Summer is a hectic time for youth ministers. I had one youth minister tell me that out of the 8 weeks of summer, he was going to be gone for 6 of them. So it's best to take the time to get reorganized when you have it. 

Most of us would want to take a few days off and recharge on a week that we don't have an event, but most of us don't have that luxury because we're planning the next event. You can, however, take a day or two and get organized. How you get organized now will help you this fall. 

That's what I'm doing this week - a little mid-summer cleaning, if you will. As I prepare to "wind down" my summer with a week of DayCamp and a relief trip to Oklahoma, it's time to get reorganized. Here's a few things I'm doing.  

Reorganizing storage rooms. This can be a big job if you've neglected the "camp room" for months. Spend some of your budget money and go buy some plastic tubs and label them with events that you've done in the past few months. Categorize game stuff, craft stuff, VBS stuff, and make your storage room where anyone could walk in and find what they need to.  

File things away. This is important because you don't want to have to reinvent the wheel next summer. File the documents, sign up sheets, everything you can into folders, filing cabinets, or whatever filing system you have. Additionally, it's time to organize those files on your computer as well. I have a folder on my computer for every major event in our youth program. Paper documents go into their own folder in my filing cabinet. Next year you will be looking for these, I promise you.  

Backup your computer. This is a huge deal because you've probably been so busy the last few weeks that you've forgotten to do it. Take a few hours and do it now. Organizing your folders on your computer will help with the backup as well.  

This is what I'm doing...what are you doing to stay organized this summer?

I am the first to admit - I'm pretty horrible at communication sometimes. But I have made a conscious effort in the last few years to communicate better and more effectively with my wife, my kids in the youth group, my church, and my church leadership. 

So how can you be more effective at communication? Here's some tips to help out.  

Minimize channels. Some of us have lots of ways we communicate. If you're tech savvy at all, then you may have more. Right now I can think of 4 emails, 6 different social networks, and 3 websites that I get communications from. All of my notifications come to one email. The sometimes overflowing river of emails and notifications comes all to one email address. If I don't do any serious communication on Google+, for example, then I set up my notifications to be virtually non-existent from Google+. I unsubscribe to 3 or 4 "accounts" per week to minimize how many emails I get a day. I even have pre-written TextExpander snippets to reply to emails and Facebook messages I get for routine things like speaking engagement requests and tech requests. But I have taken all of my networks and things and minimized it to one channel that routes everything to me in an organized fashion. Gmail is also a great product for organization and archiving as well. Outlook.com is a great free webmail client as well. You can have multiple email addresses for work, recreation, and organizations but route them all to one main email. 

Act on incoming data. Sometimes we can't respond right away to a question or request in a Facebook message or email, but you can act on that notification. Find an application (mine is Drafts for iPhone) that will remind you to get back to that message the next day. If someone has something urgent, they should call you. Otherwise, emails, messages, and other internet communications cannot expect less than a 24 hour turnaround. So whether you take a few minutes to respond to a request or mark it down for later, just make sure you act on it. Looking at a message on your phone or computer and making a mental note to "do that tomorrow" doesn't work. You'll forget someone's request or message and they might wonder if you're ignoring them. 

Get organized. This relates closely to our first tip. If you have a lot of speaking engagements, have an old fashioned paper calendar to write them down on in your office, or at least input them into a calendar app. Use Contacts Cleaner to fix up your iPhone or iPad's contact list. Give people ONE email, even if it is coming from different sources. Use Drafts to jot down quick bits of text and info for saving to Dropbox. Organize your desktop and computer to make it easier to find things on said computer (I used Alfred for finding whatever I need - I probably have 1,000 folders on my computer). When was the last time you organized your filing cabinet? Buy a pack of manila folders and get labeling. Case in point - my wife and I are buying a van this week, and we all know that minister's taxes and salaries are a little wonky, and having an organized, labeled filing cabinet let me grab files very quickly that I needed instead of searching for them. I was also able to pull down several things for our VBS this week and save myself a lot of time having to redo layouts of certain things - they were already done last year and in the VBS 2012 folder, so why do it again? Everything on your computer must have a folder, in my opinion. 

Hopefully you can learn from my mistakes and become better organized and be a better communicator. Preachers, summer is a good time to get organized, and youth ministers, August may be a great time to reorganize for you.  

Google Reader announced in March that they would be shutting down the RSS service, effectively opening the whole internet and RSS back up. The big shutdown is Monday, so I'd make it a goal to move your data out of there this weekend.

Here's what I did:

1) Downloaded my data from Google Takeout. This handy service (although a bit clunky) will let you download your data in an OPML file compressed as a Zip. If all else fails, it's good to have a backup of your data as most services will offer OPML import. 

2) Synced with Feedly. Feedly was nearly the first to jump on the Reader shutdown and they have supported importing and syncing your Reader feeds from the get-go. I did this weeks ago, but went back to check that my feeds are fine. You can continue to use Feedly as a Google Reader replacement even after the shutdown. They have apps for all major platforms. Feedly is free. 

3) Synced with Digg. Yes, you read that correctly, Digg. Like Feedly, Digg has smartly built an entire backend for importing your feeds to their Reader service. App updates in the last 24 hours will let you even do it from your phone. Digg is also free. 

There are many other paid services such as Feedbin, Feed Wrangler, and Fever that I'd love to check out, but for now I just want to make sure my data is intact after 6+ years or reading articles on Google Reader. Additionally, you can listen to the Mac Power Users podcast episode 143 that's all about the big shutdown.  

If you download your data and import it to a few services that will work once Google Reader is shut down, I'd say you're in pretty good shape come Monday.  

That snide comment about your preaching? Move on.  

That lack of respect for you as a youth minister? Move on.  

Criticism of your wife or kids? Move on.  

You will move on from these petty things because you have a job to do - spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ. You cannot control what people say or how they react, only what you say and how you will react.  

Move on.  

I needed this as much as some of you do.  

Oh goodness.  

Images originally from Witnessing Made Easy: How to Pass Out Tracts for Jesus.  

[via ChurchCrunch]