So Google Docs is useful for sharing information with your ministry team or your Bible study group, and it's also useful for keeping important documents handy if you are sometimes away from your computer (see previous post).

But there is more you can do with Google Docs...

1. Graphs

Numbers in spreadsheets are nice, but people like me prefer to see things in colourful, visual way. One simple way this can be done is by the use of a graph or chart.

The following picture shows a graph of attendance at a Bible study group over the course of a year.

This is not so special, since regular office suites have been doing this for many, many years - although it is nice to be able to do this with your Google shared spreadsheet as well.

2. Gadgets

However Google Docs also has things called Gadgets that can do things that you won't see elsewhere ... one particularly interesting one being their Maps Gadget. Here Google have somehow interfaced Google Earth with Google Docs, and you can create a spreadsheet with a list of addresses, and place names. Then select the data and insert a Map Gadget - and voila, a map appears! with your locations plotted onto it!

In the picture below you can see a spreadsheet with a Map Gadget, showing the locations of Chinese churches in the North and North West region of Sydney.

It's ... not perfect. There's a limit to how many locations it displays, and things don't always map correctly. But that's a Gadget with huge potential.

3. Forms

Something else I tried out recently was the ability to create an empty spreadsheet, and design a form that is emailed out to a number of recipients for them to fill out. When they click 'submit', it sends the data to Google Docs, and updates the spreadsheet for you - a great way to collect information! Google Docs allows you to modify the kind of input fields on the form (text area, check box, drop-down list, etc.) before sending out the email.

Below you see an example of such an email form.

Again, there are a few bugs here and there - the list of people you have sent the forms to seems to disappear once you log out and then log back in to Google Docs, giving you the impression it hasn't been sent... but hopefully they'll sort that out in time.

In the mean time, there's lots of things that are useful for ministry!

[ PS: are there other Gadgets you've found useful? ]

In ministry there's often some important document that your team needs to have access to - and it probably gets updated from time to time.

Some people from church have been using Google Documents as a way of managing this (http://docs.google.com), and so far it's worked out quite well. It allows different people to access, and even edit the same document. Google documents allow you to share spreadsheets, Word-like documents, and presentations (which I haven't tried).

It does require that people get a Google account (but not necessarily a Gmail account). But once that's set up, going in to http://docs.google.com will display a list of your shared spreadsheets and documents. From this you can select which one to view or edit, or organise them into folders.

Obviously the capability is not the same as for full-fledged office suites, but for most things, it works just fine. Spreadsheets allow for everyday functions like sum, average, count - as well as much more complex statistical and logical things. Documents allow you to change styles, insert page breaks, pictures, tables - even headers and footers.

This is great for things like:

• allowing team members to see the most up-to-date roster / document, instead of having to email around endless version updates.
• sharing a contact list from your ministry with your team members.
  
• putting together a roster for your church, where different people are in charge of finding people for different columns (eg. the person responsible for music, the person responsible for the AV team, the person with the preaching roster).
• having different team members contribute different sections of one report on how things are going in their area.
• accessing an important document / roster when you're away from your own computer.
  

Team members can even request notification when the document is updated, and you can also export to various formats (even PDF), in case you have some less technologically able team members. If someone accidentally deletes part of your document, you can look at the changes that different people have made, and roll back to a previous revision.

Depending on the quality of your connection however, the speed of updating a document can be frustrating. It does require people to adopt a slightly different paradigm of document handling. And it does requires your team to have Internet access, and log in to Google to get at those documents. But once they work that out, it can make organising ministry a lot easier.

There are some other great features of Google Docs, but more about that later!

[ PS: what have you used Google Docs for? ]

What do you do on holidays? You stop working, you stop studying, you stop doing all the normal things - but does your faith also take a break?

Over the years I've noticed that Asians who can afford it like to go back to Hong Kong for their holidays, usually in the December-January period, and usually staying for Chinese New Year. When they're there, they spend time with family, eat food, and go shopping.

Others who have been bitten by the travel bug may be compelled to explore all the unlikely travel spots, soaking in as many new experiences and border crossings as they can.

The temptation though, when your regular pattern of life is broken up, is for your faith to take a back seat. And so instead of meeting up to encourage and be encouraged by your fellow Christians, you would rather shop. Instead of allowing your mind to be transformed by the word of God, you would rather eat. And instead of giving to support Christian ministry, you spend madly, knowing that in a week or so you have to fly back to Australia.

And so, the Christian on holidays often becomes no different from everybody else. Their values, the way they spend their time and money, become so thoroughly indistinguishable.

How sad, that your faith might be so superficial, that you can be waylaid when you are not around your church friends. That it is set aside merely by the promise of bargain shopping, and the inconvenience of having to make your own way to an unfamiliar church!

Of course, Christianity is not merely about going to church. But our sudden change in behaviour when on holidays is revealing...

As Christians, we may go on holidays. We may sightsee, and shop, and eat - but our faith should never take a break.

It is still true that we need fellow Christians (even though they be strangers) to spur us on to love and godliness. In fact what better way to see how Christ has united people of all nations together, than to go and church with people from a foreign country, to see a national as a brother, a sister in Christ!

It is still true that we must remind ourselves of Christian truths - perhaps even more than ever, because of the overwhelming nature of being in another culture. Daniel and his friends, exiled in Babylon, faced overwhelming pressure to conform to the culture of their Babylonian masters!

And it is still true that people we meet on our travels need to hear the gospel. In fact in the early years of the church, the gospel was spread by missionaries like Paul - but it was also taken from city centres far and wide by everyday, ordinary Christians on their travels. It was probably such Christians who established the church in Rome (which was why Paul had to introduce himself by letter)!

[ PS: how do you behave on holidays? ]

I've been doing a lot of thinking and reading lately about the heart and it's affections, and you've probably noticed that in a series of posts in January and February. However, my thinking and reading has mostly been for a series of three talks I've been writing for our 2008 youth leaders' retreat...

Well, the leaders' retreat has come and gone (29 Feb - 2 Mar), and the talks are now finished (phew).

In the first talk we looked at "The heart and its affections". This looks at the strange language of the affections in the Bible, and looks at the place the heart plays in lives and in our decision making. We also look at how this fits with the finished work of Christ,  and  the pastoral effects of ignoring the heart.

The second talk looks at "How to strengthen the heart". If we are to have a heart that loves God, how do we go about doing it? This talk looks at the place of the word of God, the way in which we approach the Bible, and the place of prayer.

The third talk was on "The heart, and how we lead others". And here we look at the implications for all of this for the Christian leader as an individual, and then the content of our ministry. This talk also includes some clarifications, and answers to questions that people may still have on the whole issue of the heart and its affections.

Interested? You can download the talks (and the booklet) from the church website and read for yourself!


[ PS: were you at leaders' retreat? Which talk struck you the most? ]