We are always trying to think up new games to use in our ministry.  NBC has done a great thing for youth pastors!  The new game show Minute to Win It (premiering this Sunday March 14, 2010) has between 60 and 70 doable games that can be used as youth ministry crowd breakers.

Check out the site Minute to Win It and look at the “Game Vault.” There are videos to show you how to play each game and written directions that you can copy and paste in a document, and a list of items required. This is a gold mine of game ideas!
Here’s an example of one of their videos:

There is an interesting article over at churchrelevance.com about the most popular words searched by teens.  This is good insight for youth workers.

Here’s what they deemed as “bad” in the top 100:

BAD SEARCHES FROM THE TOP 100
by boys and girls (ages 18 & under)

#4 – Sex (#4 for boys & #5 for girls)
#5 – Porn (#5 for boys & #24 for girls)
#32 – Boobs (#17 for boys)
#82 – Pussy

Here’s a little of what they found:

You can learn a lot about someone by what they search for online. These top search results paint a pretty clear psychographic picture of the priorities, preferences, and habits of online youth.

Kids and teens are obviously learning and experimenting with adult content much sooner than many parents, kids’ ministries, and youth ministries realize. As Time magazine reported early this month, 40% of adolescents have intercourse before ever talking to their parents about safe sex, birth control, or sexually transmitted diseases. Parents often dread giving their kids the sex talk(s), but studies show that kids want to learn from their parents. Instead, many kids learn about sex through friends, the Internet, and experimentation.

I find it really ironic that in the top 100 is a search on how to disable one of the more popular internet filters that many parents use thinking they are protecting their kids.

Read the article: Top 100 Kids’ Online Search Words for 2009

Original research from: OnlineFamily.Norton

There’s a lot of Christmas Freebies floating around this year.  I thought I’d let you know about some before it’s too late.

• Free Media from the Simply Youth Ministry Media Store
• Free Media from Centerline Blog
• Free Training from Cadre Connection
• iTunes Holiday Sampler
• Appvent Calendar – Free iPhone games
• Free Christmas PowerPoint Game
• Free Christmas Backgrounds
• Free Christmas Message – “The Christmas Killers”

Some of these are daily or every couple days.  Even if you missed a few of them, there’s still a lot of freebies left before Christmas.

I am always on the prowl for good leadership resources: books, dvd’s, mp3’s, etc.  When I attend a conference I often buy sessions and workshops that I could not attend at sites like these ($3.50-$30):
National Youth Ministry Conference (Now the Simply Youth Ministry Conference)
National Youth Workers Convention
Founders Week at Moody Bible

Maybe a conference is not in your budget but you still need to pause and refresh in the office by popping in a few good leadership dvd’s ($150-$200):
Willow Creek Leadership Summit
Catalyst

If you are willing to spend a little more and looking for a more versatile resource you should check out Catalyst Filter.com.  For $144 you get a one-year membership to  online content from Catalyst. You will have access to downloads, audio and video from Catalyst, and some perks (like 10% off at the apple store – that is better than the educational discount).  FILTER also includes the quarterly “Aqua Box” containing all types of resources (pre-release books, CDs, DVDs, magazines, and more).

Maybe your budget is to tight for any of the above.  There are free resources all over the web.  Here are some podcast and good online content (FREE):
blogs.efca.org/challenge
www.churchmediadesign.tv

These link will open up a podcast in iTunes (you need iTunes for these links to work)
Andy Stanley Leadership Podcast
Catalyst Podcast

Remember that many churches post their sermons for free online.  You have access to the world’s best communicators at your fingers.

The geek in me loves this.  A friend of mine and her husband are in the process of learning Argentine Sign Language.  Their long-term goal is to translate the Bible using 3D animation.  Here is a slice from an email she sent me,

“The idea is to have a stationary avatar signing the Scriptures. Up until now people have tried to use stationary 2D animations (drawings) to represent a 3D language. This is really new in the world of Bible translation and very little has been produced (almost nothing!). They/we (Wycliffle Bible Translators) are in the huge learning curve as far as the software is concerned (it’s a bit complex). Ultimately, the end user will be the deaf, so it needs to be a pretty straight forward kind of software.”

This looks amazing.  Here is link to who is doing this http://www.wordsign.org. Check out this link to see a demo of the 3d animation http://www.wordsign.org/demos.html.

Brandon

I received an amazing gift this week. Someone sent me an Amazon Kindle (click the link to watch a video)! This is one of the coolest and most useful gadgets I have seen in a long time. Chiropractors around the world are hating this because it is causing people put put less books in their backpack saving back stress.

* I can buy books form amazing (so far I have not seen anything over $9.99 that I would want)
* I can highlight a section and add a note to that section or any section and then download what I had highlighted and written…this will be great for leadership training, I can send out some great quotes and not forget where they were (because they are saved and downloadable) and I do not have to spend time typing, I just copy and past!
* I can upload a .txt document and take it on the road with me (maybe illustrations of my sermon notes and practice…I cannot change them but I can add note and highlight areas I need to give attention to) or I can use mobipocket (PC only) that converts a word DOC, PDF, HTML, etc…to a kindle file. I am not sure the difference yet but I will try and see what this software can do. I can also email files to my Kindle with that cost 10 cents…I am not sure why I would do this when I can dump a .txt file on for free…I will probably try it though to see what happens.  If the lighting is right you could even give your messages using this…go paperless!
* There are other cool features like basic web…yes, I can brows the web anywhere for FREE, not great graphics but FREE! I heard it uses the Sprint cell phone feed. I can also use it as an MP3 player, and there is a feature called NOWNOW…you send in a question and they will research it for you. Don’t let one of your students get hold of this or watch out high school term papers.

I am really excited about the future or reading with my Kindle! Thank you who ever sent this to me, it will be used often.

Brandon

I love free resources…did I even need to say that? Obviously some free
stuff is free for a reason but you still might be able to glean something
form it. Maybe there is a usable series title, or a lesson to pass off to
leader, or there could be a graphic to grab for a talk. Here are some links
to some solid finished resources and a few things to dissect for the little
nuggets. Please add links that you frequent in the comment section.

http://vineresources.com/swag
http://www.muddyrivermedia.org/
http://www.openresources.org/
http://open.lifechurch.tv/
http://www.simplyyouthministry.com/freebies.html
http://content.simplyyouthministry.com/ffa08/

http://www.crazychurch.com/

http://www.newspringonline.com/
http://www.pastor2youth.com/
http://www.thesource4ym.com/
http://www.youthministry.com/?q=freebie-library/popularity/
http://www.youthspecialties.com/freeresources/articles/
http://www.dare2share.org/
http://timschmoyer.com/category/friday-freebie/
http://studentministryresources.com/

The question I am asked most when talking tech with other youth workers is, “How do I download video from YouTube?”

In the past I used a Firefox extension:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3242

Or sites like:
http://keepvid.com/
http://www.kissyoutube.com/ (if you want to use this site all you need to do it type the word “kiss” before the work youtube in ANY youtube video…“kissyoutube”)

These are are fine if you have the right codec (software) to play the video for your group, with these I could only download the videos as a Flash Video file (flv) and that has to many limitation plus you have to rename the file with a .flv extension…wow, I am boring myself…

So I moved on to so web apps like:
http://vixy.net/
http://www.mediaconverter.org/
http://media-convert.com/

These are great because they will take your video file and convert it to almost any video format that you choose that will be compatible with whatever software (MediaShout, ProPresenter, iWorship, etc…) or operating system (Mac, Windows, etc…) you are using.  Some of these sites work with more than YouTube.  However these sites are not always up and running.  There have been several times when I have had to try them all before I found one that worked.  I don’t know if this is a site crash, a poorly written online app, or YouTube blocking these sites.  Kissyoutube recently add a convert feature, when I went to use it the site said, “File Not Found – Page Does Not Exist.”

I have found a small and simple application for my Mac that download and converts YouTube video.  The software is called “GetTube” and you can download it form http://web.mac.com/simonvrel/en/gettube/gettube.html.  This app is very basic.  You can download any YouTube video as an MP4, AVI, MP3 or FLV.  This is perfect for all the video uses I have, weather showing in MediaShout or editing in iMovie.

I am sure there are dozens of other apps we could talk about but this should get you started.  Start with second set of online apps and see how they work for you.  The good thing about those (if they are running) is they will work for you on  Mac or a PC.