Adam Wormann, an old friend who graduated from the youth ministry program at Philadelphia Biblical University with me, sent me today’s Freebie Friday to share with you.

Based on a segment from Jay Leno, the eBay game is where you show a picture of a random item for sale on Ebay. The PowerPoint linked below contains various obscure pictures of items that were sold and the Word document contains information about that auction, including the number of bids and final sale price. You can have players:

• Guess the final sale price (within certain percent)
• Guess the number of bids (within a certain number)
• Give a price/number of bids and play “higher or lower”
• Give points to whoever gets closest
• Be creative and come up with something else!

All of these items were actually on eBay and really sold as indicated.

Download eBay game details

Download eBay PowerPoint game

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There is NO LIVE YM Talk this afternoon. We’re scheduled for next week, though, March 6, 2009, for 2:00 PM as usual. Talk with you all then!

A year and a half ago I wrote about a Teen Internet Hangouts workshop I did for the parents at my church. I gave them an overview of many popular social places on the Internet, including Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, World of Warcraft and some of the upcoming sites they need to be aware of. At that time I chose not to release my notes for the seminar since I was traveling and making the presentation at other places, and because I strongly feel that this is not the kind of seminar you can present to parents just based off of someone else’s notes. This is a subject you actually have to know what you’re talking about, including all the research behind it.

However, enough people have asked for the notes and PowerPoint presentation that I’ve finally given in to your request. Just please don’t get up in front of parents and read my notes to them. Use my notes and PowerPoint presentation as a springboard for creating your own seminar. Do the research yourself. Please and thank you.

Some previous blog posts on this Teen Internet Hangouts material:

• Watch the video of my workshop in it’s entirety.
• Overview of the content that was presented

Download “Teen Internet Hangouts” workshop notes

Download “Teen Internet Hangouts” workshop PowerPoint

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Join us at 2:00 PM EST this afternoon in our LIVE YM Talk! Today we are talking with Justin Ross about youth ministry to 100 kids or fewer. He has a lot of experience in working with this size group, especially in rural settings. Info on the LIVE YM Talk page.

I know this freebie is a bit out of order for the season, but better late than never, right? Besides, who said we can only be thankful at one time the year? Bust out this game to remind kids that thankfulness is an attitude we carry throughout the year!

Thanks to Nick Kmoch, the Middle School Director at North Iowa Youth For Christ, for submitting this freebie for you all! It’s a PowerPoint game that jumbles the letters from Thanksgiving words and challenges kids to figure out what the original word is.

Download Thanksgiving Word Jumble PowerPoint game

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There is NO LIVE YM Talk today. However, we will resume next week, December 12, with a requested conversation about “How to respond to flippant teens.”

VIDEO DEVOTIONALS
Last week I told you about a video curriculum called YouthBytes. I’m actually ditching our current curriculum for our jr. highers on Sunday mornings (Group’s Jr. High Grapple) and am gonna use this instead. Chad Daniel, host of YouthBytes, goes into more depth and creates videos that seem to promote a better follow-up discussion.

Since each lesson comes with a 1-minute summary version, I decided to include it in my youth group’s announcement video/podcast as a devotional and a promo for what’s coming up.

If you’d like to use some of YouthBytes’s 1-minute videos as devotional thoughts for your kids during the week in your email udpates, website, Facebook messages, whatever, just this week they added a lot of the videos to YouTube where you can access them for free.

YouthBytes video channel on YouTube

SKY POWERPOINT BACKGROUNDS
Once again, Russell Martin of Fork In The Road Music, is donating a great resource for Freebie Friday. This week he’s contributing a zip file of 15 sky photos he took. Combine this with my tutorial on how to turn digitial pictures into PowerPoint backgrounds with PhotoShop and you should have some great worshipful imagery for your church and youth group.

Download the sky image for PowerPoint

FREE WORSHIP SONG DOWNLOAD
Also noteworthy is that Russell has another free worship song download available on his site. Contact him through his site if you want the chord charts, too. He’ll gladly send them your way.

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Join our LIVE Youth Ministry Conversation today at 2:00 PM EST! The topic is, “How to minister to parents of unchurched kids in our youth groups.” Chris Day has a lot of unique experience in this, so he will lead our discussion. Join us using either your telephone or your computer microphone!

I have two freebies for you guys this week! The first one is a listing of lots of worship praise songs in PowerPoint. If you’re like me, I usually type up the lyrics in PowerPoint but never bother to save it because “it’ll be a long time before we sing these songs again.” However, only a couple weeks later I’m like, “Ugh, I need that song again!” So, maybe this will save me some time, and you too! The slides are plain in black and white, which is good if you like it simple and also good so it’s easy to apply your own formatting. See a listing of free worship song PowerPoints here:

PowerPoint worship songs directory

The other freebie for today is from CYPU (Center for Parent/Youth Understanding). They’re giving away the latest quarterly edition of their youth culture journal, ENGAGE. You can download/read/print it out by clicking on the link below

This quarterly edition of ENGAGE

CYPU is in the process of evaluating the content and delivery of ENGAGE. Give it a read and then give them some helpful feedback in the CPYU Facebook group.

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Join our LIVE Youth Ministry Conversation today at 2:00 PM EST! The topic is, “Dealing with the demands of extra-curricular activities and how it effects our youth ministries.” Brian Ford recently wrote an article on this matter that circulated the Internet for a while, so he will lead our discussion. Join us using either your telephone or your computer microphone!

We all use backgrounds images for PowerPoint and MediaShout, but unfortunately a lot of people don’t know anything better than to use an image with plain text titles. Not only is this sometimes difficult to read, but it almost annoying to look at. Here’s an example of how you can easily turn a digital photo into a slick background image.

For our example, we’ll use a picture my wife randomly took of some markers. Right-click here and “Save File As/Save Target As” if you want to play around with the original image. I’m using PhotoShop CS2 in the screenshots below, but these tools are also available in the slimmed down PhotoShop Elements (available for Windows and Mac) and other image editing applications.

Screen shot #1 and #2. Open the image you want to use as a PowerPoint or MediaShout background and change the image size to the screen resolution you’ll use with the projector. In my case, I’ll use the typical 1024×768, which is probably sufficient for 95% of the cases. (This helps keep your PowerPoint file size smaller so you’re not embedding an 8.0 megapixel image into your slide show.)

Screen shot #3. The text should stand out from the background image, not blend into it, so let’s lighten the image a little. There are various ways to do this, but in the example below I create a new layer, use the Paint Bucket tool to paint it white and then change the layer’s Opacity to 66% so the background layer beneath shows through a little.

Screen shot #4. Next, create another new layer, select the Type Tool and type your title on the image. Change the text color to be something that easily stands out. In my case, I’ll use black. You can change the font and size in the toolbar at the top.

Screen shot #5 and #6. To make the title stand out a bit from the rest of the text that will be displayed in PowerPoint, l’ll add a new layer style to the text layer. First I zoom in to 100% under the View menu so I can see the title at it’s full resolution as I manipulate it. Now let’s try Bevel and Emboss. (Play around with the other layer styles in the left column sometime, too.) In this image I’m using the Inner Bevel style with the Chisel Hard technique to add a bit of 2D perception to the title. Click OK when you’re finished setting the layer style the way you like it. (Hint: Simple is better. Don’t use too many styles together.)

Screen shot #7. Now save the image as a JPEG. In PhotoShop, go to File, Save As, and change the drop-down format menu to JPEG. Give the image a name, save it and use it as your new PowerPoint or MediaShout background!

Here’s my final image if you’d like to see it full-screen or even use it for an upcoming presentation.

The other advantage to this is that you don’t lose your special fonts styles when you transfer the presentation to a computer that doesn’t have the same fonts installed. Everything stays in-tact perfectly.