Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
There were two other things that arose from my CREDO experience/process that didn't quite rise to the level of being a goal but I felt needed to be addressed.
There were several comments about how I didn't answer some communications in a timely manner. That took me by surprise. In talking with my friends that week we talked about e-mail and how I had to check several accounts. "How many?" they asked. Well, there are four work accounts and three home accounts.
Stunned silence.
Followed by very clear input that I needed to fix that. So I'm weeding out two accounts at work and one at home. The work accounts will be for direct communication with me and one for newsletters, documents, and forms. I've already seen a vast improvement in my efficiency simply because it's all distilled into a couple places. I also realized that I was checking my e-mail several times an hour. This broke up my work into small scattered pieces, a system I've never liked. The program there is for me to check them when I arrive, at lunch time and an hour before I take off for the day. If I'm expecting something I can check more often. That has also given me much longer runs at tasks. I think I'm responding much more quickly AND getting more and better work done. Good stuff.
But if that one took me by surprise this one just about killed me. I got a note from someone who said some of our youth perceived me as playing favorites and believing that some of them could "never do anything right".
It was like a dagger in the heart. Are there some kids I've come to know much better than others? Yes. Am I closer with them? Yes. But I've tried to my limits never to play favorites. And I can not think of any young person that I had no hope for at all. I had two choices. To discard the comment as being a personal attack or to take it on board. The folks I'd asked to fill out these comments were people I knew and liked and trusted and respected. And one of them felt strongly enough to put that comment down in black and white.
So I've taken it on board. I apologized to Youth Commission for any such offense I might have committed against them and apologize here to any young person that feels I've slighted them. Creating such a feeling in you is a failure on my part and it's a failure I regret to my very core. I will be working very hard to make sure it never happens again. If you see me doing it please call me on it so that I can fix it.
So that's it. Well at least the high (and low) spots of it. CREDO has presented me with a great challenge as I move forward. I'm excited and a little scared. I hope you'll keep me in your prayers as I move forward with this new adventure.
Peace
Showing posts with label communication. Show all posts
Showing posts with label communication. Show all posts
Friday, May 29, 2009
Thursday, May 28, 2009
CREDO part 3
Part 1
Part 2
My third goal in the CREDO plan came out a little differently. The first two arose from areas where I needed to improve. As I sat looking at the plan I had the feeling there was a third goal but I couldn't see what it was. So I stepped back and started looking for big patterns again in the information. And there it was. The third goal has to do with one of my strengths, in fact it may be my greatest strength and gift. There was a consistent string of comments and data talking about my gifts as a communicator. My bishop later said it's not so much a gift as it is my identity - I am a communicator.
What was nagging at me was that I didn't feel like I was getting the most out of that area in my life. So my third goal looks like this:
To Develop and Expand projects based on my Communication Gifts
Spiritual - to expand the reach of our ministry. My hope is that I can get some of this up and running ASAP (although a technology glitch has put a crimp in that at the moment).
Health - Improve my overall satisfaction by more fully expressing my gifts. This allows me to focus on projects that feed me rather than deplete me.
Vocational - Expand my teaching and communicating possibilities. Helps to create a better link to our youth, their parents, and our congregations.
Financial - Strengthen programs to help be better stewards of our funds. We can do a better job of showing the benefits of our programs to our supporters.
I have to admit that this goal that really challenges me because it means I have to find out if I'm really as good as some people (including me most days) think I am. Some of it will be a learning curve as I expand into new areas. That means something won't be perfect right out of the box (as compared to all the OTHER perfect things I do!). I need to deal with that upfront and not let it stop me from trying.
One final note and then my CREDO report will be finished.
Peace
Part 2
My third goal in the CREDO plan came out a little differently. The first two arose from areas where I needed to improve. As I sat looking at the plan I had the feeling there was a third goal but I couldn't see what it was. So I stepped back and started looking for big patterns again in the information. And there it was. The third goal has to do with one of my strengths, in fact it may be my greatest strength and gift. There was a consistent string of comments and data talking about my gifts as a communicator. My bishop later said it's not so much a gift as it is my identity - I am a communicator.
What was nagging at me was that I didn't feel like I was getting the most out of that area in my life. So my third goal looks like this:
To Develop and Expand projects based on my Communication Gifts
Spiritual - to expand the reach of our ministry. My hope is that I can get some of this up and running ASAP (although a technology glitch has put a crimp in that at the moment).
Health - Improve my overall satisfaction by more fully expressing my gifts. This allows me to focus on projects that feed me rather than deplete me.
Vocational - Expand my teaching and communicating possibilities. Helps to create a better link to our youth, their parents, and our congregations.
Financial - Strengthen programs to help be better stewards of our funds. We can do a better job of showing the benefits of our programs to our supporters.
I have to admit that this goal that really challenges me because it means I have to find out if I'm really as good as some people (including me most days) think I am. Some of it will be a learning curve as I expand into new areas. That means something won't be perfect right out of the box (as compared to all the OTHER perfect things I do!). I need to deal with that upfront and not let it stop me from trying.
One final note and then my CREDO report will be finished.
Peace
Friday, November 14, 2008
New communications
I've mentioned that we were moving into (yet another) new way of communicating. Over the last two years it's become clear that my reliance on e-mail was hampering my attempts to communicate with my youth. They were pretty clear that e-mail was not something significant in their lives. They might look at it occasionally.
So that wasn't helping. What they were into was texting. The problem is that texting doesn't lend itself to the kinds of information transfers that I normally do. A text is commonly less than 150 CHARACTERS. (As an example the last sentence was 44 characters long. So I can do three fairly short sentences.) And doing mass text "mailings" wasn't easy and usually was fairly expensive.
My first thought was a relatively new service called "Twitter". According to their website
"Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?".
The problem with Twitter is that I would need all my youth and leaders to sign up and then either add me to a list of Twitter-ers that they follow on their cell phones or regularly check their Twitter page for my "tweets" (that's what the individual messages are called). It just didn't seem like the answer I was looking for.
(I will note that at least one youth minister out there, Shaun Mayfield Student Ministries Pastor at Red Mountain Christian Center in Mesa AZ, has found a way to make it work that is kinda cool. I quote him from the comments page at YS Blog:
We have been using Twitter in our youth as a MAJOR feed for information for a little over a year. We use it during our services and during the week, I will explain both.
We knew the fight to stop phones in service would be a constant battle so fight fire with fire. I have an intern that has a copy of my sermon notes with certain areas highlighted and he sends out a twitter as I am saying that, about 5-10 during a service, there is a lot of reasons for this that is VERY positive, email me for more reasons.
I start of every message with a 30 second intro saying if you are new here pull out your phone and send a txt to 40404 and type follow eikonlive then if it is your first time then put in your name and you are all set up. Then throughout the week we will send you updates. We have nearly 200 people that are people that have been through our doors and several parents. The key is building a culture within your group/kids/parents.
Then we also send out updates/event details/ etc during the week, respecting the amount of txts.
As we explain it regularly it doesn't take time and it has created an AMAZING culture in that our kids are having conversations through twitter and responding to the tweets during our service asking questions or delving into the topic deeper.
You can check out their Twitter page HERE
It seems like a very creative use of the service but I was looking for something more straight forward (at least in my own mind!)
And I think I found it. JOOPZ This is a web based texting service that works with pretty much any cell service in the US or Canada. It offers "two way" texting, group messages, reminder notes, scheduled texts and more. The free service is pretty good so I looked to see what the Premium would cost me.
$19.95
A year.
I looked at that three times. Most of the bulk texting places charge that much or more a month. In fact I just re-re-re-checked because I'm still not sure I got it right.
Yep. $2.95 a month. $19.95 a year.
Joopz isn't perfect. The largest group I can create is only 10 people. Since I'm hoping to get at least 100 people signed up that means 10 groups. Which is still WAAAAAY better than most other options. I'm also more limited on my messages, only 100 characters. So two sentences. My youth will approve any limitations on me talking, lol!
Because it's web based I can access it from anywhere I have internet access. I can see this as a way to communicate at Senior High conference, at convention, at EYE plus routine updates on what's happening with applications, web updates, new e-mail(!) and more.
So I'm pretty excited. Now I just need to get folks to "sign up". I'm not going to just randomly cull cell #s and load them in. By my lights that would be wrong. So I still need people to "enroll". Which amounts to sending me their name and cell phone number. I do the data entry.
My promise has been that they'll only get a limited number of texts from me, maybe two a week, no more than 12 a month. It's all designed to point them towards other things of note.
At least that's my vision for the moment. We'll see how it works out.
Peace
So that wasn't helping. What they were into was texting. The problem is that texting doesn't lend itself to the kinds of information transfers that I normally do. A text is commonly less than 150 CHARACTERS. (As an example the last sentence was 44 characters long. So I can do three fairly short sentences.) And doing mass text "mailings" wasn't easy and usually was fairly expensive.
My first thought was a relatively new service called "Twitter". According to their website
"Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?".
The problem with Twitter is that I would need all my youth and leaders to sign up and then either add me to a list of Twitter-ers that they follow on their cell phones or regularly check their Twitter page for my "tweets" (that's what the individual messages are called). It just didn't seem like the answer I was looking for.
(I will note that at least one youth minister out there, Shaun Mayfield Student Ministries Pastor at Red Mountain Christian Center in Mesa AZ, has found a way to make it work that is kinda cool. I quote him from the comments page at YS Blog:
We have been using Twitter in our youth as a MAJOR feed for information for a little over a year. We use it during our services and during the week, I will explain both.
We knew the fight to stop phones in service would be a constant battle so fight fire with fire. I have an intern that has a copy of my sermon notes with certain areas highlighted and he sends out a twitter as I am saying that, about 5-10 during a service, there is a lot of reasons for this that is VERY positive, email me for more reasons.
I start of every message with a 30 second intro saying if you are new here pull out your phone and send a txt to 40404 and type follow eikonlive then if it is your first time then put in your name and you are all set up. Then throughout the week we will send you updates. We have nearly 200 people that are people that have been through our doors and several parents. The key is building a culture within your group/kids/parents.
Then we also send out updates/event details/ etc during the week, respecting the amount of txts.
As we explain it regularly it doesn't take time and it has created an AMAZING culture in that our kids are having conversations through twitter and responding to the tweets during our service asking questions or delving into the topic deeper.
You can check out their Twitter page HERE
It seems like a very creative use of the service but I was looking for something more straight forward (at least in my own mind!)
And I think I found it. JOOPZ This is a web based texting service that works with pretty much any cell service in the US or Canada. It offers "two way" texting, group messages, reminder notes, scheduled texts and more. The free service is pretty good so I looked to see what the Premium would cost me.
$19.95
A year.
I looked at that three times. Most of the bulk texting places charge that much or more a month. In fact I just re-re-re-checked because I'm still not sure I got it right.
Yep. $2.95 a month. $19.95 a year.
Joopz isn't perfect. The largest group I can create is only 10 people. Since I'm hoping to get at least 100 people signed up that means 10 groups. Which is still WAAAAAY better than most other options. I'm also more limited on my messages, only 100 characters. So two sentences. My youth will approve any limitations on me talking, lol!
Because it's web based I can access it from anywhere I have internet access. I can see this as a way to communicate at Senior High conference, at convention, at EYE plus routine updates on what's happening with applications, web updates, new e-mail(!) and more.
So I'm pretty excited. Now I just need to get folks to "sign up". I'm not going to just randomly cull cell #s and load them in. By my lights that would be wrong. So I still need people to "enroll". Which amounts to sending me their name and cell phone number. I do the data entry.
My promise has been that they'll only get a limited number of texts from me, maybe two a week, no more than 12 a month. It's all designed to point them towards other things of note.
At least that's my vision for the moment. We'll see how it works out.
Peace
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
A mid week update
Interesting week so far. Not necessarily my most productive (so far, there's still time!) but interesting.
On the weight loss front I pushed through 190 pounds last week for the first time in years. And I stayed below it for this week's weigh in. I only lost a fraction of a pound more but I didn't bounce back up again. Which feels very good.
My volleyball team won their first match of the season. A 3-0 sweep! Very satisfying. Particularly because we played well and because we finally saw a team look at us with that "We can't beat these guys" look in their eyes. I served very well and wasn't awful otherwise.
Football pool! I continue to hang out in the 60-70% of points range. Unfortunately folks keep doing just a little better than that so I'm usually only top 20 for any given week. But I've been very consistent being right around the top 10 overall. In fact the weekly update e-mail from our pool leader said the following:
Jay . . . you've been in 9th, then 11th for 2 week, then 6th, 7th, then 12th, and then 9th, 11th, and now 10th. Dude, consistency is the name of the game!!! Way to go!!
Consistency was my goal for this year. Oh, and being in the top 10 too.
Got our first snow of the season. First "real" snow that is. Flurries, snow that doesn't stick, or can be swept with a broom are not "real" snow. We got about 8 inches Sunday night into Monday morning. Took the snowblower out but it was a mess. The ground is still warm underneath the snow (and will be for a while yet) so the bottom inch turns to heavy slush. Which clogs the snowblower. No fun. Rain tomorrow and temps in the 60s so it will all go away.
Found what I think is a great new service for communicating with the current generation of youth. I'll blog about that tomorrow or Friday.
Peace
On the weight loss front I pushed through 190 pounds last week for the first time in years. And I stayed below it for this week's weigh in. I only lost a fraction of a pound more but I didn't bounce back up again. Which feels very good.
My volleyball team won their first match of the season. A 3-0 sweep! Very satisfying. Particularly because we played well and because we finally saw a team look at us with that "We can't beat these guys" look in their eyes. I served very well and wasn't awful otherwise.
Football pool! I continue to hang out in the 60-70% of points range. Unfortunately folks keep doing just a little better than that so I'm usually only top 20 for any given week. But I've been very consistent being right around the top 10 overall. In fact the weekly update e-mail from our pool leader said the following:
Jay . . . you've been in 9th, then 11th for 2 week, then 6th, 7th, then 12th, and then 9th, 11th, and now 10th. Dude, consistency is the name of the game!!! Way to go!!
Consistency was my goal for this year. Oh, and being in the top 10 too.
Got our first snow of the season. First "real" snow that is. Flurries, snow that doesn't stick, or can be swept with a broom are not "real" snow. We got about 8 inches Sunday night into Monday morning. Took the snowblower out but it was a mess. The ground is still warm underneath the snow (and will be for a while yet) so the bottom inch turns to heavy slush. Which clogs the snowblower. No fun. Rain tomorrow and temps in the 60s so it will all go away.
Found what I think is a great new service for communicating with the current generation of youth. I'll blog about that tomorrow or Friday.
Peace
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