Fun video from our Christmas party!

Follow the Five Rules:

1. Don't be so messy.
2. Don't be competitive at sports.
3. Don't spend so much time playing video games.
4. Spend less time trying to be cool.
5. Avoid irresponsibility.

Follow 'em!

Ahhh.... so good!

We had a Killball tournament late at night during our lock-in.  It was a blast!  This video promo'ed it early in the night.  Enjoy!

Fun little video I did with some students for our lock-in.  Have YOU ever heard of an Arnold Pony???

So good!

- Tim B.

What a great (hilarious) reminder for those of us in YM.  Love it!

- Tim B.

In this last entry on how to create easy videos for your youth gatherings, let's talk about prayer and/or reflective videos.

There are many ways you can use video for reflective moments.  Here are some ideas I've used over the years:

- Take one or more passages of Scripture and reveal them slowly with some soft musical background.  This can be a great alternative to just having someone stand up and read the passage(s) out loud (which I also love to do, by the way!).  All you need to pull this off is a simple video editing program like Windows Movie Maker.

- Use video as a prayer prompt.  When the earthquake in Haiti happened, I used the video above in our youth service as a moment of reflection and prayer.  Using video can give you an opportunity to do a "guided" prayer experience and prompt students to focus on different things over the course of a few minutes.

- Silent reflection.  Sometimes it's a powerful tool to use a video with no music or sound in the background.  Try revealing Scripture or quotes that tie in to your theme/message.  You could also use video to put questions up on the screen and have students silently reflect on them before worship or the message.  This has been a really awesome experience the times I've done it with students!

I hope this series has been useful to you!  I love using video in youth ministry, and I'd love to hear some creative ways you've used it as well.  Comment this post and if I get enough ideas I'll do a post with some of them on it!

- Tim B.

Nothing kills momentum in your youth service like stopping everything for 5 or 10 minutes of BORING up-front announcements.  You may be talking about important, exciting stuff, but let's face it - with the attention spans of most teenagers, if you don't spice things up a little bit you'll at best bore them and at worse fail to communicate important info about your ministry and events.

Using video is a great way to break the monotony of announcements.  All you'll need is a decent digital video camera, a basic editing program (like Windows Movie Maker), and an idea.  Youtube is great for the latter - just type in "youth ministry announcement video" and you'll get tons of results that will inspire you.

I've done all sorts of announcement videos - ripping cartoons from Youtube and overlaying our own voices, using action figures with students voicing them, doing the announcements while someone hurts me (!), filming them in an interesting place, etc.  There's really no limit to what you can do!

If you've got a dead spot in your service and it's the announcements, try shaking things up this week or next with a simple (and SHORT) video.  You'll be happy with the results and your students will love it!

- Tim B.

I know this video makes the rounds pretty frequently in YM circles, but it's too good not to post today.  What an awesome reminder of what a good youth worker really looks like!

- Tim B.