One of the Youth Ministry Mentors, John Byrne, runs a site called YM Theology. It features a lot of youth ministry videos, podcasts and blog posts surrounding youth ministry and theology, but John also has a page of youth ministry content he’s created that he’s willing to just give away for free. The page includes

• Description of a Discipled Person
• Discipline
• Event Prep Worksheet
• Internship Proposal
• KRA-s
• Intern Job Description
• Small Group Training
• SWOP
• Worship Team Application
• Youth ministry leader app
• Christmas Trivia

Also on his page is a 4-week youth group curriculum series called “Twilight” that’s based on the story of Ruth. You can download all 4 weeks of the discussion questions for the series plus everything else mentioned above right here:

Free Youth Ministry Stuff from YMTheology.com

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For LIVE YM Talk this Monday, January 4, Todd Perkins is our featured guest. He will lead us in a discussion about designing and communicating the student ministry’s vision to the church and community. We’d love to have you join us for the live conversation at 2:00 PM eastern time! See our LIVE YM Talk page for details.

Troy Young created and donated this year’s Christmas Freebie Friday! Thanks, Troy!

If your youth ministry uses countdown timers, here’s a simple 5-minute timer on a green screen. You can put your latest youth ministry video of an event, a motion background, or even your youth group logo in front of the green screen. iMovie ‘09 makes it dead simple to use a green screen, so if you’re on a Mac, this should be simple.

Download 5-minute green-screen countdown timer*

*You may have to right-click on the link and select, “Save Target As” or “Save Link As” in order to download the video file.

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There is no LIVE YM Talk this week. Our next talk is on Monday, January 4, 2010, were we will talk about designing and communicating the student ministry’s vision to the church and community. Our guest will be Todd Perkins of Youth Ministry Consultants, Inc.. Join us then for LIVE YM Talk.

Although you no longer have 3 more weeks to do a Christmas lesson series with your youth group, you could tuck this away for next year, cram it in this year, or even continue to talk about Christ’s birth after Christmas (imagine that!).

This freebie from Interlinc includes a couple articles and three free Christmas youth group lesson plans.

• Article: The Humbling Starts Here
• Article: A Righteous Dude
• Article: Really, A Virgin?
• Session One: Unplanned Pregnancies
• Session Two: A Trip At The Worst Time
• Session Three: A Child Is Born

View and download the Nativity 3-Session Resource Guide

As a bonus, here’s a PDF quiz of Christmas carols that is print-ready for 8.5×11 paper and produces two quizes per page. The answer sheet is printable as well. We used it with our youth group last week and had a lot of fun with it!

Christmas Carol Game PDF

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There is no LIVE YM Talk this week nor next week. Our next talk is on Monday, January 4, 2010, were we will talk about designing and communicating the student ministry’s vision to the church and community. Our guest will be Todd Perkins of Youth Ministry Consultants, Inc.. Join us then for LIVE YM Talk.

iTunes is giving away a free 20-track Christmas music album for you to download!

1. O Come All Ye Faithful – Amy Grant
2. The First Noel – David Archuleta
3. Silent Night – Sarah McLachlan
4. Carol of the Bells / Jingle Bells – Barry Manilow
5. It Snowed – Meaghan Smith
6. Above the Northern Lights – Mannheim Steamroller
7. Baby, It’s Cold Outside – Lady Antebellum
8. We Three Kings – Toby Keith
9. God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen – Rascal Flatts
10. Silent Night – Wynonna
11. Twelve Days of Christmas – Mexicani Marimba Band
12. We Wish You a Merry Christmas – Weezer
13. A Snowflake Fell (And It Felt Like a Kiss) – Glasvegas
14. Another Christmas Song – Stephen Colbert
15. Greensleeves – Vince Guaraldi Trio
16. Dream a Dream – Charlotte Church
17. The Nutcracker, Op. 71, Act 2: Character Dances (Divertissement) – Dance of the Reed Pipes – Kirov Orchestra & Valery Gergiev
18. Angels We Have Heard On High – Aretha Franklin
19. O Holy Night – Musiq Soulchild
20. Auld Lange Syne – The Lonesome Travelers

Don’t ya love it with God uses unbelievers to spread His message?!

Download the iTunes Holiday Sampler

[ ht to MattReeve on Twitter ]

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This Monday, December 14, John Mulholland will join us to the issues that surround separating jr and sr high ministries. Join us for the live conversation at 2:00 PM eastern time! See our LIVE YM Talk page for details.

Simply Youth Ministry is giving away several Christmas PowerPoint games and Christmas backgrounds for free!

On their Freebie Games page, you can download three different PowerPoint Games: Christmas Trivia Game, Christmas Zoom-In Game, and Christmas Sing-along Game. There’s also directions there for a non-PowerPoint Christmas game called Christmas Wrap-Off.

They’re also giving away 10 free Christmas backgrounds to use with PowerPoint

In case that’s not enough, check out their free talk outline called, The Christmas Killers. It helps students see that Christmas is more than gifts.

And, of course, there’s the Christmas Carol PowerPoint game I gave away over 100 freebies ago, too.

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This Monday, December 7, Walt Mueller of CPYU will join us to answer questions related to youth culture, parenting and ministry. We’d love it if you could submit your questions ahead of time, though. Join us for the live conversation at 2:00 PM eastern time! See our LIVE YM Talk page for details.

A couple months ago Joshua Griffin posted a big, yellow smiley face they used for a teaching series at Saddleback. I looked at it and thought it could work great for another personality for youth group video announcements since it works very similarly to our good friend, L.T.

Basically, use your computer’s microphone to talk while using the keys on your computer to control the smiley face. A screen capture program will allow you to record a video from your audio and smiley face together, just how we discussed with the jib-jab effect tutorial. (See that post for screen capture software suggestions.) Upload the video announcement to your youth group’s Facebook page and, wa-la, you’ve created an engaging, creative and fun announcement in under 5 minutes.

Here are the controls for using Big, Yellow Smiley:

• Mouse – controls eye movement (click and drag to move)
• Q through O – controls the eyes
• A through G – controls moving mouths (hold to make mouth move)
• Z through B – controls static mouths (hold to make them stay on the screen)
• Space Bar – controls talking mouth (hold to talk)

View Smiley full-screen in your browser (right-click and “Save as…” to download)

[ht Dennis Poulette]

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For LIVE YM Talk this Monday, November 23, Brad Cooper is our featured guest. As the youth pastor at Perry Noble’s church, Newspring Community Church, he will lead us in a discussion about leading a team of volunteer youth workers. We’d love to have you join us for the live conversation at 2:00 PM eastern time! See our LIVE YM Talk page for details.

A couple years ago I highlighted Covenant Theological Seminary’s courses that were available as free mp3 downloads, complete with handouts and notes. Even two years ago, that was pretty cutting edge for a seminary, but today more and more schools are publishing course videos to iTunes, including my own alma mater, Dallas Theological Seminary.

Dallas Theological Seminary doesn’t offer videos of entire course, but it does offer pretty good chunks of them. If you’re thinking about seminary training or want to take your theology deeper without the expense, this is the perfect way to get started.

Here’s a list of the course videos you can download in iTunes for free:

• BE101 – Bible Study Methods
• BE102 – OT History I
• BE103 – OT History II
• BE104 – Prophets
• BE105 – Gospels
• BE107 – Hebrews, General Epistles, and Revelation
• BE109 – Ruth, Jonah, Epistles
• BE510 – Life of Christ
• NT101 – Elements of Greek I
• NT102 – Elements of Greek II
• NT111 – Intertestamental History
• ST101 – Intro to Theology
• ST102 – Trinitarianism
• ST103 – Angelology, Anthropology, & Hamartiology (Angels, Humans, and Sin)
• ST104 – Soteriology (Salvation)
• BC101 – Introduction to Biblical Counseling
• CE102 – History and Philosophy of Christian Education
• PM101 – Spiritual Life
• PM102 – Evangelism
• PM103 – Preaching I
• SL305 – Dynamics of Leadership
• WM101 – Introduction to World Mission

Dallas Theological Seminary on iTunes U

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For LIVE YM Talk this Monday, November 23, Brad Cooper is our featured guest. As the youth pastor at Perry Noble’s church, Newspring Community Church, he will lead us in a discussion about leading a team of volunteer youth workers. We’d love to have you join us for the live conversation at 2:00 PM eastern time! See our LIVE YM Talk page for details.

If you follow me on Twitter or Facebook you may notice that I already published this document earlier in the week on my personal blog, but since I put the time into creating the resource, I thought I’d share it with everyone else here, as well.

This weekend I’ll be at a youth pastor retreat for the Christian Missionary Alliance denomination doing a seminar on, “Web tools for youth ministry.” Although we’ll probably cover a lot more than what’s on this handout, this is what we’ll start with and see what direction we go from here.

View and download, “Web tools for youth ministry”

Any glaring oversights of a service or tool I missed? Let me hear them in the comments below.

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LIVE YM Talk this Monday, November 16, Mark Riddle is our featured guest. He will lead us in a discussion about how to find and determine the Lord’s leading to a healthy church ministry as a follow-up to my recent post on when to back away from a youth ministry position. We’d love to have you join us for the live conversation at 2:00 PM eastern time! See our LIVE YM Talk page for details.

Today’s freebie is contributed by Interlinc. Here’s their summary of the freebie:

Most of our students are impacted by music, tv, movies and videos games (or a complex combination therein), so when we have a chance to use one of those media venues for kingdom purpose, it can have a big impact. Disney is releasing A Christmas Carol this weekend. We media-ministry dudes at Interlinc have created a 3-session Youth Leader Guide to help you make the most of a movie that most of your students will probably see.

By the way, it’s an awesome movie – some of our Interlinc staff got a sneak peek on Monday. The 3D is amazing and helps communicate the story that much more. We decided to help with this movie since it is a wonderful story of life-evaluation and redemption.

So go download the 3-session Bible study lesson guide today and put Scrooge to work for you. Enjoy the Freebie on us, and enjoy A Christmas Carol.

View and download youth Bible study lessons for A Christmas Carol

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LIVE YM Talk this Monday, November 9, YOU are the featured guest. We will have an open discussion where you can ask questions, seek advice, share prayer concerns, vent, share stories, whatever you want with other youth workers. We’d love to have you join us for the live conversation at 2:00 PM eastern time! See our LIVE YM Talk page for details.

This week’s Freebie Friday is written and contributed by Paul Turner. He’s been creating youth ministry content for a long time: books, handouts, curriculum, training tools and more. Up until a couple weeks ago, all of his material was available for sale through his website’s store, but now he’s giving it all away for free! Here’s what he has to say about it:

What do you get for free? Criticism? That’s no fun. Resources, conversation, encouragement, training? Yes, more fun. When I started Disciple Project Ministries a little over two years ago, I was following a traditional model: Create stuff and sell it. The new model: Create stuff, give it away, talk about it, repeat. I hope the resources I will now provide for free; will somehow replenish a small part of what we all give up in time, money and sometimes ego to serve students. I am looking forward to serving all of you.

Download everything you want from Paul for absolutely free now.

The Discipleship Project’s FREE store

More free stuff from The Discipleship Project

Paul Turner has been working with youth for 20 years. He is the author of, The Cure For The Common Youth Ministry, and founder of Disciple Project Ministries. Paul is the youth director at Gardendale, Mt. Vernon UMC in Birmingham, Al. He loves spending time with his wife Kim, raising their their three great kids (2 of which are teens).

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LIVE YM Talk this Monday, November 2, is with featured guest, Dennis Beckner, who will lead us in a discussion on keys for successfully start in youth ministry as a volunteer. We’d love to have you join us for the live conversation at 2:00 PM eastern time! See our LIVE YM Talk page for details.