Initial Volunteer Assessment

[FREE] Initial Volunteer Assessment Sheet

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Working in a military ministry that has military families always moving, our hunt for volunteers is never-ending. We love to put out our feelers to always know who has what talents and how interested they are in serving within our ministry. Half the time, people do not know what youth ministries need which inspired me to put together this initial volunteer assessment sheet. Below is what we look for and at the bottom is the download for the WORD document. Let us know what you think of it.

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depression

Youth Workers With Depression

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I have something I want to make public and have been holding on to this secret for five years of my life. I have depression. For those that are fortunate enough to not have to deal with this situation, simply telling other people that you have this is a HUGE deal. Of course, I have let a handful of people in my life know before this, but you reading this right now are the first beyond my close circle of friends.

If you are a fellow youth worker that knows they have depression or suspects they may be facing it, you are in similar company. We need people in our lives to help support us and in a ministry that takes a ton of effort and receives little praise or respect, your career can actually hurt you emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. We want to offer you help, so here are a number of things youth workers with depression should be doing:

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google+ splash page

Guidelines For Hosting A Google+ Hangout

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This week we hosted our second Google+ Hangout and it was quite a success. Our discussion for the month was on the topic of “How to use social media well in ministry, including: Google+, Facebook, and Twitter.” While nothing new was brought up as ideas for how to use social media in ministry, the people had some great questions that I was able to answer for them that really allowed them to feel more comfortable with how to use social media.

Google+ Hangout is a completely new concept not only for Google, but for social media in general. There is minimal experience among social media users with being able to have a video chat with multiple people. So with two hangouts under our belt, we want to offer four guidelines to you if you plan to host your own guidelines so that you can have as few hiccups as possible.

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happy valentines day

Interactive Valentine’s Day Word Cloud

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Today is one of the most “important” days in any romantic relationship, be it dating, young love, or seasoned married people. Valentine’s Day fuels the chocolate, flower, and Hallmark industries every year. This year, with a baby on the way, I decided to go more of a sentimental route with my gift instead of getting her too much chocolate that she would not be able to finish until after she has the baby.

I found this great web app called Tagul that can transform text or a list of words into word clouds of various shapes. It gives you the option to not only pick several shapes, but also change the colors and even has an interactive web api that allows you to copy and paste html onto your website. Below is my Valentine’s Day word cloud for my wife.

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google image search

Untapped Blogging Potential: Images

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We did a fun post two Fridays ago of a goofy Star Wars Valentine’s card mocking the awkward kiss between Luke and Leia before they knew they were siblings. I simply loved the card and it seems that you guys do too.

Last night I found a little bit of a surprise on the Google Analytics. We had more than twice the views for that Valentine’s Day post than either of the new posts that went live today. Digging a little deeper, I found that most of the incoming traffic to that post came from Google’s Image Search today. What untapped potential.

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partners in ministry

Partnering In Ministry

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Last night, I had the opportunity go before a group of Young Life leaders in the local Colorado Springs area to talk about how we could partner together to reach every student for Christ. In the few minutes that I had, I shared my deep passion for working with these military teens, the crisis these teens face constantly, and how the Young Life leaders could assist. The pitch was simple, I want them to find out which teens were apart of a military family and if they had to have military-specific conversations with them, to call me if they needed help.

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blueprint

The Redesign Is Complete

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Two months ago, we announced some redesign changes that would be coming along to seventy8Productions. We intended for everything to be completed in January and more than twice the desired time later, we are now finished. Some of the work took longer than anticipated due to a lack of resources or simple mistakes on our part, but in the end, we are happy with the results!

Below are the changes we made to our blog, including one that we decided to remove from the list.

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how to live blog at a conference

How To LIVE Blog At A Conference

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Last week, we did a lot of live blogging for the Youth for Christ MidWinter. After the conference was over, it was suggested that we setup a how-to for live blogging so that we can replicate this at our regional conferences held all over the United States. So here are several tips on what you would need to do to have a successful live blog at a conference.

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youth for christ midwinter

Reflecting on YFC’s 2012 MidWinter Conference

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Youth for Christ’s MidWinter is my favorite part of being in this organization. You saw all of the activity we had with live blogging and interviewing the general session speakers through this blog and it was a blast. But we wanted to sit down and reflect on it to see how we can press on in the future. Here are three good and bad parts of the conference that we will take forward in future MidWinters.

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