Fork In The Road Music » National Youth Workers Convention

Suggest Your Favorite Podcasts

Russell Martin — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 04:04:55 +0000

I was listening to music on my iPhone the other day and I noticed that there was one category empty…. Podcasts. I really hadn’t given much thought to podcasts until I took a trip down to Houston recently. On the way down I was tired of listening to music, but there was nothing on the radio. I stopped for dinner and began to browse through the podcasts in itunes. I downloaded several and had plenty to listen to the rest of the trip down, and back up.

The ones I started with were:

Andy Stanley Leadership Podcast- I really enjoy listening to Andy’s thoughts on leadership. The only thing I do not like is that this one only comes out once per month.

All About Worship Podcast- Wisdom Moon and the guys do a great job making an entertaining podcast. It contains artist interviews, reviews and just some good fun and conversation. Great for worship leaders.

Mars Hill Bible Church Podcast- Since hearing Rob Bell at a National Youth Workers Convention many years ago I have been challenged by what he has to say. Nice to be introduced to other great preachers from time to time.

Those are the podcasts that I started listening to but I know there are other great ones out there. So let me know! What do you listen to? Which ones inspire you, challenge you, or make you laugh?

It’s Time For Worship, Please Turn ON Your Cell Phone

Russell Martin — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 03:00:53 +0000

It seems that whenever we are constantly being reminded to turn off our cell phones when we go to public places like movie theaters, schools, and church. This weekend at National Youth Workers Convention at one of our general sessions we were asked to do exactly the opposite. There were several times that we were specifically asked to turn our phones on.

The first time was one of the coolest prayer experiences I have ever been a part of. The speaker would say something like, “Maybe you feel like you need to be filled up this week” and then asked those that agreed with the statement to turn their phone display on. What happened is that in the darkness we were able to see that there were others with the same struggles, while it still gave some sense of ambiguity. Each time a statement was made, thousands of lights appeared across the stadium.

The second was during a general session where we had three speakers. Each one was given 15 minutes to talk, and then we took 5 minutes to discuss what they spoke about. During that 5 minutes we were encouraged to text message questions to a number on the screen. At the end of the 5 minutes they used those questions for a Q&A session.

The final use of the phone was ongoing through twitter. Through monitoring twitter comments and sending my own I was able to interact with people sitting in various areas of the worship service, get their thoughts and respond. I was even able to follow one of the services we did not attend, getting photos, comments, sermon notes and more. (follow me on twitter @rgmmusic)

These all worked great in a large conference setting. What I am wondering though is how they could work in a smaller church setting of 100-500 people. Or would I be asking for trouble by encouraging people to turn their phones on during worship.

What ways have you used cell phones during your worship service?

What would concern you most about encouraging your congregation to turn ON their phone?

Worship Distractions-Temperature

Russell Martin — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 06:33:52 +0000

This past weekend I attended the National Youth Workers Convention in Nashville Tennessee. While there I was able to sit in the congregation while being led in worship by some awesome worship leaders like David Crowder, Mercy Me, Shane and Shane and Starfield. The music was awesome, the videos and screens were great, the stage was cool, and they sounded great, but one thing was definitely distracting. It was cold. It seemed that every general session with about 30 minutes the air kicked on and it got uncomfortably cold. It was so much so on one occasion I had to leave and go into the lobby.

So you may ask at this point why I would let something so insignificant as the temperature of the room bother me so. Well I am not sure but I know that it caused me to take my focus off of the music, the worship and to focus on the cold breeze on my back.

It made me aware that in my own worship service at my church that I need to pay attention to more than just the music, songs, screens, and stage. There are many things that can be distracting and many of them don’t have anything to do with the worship service itself.

Now I do have to say that I also feel a little guilty writing about the fact that I was distracted from worship by air conditioning when there are so many people who don’t have the freedom to worship that we have, much less a building, or air conditioning.

So I have two questions….

1. What other things have you found cause distractions in your worship services?

2. How should we react to people like me, who let something simple be a distraction to worship?

photo by Kristinn Nelson at CreativeMYK.com

National Youth Workers Convention- Part 1

Russell Martin — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 17:47:11 +0000

This weekend I am attending the National Youth Workers Convention in Nashville TN. I have attended many of these events in the past years, especially when I was the youth director, but now since I have moved into a different role, (I am a volunteer and work with the youth band) I am viewing this conference differently. I used to come with my seminars already chosen about being a youth director, or setting up a youth group, or the best games for youth groups. Now I am looking at things like the course I took yesterday on how to be a transformational leader, or spiritual disciplines, and things like that.

The thing that always awesome are the general sessions and times of worship and teaching that occur there. Yesterday they started off with Mercy Me, David Crowder, Joe Castillo (The sand art guy) and Frances Chan.

Well… we are about to head off to lunch and a super seminar. I hope to share some of the lessons learned with you in future posts. Oh.. and for all you twitter folk you can follow what’s going on by searching the tag #nywc.