Tag: youtube

  • 4 Tips for YouTube You Can Use

    YouTube You Can Use

    YouTube You Can Use is a free weekly youth ministry resource I publish every Monday at The Youth Cartel.

    It includes a link to a YouTube video as well as a discussion starter, some related Bible verses, 3 ice breaker questions, and a thought question I call wrestle with this.

    To give you some behind the scenes insight, here are my goals as I put it together:

    • The video can’t be cheesy or predictable or boring.
    • The video has to be 90 seconds or less.
    • The tie-in has to lead students back to Scripture or an attribute of God.
    • It has to be age-appropriate.
    • It has to be something I’d use… because we use it in our ministry.

    Here are 4 tips for using this free resource:

    1. Play it as an intro in your Sunday morning or midweek youth ministry time. Just play the video and then have a slide with the 3 questions. Done.
    2. Post it on your Facebook page. Just straight up snatch the video and the discussion guide and put it up there for your students to wrestle with. You’re probably not using that page enough, this is a weekly excuse. Takes 30 seconds.
    3. Send it to parents as something they can use to talk to their kids. Copy/paste the content, drop in a link to the video, and now you have an excuse to send a weekly newsletter to parents. Drop your announcements for the week above there and I just made you look like a rock star.
    4. Table talk with your own kids or small group. Just pull the video up on your smartphone, hand it to them, and then have a discussion based on the email. No prep time needed, just open the email and you’re done.

    Are you getting this? How do you use it? 

    Want to subscribe? (It’s free!) Click here.

  • Guy on a buffalo

    Like that? Here’s episode 2.

    ht to Andrea

  • NYWC: What’s More Awesome Than a Bacon-filled Banana?

    The news: Today is the last day to register for NYWC San Diego for Super Early Bird prices.

    Bacon and flutophones?  The brainstorm session for this video was a blast. Ian, Tic, and I kicked around a thousand ideas around the concept of “What would be MORE AWESOME?”

    The shoot: This video was shot all around our office in El Cajon. Literally all around. As Ian set-up and moved lights all around the office to get lighting set, Tic got more and more creative. I stepped out for a phone call with Mark Matlock, came back, and Tic was riding my bike around the office. Hilarious. 

    But wait… there’s more. (Videos that is. Coming in a few weeks.)

  • U2 on YouTube

    Today, Kristen and I are driving to Phoenix to see the U2 360 Tour. I have a figurative bucket list and this was on it. My brain has been mush lately so I am greatly looking forward to driving 5 hours across the desert to lose my voice screaming lyrics with Bono. Just for good measure we’re ride sharing with Tash McGill… and a late edition, Marko. (The artist formerly known as ysmarko.) I need a road trip. I’ve got another one coming this weekend. Stuff like this clears and renews my mind.

    Mentioning this brings up jealousy. Like “Hey, so happy you and Kristen and spending the day together… but I really wanna go and I’m thinking of killing you to steal your tickets.”

    No need to be jealous. You can have Mr. Bono and the massive stage craziness. Just tune in Sunday night for all the goodness of live streaming. Screaming “it’s a beautiful day!” in your home is optional. Better save that for the live experience.

  • Sling Shot Man

    Based on the age of the video I kind of doubt this old timer is still around. But if you were a kid with a sling shot like me as a kid, you know just how good this guy is.

  • Giving Thanks


    My family isn’t one that will likely go around the table and share what they are thankful for. But that doesn’t mean I am lacking gratitude this Thanksgiving. Here’s a few things I’m especially thankful for.

    #1 I am thankful for my red hot smokin’ wife, who is a stone cold fox, and two kids, Walker and Texas Ranger. (Oh wait, that’s Ricky Bobby…) I am thankful for Kristen, Megan, and Paul. They bring immense, intense, wild, fight-club-worthy joy to my life.
    #2 I am thankful for all things San Diego. From our neighborhood, to our new church family, to my friends at YS, to the beachy goodness, to all things Mexican food and sushi.
    #3 I am thankful for getting to invest in the lives of so many youth workers around the globe. Marko expressed this much better than I could, check out this video.
    #4 I am thankful for Youtube, who just started offering widescreen video and all the fun I will have with that.
    #5 I am thankful for Steve and all my friends at Apple Computer, I’m glad I finally saw the light.
    #6 I am thankful for Snickers. Dang they are good.
    #7 I am thankful for Facebook and all of the old friends I’ve reconnected with.
    #8 I am thankful for Andy Marin. I praise God that He has raised up a man willing to stand in front of 5,000+ people and proclaim himself, “The gayest straight man in America.” I’m happy to call him a friend and I join him in praying that the church would continue to love the GLBT community.
    #9 I’m thankful for Free Speech, that I don’t have to worry about getting sued if I call someone’s ideas stupid.
    #10 I am thankful the thousands of “mmm’s” I heard at NYWC this fall as speaker’s spoke truth into leaders lives.
    #11 I am thankful for the genius feature on iTunes.
    #12 I am thankful for the Chargers, Irish, Wolverines, Spartans, and any other sports team I care about in 2008 sucking so I could concentrate on other things.
    #13 I am thankful for the dress code at YS.
    #14 I am thankful for horchata.
    #15 I am thankful for pretty things, like Gmail’s new themes, sunsets at Ocean Beach, and odd wildlife in our backyard.
    #16 I am thankful for Wii Fit as there is nothing quite like watching your 5 year old do yoga.
    #17 I am thankful for former students. They encourage me, join my crazy conversations, challenge me, and inspire me to keep going as I watch them stumble towards faith.
    #18 I am thankful for a lot of things, big and small this year.

    How about you, what are you thankful for?

  • Disco Bears

    Who says scientists don’t like to have fun? This video proves two things. First, scientists really are stuck in the 70s. Second, you cannot stop the power of disco.

  • Making videos for ministry

    cameraIt’s safe to say that I make videos for ministry. On average, I make two. Generally I make the “bumper video” that comes just before the sermon and then there is a wild card project that comes up for one of the other things we are doing at Romeo. I’ve made videos for our kids ministry, student ministry, church services, marriage ministry, websites, on and on.

    So how do we do it?

    • It starts with the end result in mind. We ask the question: “What does this video need to communicate?” before we think of the ideas that go into it.
    • We brainstorm the concept. Will it be funny? Will it be dramatic? Will it be shocking? Will it be thought provoking?
    • We decide how much time its worth. Several months ago I spent 5 hours on a video that was less than 1 minute long and we used 1 time. It was awesome… but it wasn’t worth the time. So now we spend time time deciding the importance of the video. I spent 30+ hours on a video a couple months back and it was totally worth it.
    • We filter ideas based on time… including edit time.
    • We sketch out the videos time line. This is fluid when we go to actually shooting the video, but at this point it helps to do a sketch to determine stuff for the rest of the steps.
    • We agree on a time to shoot the video. Getting this scheduled is important so that it doesn’t happen the day before we need it!
    • I map out what I’ll need for the shoot. Video and sound equipment, people, props, permission, stuff like that.
    • We shoot the video. Once we get on site or set up… the video tends to change a lot. But agreeing on what to communicate and the sketch of the shoot ahead of time is pretty huge.
    • I edit the movie. The big decision is… to use iMovie or Adobe Premiere? That depends entirely on the type of video we’re creating. Most bumper videos are simple so I do them in iMovie. If I need a video with effects and layers and a lot of those details really matter… Premiere it is.
    • I publish the movie. 9 out of 10 times I publish it to YouTube so I can show it to a couple of people before making the final version for use in our ministry.
    • I premier it. There is nothing quite as exciting as an audience seeing your idea on the big screen for the first time.

    For those who do video in their ministry, how do you do it differently?

  • Off to Shoot a Movie

    Today I’m hanging out with my favorite peeps, the cast and crew from Light Force. We’re going to conceptualize, shoot, edit, and release a movie today.

    It’s called “10 Things I Did While My Friends Were in Florida.” We’ll be driving all over the Metro area shooting all sorts of weird things. I can’t wait to see what they come up with.

  • Christian Alternatives

    Christianfamilytube logoLast night I got an invitation to put all of our church videos on a new Christian-only version of YouTube. First there was GodTube and now this.

    I laughed at GodTube’s claims that they were the fastest growing site on the internet… totally a joke of a statistic if you ask me… not like GodTube got bigger than Facebook did in 2007.

    As far as interface and design go… could this new site be any more cheesy? Technically speaking… a lot of the videos don’t even work!

    Let me share my opinion about “Christian only” content sites. I don’t mind sites that are geared towards Christians networking… heck, I own one. But I am against the idea that there should be a differentiation between the “Christian internet” and “secular internet.”  Both GodTube and this new video site claim to be “family safe.” While that isn’t a bad thing in and of itself I always wonder why people like this don’t just create channels of “family safe” stuff within the existing structure of MySpace, Facebook, or YouTube. Christians were never commanded to separate from the world or form our own sub-culture… we were commanded to penetrate the culture for God. Ephesians 5 teaches us to bring “light” to “dark” places. These sites are trying to do the opposite.

    I don’t plan on moving content to these new sites. If they offered services that were better than YouTube’s than I might consider it. But I’m not going to pull content off of a great delivery channel only to put it on a weaker and sorry to say cheesier delivery channel. That completely misses the point of using the internet for ministry.

    Plus, I don’t know how YouTube doesn’t sue these companies for trademark violations. That’s for another day.