Kids Worship artist Brent Weber is the focus of our Wednesday Give Away this month. Brent is kind enough to give away 2 of his worship DVDs. They are:

1. Crazy and Engaging
2. Rockin’ Praise and Worship

Two lucky people will win (1 DVD per winner). Here’s how to enter:

• Go to this link
• Listen to a few songs
• Comment here on this post about which song was your favorite

Next Wednesday, I’ll randomly choose two lucky winners from all the entries. One entry per person.

Cullen Wood has an extensive website full of videos geared toward preschool teachers. She has a lot of videos that teach activities to do with preschoolers along with the accompanying craft templates. She also has a good selection of Christian focused videos teaching preschoolers songs like the one below.

Have a great video online that you want to use in your ministry? Maybe someone sent you a video that you want to convert to a different format.

The best online solution I have found for these purposes is Movavi. It is easy to use and not very finicky. I’ve used a variety of different sites that do the same things, but they always seem to have a few quirks.

Hey, here are some free looping backgrounds just in time for your after Christmas weekend service…or for next year! These are courtesy of the folks at Soul Refinery.

1) Red Tree Loop

2) Green Tree Loop

If you are not familiar with Skype, it is a free computer to computer/phone line calling software. Computer phone systems have not quite taken the country by storm, but at this point they do have some special abilities, and yes, for the sake of my site, Skype is free (for the basic features and computer to computer calling).

This Sunday, I will be calling a family from our church who is serving in East Asia during both children’s worship services. I’ll project their video call on the screen and the computer will emit sound through the sound system so that all the kids in the worship can take part. We will hear them share their heart for missions and using a web cam in the worship room, we will allow some children to ask the missionary children questions.

We have done this once before and it was a success. You do have to beware that the video and sound could be choppy and it may take a few tries when the other person is in a country with poor internet infrastructure. But overall, it’s a good way to expose kids to missions work.

Muddy River Media is a nice little site for countdowns, looping effects, a few videos, and some sermon theme packages. It’s definitely not a gold mine, but the work they have done is quality and it is a well designed site. I hope that others will catch onto what they are doing and support Mark Fogarty’s work. Something like this has great potential in the market of highly priced media material.

Eyejot is super cool. You log into their site, record a video from a webcamera, and email it out. I have used it for some personal messages, but I had some ideas about how to use it in ministry:

• Send an Eyejot to every parent in your ministry on Thursday, helping them to connect with their child about the material you will be teaching on Sunday.
• Have groups of children Eyejot messages to missionaries your ministry or church has adopted.
• Send Eyejots to kids (via parent email most likely) when you know they are sick or have been out for a while.
• Eyejot your volunteers with critical news or announcements. This way they see your expressions and emotions and don’t misinterpret email communication.
• Send Eyejot updates to parents when taking kids to camp over the summer.
• Use Eyejot to remind volunteers or parents of upcoming meetings.
• Send an Eyejot to a volunteer, kid, or parent  just to let them know you were thinking about them or praying for them.

What about you? Have you used this tool for ministry? What creative ways can you think of to use Eyejot?

This one is for the techie’s out there. Go to 5am Productions if you would like to get a few quality loops for worship or countdown backgrounds. When you download the zipped file, you get about 100 .jpg images. You’ll need to import those images into a program like Windows Movie Maker, Adobe Premier, Cyberlink Power Director, or iMovie, set the .jpg images to go for a duration of about 1/30th of a second (30 frames per second), and then publish it as a .wmv, .mov, or .mpg file. Not too complicated, huh???

Well, this is our last day of the “Freed Up” Ministry series. I hope that you have gotten some great resources over the last several weeks.

Today, I think you need to check out the Seeds Family Worship YouTube channel. Seeds Family Worship has some great free music videos that you can easily use as worship videos or intro music to events. Check out:

• I Timothy 4:12
• Philippians 4:6-7
• Psalm 55:2

You may recall a previous post here about how Seeds gives away the guitar chords for every one of their songs. I love to hear of organizations like this, willing to give of the resources God has given them.

Download these videos through a website such as Vixy, Gazzump, or Media Converter.

In the future, be on the look out for :

• More Wednesday Give Aways
• New Feature: Leadership Nuggets (small ideas or articles to help you in your ministry)
• New Series: Keep Your Focus (free resources to keep you spiritually focused)

Today I want you all to know about a very well done video from Max 7. Max 7 is a great website full of downloadable videos, curriculum, music, and ministry forms.

You MUST have the Aim Lower video. If you can get your pastor to let you play this in the service, you deserve a raise!