My Charity Box is a no cost way for your church or ministry to collect tithes, payments, or donations. It offers the following features:
This month, I’m starting a new Wednesday feature where I will give you a “Top 10″ of mine. I’ll do this on the 2nd Wednesday of each month. This month, I’d like to recommend 10 people on Twitter who you may not follow, but are worthy of following. These are in no set order.
And of course…this guy.
Check out The Church Ninja for free resources each Friday. The Church Ninja also points to other media items that you can purchase at various websites and has it’s own store opening soon! Looking forward to more resources to come out from my new Ninja friend!
If you want to get more involved in movie/video production for your ministry and:
a. Have Window’s Vista (which did not include a Movie Maker), or
b. Have Windows XP Pro as an office OS (which does not include a Movie Maker), or
c. Have Windows 7 which includes Windows Live Movie Maker that pretty much stinks, or
d. Want a nicer video editor, but don’t want to spend the $80-100 to get it, then
I’ve got a few free editors you may want to try:
1. Jaycut–Jaycut is an online editor. It has some nice features including multiple audio channels, text effects, and tons of transition effects.
2. MovieMasher–MovieMasher is a great downloadable program that includes a ton of nice transition effects as well as chroma-key incorporation (green screen).
3. Lightworks–This is not for the faint of heart. Lightworks is a Hollywood level movie editing software available for free download. This is a hefty package, but very powerful…more fitting for the tech-savvy of the kidmin world.
I’m sure you’ve heard of the incredible resources that Lifechurch makes available for absolutely free. Well, I just learned that in addition to their kids and student curriculum, they also have a good deal of worship loops for download. You know they will be quality, because Lifechurch is quality. Enjoy!
What you see above is the Awana Gospel Wheel. When I found out about this about a year and a half ago, I became a big fan. I think that it appropriately communicates the gospel message along with, for the most part, a clear response. I appreciate how the Gospel Wheel utilizes I Corinthians 15:3-4 to accentuate not only Jesus’ death, but his resurrection–a portion of the Good News of Jesus that is often forgotten and relegated to a footnote. I found out now that they have an app available in Android, iPad and Iphone configurations. I just used it this week with my daughters to communicate the gospel to them and it served me well.
I think this is a great tool for those of us who work with children whether you are an Awana fan or not. You can go through the App with someone and never know it is an Awana tool except for the initial splash screen.
One critique I have, and it is a general critique for the gospel wheel, is that they do not include the concept of repentance in this presentation. Repentance, a change in mind and heart–away from sin and toward the Lord, is a critical component in a response to the gospel that goes hand in hand with faith/belief/trust. When presenting this to my daughters I had to insert the idea of repentance in it on my own.
Format wise, I do like how you have three options of presentation to choose from: kids, teens and adults. I believe the adult one could be more visually appealing perhaps utilizing symbols or “icons” to display the truth on screen. I really like how the teen portion allowed for some discussion questions, though a few of them seemed slightly surface level. Others, however, were quite poignant. You also get to choose from NIV, KJV or Spanish–another nice feature. Take a look at this video to find out more.
ZipZap is a family friendly web browser that allows parents to closely monitor and control what their children view on the internet. It essentially revolves around giving each family member a user account which can be filtered using 64 different categories. I think this would be a great tool to make available to elementary and middle school parents and could even be something that you installed on any ministry computers used by children.
Freedcamp is an online project management service. It allows you to assign specific tasks to users, set time lines and goals, discuss decisions and project direction and share files. I’m not sure how well this would work in a church with a close office system, but I do see that it can have value in event planning with volunteers. I can see this online help being very beneficial for VBS and camp planning as you enter the summer. Let me know if you used it and how it worked out for you.
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:
Having access to files is critical these days. Many of us are operating our ministry on multiple computers. You have a desktop in your office, a home computer that you do some work on, and perhaps a production computer in another area of your ministry like a children’s worship room. For that reason, it is good to have a few tools in your belt that allows you to share files. I’d like to highlight two in this post. Both of these allow for iPhone or Android access through specific apps.
1. Dropbox
Dropbox is a “Folder” that gets placed on a computer’s desktop when you install the Dropbox program. Whatever you place in your Dropbox folder becomes synced with Dropbox folders you have on other computers as well as the Dropbox website. If you would like to see how to get more free storage for this application, check out this article.
2. HomePipe
HopePipe is a little different. It is geared toward media sharing, but can be used for general file purposes. HomePipe is not a file syncing program, but a way to access files on other computers. For instance, if I want to move several songs from my home computer to my work computer, HomePipe allows this fairly quickly. Perhaps I have a sermon on my work computer that I want to print out and go over on my day off. HomePipe allows for that. It is internet based, but does not store or sync any files through the internet. It simply allows you to access and download files on other computers. It is not a remote desktop like Log Me In, but a simple way to access and download files.
