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Archives For February 2011

Some ParentLife Love

February 28, 2011 — 16 Comments

I have a new sponsor at jonathancliff.com.  I’d like to introduce everybody to the greatness of the ParentLife magazine.  What?  You think you’ve heard of it before?  Well if you’ve run in any of the LifeWay circles of the past, then you might have seen a ParentLife magazine.  However, they’ve completely redesigned their cover, and done a massive overhaul to the content between the covers.  The folks over at LifeWay were kind enough to send over a free copy for myself to look through and I have to say that it is a really well done parenting magazine.

Here are some of the things I liked about ParentLife:

  • The cover is wild and makes you want look at it further.  It’s just a fun, inviting, humorous cover.  The people at ParentLife do things well, and the cover will show you that right off the bat.  (I’d also love to say that I love the texture of the paper used on the cover.  Not that it matters, but it’s different and I liked it!)

  • It’s relevant.  The material is extremely relevant and all the information is so easy to find.  I loved the age sections with pertinent information for each age of kid.
  • Along these same lines, it’s also all-encompassing.  There was an article for grandparents, single parents, divorced parents and their step-children, and even that rare breed of married couples living with their own children.  This would make a great hand-out resource to the families in my church.  Those with and/or without children.
  • It’s short and sweet.  I sometimes have the attention span of an 8 year old; yet I was able to enjoy this magazine.  It’s a rare thing, but there wasn’t an article that spanned more than 2 pages.  Every article was well written, but it was concise and begged for my attention with it’s short span.
  • It had great ideas.  It was chalked full of really easy-to-do things with my kids.  From bible study ideas for my 8 year old, to play-time ideas for my 7 year old, and interesting do around the house craft things for my 5 year old.  I walked away with ideas after reading it.  Not something I can say with every magazine I subscribe to.

So here’s the thing.  ParentLife has sent me a free magazine, and they are of course a site sponsor with purchased advertisement space on the side bar; but I really love their product.  I hope that you’ll take some time to read my advertiser Disclosure Statement, and you’ll read that I don’t let just any organization run ads on my site. ParentLife is something I believe in, and after looking at this new re-design my wheels are already spinning with ways I could use this with some of my new and visiting parents at Trinity.

ParentLife has even offered to giveaway an entire 12 month subscription to their magazine to one of my readers.  Yes, you read that right.  A FREE 12-month subscription!  There are a few 1,000 ways to run a blog contest, but I’m lazy and will make this totally random using Random.org to help me sort all the entries to find our winner.  So to enter I’ll le t you leave a comment right here on this blog post to be entered.  And with this post going out on Monday, I’ll let you leave a comment every day for 5 entries total.  So to recap, you have 5 days to leave a comment on 5 different days to get your name in the drawing up to 5 times.  Get it?

See you on Friday when I announce the winner of the free 12 month subscription to ParentLife.

We have our winner: http://www.jonathancliff.com/2011/03/parentlife-magazine-winner/

In the mean time take some blogging time to visit www.lifeway.com/parentlifeblog and read what the ParentLife people are producing for all the blog readers!  It’s gonna be a great week.  Now Go!

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The Beauty of Approachability

February 17, 2011 — 5 Comments

When I was 16 years go I got my first job busing tables at a Goldie’s Restaurant in my hometown.  This job involved removing half-eaten food from tables, waiters that wouldn’t share their tips, cleaning the bathrooms, and just about every other conceivable disgusting thing in the restaurant business.  But I’ve always remembered one thing from my 4 nights of employment.  (Are you surprised?  Of course I quit after 4 days!)

I guess I wasn’t exactly hiding my dissatisfaction with my chores, and my boss pulled me into his office to tell me to smile more.  I laughed at his request and then he got in my face and told me that to work for his restaurant I had to look approachable, and if I was walking around looking upset; that nobody would ever ask for my help…and then there was the potential that an unhappy customer might leave the restaurant.  That right there is some truth!

So fast forward almost 20 years and that advice still stands!  Every Sunday morning as I walk in and through the areas of my church, I’m interacting with a customer of sorts.  Not the kind of customer that is buying something, but the kind that has a need that needs to be filled.  I don’t know what those needs are, but I need to work to be as approachable as possible.  Sometimes it’s being approachable to tell someone where they can find a particular place on our campus.  Other times it’s being able to reward the bravery of a child that wants you to pray with them.

Here are the ways I work to always make people feel welcome.

  • Smile.  This is the simplest one.  Simply smile.  A simple smile always disarms even the most frustrated person.  And here’s a little secret about the power of a smile…it can cover whatever turmoil you may be going through in the moment.  Have you ever heard this saying, “Fake it, ’til you make it!”?  Just because you don’t feel like smiling, isn’t a good enough reason to frown!
  • Look Around. I work every weekend to not always look at myself, and what I’m going through during a busy weekend.  Instead, I take the time to look at what is around me.  Many times I’ve discovered I can help people by just seeing what they see.  Walking around and looking for those needs, is key to finding the needs I can meet.
  • Avoid Groups. By this I mean, that I avoid standing around in groups of cliques.  If you go to church you know what I mean.  I don’t hang out with the other pastors in the lobby, loiter in front of the nursery, or restrict myself to the guest connections counter.  I’m not rude, but I just never stay in one place very long.
  • Smile. Oh, did I already mention this one?

If you’re working at a church, and you’re not deliberately working to make yourself available to those that need you…then you’re missing one of your greatest callings!

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God’s Kids Worship: Easter Songs

February 15, 2011 — 10 Comments

Thank You for visiting jonathancliff.com in your search for Easter Music. I'd love to invite you to stay around the site and leave a few comments on anything that interest you. This is a great community of parents and people that love parents, join in with us!

I’ve reviewed them in the past, and now God’s Kids Worship is back with “A Big Basket of Easter Songs”. What is it? It’s literally a HUGE digital basket of Easter Songs on a DVD. If you’re looking for something to do for Easter, and you need music to make it happen; you might have just what you need with God’s Kids Worship. Check them out, and then see at the bottom of this post how you could receive your own copy for FREE!

These energized split-track arrangements will play in any standard DVD player; plus open the Mac & PC compatible video files in your computer display programs like MediaShout, EasyWorship, PowerPoint, Keynote and others. Includes reproducible lyric sheets, sheet music, and stereo audio files with a license to make rehearsal copies for performance.

• 15 energized split-track hymns & modern worship songs for kids and Easter
• all kids voices, all the time
• great looking music & lyrics video for DVD players or computer projection
• E-Z performances
• E-Z kids worship
• great for any time of year
• great for kids, K-8

Simply drop in & use for kids worship, or E-Z performances. With QuickStart™ DVD programming, you go straight to the song selection menu so you’re singing right away.

Songs (click on titles to see full-length streaming video example):
click here to see short examples of all songs

Alive, Alive
All Creatures Of Our God And King
Beautiful Savior
Hosanna Loud Hosanna
I Know That My Redeemer Lives
If I Don’t Praise Him (Luke 19:40)
Jesus Paid It All
Joyful Joyful, We Adore Thee
Nothing But The Blood (modern worship version)
O, Worship The King
Oh, How I Love Jesus
This Is My Father’s World
This Is The Way God Loved (John 3:16)
Were You There?
When I Survey The Wondrous Cross

 

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Save Money

February 9, 2011 — Leave a comment

I like money.  I like spending it.  I like saving it when I can.  I like good deals.  I like saving money.  I like families.  I like student ministries and children’s ministries and all church ministries.  I like saving money. I like the color orange. I like Georgia.  I like friends.  I like saving money.  I like planning ahead.  I like The Orange Conference.

If you’ve read this blog for any length of time, then you know that I often speak of Orange this and Orange that.  So you’re wondering what this is all about…but if you take the time to visit the Orange Webcast you can find out all you’d ever want to know in about 4 hours of a Webcast.  But if you want even more than that then it’s time that you start planning to attend The Orange Conference in Atlanta, GA.  I’ll be there.  I’ll be there with all of my favorite friends.

I mentioned earlier (a few time actually) that I really like saving money.  If you want to attend The Orange Conference and save $30 at the same time then get yourself registered before the February 17th.  And that’s not all.  If you register before the 17th, you also get  a $50 credit toward Orange curriculum. It’s a good deal.  I like good deals.

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Doing Hard Things

February 8, 2011 — 7 Comments

“It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace the new. But there is no real security in what is no longer meaningful. There is more security in the adventurous and exciting, for in movement there is life, and in change there is power.” -Alan Cohen

So where to begin? My family and I have made a pretty gigantic change in the past two weeks, and it’s something that I think is worth sharing.  You see, I have a pretty comfortable life.  I’m not claiming to spend my afternoons sipping iced tea beside a swimming pool; but my life is pretty great.  I’ve been married to my best friend, Starr, for over 12 years, and we’ve created this wonderful family to share life with. We live in a house we can afford, and drive two cars to shuttle around town.  My kids don’t have the latest and greatest of anything, but still have more than about 99% of the rest of the world’s population.

Life was moving along swimmingly, with all of us settled into a station of comfort and ease.  Then Starr and I began to get uncomfortable with how easy everything seemed to be.

When was the last time we stepped out in faith for something great?

How are we truly creating a better story for our family?

We preach, share, and teach family…family…family…, but how do we really live this out when not in the friendly confines of our church?

So we begin to look into something that we had always talked about.  Adoption.  We looked into it, but it didn’t feel immediate enough.  I have no doubt that it will happen down the road, but felt we needed something else in the moment we were living in. Then we thought of something that was so unbelievably scary, that it almost seemed crazy.  Fostering.  We began this journey some 6 months ago, with endless parenting classes; and doing whatever we had to do to secure our license.  Then two weeks ago, they arrived.

Two children that don’t look anything like my own, yet are in need of what my family has to offer.  Not what I have as a father to offer, or what Starr has to offer as a mother…but what our entire family could offer.  I’ve watched in amazement as my children have influenced these foster kids.  They are changing hearts with their kindness.

And it’s still a journey that will grow more and more with each day, but it never would have happened if we would have settled for the comfortable.  The desire to do hard things has changed our lives forever.  Sometimes in our fear of what the future could hold, we settel for the easy. But here’s the thing I’m learning.

Easy things don’t hold nearly the potential as doing hard things.

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