Last night as I drifted off to sleep I was thinking about living my life “unbranded” – was  this was even possible? hmmm??

I woke up this morning to the beeping of the alarm on my Casio watch. I staggered over to the bathroom and brushed my teeth with my Colgate toothbrush using Crest toothpaste. After some more necessary steps my morning routine was completed with the  buttoning up of my Tommy Hilfiger shirt. I headed out to the kitchen grabbing my iPod Touch from my nightstand and proceeded to check my Gmail account – my only email was an offer from Starbucks.

Once in the kitchen I poured a bowl of Cheerios (multigrain of course) and just enough Natrel fine filtered milk to make those little O’s float. I sat down at the table to find my son had left his Tony Hawk Tech Deck skateboard ramp on the table – it made me smile.

After eating breakfast and reading my Bible (ESV) for a bit, I jumped back on my iPod to have a quick look through twitter and facebook – to catch up on life.  I grabbed my BlackBerry from it’s charger and headed out to work. I plopped myself into the drivers seat of my Mazda when the thought returned – could I live my life unbranded?

I’ll have to get back to you on that one…

I recently went away for March Break with my Family to Savannah GA and Hilton Head Island – here are some pictures for you to enjoy.

— Andy

» Continue reading “Vacation Photos”

Well it is April – yup the first day. My Son celebrates this day as his “half” birthday – everyone else just tries to play jokes on each other.

Well when I got in this morning my office floor was completely filled with “Women Alive” magazines. Some were in my drawers and even a few in my fridge… Kevin was kind enough to distribute them everywhere he could find space. My other office mate – “crazy” Elizabeth was more than willing to participate in this – her first ever – April fools joke.

Well I thought I would turn it around on them so I cleaned it up real quick and then acted like nothing happened. They were fooled alright and spilled the beans as to who did what. After a while I let them in on the fact that it all happened the way they planned – it was nice to see the squirm a bit first though

The following is a teaching I did for our youth group October 12, 2007 – enjoy!

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YouthPoint was birthed out of a dream that any Canadian youth group could have access to internet technologies for their group to communicate online. The goal was to make the tools available at no cost and to make it easy to use. Along with the group web sites the desire was to provide fresh content to the sites and the site users in the way of articles, music reviews, devotions, forums etc.

Over the past 5 years this dream has seen some success and www.youthpoint.ca has helped may groups and pastors. However over the past year YouthPoint has started to see a slow decrease in use. Other options like Facebook or www.wordpress.com sites have begun to take their place. There are a number of faithful forum posters but they too are becoming more infrequent.

Through the conception, building and running of YouthPoint I have spent a considerable amount of personal time and money to make the project happen. Many others like Will, Fred and Val have been helping all along the way by writing and managing the forums. It is not easy to admit that after all this effort that a project like this may be dying – but reality is starting to set in. The amount of time and money required to put into YouthPoint to make it more like Facebook or a WordPress blog is just too much. After all – the goal starting out was to have the technologies available to pastors for their group to communicate online – if this is being done through these other sites then the goal is still being met – just not with YouthPoint’s help.

What I would like from you is some prayer and some advice. Let me know what you think – let it die – let it ride as is and let people use it for what it is – quit my day job and live on rice while I rebuild YouthPoint? (I’m not real fond of the rice idea). I am ok with it if YouthPoint dies – I will be sad – but ok. Please let me know what you think.

-Andy Smith
Duke of URL – www.youthpoint.ca

Just a quick note to let you know about a new series of photos I have added to my Flickr page from my trip to Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.

You can view some in my footer below or go directly to my Flickr page. I have added some from around Parliament Hill, the Canadian Museum of Civilization, and the Canadian War Museum as well as some others from around the city – enjoy!

Over the next couple of days I will be attending a leadership conference called The Leadership Advantage. The goal of this conference is “ Equipping Christian Leaders and Governing Boards for Ministry Excellence.” From the site:

Without question, one of the most crucial issues facing Christian organizations and churches today is board governance. How they function can make or break a ministry or church. In fact, it has been said that the key to effective leadership in today’s churches and Christian ministries lies as much with their governing boards as it does with their pastor or ministry director. more…

I serve on the Board of directors of Medeba and hope to gain some good knowlege on board management from this conference. I will try to give an update followinf these two days.