Technology: Okay, you have an iPad. Now what?

Tom Hammel / SoCal Network Assemblies of God / Irvine, California / thammel@socalnetwork.org

If you are anything like me, you love technology! But, figuring out how to make it work beyond watching Netflix and playing Candy Crush can sometimes be a bit perplexing. So, my mission is to figure out how to make technology serve me! Here are just a few of the ways I use my iPad to help streamline and hopefully be more effective in youth ministry

Keep Your Student Database Up To The Minute

I have found an amazing tool called MinHub Youth App. There are so many cool features that are useful, but a few of my favorites are:

• Cost – There are no ongoing subscription fees, (which is important for the youth ministry budget!)
• Fun – While a bit of time is needed for the initial set up, I love the “selfie” check-in process for students. The moment something is fun for kids to do they will be more consistent in doing it.
• Messaging – You can send something out to your whole database, or just to your leaders, or however you want to group your people.

I know that there are other tools out there, but this is a simple and economical one that sync’s to Dropbox so you can have multiple devices running the same database.

Write And Deliver Your Talk From Your iPad, Complete With Slideshow

This is a huge part of what we do as youth pastors, and there are lots of options for displaying your presentations with Keynote, PowerPoint, or ProPresenter.

Using JUST your iPad and the built-in Pages app, you can build an efficient and simple collection of sermon notes. Start with the page formatting. I like to set the margins to 0.12” on both sides and 0.49” for the top and bottom – which fills the entire page with the notes. Then, use a large font size (I use 23) and build your sermon with color coding for Scriptures, quotes, comments, announcements, and what your audience will see on the screens. Then export that document as a PDF into iBooks so that when your are presenting, you have a simple page-by-page view. Finally, iBooks keeps an archive on my bookshelf in case I need to, um… be ready in season and out!

And Finally, Social Media

Even in a world full of communication and connection, announcements still can’t seem to make it home! Social Media, with all of its trappings, can be…

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