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Help for the frazzled girlsminister or girlsministry leader!

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I have great intentions of getting together with people for coffee. By the time I’m done with responsibilities on a Sunday or Wednesday, I have a handful of people that I know I need to touch base with over coffee or lunch.  The problem is sitting down to set up those meetings and get them in to my calendar. Anyone else have these problems?  I’ve tried countless scheduling programs but I am most excited about Tungle.  I even love it more after they just allowed me to select the days and hours to allow someone to set up meetings with me. There are several ways now that I can begin the process of connecting with those I have good intentions of getting together with.  1. I can send log into my Tungle account and select some days and times I’m available and send a request to emails I enter.  The recipients never have to register to Tungle to accept an appointment, and it even adds our meeting automatically to each other’s calendar.  2. I can send out my personal tungle link. Mine is

Tungle.me/Girlsminister

From this link, people can request times from my posted availability.  Tungle will then alert me to a request and ask me if I want to accept.  In addition, I can post my link on my blog, email, facebook—wherever…and if students, parents, or leaders want to contact me for a meeting–they can go ahead and go to my tungle.me link!  The amazing thing is that Tungle will not double book me so on Mondays, I can send out several meeting invites and the first people to respond get a meeting booked.  So far it has worked great!  Just passing it along to you guys.  What do you think? Could this be something you would use?

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When befriend…moves to unfriend. How to handle a digital diss.

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It’s not something I am proud of, but I did a search for someone that I needed to get in touch with the other day, and I knew that I had been facebook friends with them…but I couldn’t find them in my friends list.  I did another search and it finally clicked—I’ve been unfriended!!! Wow. I’ve heard of this, but it was still something that took me aback.  I found myself spiraling into a series of questions: “What did I do? How can I make this right? How do I respond to them in the real world? ” It was then that I stopped myself on that last question…In the words of my mother: “Whoa Nelly. Settle down there!”   Why was I having such a breakdown over this digital diss? Why was my digital ego so fragile? I realized that it truly is a crazy world when we can sever friendships without a word but merely a click of a button.  So how to we respond as Christians in a digital relationship? As I looked at that term that has developed on facebook for this action of digital dissing (UNFRIEND), I realized that the action in reverse is BEFRIEND.  When I am UNFRIENDED in the real world, my reaction should be to BEFRIEND. We should literally Proverbs 17:17 them.  (A friend loves at all times)  Therefore, when I am UNFRIENDED on facebook, I should still be a friend who loves at all times.  Even though I don’t understand why the unfriending happened…I still have a responsibility to love them—not slander them on facebook, not message them to say “I never liked you anyway”.  I find it very interesting that even The Urban Dictionary figured it out:

The oposite of befriending someone. When you unfriend someone you don’t necessarily become their enemy per say, but you are just no longer their friend, sorta like just distancing yourself from them until you befriend them again.

Well they kinda got it. At least they realized that Befriending is the opposite of Unfriending. So, should you experience a drive-by unfriending…or even if you see it coming…may you respond and teach others to respond as scripture tells us we should. Love at all times! Easier said than done, but hopefully it will be a reminder of what to do if an unfriending becomes a reality for you.

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Princess deconstruction

Some of my friends in ministry know that I have an on-going dialogue to challenge the princess perception problem that is seeping into our churches. So they sent me the following link deconstructing the Disney Princesses and Princes. I’m putting this up here just for conversation. They were being funny girl leaders (Liz and Amy) asking me to use this in our lifegroup studies but as I started looking at it, it was interesting. As Girls leaders, we need to be clear that as we begin to use the Princess label to our girls, we need to realize that their perception of a princess may be skewed as they reflect on the fairytale princess stories they grew up on. Their stories are very different from the way that the daughter’s of the King of King’s stories should go—don’t you think? tumblr_kr8nybgvqn1qzmvbao1_5001

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A New moon (Twilight) video cliff note edition.

twilighnewmoon Well it’s November. Not only is it “No-shave-mber”, it’s also the month many teenaged girls have been counting down the days for because it holds the release of the new Twilight Saga movie: New Moon.  Yes the anticipation has been building. You will start seeing the Twitter trending include New Moon and New Moon kissing scene on a regular basis.  But what is this movie all about?  What is this whole Team Edward and Team Jacob thing?  Well in this movie, Bella experiences a vampire dumping that sends her reeling into depression.  The things that Bella does to try to gain  closeness to Edward would have me send her to counseling, but that’s not what happens. She develops a friendship with Jacob that helps her limp through the Edwardless days, and begin to get mixed feelings about him as well–BUT there is always the pining for Edward. She literally stops her life and stops hanging out with friends…and in fact—finds that when she is almost killed, she hears Edward in her head.  Many of us have experienced the pain of a relationship ending, but it’s Bella’s way of dealing with it that makes me fearful that girls will allow their future dumpings to cause them to grieve in similar ways instead of finding healthy ways to move forward.  Stephanie Meyers has modeled the storyline to have a Romeo and Juliet-esque type of romance, and so many twi-hards realize this is the sad part of the twilight saga.  But you as a Mom, parent, youth worker, or friend may have opportunity to speak some hope or have some really good conversations about what happens when we do lose those friends or relationships.

What are some positive ways of dealing with that sort of loss? How have you felt like Bella, and how can you protect your heart from finding yourself in a similar sort of grieving?  We’ll have a discussion guide later in the month. Here’s is a cliff notes video synopsis of New Moon through the perspective of a sarcastic girls minister. It’s about 10 minutes but hopefully you will enjoy it.

Girlsminister on the road: A New Moon (Twilight) synopsis from Amy Jo Girardier on Vimeo.

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Mentoring In a Flash Card #2: Mirror Conversations

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Girlsminister.com has created a new resource called Mentoring in a flash(card) to help moms have some special moments in the margins of life with their daughter. Several of you have said you would be interested in receiving some additional “Mentoring-in-a-flash-cards” to distribute to moms, or to use for yourself. Click on the picture to below to download the pdf. All we ask is that you make sure and credit where you found it if you reprint or repost. If you missed the first one, click here.

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From the Girlsminister.com Mailbag: Freebie Girls Night Idea

mailbagJennifer Grether, Girls Ministry director from FBC Orlando, contacted me last week to share what they did with the L.Y.L.A.S Girl night idea that we posted here: L.Y.L.A.S Girl night idea

I asked if I could pass it along to the rest of our girlsminister.com  community and she was glad to share. Thanks Jennifer for letting us know what you did with the L.Y.L.A.S night and it looks like it turned out beautiful! Your pictures are amazing. Thanks for sharing Jennifer!  And if you have ideas or you have used something that has worked out well…PLEASE let us know. We’d love to share with the girlsminister.com community.  Also there are about 45 girls ministers, moms, and leaders starting to connect at www.mygirlsministry.com “The social network for girlsminister.com”.  So feel free to join and start some conversations there.  We have some great blogs that are featured on there as well.  Pam Gibbs from Lifeway.com/girlsministry is on there as well as some girls ministers from Texas—come see what you are missing out on!

FROM THE MAILBAG:

Thanks to your idea (at girlsminister.com), we just hosted a LYLAS girls night about two weeks ago and it was great! We had about 100 girls and over 20 volunteers show up! We changed some of the stations around, so I wanted to share those with you.   Jennifer Grethan FBC Girls Ministry Director

Stations:

1. L – “Love” – Love one another – At this station, we will focus on selflessness and humility as the key to love. Jesus showed his disciples selfless love by washing their feet, so at this station we will wash each other’s feet and paint toenails.
2. Y – “You” – You are unique – At this station, we will highlight the truth that God has given us individual gifts and has made us uniquely wonderful through a teambuilding exercise (human knot).
3. L – “Life” – Do life together – At this station, we will teach girls to make a simple and easy snack, enjoy some refreshments and ask some getting to know you questions.
4. A – “Ask” — Bring each other’s burdens to the Lord – At this station, girls will break down into groups of two or three, share prayer requests, and pray with each other.

L.Y.L.A.S event at FBC Orlando Girls Ministry
Getting her tribal paint

Getting her tribal paint

L.Y.L.A.S event at FBC Orlando Girls Ministry
human knot fbc orlando

human knot fbc orlando

human knot2 FBC orlando

human knot2 FBC orlando

LOVE station

LOVE station

hanging out in between stations

hanging out in between stations

sportin her L.Y.L.A.S tribal mark

sportin her L.Y.L.A.S tribal mark

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Mentoring In a Flash(Card) Freebie For Moms

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MENTORING IN A FLASH(CARD)

Today we are releasing free some mentoring helps for moms. Girlsminister.com has created a new resource called Mentoring in a flash(card) to help moms have some special moments in the margins of life with their daughter. Let us know if you like them and we’ll keep them coming. Click on the picture to the left to download the pdf. All we ask is that you make sure and credit where you found it if you reprint or repost.picture-4

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A free girlsministry database template

We’ve just made a template for girlsministers everywhere! It’s available to you if you have a gmail account. If you don’t have a gmail…I encourage you to get one just to use this database. You can customize it for your personal use. You can embed this form into your website or send a link in an email. All the information is sent to a spreadsheet that you host at your google docs account. Then you can export it to excel, pdf or other formats. Hope this is helpful for you! I used a customized form this past week as we sorted almost 200 girls into 17 lifegroups and it was extremely helpful to me. Enjoy! (click picture below to see the preview of the template.)

girlsministry database template

girlsministry database template

http://tiny.cc/girlsministrydata