On The Rhoads

Several years ago, Bill Hybels wrote book titled, Too Busy Not To Pray. I was just reminded of that book, as I started this email, approaching the 11^th hour on my main topic. Susan and I have been very busy working on details related to our church moving into a new building.

Susan has gotten involved in organizing the children’s’ ministries from birth – 5^th grade. Her administrative gifts have been met with a warm welcome. And it’s been good for her to have the opportunity. Please pray that all her hard work will result in a good experience for the kids, their parents and for everyone serving there.

I’ve been helping with the computer network, the sound system and on building a new website. Please pray that I’ll be able to get it going quickly, as a very high percentage of people check out a church’s website before attending.

Finally, I think I mentioned the Simply The Story training I was in a few weeks ago. Well, I was asked to teach a 2^nd adult Sunday school class once we’re in the new building (that’s tomorrow). I suggested we do a multi-generational class going through God’s Story (http://www.gods-story.org), which is what lead to Simply The Story.

That’s probably confusing – God’s Story is one presentation that goes through the Bible chronologically. It has been very successful in evangelism. And it’s success was studied, resulting in a teaching technique called Simply The Story (STS). So God’s Story is one presentation (which may be broken up as I’ll be doing). And STS is a technique for telling and teaching any Bible story.

My class starts tomorrow morning. This is going to be a new experience for everyone. Please pray God will use my feeble efforts and that this will also be the start of a more family-integrated approach to doing church.

Thanks for praying!

Here’s a presentation on my vision for mobile learning.

There are lots of things on my heart today.

I wanted to share is about the training I had this past week. I was basically learning to teach people how to tell stories. It’s a technique called Simply The Story (STS) (http://www.simplythestory.com) . It’s very powerful in oral societies especially. And I’ll be working on ways to use technology, mobile phones in particular, with this technique.

I’m also excited about using STS in our family worship. Plus I was asked yesterday (I finished this training on Sat) to teach another adult Sunday school class at our church. I said I wanted to teach a multi-generational class using STS.

Finally, God gave me a renewed vision for reaching our neighborhood. I realized that God has put a group of us Christians right next to each other. Our next door neighbor and two neighbors across the street are all Christians. I just told Susan I want to have all those neighbors over for dinner to God Storm how we can reach our mostly Mormon neighborhood. I think STS might come in here too.

I should add to that I am a visionary and get new ideas all time. So besides praying for these things, please also pray that I will have wisdom in what I take on. It would be very easy to get so busy in outside ministry that I neglected my primary ministry to my family.

Thanks for praying!