10 Great Youth Videos to Use at Your Next Meeting

Videos are definitely powerful, but who has the time to look for them!  Here are some of my personal favorites!

1. God's Chisel:

The Skit Guys put together what is in my opinion the best skit available on growing in holiness.

2. Youth MiniStarz:
 
This one is just fun but is a great way to begin a volunteer thank you or staff person intro.

3. Most - The Bridge:
 
This is a classic alegory put into a powerful, professional format.  The love of God is rarely displayed so clearly.

4. 99 Baloons:
 
Another gut-wrenching video.  A father's love for a sick child, and a shining example of what one life can mean.

5. Rule Breakers:

The Skit Guys do it again!  Use this for your next retreat instead of listing 20 don'ts.

6. All Around Me:
 
One of my favorite music videos.  It's about worship.

7. Moonwalking Bear
 
How many times do we miss noticing God's actions because we are not looking for them?

8. Dragon - Trogdor:
 
Two ideas here: 1. Playing Fair 2. You don't have to be good, just loud!

9. Hebrews Star Wars:
 
A great intro for a lesson from the book of Hebrews!

10. iLife - There's an App for That
 Fun with the apple commercials and crazy Bible stories.

Youth Group Videos: Quick and Free

You come back from a retreat and you have a bunch of pictures and video.  You want to make an awesome video but have less than no extra time to create one, much less learn how to use some video editing software.  All you need to remember is Animoto.com 

Once you've signed up for a free account, you are ready to upload your images and videos for animoto to magically turn into a great video.  For free you get 30-second videos that you have to access through the web.  Do not fret, if you want to have longer videos, it's only $3 per video or $30 per year for unlimted.  The $30 also gets you the ability to download the video files so you can burn them to a DVD, upload them to a website, or whatever you need to do.

AND Animoto has a great selection of Christian music already uploded and ready to be used as your background (you are welcome to upload your own as well).  If you are wondering what they look like, here's what happened when we locked a sixth grader in our office for about 15 minutes with a bunch of picture files:

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