This week’s freebie is pretty cool. With all the road trips we’re taking with our youth group kids, it seems obvious that we need some good rockin’ tunes we can all jam to while we travel.

Interlinc already thought of it and wants to send you a FREE music CD with 19 songs with music from well-known artists like Family Force 5, John Reuben, Ayiesha Woods, Tenth Avenue North and a number of amazing new artists. They’ll also be adding Bible Studies and other downloads to go with the CD, five of which are already available as a free download.

Check out this page on Interlinc’s website to request the free CD and check out the free Bible studies.

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Join us at 2:00 PM EST this afternoon in our LIVE YM Talk. It’s our 1 year anniversary show and YOU are the featured guest! We’ll all have a chance to answer the question, “What have you learned about youth ministry in the past year?” See the LIVE YM Talk page for details on how to join the call and/or the live chat.

Interlinc is giving away one free ConGRADulations 2009 set to any church who asks! You’ll have to part with some contact information to get it, which might not be worth it if it was just another compilation CD, but the ConGRADulations 2009 box contains a lot more than just music.

Of course the music CD comes with a bunch of music tracks from various Christian artists, but it also has a 48-page booklet containing some great stuff from Dave Ramsey (on financial issues) and Francis Chan (about avoiding the spiritual status quo). The set also has a media DVD containing videos from the two aforementioned guys, along with clips of other advice and wisdom for the big transition in life.

I personally have never given these sets away as graduation gifts, but I’ll be happy to take a free copy to check it out. Use the link below to get your free copy and evaluate it as a potential gift for one or more of the seniors graduating from your ministry this year.

More information about the ConGRADulations 2009 CD/DVD/Booklet set

Order your FREE Interlinc ConGRADulations 2009 CD/DVD/Booklet set

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Join us at 2:00 PM EST this afternoon in our LIVE YM Talk. See the LIVE YM Talk page for details.

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)

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.

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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]