed access to our server at church, for whatever reason… to access phone numbers, pictures, or just to play a quick game of solitare…. Anyway, what it all comes down to is we need access to our information at times when we are not there. Most churches have server based software that is kept "in house", the cost of converting to web based and relearning can be difficult and somewhat cumbersome unless it is clearly defined. So what most churches do, what most ministers do, is call the secretary for what information they need. Yet most ministers carry a PDA and the availability of wireless internet is almost everywhere. So here is one solution you can use to gain access to anything on your server or computer… not just your church software.
I wrote a blog a while back about a service called logmein, you can read it here. Well this wonderful little web tool also has a PDA website. Now, if you are not familiar with logmein, it is a web based tool that will let you access any computer you have over the internet… the best part is they have a totally… no strings attached FREE version.
If you go to logmein.com on your PDA, you will go to the logmein PDA site that will allow you to access your listed computers from the palm of your hand… pretty cool. The possibilities of this service are endless, it’s not just for accessing your church software. If you forgot a file, or paper, you can log into your computer with your PDA and then email the file to yourself. I have posted some screen shots below that one of our handy dandy programmers took for me of Nspire running on a PDA.
If you have other ways you have used logmein or a similar service, feel free to post them here for everyone else to see by leaving a comment.
nspiresoft’s logmein photoset
by Brandon Gross
Wow… it has been a while since I have been back in the blog community. We have been working hard here at Nspire to get our 2007 release out, which many of you readers are already enjoying. If you haven’t downloaded the new release and you are on membership… go for it… you have no idea how many cool features you are missing, not to mention our new dashboard feature.
You can find out more by going to our website at www.nspiresoftware.com ; we have given it a face lift also 
These last few months have been busy here at Nspire. If you haven’t heard we decided to bring back the Youth Assistant and we gave him a little sister called the Children’s Assistant.
If you know anything about our history in church software, you know that our company started off as the Youth Assistant. This was a first for youth pastors who needed software that was easy and gave them noticeable results. Because of it’s growing popularity and demand from other ministers, we changed the Youth Assistant into Nspire in 1999. This was a great means for us to offer user friendly software to all parts of church ministry.
Well, as the years have gone by, Nspire has grown into a fully featured church management software that can handle all the needs of the entire church. We still did not want to forget about all our youth and children’s ministers out there that use our software independently of the overall church program. So, to meet those needs we brought back the Youth Assistant, but not the old Youth Assistant you may remember… no this Youth Assistant is better than it has ever been. All the features you could ever need are built right in. So, if you are a long lost Youth Assistant lover or a youth minister just in need of some good software, hop over to the YA’s website at www.youthassistant.com to see the new and improved Youth Assistant 2007.
by Brandon Gross
I’ve been listening to a teaching series by Joe Mcgee lately. I learned something really interesting while listening to this series. He was talking about life and migrated over to talking about sin. In Greek terminology, sin was an old archery word. Every archer tried to hit the center of the bulls-eye on the target; or in other words "hit the mark". The distance from the bulls-eye to where the arrow actually hit was called the "sin". So, in Greek times this word sin meant you missed the mark by "x" amount or "by this much".
This means that in the Greek culture, when sin was talked about they instantly gained a mental picture of missing the mark with an arrow. Really interesting. I have always loved metaphors and parables, because they help you really grasp the full meaning of a teaching and continue to remember it long after it has been spoken. So, hopefully this helps you understand another viewpoint of what "sin" was seen as.
by Brandon Gross
I’ve been sick since the beginning of the week. We have had a flu bug going around the town for a few weeks now and I happened to catch my share of it at the annual Super Bowl Party we have every year for the youth. So, none the less I have been feeling under the weather for a while. Well, this morning I suddenly realized that I was 1) out of Tylenol Sore Throat (God’s gift to all sore throat sufferers) 2) I was completely out of tissues… definitely not friendly on the nose. So where do I go to fill my flu needs… none other than Wal-Mart.
Well, I pull into my local Wal-Mart and much to my surprise I see one of the local radio station vans with a guy holding a sign saying "Free Hugs" No more had I seen the sign did this lady driving a HUGE black truck in my direction, Stop in the middle of driving… bolt out of her truck (or I should say fall out of her truck) and ran over to give the radio guy a hug. I of course was stopped in my car… watching… sniffling… not from tears though… completely the flu.
I started thinking about the "Free Hugs" idea. It seems kind of silly. The radio guy giving the free hugs was even doing it because he lost a bet on the Super Bowl at the radio station. But if you do a google search on Free Hugs, you will see there is one site impeticular, www.free-hugs.com that has a national campaign for giving away Free Hugs.. Why??? Just because they want to make sure everyone knows they are special. I kind of like that idea.
I think it is easy at times to let life run past us… we somehow miss it while at the same time we think we are getting closer to experiencing it. What does any of this have to do with church software? Well, really not much.. but simple things like letting people know they are meaningful have everything to do with the church community.
We did a survey of our youth a few months back, asking various questions about their life, what they thought of themselves, and so on. The most common answers we got led to the youth feeling at times like they were meaningless. I do not think this is just affecting our youth either, their responses match some more national surveys that have been done. As a Christian, I want to make sure the people around me know that they have meaning and worth. Especially my kids in the youth group and family and friends. Sometimes it can be difficult to know what to say in certain circumstances or know how to relate.
One of the people I admired the most when I was growing up in the youth group was a wonderful lady we called Mrs. Debbie. She was like the youth group Grandma. It didn’t matter who came in our doors or how they appeared, Mrs. Debbie made it her priority to make sure they knew they were special and valuable. Many of the times she would just walk up and give them a hug and start telling them how special they were. Yeah, at times it could have seemed a little akward, but if you ask anyone that has met Mrs. Debbie, they have only good things to say about her and how special she makes people feel. I’m not trying to be cheesy but maybe there are times when a free hug is all that is needed; especially with your family. Maybe it’s not a hug but just some encouragement that is given. Free hugs or not, I think I’m going to try harder to make sure the people around me know they are special and of worth. How about you?
by Brandon Gross
We just released our new website for NSpire 2007, check it out by clicking on the image below:
by Brandon Gross
I had one of those moments a few weeks back. You know… one of those moments that God decides he is going to teach you something and you are going to realize how little you really know or how little you remember. Yeah, it was one of those moments.
My fiance’ has this cat, that we so creatively named "lil kitty", who is one of those pretty cats. Everything she does is pretty. She sits pretty, walks pretty, she is even a pretty cat!!!! To mess with her sometimes I will rub her hair toward her head… she doesn’t like that…. why I do it, I don’t know… but it is fun. I would have never considered myself a cat person but lil kitty has made me different. I really like that cat. The only thing that I don’t like is how much she sheds.
I am honestly surprised that lil kitty is not bald based on how much she sheds. We always keep lint rollers around so we can get the hair off of us after we play with lil kitty. Well, this day we did not have any lint rollers. We had used the last one and the replacements were in the car, which was not in town. I usually sit on the couch to work and lil kitty likes to jump up on my lap and work with me on my laptop. I’m usually ok with this because after I’m done I can go grab the handy dandy lint roller to get all the "pretty" cat hair off of me. I couldn’t do that on this day and of all the days lil kitty could pick it was this day that she was overly persistent that she wanted my attention.
She would jump up on me, and I would put her right back down on the floor. It didn’t seem to make sense to her, so she would jump right back up on me again. We went through this routine for a few minutes until it hit me… this was one of those God moments and I was about to miss it. I don’t want to be one of those cat lovers that is talking about their pet like it is their kid but this moment hit me.
Lil kitty wanted my attention desperately. I didn’t want her to get on me because she would shed hair all over me and I didn’t have anything to clean it off… but she still wanted my attention. She didn’t understand why I didn’t want her to sit with me like she always had.. she’s a cat.. she understands mouse toy and food. But this started to make me think about God and me. I know there have been so many times I have shed my junk on him… but he always welcomes me back. He evens tells me to caste my burdens on him…
God knows we shed a lot… but like the prodigal son He waits for us to come to him as we are. The thing I learned from this little cat was persistence. Jesus taught us to knock and keep on knocking, ask and keep on asking, seek and keep on seeking and we will find what we need, the doors will be opened to us. God likes us to be persistent with him… not arrogant… but lovingly persistent in coming to him with our needs… just how we are. Max Lucado I think said it best when he wrote "God loves us exactly how we are but he is unwilling to leave us there." I’m glad that God is not worried about having a lint roller to show his love to me. He took care of all that already, all he wants from me is persistence in coming to him.
It took a small cat to remind me about pursuing God.
So, what did I do in all this? I picked up lil kitty and we worked on the computer like we always do… except this time I did not have a lint roller. I had hair all over me, but that was ok…. Lint roller… I didn’t need no stinking link roller.
by Brandon Gross
If you have decided that it’s about time to get some kind of church software, there are a few things you should keep in mind that will save you a ton of time, money, and frustration. A few months back our Vice President, Bart Hardison, wrote a series of posts on buying church software. I thought it would be beneficial to go back into the attic, dust off those posts, and bring them back into the light.
To help you out I have linked the series of posts below:
Part 1 - How to Choose Church Management Software
Part 2 - Custom Software Development
