INFO for Families

Take 30 Seconds for a One-Question Survey

I posted an important new survey question at INFO for Families today. If you're reading this on the blog, it's just to your right. If you're viewing this as an e-mail, on Facebook, or in an RSS feed, I would love for you to click over to the blog to respond to the question. It's a simple but important one.

Here's the question: "How would you best describe the family discipleship philosophy and practice in your home?" While it may not be the perfect question for formal data collection, it is desgined to get a general feel for what parents out there are doing in their homes to disciple their kids. In my desire to help parents to become more intentional, I need to start by figuring out what is already happening out there in your homes.

So take the survey. It will take you all of 30 seconds. If you read fast, you can knock it out in 20.

In my desire to get as much input from families as possible, I would ask that you do me another favor. Would you please use the "Share This" tool at the bottom of this blog post to encourage others to take the survey, as well? From that link, you can post it on your Facebook profile, on Twitter, or simply email it to some friends. (Apparently, you can even post it on your MySpace page...if you're one of the 17 people who still have one.)

Thanks for passing the link along. I will write about the results to the survey in the coming weeks. In the meantime, stay "on task" with your family!

INFO for Families Blog - I Need Your Feedback

Sometime this summer, we passed the one year anniversary of the INFO for Families Blog. What started out as a convenient place for me to share some of the "best of the web" resources for families has developed a pretty faithful following.

There are 125 people who have subscribed to receive regular emails of posts. (Put your email address in the box to the left if you would like to subscribe.) In addition, the site itself averages nearly 75 hits a day. I'm no math wiz, but that seems to suggest that there are at least 200 people out there who are regularly smelling what I'm stepping in. Thanks for reading!

One thing that I would value as we move forward with this thing is feedback. As I look at the blog's general appearance, I see lots of text, a ton of links, etc. I tend to be overly wordy, so it reflects the person I am (for better or worse). But I don't want to offer resources there that offer only clutter and no help.

What I would love to know is this: what on the blog do the readers actually utilize. I have created a survey on the left hand column that asks that very question.

In addition to regular posts, there is a database of "Family Devo Ideas" I subscribe to for us. Does anybody use them with their kids? 

We have links to my friends Gary and Barb Rosberg's "Date With a Purpose" resources. Have you ever utilized them?

There are several other random links to stuff I like. Is that helpful at all?

Please take a few seconds to check out the survey in the box to the left. (And if you are reading this in your RSS reader or in an email, do me a favor and jump to the site and do the survey. www.infoforfamiliesblog.com) It will only take a second.

I really do value you and appreciate your opinion. And if there is any other feedback you need to give, feel free to post it below or to email me at the link above. I'm all ears!

Blessings,

Barrett Johnson

Summer Family Discipleship Ideas

For some families, summer can be just as busy as the school year. Between family trips, camps, activities, etc., the soccer mom at your house just changes schedules.

For other households, the summer provides an extra measure of free time. The question is, what do you do with your down time? Obviously, summer should be a time to relax and recover from a busy school year. Creating a long list of agenda items doesn't sound attractive to anybody.

But summer CAN be a time when parents develop an easy-going yet deliberate plan for discipling their kids.

Over the next few weeks, INFO for Families is going to offer a few suggestions for making the most of your time this summer. My prayer for your family (and for mine) is that when August gets here, YES we will have a great tan. YES we will be relaxed and ready to face another school year. And YES, we have taken some steps together to become more of what God would have us to be.  

So let's start with your feedback.

If you notice over in the right-hand column of the blog, we have a survey tool. We've just updated the survey with a question about your plans for family spiritual growth this summer. Take a few moments and let the rest of us know if you have any plans yet.

Also, feel free to leave a comment below with any ideas you feel that God is birthing within you. The rest of us would love to benefit from your head-start!

 

 

 

What Men and Women are Really Thinking

We have had a ball with the new survey widget I installed on www.infoforfamiliesblog.com. In the past week or so, I have posted a pretty benign survey and a very interesting one on bedroom activities. Here are the results...

On our bedroom question, we asked "How often do you and your spouse have intercourse?" With 37 people responding, here are the results:

*Very infrequently 14%

*A few times per month   17%

*About once a week 36%

*Several times a week 33%

The results were not a big surprise. I still don't know how couples function when intimacy isn't happening at least a few times a month. For those 14% of you who don't have this as a regular part of your lives, I hope you know what you're doing. Everybody has different needs, but I can't help but think that a situation like that is tolerable for one spouse and incredibly painful for the other. You may have some things to talk about.

For our next surveys, I have posted one for men and one for women. (Please help us keep the results accurate by double-checking your gender before you answer.) 

The survey for men asks about how you think you stack up to other men in the area of your thought life. My hypothesis is that most of us will think that our struggles are a lot worse than others. While actually, we're all having to work hard every day to keep our thought life in check.

The survey for women asks at what level you struggle with insecurities about your appearance. Given the hyper-sexualization of our world (and the magazines on the shelves and the shows on our TV's), you ladies have a ton of false messages coming your way. I'm just curious if they are affecting you in a severe way.

So check out the surveys on the left hand column of the blog. And forward the link on to your friends. I'd love to get as many responses from this one as possible. And if you can think of a good survey question for the future, please feel free to pass it on to us!