If you are not familiar with Evernote, it is a clean and easy note taking software (Learn  More). It is a great way to capture and organize ideas, web pages, audio, and more.  It is a web app, desktop app (syncs beautifully), it is available for Mac and PC and most handheld devices.  But this is not a commercial for Evernote (which is FREE).  I wanted to share a few of the way I am using it that might spark ideas for you in your ministry context.

In Evernote you can create different “notebooks” to work from and store things in.  I have “notebooks” with ideas, links to youtube clips I might want to use in a lesson, series ideas.  I find this to be much better than having several documents on my computer (which are not synced with an online source) or a bunch of scattered documents in Google Docs.  It is one location to do a mind dump, and that helps me sleep at night.  (Another place to do a great mind dump is “OmniFocus” but that is a different post for another time).

One of my folders is called “CODES.” I use have tons of serial numbers for software and did not know how to keep track of them. Now they are all in one place.  I guess I could use a word doc but Evernote is searchable so I can [...]

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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:

If I had a dime for every time I heard someone in ministry say that they did not pray as much as they thought they should, I’d be doing ministry in the Caribbean somewhere or maybe a cruise minister.  Permanent vacationing aside, most of us really do want to pray more.  My bet is that you feel you’d do it more if you just had something like, say, a text message to jog your memory.

That is exactly what Echo Prayer Manager does: it reminds you to pray via email or SMS.  After signing up for the free account, you enter your prayer requests choosing how you want to recieve the reminder (email or SMS) and how often (more, normal, less, or non-random).  Then you go over to the reminders area and decide when is the best time in each day for you to be reminded to pray.

Here’s the genius thing, unless you tell it otherwise, it reminds you of a random prayer request from your list at that time!  Of course you can ask it to remind you to pray for your friend at the exact moment he is getting his appendix removed, but the real genius is that once you decide when you want to remember to pray, you don’t have to also decide which prayers to pray at which [...]

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Last weekend was the Simply Youth Ministry Conference, and there was lots of great training. One of the speakers, Tim Schmoyer videoed his seminar on Communicating Youth Group News with Teens and Parents and dropped it on YouTube. You can watch it here (it was really good):

If you’d like to pickup more seminars from last week end you can get them here. Or if you’d like to register for next year (It’s going to sell out early) Visit: youthministry.com/symc.

Jake Rutenbar made another incredible music video for this year’s Simply Youth Ministry Conference.  It’s all about Youth Worker stereotypes.  It’s so funny, and so true.

Over at SimplyYouthMinistry.com we are having an 80′s won’t die sale.  80 products and you pay 80% (that’s 20% off, get it?).  There’s some great stuff.  In honor of celebrating the decade of Big Hair we made this video.

WARNING:  This video contains a side of Andy Brazelton you may wish you never saw.

Click here to check out the 80/80 Sale.

It’s my experience that I can often tell when a site is going to spam me. However, there are those times when I need something, and the site requires me to fork over my email and “verify” it forcing me into the conundrum of deciding between and endless barrage of spam and whatever I think I “need” from the site.  This is where Mailinator comes in.  You simply give anything @mailinator.com … anything you choose… and Mailinator will have your email waiting for you when you surf over to their website:mailinator.com. Once you check your email you can have it deleted or just leave it and Mailinator will automatically delete the email in a couple of hours.

Of course there are other applications for this like giving a “persistent” teenager the wrong address or giving it to a vendor at a conference to obtain a free glowing pencil topper, but we do not endorse or participate in anything like that here.  It’s just a quick tip.  And it is FREE!

I’m at the Simply Youth Ministry Conference this weekend, and we’ve setup some opportunities for you to watch even if you weren’t able to come.  I setup the site SYMCLive.com to host live video from the event.  You can check out the schedule on the page.

And if you are here at the event come say “hi”, I’d love to meet you.  You can find me in the Media Room (when I’m not shooting for the live events)

Though I have not received a kindle from a secret santa or generous church member, I have bought a handful of Kindle books to read on my iPhone.  I know that some people really don’t like the idea of reading on a backlit screen, but I find it less of a strain on my eyes than the hour or so I spent focusing on the lower contrast Kindle screen.

I LOVE the idea of the Kindle, but have a hard time justifying spending $259-489 on something that is solely for reading text. On the other hand, the iPhone screen is just small enough to become annoying when you are trying to read for an extended amount of time.

While doing some of my almost weekly ordering on Amazon, I noticed a “Kindle for PC App” link, downloaded the app and was excited, but not for long.  The app is simple, and focuses on one thing: reading a book.  It does well at that though it has a serious lack of polish.  Polish is one thing; functionality is another.

One of the books I have purchased is a textbook for seminary.  You can imagine how excited I was to be able to use my laptop to view it and make notes.  Wrong!  All the app does is view the text, bookmarks and notes you have created elsewhere.  This does not make sense.  If I can make notes on my iPhone, why not my Laptop? [...]

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I was working on a project recently and decided I really needed to find some new fonts for it.  I came across a few collections that I thought would be fun to share:

1. 40 Free Comic and Cartoon Fonts: These have youth ministry written all over them.  Lots of fun ones to play with.

One of my favorites:

2. 40 Free Hand Drawn Fonts: I’m a big fan of the hand drawn look.  I’ve seen some of these before, but there were some great new ones also.

I love this look:

3. 100 Abstract and Grunge Fonts: I really like a lot of these, very current and a lot of fun for ministry.

Check these out:

Maybe these will be just what you need for your next project.  Enjoy!