New Year's Reminders

This is a great way to use new year's to make a spiritual impact.  Ask students to think over their past year and write a letter to themselves.  Give them some spiritual questions to get them started:

• What is something you learned about God?
• Who is someone you need to forgive?
• Who is someone you need to ask forgiveness from?
• What is something you heard God say to you?
• What is something you heard a pastor or youth leader say that you don't want to forget?

Then ask them to place the letter in an envelope, seal it, and address it to themselves.  Take the letters up and stick them in a drawer for several months.  Sometime around may or June when you are rummaging through your desk and see the letters, mail them.

I also will do this at the end of a retreat with questions like what did you hear God say, what is something you don't ever want to forget, etc.

Bulk Text Messaging

If you're like me, then you are always looking for a new way to get your announcements out, or to remind your students of an upcoming event. For years we have used phone trees, postcards, and videos, and those are ok, but let me tell you what I have learned.  If you text your info in a short text message to a student, it's like magic or something. They just remember it better. There are TONS of web sites out there that can do a good enough job at making this happen for you, but one that you might want to check out is www.tatango.com. Tatango offers a 30 day Free trial also. 

I have, through a good bit of trial and error, found an app for my phone (G1 thru T-Mobile) called SMS Wishes. This amazing little app was free and allows you to schedule SMS text messages to go out to large numbers of people at one time. I'm sure that there are comparable apps out there for the I-phone and other smart phones on the market. 

So stop spending time and money on postcards that get tossed, and try using bulk text messaging to contact your students. (works great for most adult volunteers too) Happy texting!!

Clips from Films in the Theatres

I recently ran across a pretty incredible site: Wing Clips. The site focuses on providing clips for download from top movies that you can use as an illustration in your talks/sermons.  What’s amazing, is that they have clips available from first-run movies that are still in the theatres!  Right now they even have clips for a couple of films that have not even been released.

The clips are categorized by title, theme, and some even have full sermon outlines available for download (premium only).  What is interesting, and convenient, is that they have worked out a deal with the studios to allow you to not need a CVLI license to display them.   They provide 320×240 versions for free, and offer a subscription for unlimited 640×480 resolution for $15.95 a month or $139.00 a year (which works out to $11.59 a month).

(originally posted on youthministrygeek.com)

Quick Tip: Free Awesome Fonts

Prior to becoming a full time youth minister, I was a freelance graphic designer/print broker. Frequently I would find myself looking for a really cool font to give a project just the "right" look. Turns out I still do that alot with Youth Ministry. A great FREE source for fonts is www.dafont.com . They have one of the largest Free font databases I have seen in a long long time. So the next time you need a cool font, check out www.dafont.com