Ready or not, the game is changing. Life has shifted more dramatically in the past hundred years than it did the thousand years before. It’s altered more in the past 5 years alone than it did in the previous 50 years. What does this mean for the next 3 years? The next 10 years?

The problem is, we’re not playing a game. The stakes in the church are higher than they’ve ever been. As leaders, we risk the future of this generation if we ignore the rapid change of pace.

Zombies, Football and the Gospel walks you through 10 game-changing concepts that will help you navigate the shifting sands of culture and connect with the world around you – both personally and professionally.

(And just in case you’re wondering, zombies and football provide key sign posts along the way.)

The game has changed. It’s time for us to change the way we play – because we can’t afford to lose.

Other awesome changes are that now each subscription allows access for 10 users instead of 5, so your whole team can view the content. Also, once you access content, you can go back and view it again for a whole year. That is awesome.

To read more details about the changes to YouLead, read the Orange blog post here. Check out the YouLead website and sign up for a free trial here.

First, I use it to organize articles I want to tweet out. If you follow me on Twitter or Facebook, you’ll see that I post about 4 articles a day relating to tech and ministry. Generally, when I’m reading articles, I’m using Flipboard on my iPad, which I love. Although Flipboard does have a function that I can tweet an article as I’m reading it, I prefer to schedule my tweets using Buffer rather than send them all out at once. So, Flipboard allows me to save articles I like to Instapaper. Then, later I can just go into Instapaper and then tweet out my articles through Buffer. Once I’ve tweeted it out, I can hit Archive in Instapaper, which keeps the link in an archive folder so I know what I’ve already tweeted. It works really well for me.

The other way I use Instapaper is to keep a record of all the times my company, ROAR, has been mentioned in the media. I use Google Alerts to notify me whenever ROAR is mentioned in an online article. Then I just open up the article and I use Instapaper’s bookmarklet, which I have installed on my bookmarks in Firefox. I have the bookmarklet set to save the articles to a folder in Instapaper called “Articles about ROAR.” Then we have an easy way to locate all of the times ROAR has been mentioned.

So I really like using Instapaper, and I hope it proves helpful to others as well.

We live in a time marked by change. Electronic communications enable any message to reach virtually any person in virtually any part of the world. In this world, how can something originally written so long ago compete? Is the message that was originally called “Good News” still as relevant in the age of electrons as it was in the time of papyrus?

In the follow-up to his successful book Podcasting Church, Paul Clifford seeks to answer these questions and more:

What is Twitter?
What kind of account should you have?
How can you regularly tweet without repeating yourself?
How do you keep spammers at bay?
How can you reach people that need to hear Christ’s message?

This is a book for every Christian interested in spreading Christ’s message of hope and forgiveness, in an age increasingly marked by distraction and background noise, needs to read. This is an opportunity that the Church can’t pass up to communicate its message.

To help you decide whether or not you’re a leader or a boss and what the difference is, here are 5 signs that you’re a boss and not a leader:

1. Your communication only goes one way.

A boss speaks but never listens. A boss barks orders without leaving any room for discussion. A leader, however, listens more than he speaks and cares about what others have to say.

2. You rule by fear.

A boss wants people to be afraid of his power, his anger, his judgment. A leader would rather earn the respect of those he leads by proving himself to be of value.

3. You expect perfect obedience from those you manage.

A boss dictates what is to be done and how it is to be done, and responds with anger if his orders aren’t carried out perfectly. A leader gives inspiration and direction, and then trusts people to carry it out their own way.

4. You create a distinct hierarchy around you.

A boss treats those below him like inferiors and those above him like masters. A leader, however, sees all people as valuable regardless of their position, and he treats them with equal respect.

5. You position yourself only for your own benefit.

A boss sees people as stepping stones for him to use and walk on to reach his own goals. A leader sees a bigger picture beyond himself and is willing to sacrifice his own glory for the greater goal.

Ok, so some of these thoughts may be extreme, but I urge you to consider where you lie on the spectrum between boss and leader. Which one are you trying to be in your management of people? How can you change to be more of a leader and less of a boss?

One medium where this truth is very obvious is comedy. It’s called comic timing, when a comedian knows how to use a pause for greater effect beyond the original joke. Some comedians are famous for their skill in wielding a comic pause, one of whom is the classic comedian Jack Benny. In fact, Mr. Benny himself is quoted as having said, “It’s not so much knowing when to speak, when to pause.” Below is a clip of one of his monologues from The Jack Benny Show. Make note of the way he uses pauses to increase his effect:

So regardless of whether you’re a comedian or not, you can still learn from this great comedian about how to intentionally use pauses for effect. It will help you become a stellar communicator!

“If you are going to reach people in an urban setting you have to be credible, creative & contemporary.” – Corey Brooks

“If I have to follow you then please move. No one wants to follow a parked car.” – Bishop T.D. Jakes

“The Apostle Paul would have loved to live in this era. He could have spread the message of God using technology.” – Bishop T.D. Jakes

“Not everything that counts can be counted and not everything that can be counted counts.” – Bishop T.D. Jakes

“Leadership is about purpose and about creating change people can believe in.” – Bishop Walter Thomas

“I think when you’re representing Christ, you shouldn’t be second class in any area.” – Joel Osteen

“If you want to change a culture positively or negatively, you do it by impacting the children.” – Joel Osteen

“You’re not ready to lead until you’ve passed the test of discouragement.” – Bishop T.D. Jakes

“Your rejection was simply direction.” – Bishop Noel Jones

“Learn to forgive the process so you can be who God created you to be.” – Sheryl Brady

• Email
  This is a no-brainer, but it’s what we use the most for communication, so I felt like it should top the list.
• FreeConferenceCall.com
  We have a weekly conference call with the entire ROAR team using this free online service. It even has the capability for recording the call for download and playback later as well, all for free. It will also give your international team members an in-country number to call to patch into the same conference call from a limited number of countries!
• Google Voice
  Although a lot of people in the US have cell phone or landline plans that allow them to make unlimited long distance calls or texts, for those who don’t, Google Voice is a great free service for sending and receiving calls and texts. It also works internationally. My international team member can use her US-based Google Voice number to call and text the US from the internet for free, even though she lives on a different continent.
• Evernote
  This is a great tool for storing and organizing data, but our favorite feature from it may be lesser-known. From the Evernote iPhone app, I can record a voice message that it will then email to my intended recipient. I love this feature because it is much faster than typing out an email, and I can do it safely while driving to take advantage of travel time. This is a great way to get explanations to somebody that would take too long to do over email, if we can’t coordinate a phone call right then.
• HipChat
  This is like a private instant messaging network for your company. You can have chat rooms that are open to all or private to only the people you choose, or you can have just a 1-on-1 chat with a single person. If a person sends you a HipChat message when you aren’t signed in, it will just send it to your email to let you know. This is a really cool service, and one of the things we like the most about it is its iPhone app is really great. It’s not free, but the price is minimal and we think it’s worth it.
• Basecamp
  This is our major heavy-hitter when it comes to actual project management and collaboration. It is an amazing and superfast site for coordinating project details, to-do lists, files and data, and the people working on them all. There is a color-coded group calendar, plus the ability to track what gets done on your projects each day and by whom. Stellar stuff.
• Highrise
  The same folks that made Basecamp also made the Highrise contact management software, which we also love. Through this software, our team is able to track who contacted whom, when, and what was the result. Plus, we can manage who needs to be contacted and by whom.

So with these collaborative tools, it doesn’t matter that my team doesn’t live near each other, and half of them have never even met! We’re able to work well and function smoothly with the help of these amazing tools.

I hope this helps anybody out there looking for a way to get a team off the ground! Please let me know if you have any questions or something I didn’t cover.