Little Jesus Freaks is a website for parents that provides reviews on DVD and Blu Ray releases, books, and other parental resources. It also offers recipes, commentary on everyday parenting experiences, and press releases pertinent to resources and announcements that are beneficial to parents.

For those of you wanting information on a little bit more mature level, you can get a ton of reviews and be in the know on the latest Christian film and music through Jesus Freak Hideout. Movie reviews include a parental guide much like Plugged In Online’s content. Jesus Freak Hideout also has ongoing contests for free music and special meetings with artists. You can also check out their free music section.

Ever heard of Jenny and Tyler? I hadn’t, until a friend of mine prompted me to download a free album of theirs on Noise Trade. They have a soft acoustic sound that is very easy to listen to. Their lyrics are thoughtful, Scripturally based and true to life. If you like some easy music to read or study by or enjoy calm inspirational music while guests are over, they would make a good choice.

Noise Trade is an awesome site, offering mostly Christian music downloads for free. You can always donate to the artist if you want.

I came across this great post the other day from Jesse Gardner about video production/broadcast on a shoestring budget. They talk about a few resources that I have mentioned here at Free CM Stuff and showed how those can be integrated well into producing video content and making available to your people. In regard to children’s ministry, I see this as beneficial to:

1. Recording your kids worship services and broadcasting them the next week for children who missed
2. Recording trainings for volunteers to watch as a catch up or in the case of ongoing training for the future
3. Highlighting and promoting videos that celebrate a certain event after it happened (camps, VBS, retreats, etc.)

What other ways do you see this could be beneficial to children’s ministry?

Those of us in CM are really good at picking great worship DVD’s for our ministries. Sometimes, it’s just impossible to get a live person or band to lead in worship. But if you do have that person, you have a great opportunity to lead kids in deep worship. Mr. Dan has that passion and wants to equip others to lead creative worship for kids. Right now he only has 4 videos up on his You Tube Channel, but I hope he’ll do more. Here’s a sample:

Do you want some crazy awesome kids music for free? Then go and download The Village Church’s “Jesus Came to Save Sinners.” I’m so excited when large churches like The Village give out stuff like this that is obviously a product of long hours and hard work. Thanks Village Church!

I’m thankful for partners in ministry. I have so much to learn from them.

Check out Simply Youth Ministry for a smattering of free resources like: forms, dramas, media, and videos. A great deal of this can be applicable to kid and family ministry.

Apparently Free CM Stuff is not an original idea!

A youth pastor friend of mine, cued me in to Pastor2Youth. They have a ton of games, links, media, and object lessons that we can steal and use in CM.

Now humble yourself and admit it, it is possible to learn from youth pastors!

Contest ends soon: You have until this afternoon to get your name in the hat for the Sovereign Grace CD’s. Hurry!

Have you ever wanted to pull a sound, vocal clip, or sound from a video off of your computer? If so, you need to get one of these two free programs:

MP3myMP3

Aktiv

Here’s how I used Mp3myMP3 recently. I needed the background sound of a football game. I could not find a long enough effect on any free sound effect sites. I went to the NFL’s website and found some video of a couple of games. I used the program to pull just the sound off and store as an MP3.

Now, you can very easily use this to pull music off of sites like Pandora or Grooveshark. However, that would be stealing licensed music and I can’t say I recommend you do that. Be honest, buy it!

I’ve come across this really awesome band for kids called The Lads. They are from New Zealand and have a great sound. There is a movement in Children’s and Family music to make music more culturally relevant and this is a great thing! On their site, you can download several of their songs. Just look for the brown box with the orange arrow at the top of their site. I can’t link you straight to them because the site is flash based.

Here’s two audio Bible tools for you. Interestingly, they are both called “Pod Bibles.” The first is a Podcast, but you can listen to the Scriptures from their site. Play these during teaching times to add a new dimension to the Scriptures.

The second is a readable Bible for your iPod. It uses the “Notes” portion of the iPod firmware. Read it on the train, in a plane, in the car (while not driving), in the bathroom (don’t drop it in), use with an impromptu devotion at camp…whatever!