Simply Youth Ministry Conference 2010

admin —  September 28, 2009 — Leave a comment

I don’t know if you have ever been to a large youth ministry training conference, but they are awesome. I have been to quite a few over the years, and it’s always a great time coming together with a bunch of other people that totally understand what you do, and why you do it. It’s also a great time to grow as a youth worker both spiritually and vocationally through the sessions, seminars, and just spending time with other youth pastors.

If you’re thinking about going to one, I want to recommend the Simply Youth Ministry Conference in Feb 2010 in Chicago. I’ll be there and we’ll have a room dedicated to tech seminars and workshops. It will be a great time to hang out with me and a bunch of other geeks. There’s also a Tech Affinity group if you really want to spend time talking about technology and youth ministry. Here’s the brochure for the event:

You can also find out more by visiting: YouthMinistry.com/SYMC.  Why I am telling you about this now?  Because if you register by 10/31/09 you save some serious money.  I hope to see you there.

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Quick Tip: Find Alternative Applications

admin —  September 26, 2009 — Leave a comment

Have you ever needed to get something accomplished, known the application you needed, but been short of the cash needed to buy said necessary app?  Lament no longer, AlternativeTo is here!  A quick surf over to the simple website gives you more options than you need.  Looking for a cheaper Photoshop?  Why not try Gimp, Pixelmator, Photoshop Elements, Acorn, Pixel…  you get the point.  Not only is it a great place to find alternative software, but its homepage allows you to browse by OS and number of views, likes, recent, or no alternatives.  Hopefully this will save you some cash and make your search for the right app a bit shorter.  Check it out: www.alternativeto.net

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Review: David Crowder*Band, Church Music

admin —  September 22, 2009 — Leave a comment

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I must confess, I’m a David Crowder*Band fanboy, but when I first pressed play on this album, I thought, “What’s happening here, did David Crowder just make a dance album and call it Church Music?”  It really caught me off guard, and not what I expected an album by the name Church Music to sound like.  You’re hit with loops and rhythms that sound more like they belong in a club, than a church, and I think that’s part of the beauty of the record.

That doesn’t mean that this album is missing the classic songs that all our worship teams will soon to learning, and hopefully not botching on Wednesday night. Songs like Alleluia, Sing and How He Loves are destined to be on the playlist of our worship leaders for some time to come.

The album also just has some great, fun songs to lift your spirits.  The funk of Church Music, Dance and the 80′s stylings of Oh Happiness just make me smile.

Give it a listen and I think you will like it.

Preview Now:

Available today on iTunes or at Amazon:
Download at iTunes:
David Crowder Band - Church Music
(Click to open iTunes)

Buy the CD:

Or MP3 Download:

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Youth Minister Rap (with poll)

admin —  September 18, 2009 — 7 Comments

A friend of mine sent me this video… Hilarious. Thought we might do a quick survey to see how close this one hits to home.

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There’s an App for That

admin —  September 9, 2009 — Leave a comment

Here’s a funny promotion for a series on some of the more interesting scriptures in the Bible.

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Clips from Films Still in the Theatre

admin —  September 6, 2009 — Leave a comment

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).

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YouVersion Live

admin —  September 1, 2009 — Leave a comment

YouVersion announced an interesting new feature called Live.  Though it will not be “live” until October, the product is supposed to be focused on letting you interact with live events on your mobile phone.

According to their promotional material, it will allow you to follow along with message outlines and take notes, read related Bible verses and click through to the expanded passage, vote on a poll and see the results live, respond to questions anonymously, request prayer, and take it all home with you on your phone.

This promises to be an incredible tool if they deliver on all these feature.  Be sure that we will have a full review once the product launches.  Until then, you can click here to check out their site for all the information.

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Nooma as an iPhone App

admin —  August 27, 2009 — Leave a comment

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A few days ago I told you about one of the best deals I’ve seen to pick the physical Nooma DVDs.  And tonight I find out that they are now coming out as iPhone apps.  Here’s part of the description from iTunes:

This NOOMA application includes the full-length version of NOOMA Rain | 001 Rob Bell. In addition to providing unlimited viewings (no network connection required), the app also includes all the content from the 32-page discussion guide, a leader-follower feature that allows synchronous viewing of the discussion guide, the ability to email a friend with links and clips related to the film, and a link to the Flannel Store where you can learn more about the film.

From the description it gives you a screen by screen guide to guide the discussion.  Looks like it would be a great teaching tool to go along with the video.  At $4.99 it’s seems like a good value for the video, booklet, and discussion tools.  I can’t wait to check it out.

iTunes Link: Nooma Rain | 001 Nooma Rain | 001 Rob Bell

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Sign and Image Generators

admin —  August 27, 2009 — Leave a comment

I saw this post over on Mashable, 13 Fantastic and Fun Image Generators, and quickly thought of many youth ministry applications.  The post lists a number of different online sign and image generators.  You put in your message, photo, and depending on the site you get a sign back.  Here were some of my favorites (with some youth ministry appropriate samples I created):

Warning Labels and Signs

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Advising people to the dangers of the situation has never been so easy. Simply pick a label style, a warning icon, and enter your desired text into a simple web form and voila, you’ve got a standup warning label.

For a vertical sign-style warning image, check out the companion site Warning Sign Generator.

De-Motivational Posters

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Annoyed by those superficial and unflaggingly insipid motivational posters we’re subjected to in dentists’ and corporate offices everywhere? Why not take a stance against mass-produced pseudo-solutions to important problems?

With the Demotivators tool you can easily generate a realistic illustration of the trials and tribulations of Real Life. Just choose an image from your desktop to create a motivational parody from, customize your image settings, add a title and de-motivational text and you too can contribute to the better psychological health of us all.

Movie Posters

movie-posterAnother project from Big Huge Labs, the movie poster tool is a web form that helps you design a film-style poster from your own images. Choose an alignment for the photo, a poster style, text and accent colors, title fonts and colors, and enter your own custom text for the film title, taglines, credits and MPAA rating.

They also have them for X-box achievements, magazine covers, street signs, 13 different ones in all.  Just think of the fun for signs around the youth room, promotional fliers and posters, visuals in your message slides or just for fun.  It seems like this is one set of sites that every youth worker should remember.

Check-out the entire list HERE.

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Hebrews Meets Star Wars

admin —  August 25, 2009 — Leave a comment

I saw this and thought it was great.  Someone took the beginning of the book of Hebrews and made it into an opening scroll from a Star Wars movie.  So great.  Could be a great intro next time you speak from Hebrews.

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