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What Kind of Checkin System Do You Use?

Jeremy
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4

I get this question fairly often. It’s one of those questions that children’s pastors and leaders ask each other.

The Database / Checkin System is BVCMS

I’ve been on the lookout for a full-featured, web-based database system for a while, however our youth and children’s ministry could not afford what the companies were charging. So we settled on local, internal networked based systems, but they never fully met our needs or expectations. I wasn’t looking for the best, I just wanted to be able to:

  1. Access information anywhere, via any web-enabled device
  2. Send emails out to various lists and ministries
  3. Have an easy, simple checkin process
  4. Be able to create user accounts for people to manage and update their own information
  5. Have an easy event registration system
  6. To top it all off, we wanted all of these various functions to talk to each other.

We were doing web-based registration. That’s easy. All it takes is  a simple web-form and the user-input gets emailed to whomever you choose. The problem with this is that our office still had to manually enter that emailed information into a registration document.

We were doing mass emailing through MailChimp… great, great email system… however we had to manage another database there. In order to use MailChimp we had to load emails from our on-site database into that system and then send out messages. It was tough keeping up with all the emails that were “unsubscribed” or “no longer working” etc.

We did have checkin systems before BVCMS, but they were incredibly cumbersome and complicated. I don’t know why, they were.

Enter BVCMS. This church management system provided ALL (and then some) what we were looking for in a database. And it was an easy decision to jump on board. One of the biggest reasons it was an easy decision was because the price was affordable for our youth and children’s ministry budget.

So if you are looking for an affordable and powerful online database (with a smooth checkin process built in) for your church, you should seriously look into BVCMS.

While I am promoting BVCMS, I get no $$ for doing this. BVCMS is an open-source software, which means the actual program is FREE (interesting, eh?). If you have an IT background, you can load and run this software at your own server expense. BVCMS offers a hosting option for churches that do not have professional IT departments, which is where the cost comes in. Because the program is open-sourced, the more people or churches who adopt BVCMS, the more everyone benefits. It’s kind of a self sustaining community that way!

Story of the Saint on a Plane

Jeremy
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3
Story of the Saint on a Plane

I forget about these stories until Amanda tells me: “You should write about ______.” Then I’ll go: “Oh yeah, I forgot about that.”

Here is one of those stories:

The situation: We were flying from Minneapolis, MN to Spokane, WA on an evening direct flight and Sari was a baby; probably around 6-7 months-old.

Back story: We had seemingly done the right thing as parents and had not started or fostered the habit of Sari sleeping in bed with us. She did great sleeping by herself in her crib at night. In fact, that’s what she preferred. Sari’s bedtime was around 9pm (after the 3 naps she had during the day).

Back to the situation: The flight was @ 9pm and would last just under 3 hours.

The problem: There are no cribs on a plane! Sari sleeps great in a crib, but there were no places to lay Sari down comfortably, so she let EVERYONE on the airplane know that she wasn’t thrilled with this situation. Amanda and I were trying desperately to contain Sari and soothe her and appease her and help her… but there was nothing doing… Sari was having none of this sleeping in Mom or Dad’s arms or on our laps.

10 minutes. Screaming. 25 minutes. Still screaming. 45 minutes. Super embarrassed and more screaming.

This girls had some lungs. And in a long metal tube, cruising at 30,000 feet, with people who desperately want to sleep and a little reprieve, Sari was granting no one any such wishes.

I can’t tell you how desperate we were and how frustrated. We tried every trick in the book. The flight attendants tried. We all failed. We were all at a loss on how to help soothe this troubled little baby and her obvious discomfort (and everyone else’s!!).

1 hour. Still screaming. 1:15. Is this ever going to end?

Enter the Saint: About an hour and a half into the flight, I’ve got Sari in my arms at the rear of the plane. I’m rocking back and forth in continued desperation to soothe young Sari. But I’m stressed and frustrated to the hilt!

Sitting in the back row, all by herself, was an older woman. If it’s okay that I say this: she was plump and squishy. That’s how I remember her.

She looked at me with extreme pity, then raised her hands in a gesture that meant: “Here, give her to me.”

A couple of thoughts ran through my head in a split second:

  1. Is this lady crazy? I’m not giving her my child.
  2. I think my child is crazy.
  3. This lady doesn’t look crazy.
  4. She’s doesn’t look dangerous.
  5. She can’t take my child and run… we’re on a plane!
  6. Okay, this doesn’t sound like a bad idea after all

I handed Sari to this woman and sat down in the aisle seat (she was in the window seat). Sari propped herself on this woman’s chest on all fours and her eyes were locked on to mine as if to say: “What do you think you’re doing?” But she wasn’t crying!!

The woman was running her hand from her head to her bottom, over and over again. This saint looked over at me and said: “I’m a Grandma. And we don’t care what other people think!”

The resolution: Within minutes Sari’s eyes were closed and she FINALLY relaxed, as did everyone else on the plane. For the next hour, Sari slept on this wonderful angel God had sent our way, while I slept two seats away.

I wish I would have got her name or phone number or Twitter handle or something because she saved our sanity that night on the plane. We will never forget, though, the compassion this woman exhibited to a desperate young couple with a child that was so stressed and worked up.

Our Family’s Spiritual Practices

Jeremy
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2
Our Family’s Spiritual Practices

We are not the perfect family nor the perfect parents by any means. I’m a recovering control freak. I’ve even lost my temper a few times (okay, more than a few times). I won’t mention what my wife is not perfect at… because that’s not my job! My kids tend to get hyper (because of their Dad sometimes) and not listen very well.

However, we think we do a few things right. I think we do a pretty good job (although there is always room for improvement) leading our children spiritually. We take this responsibility very seriously, as all parents should.

Here are some of our family’s spiritual practices that we engage in together:

  1. Read the Bible // I know the girls hear and interact with Bible stories at church on Sundays (they better or I’m not doing my job there!), but we feel that if Sunday mornings were their only stream of Biblical instruction then they would be spiritually anemic. Therefore, we read and act out and have fun with Bible stories at home. We have a couple of Bible story books we use that we bounce back and forth from. I don’t think it’s bad to bounce around the stories (meaning, you don’t have to go in order). We’ve found that at this age (3 and 5) that it’s okay to follow their interests, even if you’ve done the same story over and over again. There’s been a natural progression to reading a story a lot, and then going in order for a while. All to say, reading the Bible as a family is incredibly important.
  2. Serve together // While we don’t serve together in a formal way as a family, the girls help me with lots of different tasks around the church as well as at home with stuff. “Serving” doesn’t have to just be for spiritual reasons. Serving together could mean doing chores together and helping someone out. What draws the spiritual ramification is that the action is directed outwards and not inwards. Our family is serving together for the benefit of others and not always just ourselves.
  3. Go to church // This is an important discipline in the Mavis family. The root of this required practice goes back to when Jeremy didn’t go to church for a while in his early twenties and his life started to look like someone who didn’t go to church! Jeremy knows what it is like to not engage in this important practice and he wants to teach his family that this is something we do because it prevents many things. Besides, our children (at the moment) absolutely LOVE going to what they call “God’s House.”
  4. Pray // After we read the Bible we pray together as a family. Sometimes, if we weren’t able to read the Bible together, we pray with our girls individually.
  5. Teachable moments // Nothing speaks volumes than a miracle moment to impart truth and wisdom to your kids. When these moments present themselves, PLEASE take the time to stop what you are doing (pull the car over, pause dinner, or turn off the TV) and teach these important life principles. These moments are fleeting, so engage them as often as they present themselves.
  6. Good night “verse” // The girls will not let us leave the room until we have said the “verse.” I don’t know why they call it the “verse” because we didn’t call it that… Anyway, we ask them two questions: 1) Who loves you? To which they answer: “God, Mom and Dad” (and anyone else in the family they want to add); and 2) Why did God make you? To which they answer: “To love God and other people; relationship and friendship; and holiness” (we started with just love God and others, but have since added “relationship, friendship, and holiness”). It’s been amazing even in the last couple of weeks, how the girls are connecting things they do in life to these reasons that God has made them.
  7. Discipline // God disciplines those he loves, and so do our parents. We take discipline seriously in its intent to disciple, not merely to punish for a pet peeve or personal grievance. This is an important practice that leads to our kids looking more like Jesus and choosing the way of obedience and wisdom instead of the way of disobedience and folly.

Any practices your family engages in that you would add to this list?

What Does Your “Easter Eggstravaganza” Look Like?

Jeremy
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1

I’m often asked by other churches or children’s ministry leaders what we do for an outreach during Easter and how we do it. Here’s my typical answer:

Easter Eggstravaganza

The Easter Eggstravaganza starts @ 11am on the Saturday before Easter. Everyone starts in the sanctuary where we put on a brief program for the kids and their parents:

  • Our lead pastor sings some goofy songs on his guitar (which he is great at!!).
  • Then I share a story about the “Jesus of Easter” as a certain character (in the past I’ve done Peter, Roman Centurion, thief on the cross, an angel like Arnold Schwarzenegger…)
  • Then we separate the crowd into two groups for the egg hunt part: typically infants thru kindergarten as one group, then first thru grade 5-ish.

We have two separate areas for them to collect eggs–one for the younger (often inside if the weather is questionable, outside if the weather is exceptional) and one for the older (always outside… piles of snow and all sometimes!).

Every year we add more and more eggs. I think we’re up to around 6,000 eggs or so now! I have middle school students help me stuff eggs prior to the day (an annual tradition) as well as help spread them in the two areas on the morning of the event.

The egg hunt goes pretty quickly.

Then we have popcorn and juice in the gym for the participants to eat while they are counting their booty. We ask people to turn their plastic eggs back in so we can keep increasing the total from year to year (but that’s voluntary). This is a good time for me to walk around and meet people that I haven’t met before.

That’s it. Really simple. We require the parents to come with their kids. We have a start time, but no end time, because it might be done early, or it might be done late. Things tend to wind down around 11:45am.

We keep the programming time really short and engaging because the program is between them and the egg hunt, so we keep that in mind so we don’t frustrate parents or the kids unecessarily.

People love it! Especially the story part! We typically have around 500 people (kids and their families).

Stephen’s Speech and Stoning

Jeremy
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1

Stephen is described as a man full of the Holy Spirit and wisdom (Acts 6:3). He did “great wonders and miraculous signs among the people…[and] men began to argue with Stephen, but they could not stand up against his wisdom or the Spirit by whom he spoke” (Acts 6:8, 9-10).

Stephen was dragged before the Sanhedrin and gave an account of the Hebrew/Jewish people’s history. At the end he called them: “uncircumcised hearts and ears…who always resist the Holy Spirit” (Acts 7:51). To this the Sanhedrin were furious and rushed Stephen, dragged him out of the city and stoned him.

“On that day a great persecution broke out against the church at Jerusalem, and all except the apostles were scattered throughout Judea and Samaria” (Acts 8:1).

We threw paper “rocks” at a student who stood in for Stephen… it was great!

Stephen’s Speech and Stoning [y3_w30]

Story Lesson (303kb, pdf)
Audio File (12.4mb, mp3)
Video Link (3.25.12 @ vimeo.com)
Video Link (3.29.09 @ vimeo.com)

Sticky Teaching // What Sticks in the Brain

Jeremy
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4
Sticky Teaching // What Sticks in the Brain

Interesting infographic on how the brain interacts with input (i.e. teaching):

HT ym360
source Chris Lema

Internet: The Biggest Shift Since the Industrial Revolution

Jeremy
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2
Internet: The Biggest Shift Since the Industrial Revolution

These kind of figures always astound me:

The Biggest Shift

HT Youth Ministry Media

Mom, Dad… R U Listening?

Jeremy
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0
Mom, Dad… R U Listening?

Jonathan McKee has an interesting resource he’s working on called: “R U Listening?”

About “R U Listening?”:

We are asking thousands of teenagers across North America, “What advice would you give to your parents if you knew they would actually listen?” The responses are amazing… if you really listen. Listen in right here each week, where you’ll hear a teenage perspective and responses from parenting authors and speakers. R U Listening?

YouTube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/thesource4parents

HT Life in Student Ministry
source YouTube

World’s Largest Rope Swing

Jeremy
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1

This video has been making the rounds among the various blog feeds in my Google Reader. It’s pretty cool!

HT the overflow
source YouTube

Need Help w/ Your Facebook Profile Picture? [video tutorial]

Jeremy
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1

HT the overflow
source YouTube

Useful Keyboard Shortcuts | FREE Training Included!

Jeremy
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1

These are keyboard shortcuts for doing word processing or any kind of transferring of text, graphics, or elements in the computer world.

Whenever I’m “training” folks on how to interact with computers, I like to help establish a pattern or practice that transcends a particular program or application. For instance, you can access cut, copy and paste via the right-click of the mouse in certain programs, while that same right-click might produce different results in another program. Using the keyboard shortcuts highlighted above are almost universal.

There, you have been trained!

HT Seventy8Productions

Some Technology Boundaries

Jeremy
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8
Some Technology Boundaries

A little over a month ago, my wife and I sat down to create and agree to a set of boundaries around our use of technology.

Basically it was her telling me to get off my phone and pay attention to our family! While I tried to justify my actions because I mainly read articles on my phone (in other words I could understand her frustration if I was playing games all the time), she was right.

I want my two daughters to know their father as someone who will pay attention to them instead of stare at a brilliantly lit glass square that emits light, text and graphics all the time.

So here are our “technology boundaries”:

During weekdays, we cannot read, look, or interact with our phones after the girls wake up in the morning (usually around 7am for us) and before the girls go to bed (usually around 8pm for us). Yep, when the girls are awake, the goal is to pay attention to them. This doesn’t mean we can’t take a phone call, or look something up real quick. But it does mean that we set the tech device down (this includes laptop computers) and play with our children.

On the weekends, we allow ourselves around one hour of pursuing, reading, interacting, emailing, etc. per day. This can happen all at once or interspersed throughout the day. The intent is to give more leeway to read leisurely, while still being attentive to our family.

So far, this has been a great discipline for me. I definitely goof off with my girls a whole lot more than I did, which is good. However, I have not been able to keep up with the amount of reading I used to do on blogs and such. My Google Reader unread count is growing daily and I’m unable to keep up.

Oh well… blogs lose, but my kids win!

A great related article: Jesus Stole My Daddy…

So what about you? Are technology devices running your life or are you running it? Do your kids suffer from your inattention because technology takes your attention?

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