I saw these videos a while back on Jeff’s blog and tucked ‘em away for future reference to use with my youth group kids. Good reminder for myself, too.

As someone who usually enjoys The Simpsons on TV, the movie wasn’t quite as good as I hoped. In fact, I was little disappointed. It had all the normal jokes and parodies of religion, environmentalists and the government as you’d expect, but there were several clips that were just unnecessary that kinda ruined the whole thing for me, like men kissing, exposed private parts and attention drawn to a woman’s chest. Thankfully there wasn’t really any swearing, but still, why can’t they just keep it clean? Half the theater was kids aged 9-14!

Overall, it has a good theme about the importance of family and spending time with your children, but it seemed to be shadowed by making light of physical abuse and marital disrespect.

Although a plot line was definitely present and very random at times, as The Simpsons are notorious for, it wasn’t as gripping as your average movie. Fortunately, there’s a lot of consistent laughs and chuckles throughout the film, which holds your attention for the hour and a half.

The wit and “Dumb and Dumber”-like humor definitely shines in The Simpsons Movie, but if you plan to see the movie you can probably get away with waiting to rent it on DVD.

[tags]The Simpsons Movie[/tags]

A long time ago I stopped using movie DVD clips for lesson illustrations. It was always such as hassle to queue it to the right spot, hope that the DVD player wouldn’t automatically stop after 5 minutes of being on pause and then try to stop the clip right on time before the big swear word came blaring through the sound system. So, I started ripping my clips from the DVDs beforehand and imported them into my PowerPoint or Keynote presentations. I’m not really sure how legal that was, but it doesn’t matter anymore because now there’s a better solution.

WingClips.com has a huge collection of movie clips for church teaching illustrations. All the clips are categorized, searchable by keywords (i.e. gossip, compassion, choices, etc.) and ready for download. They even have clips from movies that are still in theaters, like Transformers and Ratatouille! And, of course, it’s free. Granted, the free subscription will only get you clips at 320×240 resolution, but that’s good enough for most of our purposes. If you need to upgrade to high-res, it’ll cost ya $10-$12 per month, depending on the plan.

(ht to Josh)

CONTRIBUTE TO FREEBIE FRIDAY: If you’ve benefited from others who have freely shared their youth ministry resources online, consider giving back to the community by sharing your own materials here. Send me your donations for review and if I publish them in a Freebie Friday, you’ll receive full credit, a link, lots of gratitude and a warm feeling inside that comes from sharing with others.

[ Sign-up for other freebies and content added to this site! ]

[tags]WingClips.com[/tags]

Well, not yet I’m not, but I’m using Simplify Media’s little application that lets me share share my entire iTunes library over the Internet with any friends who also use it. In fact, as I write this I’m browsing my brother’s 10,000+ song iTunes library from over 100 miles away and streaming one of Good Charlotte’s old albums. My library is only a little over 4,600 songs, but if you want access to it, visit Simplify Media, set up their service and add my screen name to your friend’s list: rockinyp. I’d love to share it with you, especially if you do the same with me. Don’t worry; the software is legal, free and drop-dead simple to use. It shares your iTunes library with your friends over the Internet just like you would normally share it over a local network.

[tags]Simplify Media, iTunes[/tags]

#1. Adult: “Oh, you work with teenagers. That’s nice. So, how long are you gonna do that before you start a career?” (Translation: Youth ministry is a job for people in their 20s who aren’t sure what they wanna do with their life.)

#2. Parent: “Susan can’t come to Bible study because you scheduled them for Wednesday nights when she has soccer.” (Translation: My daughter’s athletic development is a higher priority than her spiritual development, so why can’t youth group fit in when there’s nothing better going on?)

#3. Property manager: “We need to paint a couple rooms in the church and the lawn needs to be mowed. I don’t have time to do it, so I figured we could let the youth do it.” (Translation: Even though there’s many other people in the congregation who aren’t plugged in to any ministry, the youth are an easy source of free labor.)

#4. Sr. Pastor: “We don’t see you enough in the church office. You need to be here more often and get work done instead of playing basketball and Xbox with the kids.” (Translation: I’m secretly jealous of your job.)

#5. Volunteer: “The problem with this youth ministry is that the kids are disrespectful and won’t listen to me teach them! We need to teach them more about respecting authority.” (Translation: My teaching doesn’t connect with the kids and I’m taking it personally. Train them to be puppets.)

#6. Student: “So what does a youth pastor do all day?” (Translation: Your Halo skills “pwn” mine, so you must do nothing but practice all day while I’m in school.)

Any others to add to to the list?

For our one year wedding anniversary, I made a nice DVD of our wedding for my wife. A guy from my father-in-law’s church who shoots and edits TV commercials for a living was gonna do the whole thing for us for free, but a year later here we are and it doesn’t look like he’s going to get around to doing it. So, I got my hands on the raw video footage and did the best I could with what I had. Unfortunately, the audio is poor at parts, but it still helps remind us of what actually happened on that day. It all went so fast.

Here ya go:

This Sunday is my one year wedding anniversary! In this podcast I quickly recap our past year, ministry together, a conversation I could’ve had before dating and what Dana probably thought after she married me.

Subscribe to my podcast in iTunes

Use the controls below to download or listen to the podcast.
 
 

As some of you know, I’m heading up the daily email Bible studies for Xtreme Youth Alliance, Bill Scott’s new ministry. The ministry just launched a couple weeks ago, so it’s still pretty new, but teenagers are signing up for the Bible studies every day. The part I love most is that my own youth group students (both present and former) are writing the lessons for their peers and they’re doing an outstanding job!

Bill Scott is also podcasting Bible studies every day so students can listen to the Word on the bus, working out at the gym, riding their bike or whenever else they listen to their iPods.

XTREME DAILY BIBLE STUDY BY EMAIL

XTREME DAILY BIBLE STUDY BY PODCAST (iTunes link)

The resource part of all this is that you can post links to these Bible studies on your youth group’s website as an extra encouragement for them to stay in the Word on a daily basis. For example, here’s what I did with my own youth group’s site.

Better yet, here’s the code you need to integrate these daily Bible study tools directly into your youth group’s website, MySpace or whatever else you use.
 

For the EMAIL BIBLE STUDY sign-up box that looks like this:

Copy and paste this code into your youth group’s website or MySpace:
<div align="center">
<table border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="3" bgcolor="#FFFFFF" style="border:2px solid #000000;">
<tr>
<td align="center" style="font-weight: bold; font-family:Verdana,Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:12px; color:#000000;">Xtreme Daily Bible Study by Email</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="center" style="border-top:2px solid #000000">
<form name="ccoptin" action="http://visitor.constantcontact.com/d.jsp" target="_blank" method="post" style="margin-bottom:2;">
<input type="hidden" name="m" value="1101687881433">
<input type="hidden" name="p" value="oi">
<font style="font-weight: normal; font-family:Verdana,Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:12px; color:#000000;">Email:</font> <input type="text" name="ea" size="20" value="" style="font-size:10pt; border:1px solid #999999;">
<input type="submit" name="go" value="Go" class="submit" style="font-family:Verdana,Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:10pt;">
</form>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</div>
 

For the PODCAST BIBLE STUDY box that looks like this:

Copy and paste this code into your youth group’s website or MySpace:
<div align="center">
<table border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="3" bgcolor="#FFFFFF" style="border:2px solid #000000;">
<tr>
<td align="center" style="font-weight: bold; font-family:Verdana,Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:12px; color:#000000;">Xtreme Daily Bible Study by Podcast</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="center" style="border-top:2px solid #000000">
<font style="font-weight: normal; font-family:Verdana,Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:12px; color:#000000;"><a href="http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=258910527">Subscribe in iTunes</a></font>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</div>
 

CONTRIBUTE TO FREEBIE FRIDAY: If you’ve benefited from others who have freely shared their youth ministry resources online, consider giving back to the community by sharing your own materials here. Send me your donations for review and if I publish them in a Freebie Friday, you’ll receive full credit, a link, lots of gratitude and a warm feeling inside that comes from sharing with others.

[ Sign-up for other freebies and content added to this site! ]

[tags]Bible study, Bill Scott, youth group[/tags]

In June I posted about a camp some kids in my youth group and myself were gonna put on for some inner-city Angel Tree children. Then earlier this month I posted a quick summary of the trip and a link to the pictures. Last night I finished the video, so here ya go:

Well, here it is — my 500th post. I don’t really know what to say now that I’ve reached this milestone, which is probably odd for a blogger, but I guess I’m not an ordinary blogger anyway. Most bloggers hit 500 posts in six months to a year, but it’s taken me two years and a month. Most of the normal blogging recommendations aren’t really applied here either: I don’t blog every day, I don’t go through my RSS reader every day and I don’t promote my site much to others. *shrugs* The main blogging recommendation I do follow is making the site my own and showing authenticity when appropriate.

I had no real goals in mind when I started this blog, but here are some goals I’d like to meet and continue for my next 500 posts.

• Encourage other youth workers.
• Provide helpful resources that will advance the Kingdom.
• Discuss various issues and topics related to youth ministry.
• Share the work God is doing in my personal life and ministry.
• Network with other youth workers.
• Evaluate how I can be more effective in reaching teenagers.
• Look for new ways to communicate God’s timeless Word.
• Have fun!

(If you rearrange the first letter of each sentence above, you get the acrostic, “S.E.N.D. H.E.L.P.” lol Maybe my subconsciousness is trying to tell you something.)