Mister Nifty

One of the most curious things to me about the modern church is the graphic medical detail of the prayer list. In the past years, I’ve seen prayer requests ranging from “Bleeding Liver” to “Colon Exploded”. I have a pretty weak stomach when it comes to other people’s medical issues, and reading a graphic prayer lists makes me want to add my name to the bottom of the list. Before I proceed, let me affirm my deep belief in prayer and its power in real situations. I am not against praying for the needs of others at all.

Since the inception of HIPPA, health organizations providing care are not allowed to transmit any patient information to unauthorized persons. The church or ministry however is not required to keep a patient’s information private unless they operate a care facility. (more…)

If you need a quick way to put together a worship plan for your services, check out Lifeway’s free online tool. It has a nifty search feature if you’re looking for just the right song. You can also add notes and other elements such as prayer, announcements, etc… They offer a premium plan which allows you to schedule individuals and send notifications via email. Their premium plan also offers a communications portal to manage all of your teams.  Another great thing is you have music resources at your fingertips. Depending on the songs you choose, you can download soundtracks, lead sheets, and much more.

Go to Lifeway Worship

(via @kjhouk)

If you’re looking for a great non-cheesy fundraiser, check out Church Coffee. Everyone loves coffee and selling them guilt-free (no child labor, bad employer ethics, etc)  coffee is a great way to make a few extra bucks for your ministry. Grown by a pastor in Central America, they claim to have an excellent blend and roast that will knock your socks off. I made up the last part, but it sure sounds like good coffee. The profit margins seem really good as well. Purchasing wholesale can net you $3-$5 per bag sold. Check out their sample forms and information to get started.

Go To Church Coffee

I was reading a programming concepts textbook today and I came across this list that I thought might be useful for real life problems. The headings come from the book Problem Solving and Programming Concepts. The commentary is mine.  I’m sure you can take and port these concepts to your own line of work or life issues.

1. Identify the problem

Have you ever sat in a meeting and everyone wants to talk about problems? I’ve enduring countless meetings where problems were identified, but nothing was ever done to solve the problem. It’s easy to be a critic. Everyone has the ability to identify that a problem exists.

For instance, I set up Google Apps for our church recently. The secretary was accessing her email from two different clients. Even though we left all the mail on the server, she was only receiving some mail in one, but not in the other. She knew what the problem was about, but she had no idea what the problem actually was technically.

Get a room full of intelligent people and you can get a list as long of problems as long as your arm in just a matter of moments. It’s in our nature to find what’s wrong with a process or a person. It take much more character and brain power to get beyond finding problems to understanding problems.

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If you run a Windows based projection system with one or two extra monitors/screens, this hack might be useful for you. Whenever you play a Flash video full screen, any keystroke or mouse click on another monitor will cause the full screen view to minimize. This could be irritating if you are trying to play an internet video on one screen and push other media to another screen at the same time. Here’s how to safely hack the Flash player.

1. Download the replacement DLL (zip container) here.
2. Open an explorer window and go to C:\windows\system32\Macromed\Flash\
3. Rename the NPSWF32.dll file to NPSWF32.dll.txt to save as a backup in case the hack doesn’t work
4. Copy the new NPSWF32.dll from the zip container to the folder.
5. Restart your browser and viola! It should work beautifully.
6. If for some reason your Flash player breaks, go back to the directory and delete NPSWF32.dll, then rename NPSWF32.dll.txt back to its original file name.

Pressing escape will minimize the Flash player once it’s been hacked.

(via Lifehacker)

Bento is a powerful database software for Mac (lightweight version of Filemaker). If you’re looking for a clean, easy and elegant solution for your youth ministry, look no further. For $49 bucks you can be in the driver’s seat. Bento allows you to create drag-and-drop database applications with no fuss. Within a matter of a few minutes, you can have your entire youth ministry operation organized. Here are a few things you can do with accomplish with Bento.

1. Student roster with photos from iPhoto
2. Event lists (even import iCal feeds)
3. Keep attendance using relational fields that link the events and roster together
4. Easy export of data to Excel or other applications

Bento also offers iPhone and iPad applications for a minimal fee so you can take your data anywhere you want.

Thanks to Joseph Waterman for creating this awesome two-part tutorial screencast.

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