Posts Tagged ‘Review’

Posted on March 1, 2010 - by rfrank

The Kitchen video sampler

Evan Doyle just emailed me and told me that our next KidzMatter email is ready to be proofed. Of course, I don’t proof it, that’s Tina’s job. You can thank me for that! But I always like taking a look at it before it hits the Inbox of over 15,000 children’s pastors and leaders.

Tomorrow’s email is about the overwhelmingly positive feedback we hear from everyone using The Kitchen. Evan also put together a cool video sampler to showcase some of the videos we have produced for the lessons. While the curriculum is not media-driven but teacher-driven, we understand the importance of media with today’s kids. That’s why we have invested so many resources into these videos. While we still have a way to go, the videos keep getting better and better every week.

After setting up and tearing down a portable video studio at my church for the first few months (a ton of work), we finally have a green screen studio of our very own! A church in town (my grandma’s church) had a few classrooms they weren’t using. They gave us a classroom to use as a video studio. It is such a blessing to have a real studio where we can leave everything set up and ready to shoot. I’ll have to share some pictures of our studio in an upcoming blog post.

Click here to watch the video that we will be sharing tomorrow. Enjoy!!

Posted on February 2, 2010 - by rfrank

Books that every children’s pastor should read

Today a reader, tomorrow a leader. It’s never been easier to read than today with iPhone apps, Kindle, and the iPad. I want to share eight books that every children’s pastor should read.

I apologize if you’ve written a book and it didn’t make the cut. Don’t take it personally! Eight is a small number to choose from.

I have listed these books alphabetically, not by priority. And, in case you’re wondering, the Bible isn’t included. It comes before the eight!

• A Tale of three Kings by Gene Edwards. This is a book that I read every year about David, Saul and Absalom. It reminds me that God uses humble, broken people.

• Already Gone by Ken Ham. This was my number one read in 2009. If you want to know why kids leave the church and what you can do to stop it, you better read this book.

• Mad Church Disease by Anne Jackson. Does working in the church ever interfere with your relationship with Christ? I thought so. You need this book.

• Purple Cow by Seth Godin. I remember the first time my friend Nevan Hooker told me about the book. I bought it and the light turned on. You’ll learn how to make your ministry great by being remarkable.

• Strengths-Based Leadership by Tom Rath and Barry Conchie. Do you know your strengths? What about the strengths of your staff? Great leaders learn to identify weaknesses and maximize strengths.

• The Effective Executive by Peter Drucker. Every leader needs to read this classic more than once. Learn how to organize your tasks, get things done right, and about everything in between.

• Raising a Modern-Day Joseph by Larry Fowler. This is a book that every parent in the church needs to read. They will get help forming a strategy for growing great kids.

• Children’s Ministry Volunteers That Stick by Jim Wideman. Get the help you need recruiting, training and most importantly, keeping volunteers in your ministry. Jim knows his stuff.

I was suppose to stop at eight, but here are a few extras:

• Axiom by Bill Hybels. This is a great book packed with short leadership proverbs that we all need to hear. I’ve shared a lot of this book with our staff at KidzMatter.

• Building Children’s Ministry by Tina Houser. Practical is the word that describes this book. I wish I would have read it when I first started in children’s ministry.

• Think Orange by Reggie Joiner. This new book is a popular one in children’s and family ministry. Reggie gets practical about the relationship the church and family can have together.

Posted on January 11, 2010 - by rfrank

90 second book review: Leading on Empty

Browsing our Christian bookstore a few weeks ago, Leading on Empty caught my eye. Every leader struggles with maintaining the energy and passion needed to lead. Face it: the demands of ministry are overwhelming. This book addresses this challenge.

Leading on Empty: Refilling Your Tank and Renewing Your Passion is written by Wayne Cordeiro, a hip pastor in Honolulu, Hawaii. He experienced burnout and candidly shares his experience. Here are a few things that stuck out to me in the book:

1. A leader’s greatest asset isn’t time, it’s energy. A person with energy can do in four hours what would take another four days.

2. One of the best ways to avoid burnout is to start young. If you wait until it’s too late you’ll be in trouble. Listen all of you “young guns” (thanks Jim Wideman for coining that term) – start refilling your tank now!

3. Friends and intentional relationships play an important role in keeping your tank full. Friends are rare these days, but not because they aren’t important. It’s because we have increased in speed. Friends are made in the margins of life.

4. Schedule time alone with God. If you’re like me you’ll understand what I’m about ready to say. If you don’t schedule it, it won’t happen. Schedule time to spend with God, to renew your soul, and restore your hunger for what he has called you to do.

These are just a few of the big things I am taking away from the book. If I loaned you my copy, you would find stars and underlined sentences on nearly every page. This is one of the better books I have read in a while. Stop right now and buy it while it’s on your mind. You’ll be glad you did.

Posted on November 21, 2009 - by rfrank

My Coffee Table: Strengths Based Leadership

A few months back I read this somewhere: Stop reading, stop leading. I won’t go as far as to say that you have to be in a book to be a good leader, but I can tell you from personal experience that books stretch my leadership. Books improve my serve.

Right now I am reading Strengths-Based Leadership by Tom Rath and Barry Conchie. I took the Strengths Finder 2.0 test online several weeks ago and bought the Strengths Based Leadership book that same day.

Although I am still reading this book, I can tell you the gist of the book in a few bullet points:

• The best leaders in the world don’t try to copy other leaders. They discover their own strengths and build on them.
• The best leaders in the world discover the strengths of their team (employees, volunteers, or whatever) and allow them to focus on what they do best.
• The best leaders in the world know the needs of their team.

This is a great book. I plan to buy it and work through it with our team at KidzMatter. I will leave you with this thought: You cannot be anything you want to be – but you can be a lot more of who you already are.

Click here to get the book for yourself!

Posted on October 20, 2009 - by rfrank

Discovering my strengths

More and more people recently have been asking me what my top strengths are in reference to Gallup’s StrengthFinder 2.0 assessment tool. I’ve told person after person, “I haven’t taken the test yet.”

Last month at D6, Michael Chanley (creator of www.cmconnect.org) knocked it out of the ballpark with a precon lab about developing the strengths of kids. He talked a lot about Tom Rath’s book.

After the workshop, I jumped on Amazon and bought the book. It was a quick read and convinced me even more to do the test. It took about 30 minutes to take the test online and I found it was pretty accurate. Here are my top five strengths with a quick summary of what each one means:

1. Competition – People strong in the Competition theme measure their progress against the performance of others. They strive to win first place and revel in contests.
2. Futuristic – People strong in the Futuristic theme are inspired by the future and what could be. They inspire others with their visions of the future.
3. Strategic – People strong in the Strategic theme create alternative ways to proceed. Faced with any given scenario, they can quickly spot the relevant patterns and issues.
4. Activator – People strong in the Activator theme can make things happen by turning thoughts into action. They are often impatient.
5. Significance – People strong in the Significance theme want to be very important in the eyes of others. They are independent and want to be recognized.

I plan to lead our KidzMatter staff through the process of finding their strengths this winter. Then we will work through the Strengths Based Leadership book.

Posted on July 23, 2009 - by rfrank

90 Second Book Review: Mad Church Disease

A few weeks ago I picked up a copy of Mad Church Disease after seeing that Kenny Conley mentioned it on his blog (thanks). I packed it in my backpack and brought it with me on vacation this week. I wish I would have read it earlier – it earns a 10.

Mad Church Disease (click here to get it for yourself) was written by Anne Jackson (who I am now following on Twitter). She grew up as a PK and saw firsthand how the ministry can lead to burnout. She reminds me a lot of myself as a kid, well except the fact that she was a girl. She not only saw her dad experience burnout, but she experienced it for herself.

This book will help you identify what burnout looks like, why it’s so prevelant in the church, and what to do to make sure it doesn’t hit you. The single biggest thing that I took from the book is a better understanding of John 10:10, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.”

Jesus said that the thief (Satan) comes ONLY to steal and kill and destroy. That is his main objective in your life and in the life of every Christian. He wants to take you down! He’ll use burnout to make that happen. BUT (and this is a big but!) Jesus came to bring life and bring it to the full!

I highly recommend this book. You’ll be hearing about it in K! Magazine I’m sure. I’m going to buy it for my KidzMatter team and the church staff. I hope to work through it together as a team. Go get it.

Posted on June 16, 2009 - by rfrank

Why I Use OmniFocus

If you’re a task-oriented person, you’ll enjoy this blog post. If you’re people-oriented go ahead and keep reading, you just won’t find it as interesting. Since I opened that can of worms, let me tell you that I’m a task-oriented guy that is growing to be more of a people-oriented person. The ministry is all about people, amen? People work always trumps paper work.

Two years ago I came to a breaking point. My task lists were overwhelming me. I’m a full-time children’s pastor, the publisher of a growing bi-monthly magazine, the leader of a growing company, and serve on a handful of boards. Each of these have a way of creating some nice task lists. My breaking point came when I realized I couldn’t manage my tasks. I was working off a task list in Mail, several Excel spreadsheets, a few Stickies, and a pad of paper. It was a classic mess.

Then I discovered OmniFocus. It’s powerful task-management software. Here’s what I like about it.

1. Tasks (called actions in OmniFocus) can be as simple or complex as you want. You can simply add a task (Pick up some goldfish crackers before Sunday) or add a task complete with a due date, context, reminder, and the whole nine yards.

2. You can organize your tasks by category. Some of my categories include: This Week, Personal, Church, KidzMatter, K! Magazine, INCM, etc. Each of these categories even have subcategories with tasks under each.

3. You can send yourself to-dos from your email. Omnifocus will watch for incoming emails that are tasks and will automatically add them to your Omnifocus inbox. Come on, you’ve gotta admit that this is cool.

4. The context feature is one of my favorite things. Remember, I probably have 30 different task lists in OmniFocus. Since each task can have a context, like “Errands”, I can view all of my tasks by context. This means all of my errands will show up in a nice list when I am ready to start shopping.

5. You can capture tasks anywhere. This is good if you have the memory of a goldfish like I do. OmniFocus is based on David Allen’s popular Getting Things Done (GTD) productivity system. The first principle in that system is that you should be able to add (capture) new to-dos whenever and wherever they occur to you. If you are typing an email and think of a task, with a few keystrokes, you can add a task to Omnifocus. You can do this from any application on your Mac.

6. There’s an OmniFocus app for the iPhone. This means your task list is always synched with your iPhone. Nice!

OmniFocus 1.0.6 (the current version) is the coolest task management software I have found. If you’re like me and you spend as much time managing your to-do list as you do actually completing the tasks on it, you’ll be hooked. That’s my two cents worth.

Posted on May 21, 2009 - by rfrank

Matt McKee on Buzz!

Matt McKee (follow him on Twitter, I do!) wrote a great review on Group’s new curriculum for elementary kids, Buzz. He discusses it all from the packaging, the CD, the activity cards and all the little gizmos. I found this very helpful since I’ve not taken time to look at Buzz up close and personal.

Matt says, “I’ve been excited to check out Buzz, a new Sunday School curriculum for elementary kids, for some time now. I was very happy when the Crime and Punishment series for 3rd and 4th graders came to my office today. I quickly opened it up.” Click here to read the rest!