4 Leadership Lessons from Moses

Exodus 17:8-9 The Amalekites came and attacked the Israelites at Rephidim. Moses said to Joshua, “Choose some of our men and go out to fight the Amalekites. Tomorrow I will stand on top of the hill with the staff of God in my hands.”

 

In these verses we find Moses and the Israelites attacked by the Amalekites.  If you continue reading the story, there are several things that we can learn from Moses and his leadership.

Moses had God with him

Moses took the staff of God with him.  Any time Moses faced a situation, or God wanted to do a miracle, the staff was there. Think back to the plagues, parting the Red Sea, and getting water from a rock. It was not that Moses had a magical staff. The staff was a symbol of God’s Power. Carrying the Staff of God was a reminder that God was with him.

• Leadership Lesson #1: A great leader does nothing without God present 

My notes from #cpc13 session on God’s Truth with @sheilawalsh

As promised, I am taking notes at the Childrens Pastor Conference. As this is my first conference with a iPad, so I am taking my notes with that, and will post them for you. Keep in mind, these are first draft notes, very raw. I hope they make sense, but keep in mind I have not processed anything. I hope to go back through to expand and add my own thoughts at a later time.

God is doing a new thing–Denomination walls are falling.  It does not matter, God is calling us to rise up

Isaiah 43 God wants us to know how much he loves us
We can’t pass on to others what we do not have ourselves
Sometimes we are overwhelmed by what we do not have, when all that really matters is what we do have

Initiative number 1
Imparting Gods truth
But what is that truth?
   1. We have a great God
   2. We have a real enemy
   3. We are not home yet

#1 We have a great God

Have we forgotten that God loves us? We hear it so much we become accustomed to it, do we ever forget it? Or stop believing it?

We cannot protect anyone from something that God allows.
Before someone can know God loves them or not, there is the fact that he died and rose again for them.

having canceled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross. And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross. (Colossians 2:14, 15 NIV84)

Jesus canceled the record of out sin.

#2 The enemy is not omniscient 

He is a liar, the father of lies.He brings lies to us, but he has no idea if we will fall for his tricks. He will keep trying, but he doesnt know the outcome. That is why we need to know God’s word against his schemes.

Anyone want FREE access to CM+?

If you are a part of children’s ministry at all there is a good chance you are familiar with cmconnect.org. If you are not, I highly suggest you check it out. It is a great place to share ideas, and the networking aspect is awesome.

This past week, Michael Chanley (creator of cmconnect) and team rolled out a great new training tool called CM+.

CMConnect+ provides an enhanced training group designed to network you with of community of leaders.

Members receive the following:

• access to a growing list of archived trainings (current value over $20)
• a 10 to 15 minute exclusive monthly video from a thought leader in Children’s Ministry
• exclusive weekly discussions hosted by INCM
• bi-monthly MP3 uploads from INCM ($96 annual value)

This content is designed to give members access to exclusive content for developing as a leader in Children’s Ministry. You will not only enhance your CMConnect experience, you’ll also improve your ability to lead in our unique calling!

 

So far there are several audio sessions from last years Children’s Pastors Conference (CPC).  I am very excited since I have not yet been able to attend one of these great annual conferences.  I am looking forward to listening and learning from some great leaders through the audio sessions. I also can’t wait to start the content provided for CMConnect+ members to earn a certificate in “The Basics of Children’s Ministry: The Five Initiatives of INCM.”  I have been told that this is just the beginning of the resources to be added to this group.

I have the special opportunity to give away 10 ‘free one month trial memberships’.  Since I am able to share this learning opportunity with you, I would like you to share something with me.  The first 10 people to comment below and share about a favorite learning experience will win a free month access. It could be your favorite teaching technique.  Or maybe your favorite learning memory from when you were in school. Share something and win!

Free Friday: Free (and sale) Apps for iPad/iPhone

Assuming you are one of the millions of people who own an iPhone or iPad, you know how easy it is to browse around the app store. It is not hard to find some way to spend your app store gift cards.
If you aren’t lucky enough to have a spare iTunes card laying around, you can try what I do to stretch your app dollars. I have found several websites that monitor the price of apps, and they will feature apps that go ‘on sale’ or even free.
If you want to go a step further, you can even sign up to receive emails from the sites to receive sale notification. I have enough junk mail, so I just visit the site directly. There are even apps that you can download to browse sale and free apps, but again, I prefer to visit the site directly.
http://www.iosnoops.com/

This is my favorite of the three because of the rating system. When you see an app you are interested in you can click to see a description. If you scroll down toward the bottom you will see “Our Verdict”. I have found the verdict to be pretty accurate.
The following two sites are very similar, but sometimes will feature different apps.
http://appshopper.com/
http://www.bestappsales.com/

As with anything, use your own discretion when purchasing/downloading apps. With hundreds of thousands of apps available, many of them are not of very good quality. Many times I have downloaded an app only to have to delete it after two minutes because it did not do what it was supposed to do.

What kind of apps do you use? Do you know any other sites to find sale or free apps? Leave a comment and let me know.

FamilyTalk ranks #18 on an Amazon best seller list!

You may have seen some earlier posts I wrote about Family Devotion times, or my book- FamilyTalk: a guide to family devotions.  Whether you have seen the posts or not, I have some exciting news to share.

After much reading, learning, and experimenting I finally formatted my book for Amazon.  The link went live on New Years Day, and after a few sales and several reviews from people that already had the print version, FamilyTalk ranked #18 on Amazon’s Best Sellers list for its category.  That means out of over 300 books in the category, it ranked #18 in it’s first day!

Check out FamilyTalk on Kindle!

That may not mean much to you, but that was very exciting for me.  It was not long after that I noticed it was #1 in the Hot New Releases for it’s category.

If you haven’t seen it yet, it is listed at a great price right now on Amazon.  If you have a Kindle, or a Kindle app on an ipad or iphone this would be a great investment for your family.  If you decide to get a copy, don’t forget to leave me a review!  And you are welcome to post your thoughts here too

Top Thoughts this Year

I was checking though some stats, and realized something.  Several months ago I posted (what I thought would be) my last post here as I moved all of my posts to my new site.  The funny thing is, because of the way different search engines work, this site often gets more traffic than my new site.  I put links here to my new site, but it seems not everyone followed the links, so I lost some of you in the process. Please consider following/subscribing on my new site, since I update that much more than I do here.

Since you may have missed some of my recent posts, I thought I would take a few minutes to share a few of the top posts from this year, many of them coming after I moved.

By far. my most popular post was “how to talk to your kids when tragedy strikes”

I posted this recently in response to the Connecticut elementary school shooting. I shared a few of my own thoughts, as well as links to many other resources to help you talk to your kids after a tragedy. I was also privileged to interview Wayne Stocks and Linda Ranson Jacobs on a special podcast.  They are both very experienced when it comes to helping kids through tragic events.  You can listen here.

Some other popular posts:

Questions to ask when in Leadership

If Christians were birds

5 classroom and behavior management tips and tricks

Laying a spiritual foundation in our kids

What is Family Ministry

I am considering posting more here as well as my new self hosted blog, but I ask you to consider subscribing over there to make sure you dont miss anything.

As always, thanks for reading, and feel free share your thoughts with a comment!

I’m moving!!!

Thanks to all of you that read along as I type some of my thoughts.  It is humbling to think that anyone would find my ramblings worth reading.  I appreciate each and every one of you.  And I would like to tell you of my big move!

I am moving my blog to pastorronbrooks.com

I have enjoyed my time on a free wordpress blog, but there are quite a few new things that I am learning that I can do on my own site that I cannot do with a free site.  All of my posts here have already transferred over.

I encourage you to connect with me at my new site.  I hope you will follow me over there.  You can follow me or sign up by email, just like you could here.  Please take a minute to subscribe or follow me over there.  I don’t want to lose our connection!  Take a look around the new site and let me know what you think.

 

Click to connect to my new home:   pastorronbrooks.com

CMLeaders: 2 Characteristics of an effective leader

Listening to all the different aspects of leadership over the two days of CMLeaders was great.  Reading through some notes, I did find some pieces that fit well together: pieces from multiple speakers.  One of the bigger pictures that I found could be called ‘Characteristics of a Good Leader’.

#1 A good leader pays attention to patterns

This works on tow different levels.  First, you need to be aware of the fact people are looking at you, and often imitating you.  I have a lot of experience working with kids, and this is so true.  The behavior pattern you model is the behavior pattern you will encourage.  If you are a high-strung, disorganized, paranoid person, the kids around you will tend to pick up on that and imitate your behavior.  On the other hand, if you model organization, thoughtfulness, kindness and any number of positive qualities, you will automatically enforce those qualities in the kids around you.

This is not only important when you are leading kids, but it holds true when leading adults as well.  If you complain, are disorganized, unhappy, that will trickle down through those under you, and it will be increasingly more difficult to keep them motivated.  If you remain positive, encouraging, uplifting, guess what.  That will permeate your team as well and it will become easier to lead your team.

Top Leadership quotes from CMLeaders

So I’ve had a little time to start processing everything from the CMLeaders conference.  If you weren’t there, I would highly recommend you attend next year.  I searched through my twitter account to find some of the quotes I posted during the conference.  I understand that sometimes a quote out of context may not mean much to you, but this list is just as much for my sake as it is yours.  At least this way I have all of my ‘top quotes’ in a single place.

Your devotional time determines your emotional time @craigjohnson5

Kids don’t need to love me, they need to know someone loves them @samluce

Help those u lead succeed and shine brighter than u do. @samluce

We need to get back to “Jesus is everything” @samluce

The value of a volunteer in the United States is $27.79 per hour. – Sheila Robinson

Thoughts from CMLeaders conference

I just got back from the very first CMLeaders conference, put on by INCM (International Network of Children’s Ministry).  It was a GREAT experience.  As expected, the quality of speakers was top-notch.  I walk away challenged to not only be a better leader, but a better follower as well.  I have just started to review and begin to process my 25 pages of notes.

The structure of the conference was great.  There were no breakout sessions, only large group ‘TEDTalk’ style sessions.  This was nice because I did not have to worry about choosing the wrong session or wondering what I would miss out on in the break out group I didn’t go to.