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I wrote earlier about saving printing costs by how you choose your printers and ink cartridges. Now, let’s look specifically at fonts.

The University of Wisconsin at Green Bay chose Century Gothic instead of Arial as their default typeface in basic documents, spreadsheets, and eMail, claiming that Century Gothic used the least ink, even 30% less than Arial.  (But why eMail?  Because you’ll print some of your electronic correspondence, so eMail was also included in the programs with recommended defaults.)

I also learned from this study that ink is 60% of the cost of a printed page.   So, how can you save the cost of ink and paper simply by choosing your fonts wisely? Take a look at the following list of commonly recommended fonts (which also includes Campus Crusade for Christ’s official fonts, Atma and Trade Gothic) to see how the different typefaces compare.  All are font size 12.

If your prayer letter or spreadsheet (or whatever document) will fit on one page using Cen...

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Perhaps you have been thinking about sending out your prayer letter by email, or you may already be sending it out through Outlook as an attachment.  However, you can make your emails more impactful by using an email service like MailChimp to send your letter.

I did a survey with my ministry partners and found in general that women like to read the printed letter and men prefer to read by email.  I suggest sending both.  Sending your prayer letter by email should not become the only way you communicate with your ministry partners.  You should continue to send it by mail as well.  Also, using multiple touch points of communication each month enables you to stand out.

There are several other email services that are available, but MailChimp has a generous free option and is very easy to set-up and use.  Here are some of the key features:

• With MailChimp you can personalize each email to your partners using merge tags.  This will make your email standout.
• All your text including pictures and links are i...

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I went into New Staff Training with the butterflies of a freshman in high school on her first day of classes. I remember telling my husband that I was scared I wouldn’t make any friends and be that kid picked last for Red Rover or something ridiculous like that.

Little did I know that the very next day, as I met my Life Group, I was meeting the women that would become my closest spiritual confidants and literally my lifeblood in the upcoming year-and-a-half of support-raising. From the very first meeting, until the end of Staff Training our hearts were intensely linked by what could only be described as divine: sharing our past struggles, current fears and hopes for our futures in ministry.

After we all left New Staff Training, we plunged into support-raising and slowly lost touch with each other. Individually, my husband and I became discouraged and isolated, not only in support, but in the lack of that intimate sharing of our lives with these other people.

We decided to use our phones to connect. Since ...

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I decided to end it.  After six years since our first encounter, our relationship had grown far too personal.  Oh don’t get me wrong; I did not cross the line with any one person.  I crossed the line with one thing: Facebook.  Or perhaps I should say Facebook crossed the line with me when mere acquaintances started knowing far too much about my personal life through my posts and pictures.  Still, in Facebook’s defense, the issues in our relationship travel a two way street, given that my list of friends exceeds 1,000.  But since I can no longer discern whether Facebook has an inappropriate relationship with me, or vise-versa, I will remove my personal page and replace it with one a little more professional in order to allow Facebook to witness more of my relationship with Christ than my daily relationships with friends and family.  My hope is that my mere acquaintances will start talking more about my most recent blog post than my most recent vacation.  After all, if Facebook in itself is an a...

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