I killed a podcast.

Today I listened to the Simply Youth Ministry Podcast and I think I killed it.

Doug and the "friends" hadn't really looked at the emails and it seemed they were pretty much reading them cold, on the air. At the very end, Doug said, "Here's one from Ken, he's a friend of ours and a PDYM mentor so I am sure this is safe to read..."

You see I had written this email as a joke and was being very sarcastic, and most likely knew it wouldn't be read on the air, but just by Josh and possibly Doug and it was a joke...but then they read it and the mood just died for the podcast. Oops.

Now I feel embarrassed, especially since I'll see them in a few months...

Student Ministry Class of 2008

This is the First Class I have seen from their first experience with the Youth Ministry. I just started at the church when they were entering 7th Grade! What an awesome experience!!!

Busy Weekend...

This last weekend was awesome, although it was a little crazy busy!

Friday I spent the whole day with one of our musicians (from Lakeside) at the Red Wing's Stanley Cup Parade. I really didn't have the time (as you may figure out later) but I thought it was a once in a lifetime oportunity and I convinced myself it was ministry (cause I was hanging out with one of my band members...)

The Sunday I not only led Worship, but also taught the message because it was the Sunday we dedicate to our student ministry. Also, I had to put together a video for our senior class (in a separate post after this)

In order for the day to not be the Ken Leslie Show, I wanted to make sure to invite some students up to talk, as well as other adult leaders in the ministry. That is super cool, but also requires a little bit of stress, becasue you don't really know if they are going to be prepared or do a good job.

Well, everything said, Sunday was great! Band was prepared, The students and other adult speakers were well prepared and relaxed, I even received some very positive responses on the message.

God is good.

Summer Calendar

The Student Ministry Summer Calendar has just been put to print and will be available in a few days for students.

I went for the simple details concept.  Not too much information, but enough to get someone excited about certain events.  Then hopefully they will seek out more information on the website, through a phone call, or even at church!

I would appreciate ANY comments (I mean really, any at all would be helpful!)

Countdown Video

Here's a video we used a week ago to start our service. No real point to it, other than its funny and gets the students into the service to actually check out the countdown and begin.

MediaShout or ProPresenter

First, if you don't know what those two things are, stop reading and go play atari or something...They are church presentation software packages.

My MediaShout Journey
So for about 5 years (wow!) we have been using MS. We started with 2.0, then 2.5, then bought the v3 upgrade, now run 3.5.5. Lots of upgrades over the years, and we have developed a few volunteers who run the program Sunday mornings. These volunteers are not MS experts, although they know and are comfortable with the program. HOWEVER, there have been many times that I wished MS would perform better, run .mov files, and simply be more reliable.

Then things changed...
About 6 moths ago, with the intentions of church growth, quality development, and becoming a portable church, we upgraded our 1.8 Ghz tower PC to a 2.4 Ghz Macbook Pro. 

Our setup now

So currently we run MediaShout using bootcamp on the mac and running winXP.  Things are fine, but I want to take the leap to propresenter and just use the Mac. However, I know my volunteers will require a whole bunch new training and might not feel initially comfortable with a mac.

I am sure we will make the change soon, but as of now, I am setting up both Media Shout and ProPresenter so I can get used to the latter.  Nothing like some extra work!

Swing Set 1 : Me 0

I spent the better half of this morning setting up my son's new swing set, about 3 hours to be exact. However, currently it only has 1 swing that is working. The slide is almost up, but I can't get the screws to fit in right. Then I tried hanging the glider and the pole was bent.

This swing set is making me frustrated...and Colin too!

Some ministry thoughts...

I've been trying to post some blogs, but every time I think of something to write about that has any significance, I post it to www.pdymblog.com instead.

Thats ok, because no one reads this and I am sure at least a hundred or so people read PBYMblog...