Tag Archive - productivity

Save time and can email responses

December 17, 2009 in Christian Living, for Churches, Pastors

Are there some email responses that you send quite regularly? Perhaps you are replying to the same questions over and over again, for example:

  • What are the service times for your church?
  • What are the bank details to give to the church?
  • Can you add me to the list to receive the weekly email newsletter?
  • I’d like to join the church – how do I do this?
  • I want to become a Christian – how do I do this? (wouldn’t it be great if that were a common question!)

If you have ever had the need to write the answer to the same question twice, you might benefit from using Google’s canned responses. Launched in 2008, I only just discovered this handy tool a couple of week’s ago when a friend put me onto it.

Canned responses allows you to save a response to easily re-use it on another occasion. They save you from re-typing the email from scratch. They save you from having to dig around to find the response you gave to the same question three months ago.

Of course, you can adjust any of the response to customise them as you need, and you can add text before, after or in the middle of the canned response, but  simply having the pre-written response on-hand can be a real time-saver. Other uses of this tool including adding signatures to the bottom of emails, or creating templates for weekly roster reminders, or weekly emails to your Bible study group.

If you use a Mac, but don’t use email, you might like to try out a tool called TextExpander (explained in more detail, along with some other email tips, in ‘8 tips for email liberation‘).

But if you don’t use Gmail, perhaps it’s time you switched – there’s lots of benefits to using this tool to manage your email!

It’s easy to import your email to Google from another web-based email account (e.g. Hotmail), and even if you don’t want to use a Gmail account, you can send and receive your email, using the Gmail interface, by importing your mail settings.

Web apps for ministry – what do you use?

November 11, 2009 in Christian Living, for Churches, Pastors

This Saturday I’ll be presenting two seminars at the Create conference and I’d like to ask for your help. One of the seminars I’m presenting is entitled “I’m not cheap, I’m entrepreneurial”. At it, I’ll be sharing free or cheap tools to assist with ministry. I’ve got lots of ideas for apps that fit into this category (and I’ll be sharing 2-3 per category, plus some surprises!), but I’d like to hear your ideas. Below are some categories and examples – what tools do you use and recommend?

Will your church join LA city council?

November 5, 2009 in for Churches

Most churches and ministry organisations have two core technology tools – email and word processing (I’d add calendars to this list too, but most ministries and people in ministry probably aren’t using online calendars – yet!). Most churches and ministry organisations would use a desktop email client (e.g. Microsoft Outlook or Apple Mail), and Microsoft Office for word processing. Not only can these tools be expensive, in need of regular upgrading and specific to particular operating systems, there are some real benefits to using online tools for these tasks.

Last week, technology blogs Mashable and Cnet that the Los Angeles’ city council is about to start using Google Apps. For those unfamiliar, Google Apps is a set of tools provided by Google to assist organisations with communication, collaboration and publishing.

How does it work?

Most churches and ministry organisations will already have their own domain (e.g. www.stanglican.com). You can keep this domain and use Google to manage these common tasks:

  • Email – use Google’s email tool (Gmail) to manage your email. Your email address will remain the same (e.g. steve@stanglican.com), but there are added benefits such as awesome spam filtering, access to email wherever you have internet access, and a dedicated team working behind the scenes, 24/7/365 to make sure your email is always available. Here’s some more tips and benefits to using Gmail.
  • Calendars – use Google’s calendar tool (Google Calendar) to manage your schedule and collaborate with the schedules of others in your team/ministry/church. There are many benefits to not using a paper diary, but one of the most compelling for ministry is collaboration. Google Calendar will allow you to create multiple calendars, see who has what on when, allocate resources, find common meeting times, and publish (where appropriate, of course) particular calendars online for anyone to access. That’s a very brief sell – check out a tour with more of the features.
  • Documents – use Google’s document creation/management tool (Google Docs) to create documents, spreadsheets and presentations. You can import (eg. from Word/Excel/PowerPoint) and export to the same formats (and others) – i.e. you can maintain most of the benefits to using Microsoft Office and open documents others send you. Again, one of the key features is collaboration – Google Docs is a great platform for sharing documents and allowing others to work with you on particular documents, without the issues associated with emailing these around and hoping you’re working on the most current version. And importantly, you don’t need to be connected to the internet to access your documents.

There are other tools and benefits provided by the Google Apps service – all available free for non-profits (i.e. churches and most ministry organisations!) Learn more of the features of Google Apps, or sign-up.

Will your church or ministry organisation join LA city council?

5 (useful) links #17

September 1, 2009 in Links & Tips

Five websites and online resources to inspire, inform and enthuse.

  1. 20 simple productivity tools for bloggers. I’m a fan of TextExpander and Fluid.
  2. Bible events seen from Google Earth. “The images…use real satellite imagery to achieve the incredible effect.”
  3. Free album download. Phil Wickham offers his album ‘Singalong’ as a free download. h/t Hayley Neal.
  4. 20 non-preaching websites for better preaching. Most are US-specific, but not too hard to find a local equivalent where necessary.
  5. PhillipJensen.com. The Dean of St Andrew’s Cathedral gets his own website!

5 (useful) links #16

August 21, 2009 in Links & Tips

Five websites and online resources to inspire, inform and enthuse.

  1. The Twitter Guide Book. A comprehensive guide from Mashable.
  2. How President Obama spends his time. If you missed it, this relates to ‘You’re busy, but are you productive?‘
  3. 11 ways to use images poorly in slides. Some lessons for churches here?!
  4. 100 online tools for non-profits. Which of these does your ministry use?
  5. Why use royalty-free music. Good article, following the recent discussion on copyright and churches.

You’re busy, but are you productive?

August 13, 2009 in Christian Living, Pastors

I’m feeling convicted.

I’m often busy, but not as often busy doing what’s important.

I came to this conviction after reading C.J. Mahaney’s series on Biblical productivity. C.J. explains:

  • Busyness does not mean I am diligent
  • Busyness does not mean I am faithful
  • Busyness does not mean I am fruitful

Ouch.

And he has a word for the procrastinators amongst us. Here’s an insightful quote by Scottish preacher, Alexander MacLaren:

“No unwelcome tasks become any the less unwelcome by putting them off till tomorrow. It is only when they are behind us and done, that we begin to find that there is a sweetness to be tasted afterwards, and that the remembrance of unwelcome duties unhesitatingly done is welcome and pleasant. Accomplished, they are full of blessing, and there is a smile on their faces as they leave us. Undone, they stand threatening and disturbing our tranquility, and hindering our communion with God. If there be lying before you any bit of work from which you shrink, go straight up to it, and do it at once. The only way to get rid of it is to do it.”

C.J. comes to the conclusion that to be faithful, productive and fruitful for the glory of God, requires him to accomplish three things:

  1. determine my present God-given roles,
  2. determine specific, theologically informed goals, and
  3. transfer these goals into my schedule.

This series challenged me in a number of ways:

  • I have been challenged to consider the roles that God has placed me in (Christian, son, fiance, friend, MTS trainee – among others).
  • I have been challenged to set goals for these roles (C.J explains that his goals revolve around serving and surprising those with whom he interacts within those roles).
  • I’ve been challenged as I’ve realised that I am easily distracted by what is of secondary importance, and challenged to prioritise (i.e. make suitable time for) what is of primary importance. As C.J. puts it, just because I’m busy, doesn’t mean I’m devoted to what’s most important.
  • I’ve been challenged that my schedule for each week must reflect the goals that I have prayerfully considered, that are derived from the roles that God has given me.

The series ends with a great reminder – only God gets his to-do list done each day. We need that reminder.

And you, like me, might also benefit from reading this series. It’s an easy 36-page spread – I pray we might not just be busy, but also be faithful, productive and fruitful – honouring God with our time.

Read on…

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