Thursday Three For All

It’s Thursday, kiddies: the day when I roll out a few things I’ve been reading over the past week. Three of ‘em, to be exact. Enjoy. (Remember: click on the big bold print to read the entire article.)

Stop Doing Church Announcements and Start Inspiring Mission Engagement

(via @daviddrury) Announcements don’t have to be the life-sucking, soul-draining, eye-glazing thing that they sometimes turn out to be. David gives six helpful tips to make the most of your stage time.

The number of people who sit in a church service doesn’t mean a whole lot if you didn’t do something in them and through them to Christ’s glory. Church leaders learn before long that attendance is only meaningful if you can drive engagement.

For this reason, many churches have a laundry list of announcements given in church, often at the beginning of a service. This is meant to give people the information needed, and get them moving on the things that matter in Church life.

The problem is that doing announcements doesn’t work.

The bullet list of announcements is invariably too long, it’s at the most skipped time of the service, the least skilled communicators often end up delivering the information, it is redundant to other sources of information, and it is not prioritized into what matters most. This is why most announcements slots fail to do their job.

To engage people in the church you can harness the “announcements” by figuring out how they are not really “announcements” at all but instead they are this: the mission critical action step you want to convince the Body of Christ to engage in right now.

 

What to Unplug and Turn Off When You Leave for Summer Vacation

(via @lifehacker) Take it from a guy who came home from vacation just in time to see a water heater leak that could have been so much worse…invest in one of those water supply cutoff thingies.

Electronics with standby or “sleep” modes: Desktop PCs, televisions, cable boxes, DVD/Blu-ray players, alarm clocks, radios, and anything with a remote control is never truly “off.” If the item has an “instant on” feature or has LED lights glowing when it’s off, it’s always draining small amounts of power. If items like this are all plugged into a surge protector—which they should be—you can just turn off the surge protector itself.

 

“Take On Me” Comes to Life with Augmented Reality

(via @laughingsquid) Can we all agree that A-HA’s “Take On Me” was the greatest music video of all time? (Spoiler alert: yes.) I’m going to need to download this to show my children what true art looks like.

photo credit: Jason Mathis