It includes opportunites to
encourage,
receive prayer requests,
share God's Word,
Biblically counsel, exhort, or rebuke.
I usually respond to personal e-mails
before I do any other computer ministry.
Before going on vacation or business trips or church retreats,
be sure to use the Vacation response feature of your e-mail software.
Cautions: Ministers need to have integrity and be wise in discerning. Many individuals
use the Internet to play romantic games with others or worse, so you need to be
verycareful and be thinking as Proverbs 3:5-6 says in order to be sensitive the
Holy Spirit. You also should avoid using any words which could be considered
romantic. Also avoid giving any personal information to anyone you don't
knowvery well. Even trivial information about your usual daily schedule,
kind of car you have, and names places you frequently go to can be used by
an individual to find you. I even avoid giving my last name.
1.) I recommend Google e-mail now, but still have some Yahoo accounts.
Google and Yahoo save your e-mails on their computers. Whereas Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express,
and IncrediMail save the e-mails on your computer. If your harddrive dies (like mine did in October 2005)
or a virus goes after e-mail files, you would loose your e-mails.
2.) I suggest that you make Google labels or Yahoo folders (usually to the left of the e-mail text area)
for putting incoming e-mails and sent e-mails in:
(a) the best aritcles related to your My Documents folder s
[examples: �1-- for counseling�, 1-- �religious controversies, 1-- humor]
(b) �2-- prayer requests�
(c) �3-- relatives and friends� with subfolders for each
(d) �4-- other spiritual
(e) �4-- other secular
(f) �5-- misc.� for personal information things
3.) For protecting my friends' e-mail addresses, I developed a few IDs for my e-mail address
(like �Bible lover Bill�s friends�, �undisclosed recipients�, "prayer waririors").
Then I could put that in the �To:� box and my friends� addresses in the �Bcc� box.
You could even make your IDs for such to relate to the categories and groups you make in response
to the below information. This allows for quick insertion of friends' addresses in the "Bcc" box.
4.) You can organize your e-mail Address Book names in several different ways:
(a) by categories and groups or
(b) by using numbers 1-5 in front of their first name.
�1� would mean the most communicative individuals and �5� very rarely.
(c) Recently I started each of my contacts names with "E", "M", and "W". "E"= East, "M"=
Middle (for Europe, Africa, and the Middle East), and "W"= West (for the Americas) This puts
the Address Book in a good order for doing mass mails.
I also put what country or USA city or state they are in after the first name in the same box.
Sometimes I put if they are in Yahoo 360 or referred by another friend by either putting "in 360" or "via
________" in the First Name box. I make the last name box blank because the default sort is by Last
Name first . Last names could be put after first names in the First Name box.
5.) Most e-mail services have a grouping feature. Names of a group or a categoriy can have no spaces or
special symbols. The underscore line needs to be used for a space.
**You can use prefix numbers in front of group names to help sort the groups logically. Then when I go to
the �Bcc:� box, just start typing in a number gets me to the appropriate group(s).
**Another way to set up groups or categories by interests. You can send an e-mail questionnaire
asking what they want: personal communications, prayer requests, Bible studies, Bible information,
spiritual essays, important current events information, politics information, sports stories, clean humor.
Then make appropriate categories' or groups' titles.
6.) Also there is limit of how many addressees you can Bcc send an e-mail to. In Google, they allow not
more than 500 addressees within an hour or two. In Yahoo I think that you can have up to 50 per group
and send only a few per hour. So consider using several Yahoo accounts if your list is over 300.
7.) After I e-mail a message with a good group of attachments that probably other individuals would
like in the future, I put it in a special Google label or Yahoo folder with "0_" as the first characters
of the label's or folder's name.
8.) I also developed several MS Word documents to put in frequent or/and good information quotes.to
use in my e-mail and blogging ministries. The "0-- Personal Information" document has even
my address and phone number, even though I share such to close friends. Then I have other
MS Word documents titled as follows: "0-- miscellaneous freqent quotes", "0-- miscellaneous
spiritual quotes", "0-- miscellaneous secular sayings".
