Archives For Tech

January 2012 Update

jay —  January 30, 2012  Leave a comment

Passionate about tools.

We feel very fortunate. The positions that God has led us to over the years have overlapped well with our own skills and passions. One of those things for me (Jayson) is that people would use the available tools and resources to the fullest — especially in proclaiming the Gospel!

With the JESUS Film, that means that as we develop applications and tools, I want to make sure we’re creating things that people can actually use, not just flashy useless things.

Some things for you.

I also want our partners to also be able to make the best use of the resources out there. For those with an Android or Apple smartphone, search for an application called God Tools. This app puts great evangelism tools in your pocket — the tried-and-true Four Spiritual Laws in 3 forms, and one for struggling Christians on the power of the Holy Spirit in a believer’s life.

If you don’t have a “smart phone”, let me suggest two Bible tools that do have phone apps, but are available on your computer alone: BlueLetterBible.org and ESVBible.org. Blue Letter Bible has just about everything one could want for personal study — 18 versions, word-by-word concordance, commentaries and more. The ESV Bible online offers a way to keep notes, free audio Bible, devotional readings and optional add-on Greek & Hebrew study tools.

About your church: it should be easy for people to find out inf
rmation — at very least service times, an address, and a way to reach leaders by phone or email. If someone searches your church’s name in your town the first result should be a page with its information on it. This is the contemporary equivalent of having a sign by your building.

The easiest way to get a website started is WordPress.com. Their basic pages are free and with plenty of tutorials to get you started. If your church wants their own “.com” site, it will cost a mere $27 a year. A pretty low hurdle!

We see our ministry as not only to our students, neighbors or people through the showing of the JESUS Film, but also to you who partner with us with prayer and/or finances. Please let us know if you ever have questions, how we can be praying for you, or other ways we can care for you!

Pray For

  • We’ve set a moving-to-Florida date of March 15. Pray that we can find the right housing for our family.
  • We need about $315 of monthly support before Jayson can report to his team. Pray that it would come quickly.
  • Jayson is traveling to Austin for a tech- conference in March. Pray for safe travel and lots of learning!
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June 2010 Update

jay —  June 4, 2010  Leave a comment

Creation Festival

In the past 7 years that we’ve been with Campus Crusade, we’ve had a lot of ideas, one of which I have shared with some of you. Every year, there are a number of Christian music and arts festivals around the country. When I had the chance to go to some in college, I remember thinking it odd that organizations like ours didn’t have booths to connect interested youth with movements at their schools. This summer we get to help move in that direction! From June 28 – July 3 we’ll join another staff member and 4 students in Mt. Union, PA to invite college students to partner with us to reach their campuses. Last year was the first for anything like this and the result was 8 new movements in our region! So, if you’re attending Creation ‘10, stop by our booth and say hi!

Jobs!

In anticipating our move to Orlando, we’ve been eagerly speculating what our roles will be upon arrival. During our application process for the program in March, we outlined what kind of things we enjoy, wanted to learn, and felt prepared to do. Just last week we heard back from the placement team! And (drum roll…) our job titles will be as follows:

  • Jayson: Content Manager for StaffWeb (All-Staff Intranet Site)
  • Carrie: Campus Minitry Media Lab Project Manager

While we’re still figuring out exactly what those words mean, the small glimpses of have been both intimidating and invigorating. Jayson will be helping staff all over the world access vital information ranging from legal issues to encouragement from our senior leadership. Carrie will be helping the teams that design the media (everything from conference ads to websites) that engage students and partners with the heart and vision of our ministry.

We’re trusting the Lord that the coming year will be fruitful for our own growth as well as that of His kingdom. Thank you again for everything you do to make it possible for us to be here!

Please Pray For:

  • Our times in the Word. As we step into roles that we feel unprepared for, 2 Timothy reminds us that it is used to, “equip his people to do every good work.”
  • Every weekend in June has one or both of us out of town. Please pray for rest in our home when we are able to be here & strength while we’re not.
  • For the students’ summer Bible study that starts next Tuesday.
Grace & Peace,
Jayson & Carrie
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Great and Ordinary Impact

jay —  July 23, 2009  Leave a comment

One of the things that we (Campus Crusade for Christ) has been talking about lately has been the idea of “sending” every student that is involved in our movements. This doesn’t sound new on the surface, but there is a significant difference – our definition of sent.

In the past “sending” was one of two things, coming on staff or into some other vocational ministry. This definition was not something that we necessarily said out loud, but it was something that did come through often to students who were involved in our movements. I remember feeling this when I was a student – this was easier for me since I was planning on coming onto staff with Campus Crusade.

The was this is changing is powerful – sent is not what you do for your pay, but whether you see yourself as someone who represents Christ in a missional way where you are.

Something I want to say to all of you who are supporting us: you are sent laborers! God has called each of you to make an impact by representing him and sharing the Gospel where you are; it is not something that is reserved for pastors or ministers. You are missionaries! You are ministers! You are ambassadors from Jesus to your family, neighbors, co-workers and friends.

Yesterday, Holly Sheldon, a staff member who spent many years in East Asia and is now spearheading the 100% Sent push, shared 5 things that hold up ordinary Christians from having great impacts over time. They are:

  • Kingdom vision and context.
  • A Team
  • A Plan
  • Ongoing Equipping
  • A Coach or a Receiving Partner

Kingdom Vision and Context

Every Christian needs to have a vision for Christ’s Kingdom and it’s preeminence over all things. If we see it as an add-on to the rest of life we’ll fail to live up to the call of the Great Commission that is on our lives. We have to have a mental context of the Gospel going to every tribe, tongue, nation, town, villiage, crossroad, valley, county, city, church, sub-division and family… you are a missionary of the Kingdom somewhere.

A Team

Who are your partners in reaching your circle? Is it your spouse? Someone else in your church or small group? Do it with someone!

A Plan

Do you kow where you’re aiming with the Gospel? What are you going to do to help people hear the call and message of the gracious forgiveness of God? How will you speak to them about the deadly ramifications of sin and how Christ has worked to free them from it?

Will you hold a Bible study that you’ll be intentional about inviting people to? What passage will you study (don’t do Revelation)?

Will you have dinner parties that will be intentional places to mix your friends who are believers with your friends who aren’t? (Bring your team!)

Ongoing Equipping

What are you doing to expand the ways that you are able to express and explain the Gospel? Are you going to conferences to learn apologetics better? Are you taking the time to learn how the culture is changing and how we need to react to it or change with it? Are you reading books like UnChristian, The Reason for God, or Come Help Change the World? Keep growing in your equipping!

A Coach or a Receiving Partner

Do you have someone who is helping you grow, holding you accountable or coaching you to try new things? This will usually be someone outside of your situation, someone you look up to, someone that knows you well and wants to see your grow and be fruitful through the power of the Holy Spirit. Perhaps God is calling you to go somewhere – who are you working with who can coach you from within the culture or the location you’re going to.

Also, if God calls you to go, please let us know! We want to support you in prayer and perhaps financially. We’d love to return the favor!

Keep praying for us while we’re out here in Ft. Collins, CO at the US Staff conference. If you want to get an idea of what’s going on you can follow the Twitter feed of people responding to the talks and events by searching for #csu09ccc – a link is here: http://twubs.com/csu09ccc. You might see a lot of me on there. I am helping to lead the Social Networking team.

Thank you!

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Podcasts to Encourage You

jay —  February 27, 2008  Leave a comment

One of the things that I look forward to as I take the DC Metro System (buses and subway) to get to campus is the time to learn, both from reading and by listening to “podcasts”. For those who don’t know, podcasts are syndicated shows that you can download and listen to on an MP3 player… they’re like radio shows that you can listen to any time. There are a lot of them that I like to listen to from news and politics to sermons and Christian radio shows… even talks from conferences!

Today, as I was listening to a podcast that Campus Crusade for Christ puts out to encourage and empower people to share their faith with their friends and neighbors, I decided that I would share how to take advantage of this with all of you!

iTunes LogoFirst off, you’re going to need a music player on your computer that can download podcasts… my suggestion is a program from Apple called iTunes (don’t worry, it works with a Windows computer). You can get it from iTunes.com.

After you download it and install it, open up iTunes and click on the “iTunes Store” link.

iTunes Store Button

After the page loads you’ll have a lot of options in front of you, let’s start by searching for Cru’s podcast on reaching out to your friends, called the “Overflow Show”. To do that, go to the top right and type in “Campus Crusade for Christ” in the Search iTunes Store box and hit Enter.

iTunes Search

It should bring up a page with a number of different options, including “Campus Crusade Today” as well as the “Overflow Show”, click the subscribe button next to the Overflow Show (or you can click on the logo for more information).

Overflow Subscribe

When you click the button it may or may not take you to your “Podcast” screen, if it does not click on Podcasts on the main menu underneath Music. It should now look something like this:

Downloading the Latest Episode

If it’s just showing the title Overflow Show click the gray arrow next to it to show all of the episodes. If you want to download all of them, click the Get All button. Notice the orange circling arrow, that means that it’s already downloading the newest episode! It should be ready listen to pretty soon (depending on your internet connection speed)! If you notice, there’s now also something on the menu to the right that says Downloads and has a similar spinning arrow from now on when you start iTunes up it will check to see if there are new episodes of your podcast and try to download them, this will let you know how many new episodes of podcasts it is currently downloading.

Now, if you want to try other podcasts that are listed in the iTunes program click on the iTunes Store button again and it will take you back to the last page you were at. You have a few options…

See All You can click the See All button and see other podcasts that were found under the “Campus Crusade for Christ” category (or you could look at the list on the bottom – for those of you in Central PA area, there are even some of the talks from Penn State’s Cru movement).

See All You could go back to the main page and browse through the podcasts and look for other ones you might like.

iTunes Store

Sometimes you might run across a link for a podcast on a webpage, often when you click on it your iTunes will start up automatically and it will subscribe you to the podcast. Such is the case with the talks from our recent RADIATE07 (formerly known as Christmas Conference), I took the audio from the talks and uploaded them as a podcast and you can subscribe to them using this link:

RADIATE07 Podcast

If you have an iPod or another MP3 player you can now load them onto it (follow the instructions that came with your MP3 player) and listen to them wherever you go. You can also listen to them on your computer or burn them onto CDs to take with you in the car. Have fun with your new podcasts, and let me suggest some of the ones that encourage me (just for the record, I don’t necessarily agree with everything in the podcasts, but I find myself encouraged to seek God’s face because of them often); search for them in iTunes:

Campus Crusade Today
Grove City Alliance Church
Mars Hill Bible Church
McLane Church – Edinboro
National Community Church Audio Podcast
Overflow Show
SermonIndex.net Classics Podcast
Veritas Media

I hope this encourages you and gives you a new way to learn and grow in your walk with Christ!

Grace & Peace,
Jayson

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