Yesterday morning I found out that Shane & Shane and Bebo Norman were coming to our church tonight night to perform. Normally that wouldn’t be a big deal, except I doubted any of my jr. high small group leaders could successfully pull of their meeting times with something like that going on outside their classroom doors. So, I gave leaders the option of taking their small group to the concert instead and most took me up on it. Next week the African Children’s Choir is performing at our church and there will be no jr. high meeting because of that, so two weeks in a row with no jr. high. Good thing I still have my Sunday mornings with them. I miss those guys!

Look at these pictures of Shane. Are you thinking what I’m thinking? lol

Here’s some other more serious pictures. You can also see more pictures here.

Why college students have sex (It’s more about lust than about love. CNN video here.)

Where do you get your creative ideas from? (Perry Noble talking about how he sparks creativity and new ideas for ministry at NewSpring.)

Two new sites in the YMX family! (Reviews of two new YMX sites: youthministrytips.com and youthministryclassifieds.com)

Youth worship team expectations (A good list of what you should expect from students on your worship team.)

Youth ministry mapped out (A great graphical chart of what youth ministry looks like all laid out. Kinda cracks me up, actually.)

BONUS LINK
SkreemR mp3 search (Music search engine SkreemR turns up a selection of MP3 files from all over the web. Download copyrighted material at your own risk.)

Relevant Magazine is giving away free copies of Robbie Seay’s new album, Give Yourself Away, set to release on August 28 from Sparrow Records. If you’re willing to give your email address away and sign up for both The Robbie Seay Band newsletter and Relevant’s newsletter, you can download the album for free right now. The best part is that the tracks aren’t even loaded with annoying DRM licenses! Just good ol’ mp3s. Gotta act quick, though, because the offer is available for a limited time. (Some blogs say the offer ends today, but I couldn’t verify that anywhere on Relevant’s site).

GET ROBBIE SEAY’S ALBUM

(ht to Joshua Johnson)

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My youth group has been a subscriber of Interlinc for several years now, so they’ve accumulated quite a large Christian music library. It used to be made available for students to borrow CDs, but apparently several problems arose: 1) CDs were lost, broken, scratched or not returned; 2) Kids just ripped them to their iPods and returned the CD. Granted, I’ve only been at this church for about 6 months now, so I’m not too familiar with the old system that was in place, but nonetheless it ceased to exist by the time I arrived. Rather than letting hundreds of CDs go to waste, I devised my own plan.

Inspired by all the positive response to my post on Simplify Media, I found Jinzora, a free open-source web-based music jukebox. In my true geek-like fashion, I set it up on my church’s server and integrated it into my youth group’s website where the students can now stream their favorite Christian music 24/7. No more checking out CDs, losing them under the bed or copying them several times over.

Click the screen shot below for a clearer picture of what it looks like. Nice, eh?

(Sorry, the library is available only to manually approved members of my church’s youth group.)

Woo hoo! I was a long time subscriber to Rhapsody’s music service until last night. My wife and I are getting serious about eliminating all debt, so we’ve canceled a lot of services like TV, gym membership and Rhapsody. But then this morning I finally received my invitation to join the beta of SpiralFrog.com! I’ve been waiting over a year for this and it came at the perfect time.

SpiralFrog is a legal alternative to pirate file-sharing sites, providing a comprehensive listing of artist information, over 700,000 songs to download at no cost – with more added weekly – videos and music discovery tools.

They’re able to provide FREE legal music downloads because of the support from advertisers, so I was kinda expecting to hear 10-second ads at the beginning or end of each track, but was pleasantly surprised to hear that wasn’t the case. Instead, it looks like they ask you fill out a survey and check out some advertisers every 30 days in order to continue your service and renew the DRM licenses on your downloaded media. Granted, SpiralFrog’s music library is considerably smaller than Rhapsody’s, but SprialFrog’s press releases shows agreements made with most of the top record labels in the industry, so given some time SpiralFrog might catch up.

Unfortunately, SpiralFrog didn’t give me any free invitations to pass out. If you want to join the free legal music downloading service, you’ll have to sign up at SpiralFrog.com and wait in queue for your invitation email to show up.

[tags]SpiralFrog, Rhapsody[/tags]

I was listening to Hoobastank in the car yesterday and the chorus to “First of Me” made me think about the approach many youth pastors take in youth ministry:

I hear a voice inside
It’s grown into a scream
I’m not the next of them
I am the first of me
‘Cause I can’t live the lie
I am just what you see
I’m not the next of them
I am the first of me

How many youth pastors are frustrated in ministry because they’re trying to copy someone else’s ministry? We look up to and respect the youth pastors at the “big churches” who appear to be very successful because they have a calling from God and follow it diligently. But we often fail to remember that we too have a calling from God and need to follow it to the best of our ability.

I am not the next [insert big youth ministry name here]. I am the first Tim Schmoyer.

I’ve followed Skillet’s music ever since they appeared on the Christian music scene, but I was never a huge fan until their latest album, Comatose, came out last month. This is one album that will definitely earn the status of “repeat-all” mode in my car. My original attraction was the combination of an orchestra and driving guitars with solid rhythm on almost every song, kinda reminding me of something like Carol of the Bells by Trans Siberian Orchestra or a heavy version of the Halo soundtrack. But after being hooked on the melodic rock orchestra, the lyrics started to sink in:

Oh how I adore you
Oh how I thirst for you
Oh how I need you
– Comatose, by Skillet

Despite the lies that you’re making
Your love is mine for the taking
My love is just waiting
To turn your tears to roses
I will be the one that’s gonna hold you
I will be the one that you run to
My love is a burning, consuming fire
– Whispers in the Dark, by Skillet

Listen to sample tracks here.

May I especially recommend Rebirthing, The Last Night, Yours To Hold, Falling Inside The Black, and Whispers In The Dark.

Fans of Nickelback and Hinder will appreciate the refined talent Skillet puts forth in this album. Comatose is probably one Christian album that is actually worthy of mainstream attention. I’d love to see it earn the respect of secular critics.

[tags]Skillet, Comatose[/tags]

Here’s a bunch of video clips of the music at the [tag]National Youth Workers Convention[/tag] all rolled together as one. It includes:
– [tag]David Crowder Band[/tag]
– [tag]Hawk Nelson[/tag]
– [tag]Ceili Rain[/tag]
– [tag]Shane and Shane[/tag]
– [tag]Building 429[/tag]
– [tag]Jars of Clay[/tag]
– [tag]Jeremy Camp[/tag]
– [tag]Thousand Foot Krutch[/tag]

[tags]NYWC, Youth Specialties[/tags]

I don’t really understand people who say things like, “The worship isn’t very good at my church,” or, “Our worship pastor doesn’t remove enough distractions for me to worship.” Man, this is America’s consumerism mentality at its worst. Since when does worship depend on a musical performance? Worship is not an event for 20 minutes on a Sunday morning, it’s a lifestyle of attributing worth to God in everything we say and do. Although worship includes singing, it also includes prayer, loving God, living blamelessly, sharing Christ with others, spending time in the Word, sacrificially serving those around us and more. We don’t go to church to worship, we go to church already worshiping. It can take place in a big church with a professional band and lighting, alone in the quietness of a closet or deep in the jungle of Africa. Worship is a week-long process, a lifestyle, not solely a Sunday morning activity. Sure, certain environments may promote an atmosphere of worship better than others, but worship never hinges upon such factors.

So if someone tells me they can’t worship at their church, who’s fault is that? True worship is not dependent on anyone or anything else other than ourselves and our heart’s attitude toward God.

I’ve been hearing a lot about SpiralFrog.com and its pending release in December. The company plans to offer legal audio and music video downloads in exchange for watching 45-90 second video ads per song or video. Surprisingly, SpiralFrog’s music database will not just be a lot of obscure artists no one’s ever heard of — they have agreements with EMI and Universal Music Group to make their entire music catelogs available as free downloads! Personally, watching up to 15 minutes of advertizing every month to download and keep just 10 songs that otherwise expires every 30 days due to Microsoft’s copyright protection (DRM encryption) probably isn’t worth my time. I think I’ll stick with my subscription to Rhapsody just because it’s so easy and convenient to use.

Derek Webb, on the other hand, is making his new album, “Mockingbird,” available for download from his site completely free — no strings attached. As a former member of one of my all-time favorite bands, Caedmon’s Call, Derek seeks to use his music to spark discussions among people by using the power of the Internet. He says this:

one of the things that excites me most about the future of our business is how easy it is becoming to deliver music to people who want to hear it. i heard a story once about keith green caring so much that people were able to hear and engage with his music that he gave it away for free, which was a very difficult and expensive thing to do at that time. it’s actually never been as simple as it is today to connect music with music fans. and i want people to have a chance to listen to mockingbird and engage in the conversation.

so this is why, on september 1st, we’re launching freederekwebb.com, a place where anyone can go online and not just hear but actually download, keep, and share ‘mockingbird’ completely for free. In addition, freederekwebb.com will give you an opportunity to invite your friends to download ‘mockingbird’ in order to get them in on the conversation as well.

I’m curious to follow Derek’s plan for communicating his message through music made freely available online. One thing is sure: he must absolutely believe in what he’s doing to go through all the time and expense of recording an album and then to give it away for free. I’m impressed that he would forfeit all monetary profit on something like this for the sake of promoting conversations.