Are you in Australia and involved in Christian ministry?

Check out this short video:

If you can’t see the video above, you can view it on YouTube here.

You can register for the conference here.

1. Video: ONE
2. Hillsong provides two lessons for welcoming visitors to church
3. It’s time to stop assuming people know
4. 8 posters to engage with people new to church
5. An idiot’s guide to church copyright

There’s lots of different journalling apps out there. Penzu is a particularly stylish and feature-rich option. Evernote could also be used very effectively for this purpose.

But I want to let you know about 280daily.

280daily is a tool to ‘sum up your day in 280 characters’. It’s really simple – choose the day you want to sum up:

And then type in your entry:

You can also attach a photo to your entry if you like. One nifty feature, is that 280daily will send you an email at 4pm if you haven’t entered anything in for the day – a good reminder to stick to the discipline!

280 characters doesn’t seem like much (perhaps because it isn’t!), but in my opinion, it’s more than enough. Unless you want to write an essay, the discipline in summarising in 280 characters forces you to focus on the big picture, and makes it far more likely that you’ll put pen to paper, so to speak.

They propose a raft of new features:

• Email in photos and entries.
• iPhone and Android app.
• Language translations.
• Ability to change the look and feel of 280daily.
• Book export – fully featured.
• Improve PDF export functionality – more control over appearance, layout and content.
• Improved photo support – better galleries and photo integration.

But to be honest, I’d be pushing to keep it simple. What 280daily does now, it does well.

Question

Do you keep a daily journal? What do you use? An online tool? A notebook?

I’m a big fan of Evernote. I’ve got 30 notebooks, and use it frequently to save articles and websites as I research for blog posts, talks, sermons and for resources to share with my church.

Evernote has many different uses – here’s a quick overview (the video says ‘Mac’, but it’s also available on phone, web and PC):

Evernote has just released an innovative app that enables Evernote to be used even more effectively as a study tool. It’s called Evernote Peek:

Learn more about Evernote Peek here.

Rune had 744 friends (according to Facebook). He observed that “it’s so easy to become friends today”. He wanted to discover who his true friends were. Take a look at this video where he explains his frustration with Facebook, and what he did about it:

How many of us have felt fake as we’ve posted content to Facebook, or wondered, as Rune did, about the people who are looking on?

You can discover more about this project on Rune’s website - arewefriends.org.

He’s also made available his ‘friendship kit‘, to discover whether your friends on Facebook, really are your friends. Do you think you’d use the kit?

The most tragic story I’ve heard about the nature of Facebook friendships, was that of Simone – who told her 1082 ‘friends’ on Facebook that she was going to end her life – and none of them did anything about it. No one needs friends like that.

“One who has unreliable friends soon comes to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.” – Proverbs 18:24

I spent the day yesterday speaking with students, teachers and parents at Wycliffe Christian School. The topic for the day was ‘online safety’, and I explored the dangers that are presented in a world that is increasingly online.

It was a privilege to spend the day at the school – thanks for having me.

I’ve put together a collection of resources on the topic of online safety, and will continue to add to it. My aim is for this to becoming a growing list of the best resources for online safety and integrity.

I also welcome any suggestions others have for quality resources to list on this page.

Check out the collection of resources here.