I posted on this very helpful Bible study website before, when it was called The Greek Study Bible. However, it has changed names and is full of many improved features. I thought it definitely deserved a repost.
Great Treasures is a colossal effort by a guy named John Simon who has developed a healthy appetite for the Greek Language. Great Treasures, however is so much more than just a Greek tool. It features:
Side by side translation comparisons
Ability to place your own notes in connection with a particular text
Word studies
Concordance of user-selected words
Accurate definitions of Greek biblical vocabulary (in English, of course!)
Is this a tool for kids? No. Is it a tool for those who teach kids? YES!
I firmly believe that in order to communicate God’s Word to kids we must go even deeper on our own than the general message we want kids to hear. This resource helps you do that. Let this be a tool to help change you spiritually so that your teachings and messages to kids will be an overflow of what God is doing in your life. Do not neglect this tool! It is incredible!!!!!
Mail Chimp is a great tool for tracking your mass emails to parents and volunteers. I am amazed that they offer so much for the free service. The free service allows you to store up to 500 email addresses (plenty for most churches) as well as send up to 3,000 emails per month. So if you had 500 addresses, you could send 6 mass emails per month free of charge. They also offer a 15% discount to non-profits.
I’m really looking forward to using this in a similar way that Jonathan Cliff does (only I believe he uses Constant Contact-a paid service). Jonathan sends out weekly update and leadership videos to his volunteers. He utilizes Vimeo for this. Mail Chimp will allow you to communicate things like this to your people as well as keep track of who actually has opened the email and who clicked on the links within it.
God’s Kids Worship is on to something. They have an interesting niche in the kids worship market in that they have put together sets of music so that your worship leaders don’t even need to choose which songs they are doing each week. It is a sort of curriculum for worship.
The DVD’s are designed to be used with any kids ministry gathering, no matter what the curriculum. They worked hard to make it easy for a volunteer to use just the parts thye want, when they want them. Leaders can simply sing 1 or 2 songs, mix and match with other DVD’s, or have an entire worship event by adding their own message.
The music they use is great and the backgrounds are generally good, though I think you will find a little higher production in the Shout Praises and Hillsong series of worship. With that said, it is still a top notch worship company that produces quality material with which your ministry will benefit.
God’s Kids Worship is kind enough to be giving away 1 Fall quarter of the Modern Worship DVD Series ($60 Value). All you have to do is place a comment below answering the question: “What do I want kids to know about worship?”
I’ll randomly pick a winner next Thursday September 2nd!
When my friend told me today about Red Ferris Wheel, I almost plucked my eyeball out in sheer excitement. Zach Fonville has provided us with a host of free still images and motion backgrounds. It is a HUGE collection! Download them now for your worship environments!
Want a simple way to keep up with this website as well as many other websites you check out regularly for new content?
If so, humor me a moment and follow this highly logical formula:
Free CM Stuff has around 1,000 different visitors (individuals) each month.
Only about 10% of you subscribe to an RSS feed (generally a blog reader).
It is deduced, then, that 90% of you are returning back to Free CM Stuff to find new content on a regular (monthly) basis.
Therefore, it’s highly likely you are wasting a lot of time checking on websites…
The solution for you pitiful souls…Google Reader. Google reader is a web interface that allows you to view the content of a website (not the whole web site) in an organized fashion. In fact, you can view a TON of websites all within this easy to navigate web page. Check it out, and be sure to subscribe to Free CM Stuff and all your other favorite CM blogs while you are at it! Contact me if you have questions: andy @ freecmstuff dot com.
Do you have a clip from a DVD you need for a message this weekend? Perhaps you want to convert some of your worship DVD’s to individual files so that you can more easily access them during a children’s worship.
Then you need Handbrake. I have used a paid program to rip tracks off of DVD’s and I really feel that Handbrake is the best. It is a free program and will allow you to rip full tracks or portions of chapters into MP4 format. While this format will not work in MS Powerpoint, it is a fully acceptable file in programs like Easy Worship, Pro Presenter, Song Show Plus, or Media Shout.
Footage Firm is giving away 10 of their looping worship backgrounds. They are great quality loops. You can download them in both standard and high definition. Get the downloads here.
Also, coming this week…a new series called Fire ‘Em Up. This will be a series of devotionals from Scripture that you can use with your volunteers and staff. I have six of them lined up, but we’ll see where the Spirit takes them!
Big City Studio is the children’s church curriculum from Kidz Blitz (Roger Fields). We have been using it for 3 years now and it is incredibly awesome! In six years, it takes kids through the entire Bible and Roger and his team have come up with some high impact ways to get those Bible truths across to young minds. One resource I’ve created to help my Big City is a “Shout it Out” bumper video. Shout it Out is a “Wheel of Fortune” type game where kids guess letters and try to solve phrases that deal with the message for the morning. The kids really love this one. I used a song by Yancy.
Crocodoc is a web based application that allows you to share and mark up documents online. It is very simple to use and you don’t even have to have an account to use it. You simply upload a document (MS, PDF, JPEG, PNG), share the link with those whom you want to review it, and take a look at their edits. Here’s an example of one I uploaded.
I can see this being helpful with getting feedback from your team regarding registration forms, important letters, and newsletters. My wife proofs all of my newsletters, but because we do not have MS Publisher on our home computer, I can not just email it to her. This way, I could get a same day proof from her without printing it out, taking it home, having her edit it, and then fixing it the next day.
This tool could be beneficial for a church member to look at bulletin/newsletter proofs and many other admin purposes. Of course there is a short 5-10 minute learning curve, but it is a pretty basic and handy tool!
Free CM Stuff highlights top notch no cost resources for Children's Ministry leaders and offers a site for CM leaders to share resources they have developed themselves.
