“Get your head outta the clouds!” I remember hearing that phrase countless times on old movies whenever the older, sensible character was verbally lashing the whimsical, dreamy character.  It’s an odd phrase.  I remembered it recently when I encountered Wordle.

According to Wordle’s website, “Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends.”

These “word clouds” have countless applications in children’s and family ministry.  They are a powerful design tool.  They can provide visual feedback to those who submit written materials: prayers, prayer requests, favorite Bible passages, sermons, and books of the Bible.  Last weekend, I used Wordle to create a cloud from the combined written prayers of 85 middle and high school students.  Here is what we came up with:

So, get your head and your ministry in the clouds!