Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Yeah I could write about 5 posts for today. Lots to talk about but I"m gonna just be my ADD self and make it all one post. Yay.

So first a follow-up to my Young Adults Class. I really need a name for it because I hate "Young Adults" and "College and Careers." I also don't want something confusing. Whatever, I'll deal with that later. We did chapter 8 of Crazy Love last night and it went really well. We had a new girl that I've been trying to get into the class for a while. She is a Senior in the Youth group but doesn't really fit in there. She needs something more and I'm really glad she was able to make it last night. She got involved right away which is awesome because she normally hangs back in Youth. MY wife says I say awesome too much and started taking points away for saying it. She is right but I still like the word. I'm gonna start saying "frigintastic" instead. She will long for the days when everything was awesome.

Anyways, at the conclusion every decided they would be willing to try small accountability groups. Now I'm gonna research such things and try to get some general outlines, 2-3, and let the groups fill in the rest of the blanks themselves. If the girls want to make a lunch or shopping out of theirs good for them, if the guys want to shoot each other in the face with paintballs good for us. So long as there is accountability and not just a social group I'm pretty happy. It is frigintastic.

Speaking of frigintastic my t-shirt cannon is complete and it looks fan-frigintastic (which is the superlative of frigintastic). I need to pressure test it and launch test it but I think it should be fine. The weather isn't cooperating today but once I get the opportunity I'll hook it up and see if it blows apart. I'll be sure to video the whole thing and upload the video for your viewing pleasure.

I also wanted to talk about a really cool resource I've found out about. It is most useful for Youth worker types, but there are lots of other people out there that text message and so it is all around awesome. The service is called Tatango. It is a group texting service. Before I signed up for this I had my Youth and Young Adults in groups on my phone. Actually I had multiple groups for Youth, Leaders, Drama, ... If I needed to get a message out I sent it to the group but that could be quite a few texts that added up very quickly. I also had a few I couldn't text because their service charged them for texts from out of network. With this service I can send one text to the service number and it will resend it to the entire group, plus I can also log online and send texts that way.

It does have a small add at the end of the message but I'm willing to deal with that for a free service. If you deal with any kinds of groups like that you would want to mass text look into this. It is seriously awesome.

13 comments:

Marni said...

We're about to start a college class at our church. The hubs and I are going to lead it. Two questions:

1. When you come up with a cool name, will come up with two because we need one also.

2. Frigintastic is awesome (ha!). Can I use that too or do you have a patent pending?

Nick the Geek said...

1) If I come up with a good name feel free to use it or something similar. I've really been struggling with the name because I want to do more than just tag something cool sounding on it. I want to convey what the group is by the name. Very frustrating.

2)Frigintastic is available for use, but act now because I may change the license at any time ... blah blah legalese and retardation ... patent pending.

katdish said...

This video isn't going to be like the guy who almost blew his face off is it? I hope not.

Oh, I should probably go watch that again. That thing is frigintastic!

Nick the Geek said...

katdish,

That vid is awesome. If you were tweeting right now you would know the testing went perfectly, but my video needs to be redone. I can't possibly explain just how awesome it was firing the thing for the first time.

jasonS said...

Very cool. And I want to check out the texting service. Thanks!

Nick the Geek said...

I should have pointed out I got that text service by following Youth Specialties. I get tons of great stuff from them.

Stephanie Wetzel said...

Two class names I've known:

20/30 Vision - at my old church... where Charlie & I met

Water's Edge - at my current church

I can't wait to see the frigintastic t-shirt cannon!

Bethany said...

SeaTu! That's our group's name. It sounds like "C2" like, College and Careers, but that was boring, and we wanted an acronym. Acronymn? acro...whatever. So we spelled it out to be SeaTu and it stands for "Seekers Eagerly Addressing Today's Undercurrent"...undercurrent being the issues in today's society.

Nick the Geek said...

Steph,

20/30 Vision isn't too bad because it says what the class is all about, but Water's Edge is trendy (good) but not descriptive so you have to say, "I'm going to Water's Edge, which is for people in their 20s, want to come?" This is why I struggle so much with the name. I'm asking too much because I'm a little (read a lot) anal about things sometimes (read often).

Bethany,
Both SeaTu and C2 are goon names. I think they end up with the same problem of needing explanation to new comers, but it looks like a lot of thought went into SeaTu which makes it frigintastic if you ask me.

Helen said...

Did you consider asking the youth to help pick out a name? Of course, you give them guidelines, and you and the Senior pastor have to agree to the appropriateness of the name.

Nick the Geek said...

Helen,

It is for the 12-30 group and I have asked them. For some reason they are stumped too.

katdish said...

Oh, well! I don't know why the name didn't come to me sooner. Isn't it obvious? The name of your new group should be: BOB

"break out bible"
"borrow our bike"
"business out back"

Whatever...You should call it BOB. Now go spend some money on print ads and stationary before your wife talks you out of it.

wv: myess - "Myess, as a matter of fact our group is called BOB."

Nick the Geek said...

Personally I think it is a great name but my wife shot it down already. I try to name everything "bob." She never let's me.

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