Why You Should Use Buffer for Your Twitter Account

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Twitter has proven to be a great place to share interesting links and stories that I find online. I find the ability to share what I know with a group of people who are interested in similar topics to me to be very beneficial with my role as a missions communicator.

Buffer is a great application that I have been using lately that allows me to spread out the updates that I send on Twitter. I find that I usually find what I want to put on Twitter all at once, but I don’t want to sent it all out at the same time. With Buffer I am able to put the updates and links into a queue that are spread out and sent at pre-determined times. This helps to eliminate Twitter fatigue, with me sending a dozen updates almost all at once.

Buffer isn’t something I use for any of my real time updates about what I am doing right then and there, but for sharing links and stories it’s great.

In addition to an on-line interface Buffer has add ons for Chrome, Firefox, Safari and more. You are also able to send them an e-mail with a link and it will be automatically added to your twitter queue. This is especially useful if you are on a mobile device.

Personally I think that Buffer is a great addition to anyone using Twitter to share information.

As a bonus, Buffer can also give the impression that you are working more often that you may actually be working, but you didn’t hear that from me, and please don’t tell my boss I said it… 😉

Teaching Personal Finance and Financial Stewardship in Missions

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Coins and CashOne area that I am increasingly challenged in with regards to what we are teaching in our schools in Youth With A Mission (YWAM) is the area of personal finance, or financial stewardship. Debt is something that is crippling to missionaries and missions agencies when it comes to being released into what God has for them.

Even though personal and organisational debt is something that limits so many people in fulfilling God’s plan in their lives, it is not something that I have seen talked about much in teaching or schools in YWAM. Sure, there is a lot of talk and content about support raising for missions, but I have not seen nearly as much content created about personal financial stewardship.

Personal Finance and Financial Stewardship Training

There are many programs out there that can be implemented personally, or in our schools in YWAM. Two that I have been looking at are the Dave Ramsey Total Money Makeover, and more recently Lazarus at the Gate, an Economic Discipleship Guide.

Both of these programs are things that could be very easily implemented on our schools in YWAM, whether it be on the YWAM Discipleship Training School, or a school like YWAM Denver’s Phase II / School of Ministry Development (which does offer a section on Stewardship in their curriculum). They are also programs that could be implemented with regular staff training and equipping that should be constantly happening are all YWAM Centres.

Dave Ramsey, Total Money Makeover

This is a program that I am very familiar with and one that my wife and I are trying to implement in our own life. The centre of the plan is the seven baby steps:

  1. $1000 Emergency Fund
  2. Pay off all debt with the Debt Snowball
  3. 3 – 6 Months of expenses saved.
  4. 15% Retirement Savings
  5. College / Education Fund for Children
  6. Pay off home early
  7. Build wealth and give

In addition to teaching these seven steps in his book The Total Money Makeover, there are other teaching packages and programs that could fit very well within a missions setting.

Some of the different programs are Financial Peace University and Generation Change. Here is a video explaining Dave Ramsey’s Generation Change, which I think could fit very well into a program like the YWAM Discipleship Training School:

Generation change is geared towards youth groups, which could suit the discipleship training school audience.

The other, and possibly better option for missions training schools like those offered in YWAM, is Financial Peace University. Financial Peace University has been used successfully by churches, companies, communities and non-profits to help people learn how to control their money.

I find Financial Peace University for Non-Profit Organisations to be especially interesting for missions organisations. Below is the video specific to non-profits and how Financial Peace University has helped them with their students, staff and clients:

Certainly looks to me like something that could be part of a missionary training course…

Lazarus at the Gate, an Economic Discipleship Guide

Lazarus at the Gate is a small group discipleship experience designed to impact global poverty.

While the Dave Ramsey program is a commercial operation, Lazarus at the Gate is an open source curriculum designed to be used by small groups to explore what the Bible has to say about personal finance. There are numerous resources available from their web-site, Simple Living for Just Giving – Resources, including curriculum for adults, curriculum for students and a series of devotionals.

During the 12-sessions of the adult curriculum the participants are encouraged to make four different individual commitments:

  • Spend joyfully
  • Spend justly
  • Spend less
  • Give more

With the curriculum being open source there is nothing to stop the curriculum being rewritten from a missions perspective.

Lazarus at the Gate has the advantage over the Dave Ramsey material in that it is free and open source, but would require more work on the part of the facilitator to implement. The Dave Ramsey material has the huge advantage in the quality and breadth of material and resources provided with their different courses, including full training DVDs, CDs and more.

I think that either one could be a good option to implement in a missions training program.

What do we do now?

As missionaries personal finance is not something that we should take lightly. It is an area that the enemy can use to rob us of God’s desires for our lives. How we handle our personal finances shows a lot about our character and what we place value in.

  • What tools are you using to help with your personal finances?
  • Are there some tools that you can recommend to others?
  • Is your ministry centre helping to disciple your people in this area?

Let us know in the comments below…

Top photo courtesy epSos.de

Bringing the Message Home–War School

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One of the challenges that we have communicating about missions, ministry and the work going on in the field is bringing the message home. It’s one thing to watch or read stories from “distant  lands”, but it’s quite another to see the stories lived out in our own back-yard.

War School is a short film about Child Soldiers. It takes the traumatic plight of children forced to be child soldiers and brings it back into an an environment that we in the developed world know, elementary or middle school.

Warning, this video contains disturbing content and strong language. If you are watching in public I would recommend using headphones…

Seeing a story that is happening every day around the world, but in an environment that is not foreign to us, and one that we can relate to, allows us to understand the story in a much different and more powerful way. The challenge that we are presented with is how can we portray the ministry that we are doing in missions in a way that impacts the life of people viewing it and develops empathy in the lives of people who can make a difference…

Explaining Idiots to our Kids – The Vancouver Riots

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Caleb came home yesterday from school talking about the riots in Vancouver after The Canuck’s 7th game loss to the Boston Bruins. It was a despicable display of complete idiocy on the part of the “fans”, and somewhat of a challenge to explain to my son.

How do you explain to your kid why people act like that?

Proverbs is full of explanations for people acting like fools:

A fool gives full vent to his anger, but a wise man keeps himself under control. (Proverbs 29:11)

A fool shows his annoyance at once, but a prudent man overlooks an insult. (Proverbs 12:16)

We also read in James:

My dear brothers, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, for man’s anger does not bring about the righteous life that God desires. James 1:19-20

Most of us realise that the loss of the hockey game was just an excuse that the instigators of the riot used to start the riot, but how do you explain to your kid why some people feel the need to act with total disregard for other people and the law?

We read in Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians:

Do not be misled: “Bad company corrupts good character.” (1 Cor. 15:33)

Unfortunately in a situation like the Vancouver Riots we can see that a few bad apples caused many others to misbehave. This is something that we can highlight to our kids in encouraging them to be wise with who they hang out with, and where they spend their time.

How would you explain to your children why people act like this?

Photo souce: @latoya12

YWAM – Who is the Most Popular

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The Big Keep Getting Bigger

After reading this article about Google being sued for their search engine autocomplete results it got me thinking about who has the advantage in YWAM because of Google autocomplete. Although the results didn’t surprise me, I am disappointed as it’s another example of how the big keep getting bigger, to the disadvantage of the small Youth With a Mission Centres.

If I type “YWAM ” into Google here in Canada the autocomplete results that come up are:

  1. YWAM Kona
  2. YWAM Canada
  3. YWAM DTS
  4. YWAM Perth
  5. YWAM New Zealand

Google autocomplete clearly gives an advantage to two of YWAM’s largest missions Centres, YWAM Kona and YWAM Perth. Although there is nothing that can be done to counter this, it’s another frustrating development for the smaller YWAM Centres around the world who are forced to compete with larger, better known locations.

What can we do to help alleviate the disparity between the larger Youth With A Mission locations and the smaller locations around the world?

Update

Well, if the autocomplete wasn’t enough, now there is Instant Pages.

Update 2 – Thanks to Daniel K

This video given at TED Talk by Eli Pariser called Beware online “filter bubbles” brilliantly displays that I am talking about in the above article. It takes it a step above what I’m talking about though as it talks more about how the filtering works and how it can change the lens that we view the world through.