Random Thoughts

IGTV Youth Pastor

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So I am trying to figure out this whole IGTV thing. Instagram’s new long form video platform hooked me with of all things a trailer for Aquaman (a movie I am not even all that excited about seeing). The fact that they had recut the trailer so that it fit in vertical instead of horizontal format intrigued me and opened my eyes to a whole different world of vertical video.

So I thought I would try my hand at a regular feature on IGTV which I am calling the IGTV Youth Pastor. I am still working with the tools and things are not quite up for public consumption yet.

If you are interested in checking out IGTV or using it here are some things I have discovered.

  1. There is no good way to search for anything other than usernames. So if you are making content about the Bible or about cooking or whatever and you instagram name doesn’t contain those things people aren’t going to be able to find it.
  2. My “suggested videos” that autoplay when I open up IGTV are trash. Not only that they are trashy and require that I immediately turn to something else so that I don’t offend myself or those around me. I currently don’t know how to fix this.
  3. To try and fight that I have been following more “official” pages in hopes that I can get a slightly less “people booty dancing” greeting every time I open up the service.
  4. Vertical video is a fun challenge to edit. I have been using Videoleap to edit the videos. I am sure I could do more elaborate things in Premiere, but right now I am trying to get everything made on my phone. It has been an interesting challeng.
  5. NO ONE and I mean NO ONE I know has any idea what IGTV is. Every time I tell people I am making videos for it they look at me like I have 2 heads.

All in all it has been a fun experiment. It feels like the early days of YouTube when it was sort of a crap shoot what you would get and there was a place for every weird thing on the internet on the front page.

Maybe I will find a way to use it for ministry one of these days.

A Break from Extremes

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A Break from Extremes

So last week I was at kid’s camp (which in and of itself is a remarkable thing and should be discussed, but that will be later). At camp I didn’t spend a whole lot of time on Twitter and Facebook. I would spend the morning checking out a couple of headlines, but I wouldn’t pull out my phone all day and read through my feeds.

It was about the 3rd day when I realized that unplugging for that stuff actually lowered my stress level.

You see my feeds are interesting. My Facebook feed is primarily people from church life and so it runs very, very conservative. The stress I get from there mostly is the stress that comes when someone you respect posts a subtly racists picture with a whole bunch of facts that actually aren’t facts and I am left trying to decide if I should explain the truth to them.

My twitter feed is actually very liberal. I tend to follow a bunch of celebrities, media personalities, and new organizations. So this means that it leans further left. The stress there comes mainly from feeling like I can’t fix any of the problems and that as a Christian I feel this deep desire to help people who are in pain, and there are a whole lot of people who are upset and angry. My stress also comes from the fact that I believe (even though I know it isn’t true) that the right words and right argument can make a difference and help any situation. So I get stressed trying to find the words to say to make situations better.

But honestly after being away from it all a week I realized just how much those feeds add unneeded stress to my life. In the end I can’t help the people who are willfully ignorant and just repost whatever picture with some text on it they see. I also can’t help explain that all Christians are not evil and that all of us don’t hate you or think you are a terrible person.

So instead of chasing down the things that I can’t fix I am committing to work on the things that I can.

And most of those things require looking up from a screen and doing something in the real world.

Something Profound Goes Here

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OK, so Nailscars.com has been down for 4 days. It seems that just as I decided to start coming back this site decided it didn’t want me back. Anyway, for the last two days at Centrikid I had this really profound post that was something about God and the way that we see things. I kept meaning to write it down somewhere other than on here so I would have it, but I kept forgetting.

Now I can’t remember what it was.

So whatever life changing profound thing that was ready to be placed here apparently is gone for now. Oh well, that’s the cool thing about ideas, when one goes another comes. You can’t keep chasing the old ideas, you have to run after the new ones.

Tomorrow I am going to Holiday World with the youth group. The fun never stops when you are a youth and children’s pastor. Every week this summer we have some sort of extra thing happening.

Back to Camp

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Back to Camp

Summer is such an interesting time when it comes to being in ministry. On the one hand it is amazing. You get to spend days and days with students learning about their lives, building relationships, teaching about Jesus. On the other hand it is an exhausting slog that sucks at your soul and makes you surly.
Case in point: Tomorrow we are heading to children’s camp. We will come home from that on Friday and then the next Monday head out to Holiday World with the youth followed by the Sunday after that for our VBS kickoff. It is a crazy, crazy month and I am tired just looking at it.
With all that said, it is a fun time, just lots of things that have to be happening in my brain all at once. While I am at an event I am already looking forward to the next thing. On top of that the Sunday and Wednesday nights don’t stop so I am still teaching kids, still writing lessons, and still trying to get all of the other church stuff done I normally do.
Like I said, it hasn’t even started yet and I am already tired.

But once this little bit of crazy happens I think I am going to write a new complete series for Nailscars.com. So here are my options. Let me know in the comments which you would rather see.
Kim Possible (4 lessons from the old cartoon)
Finding Purpose (4 Lessons based on the old Phineas and Ferb cartoons)
Come Alive (4 Bible lessons from The Greatest Showman)
Beauty: Who you are as a Child of God (5 lessons from Disney Princess movies)

It is FIXED!

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It is FIXED!

So after paying yet another company it appears that all of my Nailscars.com issues are fixed. I could be wrong, but it looks like traffic is returning to the site and the crazy pop ups are over. I am heading to kids camp next week so there won’t be a whole lot of changes, but I hope to get a new theme up and work out some of the kinks of the site. If you hit a link that doesn’t work try using the search bar on top of the page to find what you need. It is probably still on the site, just not where it used to be. If you still can’t find it just email me and I will see what I can do.