YouVersion Live gives you a way to interact with church services and other live events using your mobile device. You can follow along with message outlines and take notes, read related Bible verses and click through to the expanded passage, vote on a poll and see the results live, ask questions anonymously, give, request prayer, and take it all home with you on your phone. It works with any web-enabled phone, as well as any computer with an internet connection.
As you know, I’m in the air (traveling) a lot. Lately I’ve been bringing some magazines with me to read during the flight. Magazines that I’m reading currently are:
Outreach (I’ll talk more about articles from this tomorrow)
Worship Leader (I was interviewed for a series called Worship 2.0)
Mind mapping is something that I learned and began to truly appreciate through my friend, Tony Steward (Online Community Pastor at LifeChurch.tv). Up until recently it was always done on paper (Moleskin). Yesterday he sent me an email introduction to MindMeister. I was instantly interested! I signed up and watched their helpful tutorial video (it’s brief).
There are a number of ways that you as a Church leader could use this new tool. Whether it be as a Senior Pastor, Executive Pastor, Worship Pastor (leading a creative team), Small Groups – you name it – there’s a way that this can be a great tool and resource for your ministry.
You can share your mind map with friends. Share instantly any mind map with friends and colleagues. Invitees will receive an email with a link and – depending on what access you give them – will be able to contribute or just read.
Real-time collaboration. When two or more users open the same mind map at the same time you are in brainstorming mode. Every change you make will be replicated instantly to your fellow editors’ screens via our server. Through colour-coded effects they will see what you did and vice versa, no reload necessary.
Summary: MindMeister brings the concept of mind mapping to the web, using its facilities for real-time collaboration to allow truly global brainstorming sessions. Users can create, manage and share mind maps online and access them anytime, from anywhere. In brainstorming mode, fellow MindMeisters from around the world (or just in different rooms) can simultaneously work on the same mind map and see each other’s changes as they happen.
There’s a free version and a premium version that only costs $4 a month. $4 bucks a month! Check it out and let me know if you have something you’d like to share. I may have something I’ll share soon with you.
PERSONAL:
Today is 9/11. We pause to remember what happen on that tragic day. 9/11 is also my mom’s birthday. Mom: Happy Birthday!
The following is an announcement from Kent Shaffer’s blog that I thought was worth you knowing about and keeping an eye on:
LifeChurch.tv’s interactive online Bible, YouVersion, is about to take the interactivity up a notch and to congregations around the world.
It’s called YouVersion Live (October 2009 launch). And it allows pastors, conference speakers, teachers, and group leaders to share content and real-time feedback on mobile devices during live events. Essentially, YouVersion Live is interactive digital message notes that allow the audience to:
take notes and save them online
read the Bible
ask questions and get answers during the message
do surveys anonymously via a YouVersion Live poll
get extra content via blog links, YouTube videos, and other resources
share the message with a friend
request prayer
give online
It is easy to create a YouVersion Live message guide. All a speaker has to do is drag and drop the features he wants to use into his template on a super-simple YouVersion Live admin area. All an audience member needs is a web-enabled phone, netbook, or laptop.
Already over 1.8 million iPhone users have YouVersion on their phone, which is equivalent to 1 in 27 iPhones. YouVersion’s rapid growth means your user base already exists. All you need to do is use YouVersion Live’s super-simple admin panel, and you can take your audience engagement to incredible new places.
YouVersion Live launches in October 2009. Until then, you can sign up for updates atYouVersion.com/live.
This came out recently on SermonCentral.com and I thought it was worth passing on. To read the 20 non-preaching websites for better preaching, go HERE.
I wrote a new article called “Lessons from a Secret Shopper” that will be coming out on SermonCentral.com in a couple of weeks.
I look forward to sharing it with you.
What are websites and resources that you use in message preparation?
Today I leave for 10 days straight. Boy will I miss my family! I fly to South Carolina this afternoon to speak at a worship conference Thursday through Saturday in Spartanburg, SC. I always enjoy this conference because it takes place 15 minutes from where I grew up and so I get to spend some time with my mom and sister. If you’re going to be at First Baptist Spartanburg, please stop by my class and say “hey”.
Then Saturday I fly from South Carolina to Birmingham, AL to join my new friends and team at ARC for a Church Planter Basic Training. From Saturday to Friday I’ll be involved with a week of intense training for church planters. I can’t wait!
Next week I’ll share with you a new project I’m doing with ARC that could involve YOU and your church. I’m pretty excited about it and hope you’ll be too.
Today is my first official work day with ARC (Association of Related Churches). I’m thrilled to begin working with this great, Kingdom-minded organization. My heart is strong for the Big “C” Church, as you know, and I’m pumped about working with a number of churches, church planters and leaders around the world.
What will I be doing? A number of things. My first project is to take their existing CPR (Church Planters Roundtable) – which meets at various churches throughout the country and build an online version of it, so that a potential church planter can stay at the comfort of his home and log in to take the CPR – which is one of the big 3 of the ARC process.
I’ll also be serving as a coach for church planters. Both pre-launch and post-launch, I’ll be helping, supporting, encouraging and challenging church planters as they are on their journey. I’ll also be involved in a number of other smaller projects, events and functions of ARC.
I’ll also start back doing some consulting with churches and organizations on the side, as well as writing and working on a couple of book projects I have on-deck.
Again, I’m honored to join Billy Hornsby and the ARC team and I hope you’ll get to know us. Whether you’re a potential church planter that is interested in planting through ARC or whether you’re an existing church that would like to partner with ARC to plant churches (that covers just about all of you) – I look forward to speaking with you and seeing what we can do together to build the Big “C” Church.
Just to recap: I’m no longer at Bent Tree. I’m beginning on staff with ARC. If you’re not familiar with ARC, read HERE. We’ll be eventually leaving Dallas, TX. This is big news. Please comment/respond and let me know you read this and know what’s going on in my life.
To the right, on the bottom left of my sponsors, you’ll see the new album from Hillsong United: Faith + Hope + Love. It comes out this week. Below you can check out one of the new songs thanks to Ben Arment.
From time to time I’ve referred to the ARC (Association of Related Churches) – a church planting organization that I’ve been working with a lot lately. I just returned from speaking at their BUG Conference. What you may not realize about ARC is all the great churches that partner with them.
What do Craig Groeschel and LifeChurch.tv, Mark Batterson and National Community Church, Chris Hodges and Church of the Highlands (remember they are the fastest growing church in the country), Greg Surratt and Seacoast Church, Jonathan Falwell and Thomas Road Baptist Church, Dino Rizzo and Healing Place Church, Matt Fry and C3 Church, Stovall Weems and Celebration Church and Rick Bezet of New Life Church all have in common? They are all ARC partners and choose to plant churches through the ARC.
I don’t know about you, but that’s an organization worth getting to know. I got to attend the ARC’s annual conference (All Access) back in April – it was awesome and can be seen on Daystar. I spoke at and attended their Bug Conference. I’m attending their CPR (Church Planters’ Roundtable) in September in Colorado Springs. I’m getting to see them real up close and personal and I like what I’m seeing.
I’ll share more about them in the near future, but I just wanted you to get to know them and explore some of their events and opportunities for growth. By the way, if you’re a church planter or about to plant a church: I want to hear from you! Give me a shout. If you’d like to know how your church can get involved and plant churches through ARC: Give me a shout.
This week VideoTeaching.com launched. This is actually a form of an idea I had about a year ago. I’ve had my eye on this project for the last 6 months and have been eagerly awaiting the launch.
I think this will be a great resources for pastors around the world. I do hope they will quickly add more messages and a few key speakers that are noticably absent (to me) – Rick Warren, Bill Hybels, Andy Stanley, Erwin McManus, Dave Ferguson, etc. I realize that their absence may not be the fault of LifeChurch.tv – it may be the speaker’s issues or preference, but I hope things change in the future and we see the addition of these high quality communicators.
In the near future, I’ll write more about my version of this idea and how I think a resource like this could be used. It will require more time and length. I think this just scratches the surface. Greater things are yet to come! I’ll share more later.
This came out recently on 
