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The Homeless Blogger

October 11, 2011 — Leave a comment

Hello friends. My name is Kenny Conley and I’m the homeless blogger. What does that mean? Well, I have a blog over at childrensministryonline.com (BUT DON’T GO THERE). My blog is very sick with a nasty virus. Since she’s sick and slowly getting better, I don’t have a place to post new articles. I’m at the Kidmin Conference in Chicago and like always, I’ve got something to say… I just don’t have anyplace to say it. So, thanks to some good friends, they’re giving this homeless blogger a couch to sleep on and letting me finish off the carton of ice cream in the freezer. 

The Homeless Blogger: Making Connections

The other day I wrote about having a roommate at conferences because it is such a great opportunity to continue to network and connect. I have to admit though, the Kidmin conference was all about connecting and networking.j

First of all, Jim Wideman hit on this specifically. He shared how connecting with others is an integral part of his ministry. I think what some people might not get is that you can connect with others whether you lead a ministry of thousands or if you are a volunteer at a small church, I’ve actually been amazed by how many significant voices in the kidmin twitter feed and blogosphere are volunteers. Everyone has something to contribute… Don’t be silent.

Secondly, the kidmin conference was pretty intentional about helping people connect. Ey created spaces where people could connect in a way that was relevant. They had connect groups for those new to ministry, those feeling burnt out in ministry, those in mega churches, those leading multi-site ministry and many more. So, everyone had an option and many connected through this opportunity. Big win!

Lastly, Group has a specific philosophy. Every one of their products is R.E.A.L.

  • Relational
  • Experiential
  • Applicable
  • Learner-based

This was true of kidmin as well. This means that the breakouts included relational components. There was a lot of time for people to connect about topics important to them within the context of a breakout. Another Win!

When it comes to networking and connecting, kidmin championed that cause. Now it’s time to carry it out. I hope that I get to continue some conversations that started this weekend.

Thanks Jonathan for hosting my post. I think I might have dropped your toothbrush in your toilet while I was looking through for dental floss. Don’t worry though, I rinsed it off under hot water for a few minutes. Look for my next post by following my tweets at twitter.com/kennyconley

See past homeless blogger posts at the following sites:

Small Town Kidmin

Jenny Funderburke

Sam Luce

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Introducing the D6 Live Page

September 22, 2011 — Leave a comment

I’ve moved all the live blogging over to www.jonathancliff.com/d6live to avoid the multiple blog updates.

Get over there now and check it out!

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Second Chance Grace

May 6, 2011 — Leave a comment

All week I’ve shared the method behind how I prepare myself and my words for speaking to a crowd.  If you haven’t yet read up, then take the time to catch up now.  We had some great discussion.

The Opportunity to Speak

Preparing Myself to Speak

Remembering the Important Things when Speaking

How I Need to Get Better…and Quick!

At this point, I’d like to introduce you to a page that has been up for a few months now that you might have not noticed.  Up there at the top, and right here with a link you can go to a “Resources” page where you can take a listen to all that I have recently recorded in regards to myself speaking and writing.  I promise to not self-promote with regular blog posts, but instead to just throw what I have up there on the Resources Page.  Enjoy!

However, for this one-time moment and in the spirit of all we’ve discussed this week about Public Speaking let me throw out something I shared recently at my home church.  My pastor gave me a great opportunity recently, and I present it below for all your viewing pleasure.  Much of the material is from the reading I’ve done recently from “The Grace of God” by Andy Stanley, and I attempted to give credit where credit is due.

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ParentLife Magazine Winner

March 4, 2011 — 2 Comments

I wrote about the greatness of the new ParentLife Magazine, or more appropriately…the new redesign of ParentLife on Monday. If you haven’t read my thoughts, then be sure to head over to that post right now and read why you should consider an inaffordable subscription to a great parenting resource.

In that post, I also promised a one year subscription to one lucky commenter on the blog post.  I said that you could comment once a day for five days, and then I would randomly pick one of the comments for the prize.  And our winner is:

Kelly entered twice, and therefore doubled her chance of winning!  I personally know our winner this time around, and I can guarantee you that the prize could not go to a more wonderful family.  Enjoy the prize Kelly, and remember that if you’d like to see ParentLife for yourself then please go visit them today at www.lifeway.com/parentlife.

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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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