Yesterday I posted the general results from the survey I did of this site’s readership, which was really helpful in sharpening the focus of this site for 2010. However, almost everyone left comments and questions in the survey, too.

Since the survey was anonymous, I have no way of responding directly to people, let alone knowing who they are. Here are a couple questions and feedback that was asked by several people and my answers. NOTE: I edited and summarized a lot of this feedback for the sake of brevity.)

I’d like to see more product reviews. We know what saves a young person, but what is the right camera to buy? What is the right program or mac to purchase? This is something that would be helpful and also a good use of God’s money.

While I’m glad to hear you’re like me and like to research products before you buy them, I doubt this will be an area I’ll dive into anytime soon. I’m happy to mention the electronics I’ve purchased for my ministry and make recommendations accordingly, but there are many other websites that do a much better job of offering reviews and advice in this area than I can. I usually use sites like Amazon.com and Epinions.com to check out user-reviews of products.

Of course, you can always ask for recommendations and input on a product at MinistryQuestions.com before you buy something, too. There’s usually a youth worker or two out there who can give great advice on just about anything.

Please carefully proofread your writing. I think the frequent errors detract from the professionalism that you promote otherwise.

YES! I know! It bugs me, too! lol I type about 87 words per minute, but that’s still not fast enough to keep up with my thought process. I notice I often skip entire words as I type because my mind is already several words ahead of what I’m typing. Thanks for this reminder, though. I do need to do this more.

Unfortunately, I’ve watched very few of your videos. When I skim through my emails, I can read text very quickly. When I encounter a video, I don’t know how much time you’ll be taking away from me. If I can’t tell how long the video it, I’ll just skip it.

Great input! Just thought I’d point out that you can see how long each video is ahead of time by looking at the bottom-right corner of the YouTube video. The time duration is there. Hope that helps!

I listened to one episode of ministryquestions.com and I’m sorry to say that I wasn’t very impressed. A significant chunk of the time was taken up by introductions. I suppose that makes sense at the moment but it is tedious and unnecessary for the archive version.

Hmm… yeah, that makes sense. The reason I include the introductions is because I like LIVE YM Talk to be a place where youth leaders can connect with each other, even if it’s just by knowing someone’s name and having a frame of reference for their input throughout the recorded discussion.

I’m interested to hear what everyone else thinks about this. QUESTION: Should I include introductions in the podcast recording of LIVE YM Talk or not?

I’ll admit, the current website/theme is getting a bit old and is appearing “stale.” All my love to you, but after seeing some of your videos, video bumpers, etc. maybe an upgrade is in order?

I definitely agree. I’ve been discontent with it for a long time now. Since this site has kinda evolved on me, a lot of it needs to change. For example, when I made the logo of me in the goofy pose with the yellow lei around my hat, I just thought it was funny and didn’t expect too may other people to visit the site and see it. But now I know the branding of this site is very inconsistent and the design, while functional, is cluttered and busy.

None of the premium pay-for themes out there really fit what I have in mind, so just last week I finally finished saving up enough cash for a custom design and mailed in a check for the first deposit to a designer I hired. Within the next month or two, LISM will undergo the second phase of my site’s relaunch with new a new design and branding. (The first phase was moving to StudentMinistry.org, the final phase will be to upgrade some things with the videos and LIVE YM Talk recordings, but it all costs money, so it’ll take a while.)

Maybe giving away free tech gear, iPhones, or Wii’s? ;)

If someone wants to donate some gear to give away on my site, I’m totally up for that! In the meantime, I’ve showed you how to get those items and more for free, just like I have multiple times.

I appreciate not having to sort through the ads.

Yeah, this is a delicate balance. On one hand, I need to generate an income through the site so I can not only maintain it, but also improve it and upgrade it to keep up with growth. Plus, I love launching new projects like MinistryQuestions.com, which was not only costly to pull off, but is spendy to keep online due to the integrated video recording and streaming. It’s not even close to supporting itself, so I keep it online and maintained with the surplus funds from LISM advertising revenues.

But I also am firmly in your camp where I hate lots of advertising on a site. It annoys me to no end when I see it on other websites. I hate having to sift through the ads to find the content I want. Often I just leave a site altogether and never bother with it again if it’s cluttered with ads. While it’s necessary that this site generates an income, I plan on experimenting with fewer ads and charging more for them when the new design launches in a month or two. Not sure if that’ll work or not, but it’s worth a shot.

I really liked your “big rocks” video post. I have thought of four or five similar videos I would like to make but just haven’t had the time. Do you plan on adding more of these maybe for a small fee or even for free?

Yeah, the “big rocks” video was fun to do! It’s the only video I’ve done like that and, while it’s cool and all, personally I enjoy talking with other youth workers even more. As I mentioned yesterday, the tagline for LISM is, “Conversations among those who are passionate for teenagers.” The interview/discussion format of my videos is more enjoyable for me and fits the direction I’m going with this site better than the inspirational reminders. That said, however, I’m sure I’ll end up doing more videos like “big rocks” again in the future, because they still are fun to do from time to time.

Sometimes when I ask a question on MinistryQuestions.com, after a few answers come in, I’d like the chance to interact with the answers, which I don’t believe is possible right now.

I’ve wrestled back and forth with this question a lot. On one hand, I really do value the interaction and dialog that can take place from something like that, but on the other hand, I don’t want MinistryQuestions.com to just turn into another youth ministry forum. I want MQ to be distinctly unique. Sometime in the future I may pay the developers to build a feature that lets the question owner ask only one follow-up question to each response, but for now the best solution is to send a private message to the person who answered your question, as I talked about on the MinistryQuestions.com blog.

I don’t have the time to listen to all of the podcasts, but there are often topics discussed that I would love to learn more about. Is there anyway to get a text copy of the conversation or a summary of them?

Many people ask for this and, unfortunately, there is no easy way to do it at this point. Transcribing the each conversation would take hours and hours and does not sound even remotely fun. Maybe there’s someone else who would be up for doing that, or even writing a solid summary post about the discussion, but it’s definitely not me. Sorry! There may be some services out there that could do it, but I haven’t looked into them. My guess is that they won’t be too accurate with transcribing anyway.

Anyone else up for doing it?

Other general comments

Technology posts: There were a lot of comments about how you appreciate the articles about using technology in youth ministry, which makes sense, I guess — if you subscribe to a blog you’re probably more technologically inclined and interested about those kinds of things. Since I also enjoy technology, I don’t think writing more about this will be a problem. :)

My transparency: There were also many comments about how you all appreciate my transparency and authenticity on the site. Personally, I don’t think I’m being transparent enough! In 2010 I’m looking forward to sharing even more about my own life and ministry, lessons I’m learning and struggling through.

Networking with LISM readers: Another popular request was something I had never thought of before: a map of the US for LISM readers to use to find other LISM readers in their area. Apparently a lot of you want to connect with other readers of this site on a more personal level than what MinistryQuestions.com or LIVE YM Talk can provide. My initial thought is to refer you all to the National Network of Youth Ministers. They do an excellent job at forming local youth pastor networks and connecting youth workers together in face-to-face communities. But for those who want to connect specifically with other LISM readers, let me give more thought to that and see where it goes. Good idea!

QUESTION: How many other people would be interested in a LISM networking too like this?

On New Year’s Eve I asked how I can make LISM more valuable for you in 2010 and I’m glad I did because 70 of you gave me a lot of very helpful feedback!

Here’s an overview of some of your input, my responses, and reader demographics on this site. I would love to hear your response to all of these items in the comments below!

Overview

I asked this question to see if there were any trends in how questions were answered among newer subscribers as opposed to those who have been around for a while. The answers and comments were all pretty diverse, so nothing really to report there. The number of newer people who responded to the survey compared to the number of long-time subscribers is pretty reflective on how the site has grown over the past several years (i.e. there weren’t many subscribers 2 and 3 years ago).

Both of these surprised me! The main demographic of youth workers I have in mind when I generate content is the new youth worker (2 years or less) who is the main volunteer at a church with no paid youth worker. The secondary demographic I have in mind are paid youth workers who are new to youth ministry. To see that 64% of you are paid full-time and that 65% of you have been in youth ministry for 6 years or more makes me scratch my head a bit. I wasn’t writing for you! lol I feel like my content is a bit remedial for people who have been serving in that kind of a capacity for that long.

But regardless of what I had in mind, it is what it is. QUESTION: Should I start gearing my content more for you youth ministry veterans who have been doing this for 10+ years? I’m humbled you would even consider this site worth reading! Wow.

This site has a lot of international visitors thanks to some decent Google rankings, so I was curious to know if I should start focusing more on youth ministry from a global perspective. To be honest, I’m glad the large majority of readers are from the US because I know almost nothing about international youth ministry. How to work with teens in India, Africa and the Philippines is something I’d definitely have to outsource to someone more knowledgeable than myself.

This chart shows me that, while I have a decent amount of international traffic, almost none of it converts into subscribers, probably because the content is geared solely toward American teens? While it would be cool to help our international brothers and sisters in youth ministry, I feel that mixing international content in with the normal LISM stuff would dilute the focus here too much, but doing a separate youth ministry blog that focuses on that un-resourced demographic would be cool, maybe as a subdomain here or something. QUESTION: Anyone know someone abroad who would be excited and qualified to blog here about international youth ministry?

Aww man, I was hoping video would be much higher because it’s so much fun! Plus, I don’t have to worry about spelling, grammer, punctuation, and all that crud. Oh well. Good ol’ text it is, then… for now.

Freebie Friday and my normal blog posts are out front pretty strong together, twice as far as everything else, which are all somewhat close. It appears that there is value in it all, but that I should focus more on writing content than continuing the different features and series here. My tension is that I try to limit my posts to one a day, which only leaves 2, sometimes 3, days to publish unique “featured” posts.

Right now I have 56 blog drafts waiting to be published eventually. Some of them have been there for over a year and are probably out of date and irrelevant by now. QUESTION: I have enough that I could publish two posts a day for a while, which would be fine for you RSS subscribers, but might feel like spam for you email subscribers. What do you think?

Looks like I could write about anything and someone somewhere would be happy. I appreciate the flexibility! Although, I definitely am more excited about guest posts here at LISM than the rest of you are. I’m probably gonna push that direction a bit more than you guys indicated just because I really value having other voices and perspectives on this site. The tagline for LISM is, “Conversations among those passionate for teenagers,” hence LIVE YM Talk and the youth ministry mentorships. Guest blog posts fit right in with that focus. (If you’re interested in being a guest blogger, check out my guidelines and tips for how to make that happen.)

Tomorrow, answers to your questions and comments

There were several common questions that you all asked in the comments section of the survey. Tomorrow I’ll do my best to respond to a lot of your anonymous feedback and the future of Life In Student Ministry.

Just a quick note to notify everyone that LIVE YM Talk will now be hosted at BlogTalkRadio.com.

In 2008 LIVE YM Talk was hosted on Skype before we quickly switched to Talkshoe.com, which worked great for a year and a half because it was free and served our needs perfectly. In fact, it still is the perfect solution for LIVE YM Talk, except that a couple months ago it started having a lot of issues with crashing people’s browsers, software incompatibilities, down-time, and more. I’ve been in touch with Talkshoe’s head support rep and, unfortunately, they don’t seem too eager to fix anything, so it’s time for us to move on.

Try joining us again

If you’ve joined us in the past but stopped because of all the technical difficulties with TalkShoe, I’d like to invite you to come back and join us again. Although BlogTalkRadio.com is missing some of the key features we loved at TalkShoe, at least it should be functional — it’d better anyway, I’m paying $39 a month for it!

Each week’s show link will be posted at it’s normal place on the LIVE YM Talk page here at LISM, so check that each Monday for a direct link to listen to the conversation online and access the chat room. We also now have a direct phone number: (646) 721-9140. Or, during the show you can just click a button and connect directly using your computer microphone with no software to install.

Some big upcoming shows!

We have a great lineup of discussions scheduled, including a live conversation and Q&A with Tic Long, the new Executive Director of Youth Specialties, in a couple weeks!

This Monday we’re talking with Eric Iverson, the Multi-Cultural Integrity Director for YouthWorks. He’ll lead us in a discussion about, “What every youth worker can learn from urban youth ministry.”

The Monday after that, on January 25, E.J. Swanson is going to join the conversation about, “How to connect God’s Word with students who appear disconnected, apathetic, and distracted.”

Check out the schedule of other upcoming discussions on the LIVE YM Talk page and join our conversation every Monday at 2:00 PM eastern time!

As we enter into 2010, I’ve been thinking a lot about Life In Student Ministry and it’s direction for the future. I’ve been tremendously blessed to create much of the content here, sometimes with you in mind, sometimes just rambling out loud about my own issues and struggles in youth ministry. I presume much of that will stay the same in 2010, but I also want to make some changes that will continue to bless you and your ministry. As you know, evaluation is critically important in preventing something from becoming stale and stagnant, so would you help me with that?

Linked below is a survey that could give me some valuable insights into you, your ministry, your needs, and thoughts about this site. It should only take about 3-4 minutes to complete, so when you have the time, please fill it out and help me serve you.

[ SURVEY: Looking forward to 2010 with LISM ]

All that I ask is that you be honest, courteous and constructive with your feedback.

I pour a lot of time and energy into Life In Student Ministry and the projects that surround it, so criticism can be a little difficult to hear sometimes. However, I think it’s vital to hear it all if this site is going to continue to be a valuable resource for you and your ministry.

I appreciate if you could complete the survey above, but also feel free to leave comments below that could be helpful for LISM in 2010. Give me feedback about topics, types of posts, posting frequency, the site’s design, blog features, MinistryQuestions.com, tools and services, frustrations, ideas, etc. Thank you!

I’m looking forward to an amazing year of blessing you and your “life in student ministry!”

We have a couple exciting LIVE YM Talks coming up! If you haven’t joined us yet on Mondays at 2:00 PM, it’s always a great conversation among youth workers from all over the country. We gather together in an online chat room and on the phone to learn from each other.

We have two exceptionally good talks coming up the next two weeks.

Answering recent questions and debates from MinistryQuestions.com: Monday, November 30

Not sure why I didn’t think of this sooner. It just makes natural sense to do a Ministry Questions podcast where we discuss some of the recent questions, answers and debates posted to the site. So, this coming Monday we’ll be doing our first Ministry Questions LIVE YM Talk episode. We’ll probably make this a semi-regular discussion, so come be a part of the first one.

If you have some questions you’d like us to discuss together, get ‘em posted at MinistryQuestions.com sometime before Monday.

Q&A with Walt Mueller: Monday, December 7

Next Monday we have the tremendous privilege of having Walt Mueller, founder and President of the Center for Parent/Youth Understanding, join us for LIVE YM Talk. This will be a great opportunity for us to interact with him, ask questions, and pick his brain on issues relating to youth culture. If you’ve ever wanted to sit down and talk with Walt, this is your chance!

We’d like to have as many questions ready-to-go for Walt as possible, so if you have something you’d like to talk with him about, please post it in the comments below. This will both help us manage our time well and help Walt come as prepared as possible for you. It would be great if you could show up for the conversation and ask him your question yourself, but if you’re unable to, I’ll do my best to ask many of your questions as I can in your place. Either way, post them in the comments below between now and then.

How to join the LIVE conversations

To join the live conversation on Mondays, call 724-444-7444 and enter ID 19105#. Or, use the link on the LIVE YM Talk page to listen online and participate via the live chat room.

Subscribe to the podcast in iTunes if you can’t make the live conversations but want to listen to the recordings later.

Last week I explained that I can no longer do LIVE YM Talk on Fridays and asked for your input about a better day of the week to host the live conversations. As a result, LIVE YM Talk will shift to Mondays, still remaining at 2:00 PM Eastern time.

There is no LIVE YM Talk this Friday. The next talk is this Monday at 2:00 PM Eastern time.

We have some great shows coming up, too! Here’s what’s schedule for the next couple weeks:

Communicating God’s Word effectively to teens
October 12 with featured guest, Rick Smith.

Mobilizing your students to share their faith
October 19 with featured guest, Matt Brown.

Working with cross-cultural students and minorities at youth group
October 26 with featured guest, Dennis Poulette.

Keep your eye on the LIVE YM Talk page for a schedule of other upcoming topics, guests, and shows. You can also listen to an archive of past conversations there, too.

How to join LIVE YM Talk show

Joining LIVE YM Talk is easy. On Mondays at 2:00 PM Eastern time join the conversation on the phone by calling 724-444-7444 and enter ID 19105# (standard long-distance charges may apply), or use the, Click HERE to join us LIVE online! link on the LIVE YM Talk page to listen to the conversation live online and participate in the adjoining chat room.

Cancellations and schedule changes are also posted on the LIVE YM Talk page as well as our Facebook page and Twitter.

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Please help support the youth ministry mentorship, the Online Missions Trip, and MinistryQuestions.com by subscribing to YouthWorker Journal. Get your FREE no-risk trial issue of YouthWorker Journal today, the best in youth ministry resources!

Several people have emailed me asking to how to produce video blog posts. Since replying to each inquiry hasn’t been high enough on my priority list, so I’m responding to all of you publicly here.

(Of course, a simple Google search will probably reveal everything I’m about to share and more, so don’t forget to look there. Plus, check out the archives of past blog posts here that talk about using video in ministry and blogs.)

Programs I use for editing

I primarily use iMovie ‘09 for all my video editing. It comes free on my Mac and is just so amazingly user-friendly. I also have Final Cut Express, but I’ve only used it a couple times to do some work that was a bit more advanced. Probably 98% of my editing is done in iMovie.

Sometimes I use LiveType, a Mac program that’s included with Final Cut Express, to create text animations like this one, too.

In the past couple weeks I started playing with the trial version of Adobe After Effects and created this cool little intro, but After Effects is too expensive for me to purchase so I doubt I’ll keep it around for much longer. It’s also pretty advanced. It’s definitely not a novice, user-friendly program.

If you’re on a PC, the Microsoft’s free Windows Movie Maker may be sufficient for your needs as you begin to experiment with video editing.

Where to get a cool intro

You can find a lot of good stock (royalty free) video footage and animations at iStockPhoto.com and RevoStock.com. If you want something quick and easy that you can just throw some text over, check there first.

If you think you want to try your hand at editing an animated After Effects template, RevoStock.com also has a lot of good AE templates you can customize with your own text, images and video clips. Unfortunately, it’s not quite as simple as dragging and dropping your content in the blank spaces, but if you committed to spending a couple hours on it and if you’re willing to watch some video tutorials on YouTube, it’s definitely doable with the trial version of After Effects.

Determining what video content to publish on a blog

For my blog here, I basically take a topic that’s related to my blog’s audience and draft a couple thoughts on paper. I then tape that sheet of paper on the tripod beneath the video camera while I shoot to make sure I stay on track and remember everything I want to say. The trick is to maintain eye contact with the camera lens and only use the sheet if I have to.

Use a clock to keep videos moving

No one likes to watch a video where someone rambles on and on in circles about something, so I use the timer on my iPod Touch to make sure I keep moving through my notes. I try not to spend more than a minute or two on each point.

Also, since YouTube limits videos to 10 minutes, a timer helps me know when I’m approaching 9 minutes and need to wrap it up. If you ever do a video interview with someone, explain ahead of time that you two have a maximum of 8 minutes to talk, show them the timer and do your best to stick to 8 minutes because it will always go over and end around 9+ minutes anyway.

Another note about interviews: when you’re shooting a conversation with someone, time feels like it moves naturally to you, but when people watch it on a video, it moves a lot slower, so keep the pace quick and don’t get stuck on something for too long.

Camera I use

I use a Canon HF100 video camera because it’s small (size of a soda can), shoots in amazing HD quality, 12x optical zoom (great for framing shots from a variety of distances), and has some limited advanced features for when I need them. However, if you’re looking to purchase a camera, the Canon HF200 is out now and seems to be a slightly better camera.

Of course, there’s the Flip HD cameras, too, if you want something that does a good job as a cheaper point-and-shoot camera.

Microphones I use

The thing many people overlook when it comes to shooting the video is that the audio quality. It’s is just as important as the video quality. Video camera’s on-board microphones aren’t entirely bad, but an external mic will make a huge difference in the overall quality of your video.

I mostly use the Sony ECM-MS908C mic for general shooting. It does an outstanding job, especially since it will cut out miscellaneous sounds that come from other angles around the camera. This mic’s audio is far superior to any video camera’s on-board microphone. Definitely worth the investment.

For interviews or for subjects that are a further away from the camera or if there’s a lot of background noise, I use the wireless Azden WMS-PRO wireless microphone set, but honestly, I’m a bit disappointed in the sound quality of these mics. They record a very low hum in the background, probably noticeable to no one else but me. It’s absolutely better than the alternative of using a standard mic under the aforementioned conditions, but you also get what you pay for when it comes to wireless mics. If I could do it over again, I’d probably save a bit longer and purchase a higher end UHF wireless mic system.

Notes about lighting

One of the biggest mistakes I made when I first started shooting video is that I ignored lighting conditions. Most cameras let you set the “white balance” to a preset of sunlight, shade, cloudy, florescent, tungsten, etc. Make sure you use that! Otherwise the people in your footage will turn out looking sunburned, pale, or worse.

Also, when I started I thought that the more light there was, the better, but that’s not necessarily true. There are two things that are important when it comes to lighting:

1. It’s best if the light is all the same “temperature” (roughly, the same kind of light). For example, try not to mix daylight from a window with florescent light from the ceiling. If it’s unavoidable, set the white balance on your video camera manually by zooming in on a white piece of paper and use the settings to automatically determine and adjust the camera’s white balance.

2. Be aware of the angles from where the light is coming. Search Google for “three point lighting” and try to use that basic light setup when it’s just you and the camera. For example, here’s two YouTube videos about three point lighting that will explain the basic concept: here and here. You don’t need to purchase expensive lights or anything — just use normal light bulbs that are all the same brand and position them accordingly.

Do you need all this equipment?

Probably not. When I first started doing my video blog posts, it was just me and my Macbook Pro, that’s it. I used Mac’s built-in iSight webcam and mic to record directly into iMovie. I slowly upgraded as I saw that the video blog posts were being received well, that I enjoyed doing them and was willing to put the time into shooting and editing each video. I’d recommend you start small and upgrade your equipment slowly over time as you learn what you’re doing and figure out what equipment you need most.

What tips do you have for shooting and producing video? We would love to hear them in the comments below!

For over a year now LIVE YM Talk has been on Fridays at 2:00 PM Eastern time because that’s my day off, which allows me to host the show without many ministry conflicts. However, now that I have a new little girl, Fridays are more sacred and need to be guarded carefully.

Thankfully, my Sr. Pastor is totally fine with me hosting LIVE YM Talk during the “work week,” so I plan to move the show to a different afternoon. The question is, what afternoon works best for all of you?

I asked that question on Twitter and the LISM Facebook Page a couple days ago and received some helpful feedback from some of you. So far, it turns out that Fridays are the worst possible days for LIVE YM Talk.

If you’re interested in participating in upcoming LIVE YM Talks, please cast your vote on this poll for what day works best for you. The time will most likely remain the same since 2:00 PM Eastern time allows east coast youth workers to be finished with the show about the time schools let out, and for pacific coast youth workers to finish the show right before lunch.

If you’re not familiar with LIVE YM Talk, check out the show’s page. You can listen to recordings of most of our past open-forum conversations there.

Vote for a new LIVE YM Talk day!

Back in 2005 I registered timschmoyer.com and setup WordPress because I was bored one night. I had no intentions of creating the site that this has become. If I could go back and do it over again, I would do a lot of things very differently, one of which would be to use almost any domain other than timschmoyer.com. As Life In Student Ministry becomes more and more oriented around the youth ministry conversations that take place here by people like you (i.e. LIVE YM Talk, mentorship program, guest posts, Freebie Friday contributions, MinistryQuestions.com, etc.), I felt strongly that I should move the branding away from myself. This will also open up many doors and possibilities that were previously not available to me, and thus neither to you.

So, please welcome the new domain… *drum roll*… StudentMinistry.org!

I eluded to this domain change in my earlier Gifts from YS, Interlinc, and Simply Youth Ministry post. Switching my site to StudentMinistry.org is the first phase in a long (expensive!) vision for this site, hence the fundraiser. Thanks to your contributions and gifts, this first step is complete. If you missed out on the fundraiser post when it was originally posted, there’s still time to contribute to the next step and get your thank-you gifts.

The next step is a new design and branding for studentministry.org that will allow me to work more easily with the board members of some ministry partners, thereby enhancing the Youth Ministry Mentorship, the reach of LIVE Youth Ministry Talk, snag high-quality Freebie Fridays, and a lot more.

So, although the domain timschmoyer.com is retired for a year or so (until I resurrect it for some unrelated personal use), Life In Student Ministry is growing and has some exciting potential in the future, all for the sake of bringing glory to God by blessing His youth workers.

Important

If you find broken links around the site, please let me know so I can update them. But more importantly, if you have previously linked to timschmoyer.com on a website, either in a blog post, sidebar, or whatever, could you please update your site to link to studentministry.org instead? Please and thank you!

Two weeks ago I wrote that I was temporarily slowing down my blog postings to prepare for our first baby that’s due very soon and to give some extra attention to this season of transition in my own youth ministry.

I also mentioned that some major changes are coming to Life In Student Ministry. Much of the time I normally spend on generating content I’m using to work on that project instead.

Future vision for this site

Basically, this site will be relaunched on a new domain with a new design that will allow it to reach far more people than it currently does. More new youth workers will be able to connect to the Youth Ministry Mentorships, blessed by resources, content, videos and LIVE YM Talks. MinistryQuestions.com will receive a boost among other things, but perhaps best of all, it will no longer be branded around my name. I will remain the primary voice, but the community of youth workers who have surrounded this site over the past several years will become a bigger emphasis. I’m really excited about the possibilities of growing, learning and being challenged together!

As with most things, there’s a price tag for all of this. Life In Student Ministry has never charged for anything and it rarely asks for donations, but the vision I have in mind will cost about $8,500 (yikes!), which is why I anticipate doing it in stages as funds are available. The first stage costs $2,500 and would work best if it was reached within a week from today.

I have about $900 of personal funds to contribute (instead of buying a TV) and am more than happy to do so in order to bless you and your ministries, but I can’t do it by myself. I know your ministries can’t always get away with just giving away funds — that’s why several organizations have partnered with me to offer their products as thanks-yous for your donation to Life In Student Ministry.

$10 donation – Interlinc “Welcome to youth group” videos

Interlinc creates “drop in” videos of Christian music artists doing little promos like, “Go to camp,” or “Join the worship team.” They’re easy to drop in to PowerPoint announcements, iMovie, or burn to DVD.

For a donation of $10, Interlinc will send you

• 5 “Welcome To Youth Group” drop in videos by Christian music artists
• An article from their Youth Leader Only book titled, “An Old Guy’s Advice for Strategic Ministry”
• A great download Bible Study for a Kutless song

$25 donation – 36 Parables video from Youth Specialties

For a $25 donation, you receive both Interlinc’s gift above, plus a free download of a 36 Parables video, “The Car Lot,” from Youth Specialties.

If you like that video, check out the entire 36 Parables series!

And as an additional bonus for every Life In Student Ministry reader, regardless of if you donate or not, register for the 2009 National Youth Workers Convention, with coupon code LSMN09 to get a free convention t-shirt! The early-bird rate is good until August 14, 2009.

$50 donation – “One Month To Live” from Simply Youth Ministry

For a donation of $50, you receive Interlinc’s gift, Youth Specialties’ gift, and a free download of the 3-week sermon series, “One Month To Live,” from Simply Youth Ministry.

This series helps students identify the values that define them — while also shedding light on parts of their lives that may be holding them back from living for God. It covers topics like determining what matters most, deepening relationships, leaving a legacy.

$100 donation – 3 random ministry books

For a donation of $100 or more, you receive the 3 gifts above, plus I will mail you 3 random books from my ministry library.

(Limited to first 10 doners. 8 left.)

How to donate

Visit my ChipIn page to “chip in” and give securely online via PayPal. I will be in touch via email with links to download your gifts.

Contact me privately if you prefer to donate with a check instead of online.

Other donations

Any size gift is appreciated, whether it’s $10 or $1,000. Thank you!

Other ways to contribute

If you’re unable to donate or would like to contribute in a different way, consider building a website for your ministry through MinistryWebsites.biz or completing a referral for a free iPod Touch, iPhone, Xbox 360, Macbook, and more.