Zend certified PHP/Magento developer

How do I create a Magento block that has input fields for to store values in variables?

My code for displaying rotating messages is currently hardcoded and I have to go in and update the messages manually. I want to replace this with a new block in magento so other people can just go into magento and type some text into input fields to update the messages array without knowing how to code. How would I do this?