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.

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.

Communication in ministry is vitally important because it really sets the stage for how people will perceive the ministry. Solid communication gives the impression that the ministry’s leadership is trustworthy, capable, and competent, whereas weak communication, even if the actual ministry is solid, leaves people feeling that the leadership is lacking direction and credibility. Probably about 80% of my office time each week is spent communicating our ministry with others, not just calendar events and news items, but the vision of who we are that drives what we do. (UPDATE: I usually do the communication stuff in the office, lesson prep and planning at home, and of course all the relationship stuff outside in other places. So, it’s not 80% of my total working hours, just my office hours.)

On a very practical level, here are the avenues my ministry uses to communicate with teens and parents throughout the week. In fact, we even have a handout that sits at our youth kiosk at church that lists these for newcomers.

Youth Group website

www.AlexandriaYouth.com
This is our main hub of communication because it’s a neutral place that almost everyone can access. On the front page site visitors will find the most current information, where and when to be places and who to get a hold of for each thing. There are also pictures and videos of past events, and lots more!. Here’s more information about how I made our website and the thought process behind it.

E-mail list

Whenever news is posted to our website, that info is automatically emailed to our mailing list. We use Feedblitz.com to automatically distribute the emails and manage the subscription list.

Text messaging

Text messaging is a great way to get last minute updates, reminders, and cancellations, but we use it for a lot more than that. There’s a lot of mass text messaging services out there, but I highly recommend TXTSignal.com.

A note about Tatango.com
I know a lot of youth ministries are using Tatango.com, but, although their service may be okay, I can personally vouch that their marketing ethics are highly questionable. Their VP marketing guy emailed me two weeks ago and, after some exchanges, started calling TXTSignal’s service illegal (citing a list of “best practices” as evidence, all of which TXTSignal meets and exceeds) and pointing me to a misleading blog post on their site about the SMS technology. Kinda ticked me off because people who aren’t familiar with the technology could easily get sucked in, like they were trying to do with me. I’ll never use them.

Facebook Page

www.Facebook.com/AlexandriaYouth
Many of our youth group kids are on Facebook. We use it to keep in touch, posting not only youth group pictures, videos and status updates, but video clips and pictures of high school sports games and performances. When kids start commenting on the media, it highlights the videos and pictures for most of their friends. Some of them check out the rest of our page and even become fans. More about using a Facebook page for youth ministry here (although, it’s slightly outdated already).

Bulletin inserts

Every Sunday we basically copy and paste what was posted on our website and distributed via email to a bulletin insert. This is mostly for first-time visitors and those who don’t use email or the web too much at home.

Youth kiosk table at church

We have a youth kiosk table at church right outside the main entrance to our worship center (sanctuary). The lights and motion on the TV and digital picture frames catch people’s eye as they walk by. We have a lot of general information sitting out, as well as sign-ups, pictures, promo flyers, and our weekly news video on a loop. Hanging around it on Sundays is a great way to meet new visitors with teens. See a picture of it here.

Twitter

twitter.com/AlexandriaYouth
Although only a couple of our teens use Twitter, the real reason I use it is to easily easily post short little updates to the front page of our youth group website. (Parents love it when I post updates while we’re away on trips!)

iTunes News Videos

http://www.alexandriayouth.com/itunes
Most weeks we publish a fun video that gives and overview of announcements, highlights of past events, previews of what’s coming up, contests, giveaways, and funny clips from YouTube. I found that if I stand in front of the youth group and make announcements, no one listens, but if I say the exact same thing on a screen, everyone is glued to it.

We post these videos on our website, our Facebook page, and show them at our weekly large-group jr. high and sr. high meetings. Publishing the videos in iTunes allows teens to automatically sync them to their iPods to watch on the bus, in the gym, and share with friends.

Personal contact

And, of course, I make my personal contact information readily available.

A video of my seminar on youth ministry communication

Last year at the Simply Youth Ministry Conference I taught a seminar on, “Communicating with teens and parents throughout the week,” which went into some of these areas in more detail. You can watch the video of the seminar here. Although some of it needs to be updated now (especially the Facebook part), it’s still generally true.

Last week my youth group’s news video featured my 2-month old daughter sharing some announcements using the JibJab effect along with my wife’s voice. It’s pretty funny! Check it out on YouTube, if you want.

Many of you were asking how I did it, and fortunately for all of us, it’s really simple.

1. Setup the talking head

Visit Blabberize.com and follow the instructions. You’ll have to upload a picture you want to use, select the mouth area (it looks best if you select the entire chin area, too), and select what audio source you want to use. Click the icon to use your computer microphone and you’ll see that the mouth starts bouncing along with your voice. This is as far as you need to go for our purposes.

2. Record your JibJab video

Since there’s no way to download your JibJab videos from Blabberize, you’ll have to use screen capture software that basically records to video whatever you select on your computer screen. I use iShowU for Mac, but Jing is free and available for both Mac and PC. Or, Free Screen Capturer might work for you PC users, too. (Disclaimer: I’ve never used Jing nor Free Screen Capturer.)

Just like I explained in the tutorial about how to record L.T. for youth group video announcements, set the screen capture software to record only the area of your computer screen where your Blabberize character resides. Make sure you also set it to record the audio from your computer microphone. Then click record and start talking. Stop the recording when you’re finished and, wa-la, you have your JibJab video announcement.

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Yesterday Simply Youth Ministry released only 400 units of the Spooky Awesome Bundle. It’s a $69 bundle with $280 worth of resources included, plus some free gifts. They’re already half way gone, so get the value while you still can.

Earlier this week Jason Stemm contributed a guest post called, 3 tips for improving your student ministry’s worship media. Today, he’s donating a motion background from his site, www.MotionRevival.com. You can use this with PowerPoint, MediaShout or even Keynote for Mac.

Limited Availability
This download will only be available for 2 weeks, so be sure to download it while you can.

You can preview it here.

Download “Green Particles” motion background

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Our topic today for LIVE YM Talk is serving as a woman in youth ministry. Special guest, Patti Gibbons, will share with us about the unique opportunities and struggles of being a women in youth ministry, talk to the male youth pastors a bit about working with their female leaders, and more. Join us at 2:00 PM Eastern time today!

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!

Brandon Riley joined us today to talk about unleashing student artists in our ministries. Youth leaders who are not artistically inclined themselves tend to overlook artistic students in their ministry, so Brandon shared some ideas how we can get them involved and encourage them to use their gifts for enhancing the body of Christ.

Some of the things we talked about:

• How to spot artistic teens in your group
• Ways to help them start using their artistic abilities in ministry
• Tools that could help with the process
• Tips for shooting and editing video and photography
• And a lot more…

You can listen to the whole conversation below or grab it in iTunes.

Play this episode

Subscribe to LIVE YM Conversations in iTunes

Next week’s discussion

September 25: Next week LIVE YM Talk is with guest, Patti Gibbons, who will lead us in a discussion about serving as a woman in youth ministry. We’ll discuss some of the unique opportunities and challenges of youth ministry for women, what male youth pastors need to know about their female youth leaders, and offer a lot of encouragement for you ladies!

Join our next LIVE Youth Ministry Conversation!

Last week I shared 5 ways how video can enhance your youth ministry, but there’s one very important aspect I left that that warrants it’s own post: using highlight videos to build momentum at youth group.

Highlight videos are essentially a lot of short video clips, typically set to music, that summarize a special youth group trip or event. To see a couple examples, check out some recent videos from my own youth group this summer: jr high retreat, sr. high conference, and Wake ‘n Ski.

Highlight videos have tremendous potential to build momentum for your ministry if you leverage them in a couple key ways.

1. Show highlight videos in church services, online, and at youth group.
When people see the energy, excitement, and value of the youth ministry in a very tangible way on the screen, they tend to become excited and talk about what’s going on in the youth ministry. You’d be amazed how much support you can generate from the church body after showing them a couple highlight videos of your group in action.

2. It serves as a video scrapbook of memories together.
Sometimes I’ll put all the highlight videos from the year together on one DVD and give it away or even sell them to the teens for $5. The students love having the visual reminders of some of their fondest memories with each other, especially years later after they’ve graduated.

3. Upload the videos to Facebook and tag kids.
Perhaps the best way to use highlight videos is to add them to your youth group Facebook page and tag every kid in the video. Not only does this notify each teen that a video of them is online, but it also makes it more likely to be featured on Facebook’s home page news feed when their friends login. They see, “5 of your friends have been tagged in a video by Way Cool Youth Group.” Their friends watch the video and immediately form a positive image of your group. They see the faces, what you do together and think, “Hey, that’s something I’d like to be a part of.”

4. It helps disconnected kid want to connect.
Whether the disconnected kids see it on Facebook, in a church service, on your youth group website, or looping at the youth kiosk at church (as in our case), it somewhat makes them feel that they’re missing out on something great (because they are!). Just this past weekend a girl who is not involved in our group had no motivation to connect with us until she saw our Wake ‘n Ski video from earlier this summer. Now she can’t wait to plug in and attend our last Wake ‘n Ski for the summer this coming Sunday.

5. It’s great accountability to the church.
Especially if donors contributed funds to help make the event possible. They can see exactly how their money worked because, short of witnessing it first-hand, nothing can tell a story as well as a video can. I’ve found that after donors see the video of the trip or event they helped sponsor, they are much more likely to donate again in the future.

6. It reminds kids where they were spiritually.
Sometimes it’s appropriate to sit down with individual teens or even the whole group and record a debriefing time at the end of a missions trip or camp. A couple years later, show them the confessions they made on video and ask them, “Look at where you were in 9th grade. Now you’re a senior. How is your walk with God going since then?”

As my church continues to experience the power of sharing our community’s stories through video, we’re now doing some for our entire church body, as well, like this highlight video of our baptismal service two weeks ago. We showed it during the offering last Sunday as a way to extend the celebration of what God’s doing in the lives of people in our church body.

The more I use video in my youth ministry, the more I’m convinced that it has the potential to communicate more effectively than any other medium that is currently available. It’s better than email, better than than bulletin inserts, than a cool website, even better than Facebook messages. The only medium that might beat it is text messaging.

Here are some ways I’m using video in my youth ministry this year:

1. Teaching. Although it’s a pretty common usage of video in ministry, using it in teaching environments is often way undervalued. 1) Video gives the audience something different to focus on after staring at me for a while. 2) It keeps minds engaged. 3) Video can tell a story much better than I can. 4) I can only describe an event, place or a person, but a video can actually show them. 5) I try not to take it personally, but video is also more memorable than most sermons and bible studies I lead.

2. Announcements. When I started using video for announcements in my youth group, kids actually started paying attention! When I stand up in front of them and tell them what’s going on, most students are not listening very intently and thus the retention of the information shared is pretty low. But if I say the exact same thing and project it on a big screen or show it on a TV, everyone is glued to it. Turns out the exact same thing is true for adults and our church announcements (see an example here). Plus, our news videos are viewed by all our teenagers’ friends online when I include our youth group kids in the videos and tag them in Facebook. More on using video to communicate youth group news part 1 and part 2, as well as a free youth group news video intro.

3. Training. With so many different schedules, it can be really difficult to get all of my adult youth leaders together for training sometimes. Rather than trying to carve the same period of time out of everyone’s schedule to come to my house or the church for training, I plan to shoot the training info in a quick video, post it to YouTube or Facebook, and send it to all my leaders to view instead. I encourage them to ask questions and interact in the comments. Of course, this can’t be a long-term substitute for meeting together, but it can get the job done and can shorten the amount of time I take when we do meet. (If you make training videos, make sure you send them to me so I can feature them in one of Life In Student Ministry’s youth ministry training videos.)

4. Screening. Our church has a pretty rigid volunteer screening process every adult must pass before they’re given access to children and teens. In the past we scheduled times when new leaders could come to the church, watch the child safety video and fill out a stack of paperwork and questionnaires. As of this year, however, we’re putting the video online and have reproduced the forms and questionnaires as online forms people can fill out and submit at their convenience. It will cut down on a lot of my legwork for each new leader and it allows the new leader to work the screening into their schedule whenever their time permits.

5. Atmosphere. Videos can do a powerful job at setting the tone for your meeting. A worshipful video before a time of worship can settle hearts and minds and help direct their focus on the Lord. A funny YouTube video can have a totally opposite affect. Or a countdown video can set a mood of energy and anticipation.

How are you using video in your youth ministry?

Besides the obvious items like a Bible and a first aid kit, here are some key pieces of equipment that will definitely get a lot of use this summer.

1. Video Camera. I have the Canon VIXIA HF100, which is great because it records in full 1080p HD quality, has outstanding image reproduction, records to SD cards and is about the size of a soda can. It was relatively cheap when I bought it, but now it costs almost twice as much. Not sure why, especially when the newer Canon VIXIA HF200 is a better camera for a cheaper price. Weird. But anyway, we all love capturing our favorite moments together on video and putting it on Facebook for all to share. Some youth workers swear by the mini Flip HD cameras that’s approximately the size of a deck of cards. For $129, it’s hard to go wrong.

2. iMovie. What good would the video camera be without a very simple, intuitive, user-friendly video editing program to make some quick modifications to make a professional-looking video? Although I have the higher-end Final Cut Express software, I hardly use it because iMovie does pretty much everything I need and more.

3. Digital camera. Video is cool and all, but still images have their place, too. Gotta have a digital camera around to snap quick poses, twisted facial expressions, and capture those unrepeatable moments. Plus, a photo you can hang up around your youth room or put on a bulletin board at church. Can’t quite do that with videos.

4. Swimming suit. Since a lot of people in our community live on lakes, it goes without saying that we’ll need bathing suits. In fact, we often get together to go water skiing, tubing, wake boarding, and more. We do it officially as a youth group one Sunday each month, but it definitely happens more than that on a more spontaneous level.

5. Xbox. For those rainy days when we’re all hanging out and stuck inside, the Xbox comes in handy. I don’t think I’ve met a teenager who wasn’t up for some Halo or Guitar Hero. When we hop on Xbox Live and compete against others, it’s like instant teamwork and comradery.

What equipment is essential for your ministry this summer? I asked this question on Twitter and Facebook and got a bunch of answers from some of you.

• Jeff Greathouse: “air conditioning”
• Tony Myles: “A car trunk full of athletic balls and cones.”
• Sarah Webber: “spaghetti dinners”
• Joshua Treece: “Orange game cones”
• Summer Hamilton Brown: “water balloons”
• Dale Wayman: “patience and tolerance”
• Pastor Robbie: “diet mt dews, macbook, the message bible, megaphone, & college leaders to help hype up the youth”
• Chris Kidd: “water pistol, vit C tablets, team of leaders, BBQ & burgers, minibus keys, sleeping bag, credit card to buy the things you forget”
• Josh Christian: “Sunscreen, deodorant, water balloons, super soakers, and air conditioning. Not really “equipment” but essential!”
• Brit Windel: “Gas in the van, tons of disc golfs, Bible, camcorder, paint…”

How about you? What essential summer equipment do you use for youth ministry during the summer?