YOU SEND IT

Many of you might know about this site but for those of you that don't...CHECK IT OUT! It's not flashy looking or aesthetically impressive but it's capabilities are very useful. For someone like myself who has to send and receive large files such as videos and graphics this site comes in handy. Almost all e-mail servers limit your file transfers and yousendit.com gives you the ability to upload your file and e-mail it to someone through the yousendit.com website and YouSendIt will e-mail your recipient a hyperlink to their site to download the file. The FREE version of this allows you to send 1GB of files every month and you can upgrade your file transfer limit for a cost and you can see those prices and details here.

10 that tempt and bring death to leaders

1. Focus on personal advancement instead of team success.
2. Shift blame to others instead of absorbing it yourself.
3. Avoiding a hard conversation because you might not be liked afterward.
4. Wanting to be heard instead of trying to listen.
5. Delegating to the point of being unaware.
6. Make decisions that please people instead of the right ones.
7. Delaying tough decisions under the disguise of needing more information.
8. Always acting like you know all the answers.
9. Never seek advice or wisdom for fear of appearing incapable of your role.
10. Believe you've learned all there is to know about what you do.

VIMEO VIDEO

I know this is the age of YouTube but I have just discovered an amazing website that is free of charge that delivers much better quality, options, and a better looking result. It's a site called VIMEO.com. Vim (rhymes with him) ee (rhymes with bee) oh (rhymes with go). Vim-ee-oh is the correct pronunciation. I first noticed VIMEO when I watched a video on Ed Young's church site. You can see this video a few blogs below but I noticed that his videos were extremely clear and clean looking. I did some searching and found the site that he uses to post videos on all of his sites. At the end of my searching I found VIMEO. Let me just tell you some of the great features this video blogging site allows you to have creative control over. First off, the upload process is very quick and easy to follow and while your files are uploading you are still able to roam the site and make setting changes to the video that is currently uploading. Once the video has completed uploading to the site you can now add search TAGs to the video to help others easily find it. You can change privacy settings such as, making it private or public. You can allow others to post comments on your video or not. You can give viewers the option of downloading your video to their computer. You can allow others to add your video to their "channels" or websites by grabbing the html code right of the video window. You can credit people that appear in the video. The options are considerably greater than other sites. Another great feature I found cool on VIMEO is the option of choosing your preview screen or your video thumbnail. Previously, with other video blogging sites, your video thumbnail was just determined by whatever image was on the screen at a certain time lapse into the video you posted. You never knew what it could be until after you had posted the video.
I have had videos in the past that got stuck with a freeze frame of someone's face in an awkward position and it just becomes a horrible first impression when people are browsing your site to see videos. VIMEO gives you 12 freeze frame options that are randomly selected from your video as seen to the left and you also have the option of uploading an image or graphic that you choose to be the thumbnail. Not only does VIMEO give you countless options in uploading your video but it also gives you multiple choices with how your video is presented when posted to other sites. VIMEO gives you the option of changing size and format of your video while still keeping the aspect ratio. It also allows you to change the color of the buttons displayed and an amazing feature that this site has that others sites like YouTube does not is the ability of clicking an expand button on the video window that will expand the video playing to full screen. If you are in youth ministry or you just use video quite often in your video blogging and website designs, this is a site you definitely want to check out. VIMEO allows you to create small video galleries that can be placed on your websites so that your site's pages aren't cluttered with video windows. You can see an example of this on my blog's home page. The only complaint I have about VIMEO is that the site limits your "weekly" upload to 500MB. I have been reading up on the site and there will possibly be a professional upgrade to expand your weekly limit. Other than that it is a great site for being free of cost and since I have been using it I have noticed that quite a few large churches and organizations use VIMEO for their website video posts. I highly endorse it and seriously hope that you check it out. HAVE FUN!!!

Relevant Marketing

We had a band come and play at Identity Student Ministries the other day and as they were setting up their merchandise they observed our youth t-shirts a made a surprising comment. They said, "These are the first youth group tees that we've seen that we actually like." They went on to say, "I even want to by one. So many youth groups have such cheesie tees." Remember, these are their words and not mine but I think is something we (those in ministry) can all think about. I have made it a point to create t-shirts and graphics that our students will wear and use. Too often people choose a cheaper priced tee and graphic and the quality of the product suffers. We have to remember..if they don't thinks it's fashionable then they will probably not wear it. And if they won't wear it then your ministry won't get the exposure that you probably are hoping for. A lot of people have asked me how do I make the graphics and t-shirts for our youth ministry and it always amuses me. The reason is...I can't take complete credit for everything that I do. I use graphics from everywhere: iStock, Google Image, wallpaper sites, graphics exchange, iChurch Photo, Relevant Magazine, Deviant Art, and more. A key thing that I tell everyone is to keep a library of starter graphics that can act as a base or foundational background and then add to those to make them your own. Who has the time to start from scratch? Anyone in ministry knows that your time is spread thin in many different areas of ministry and so we have to use our time efficiently. That's why it is important to always keep your eyes open for great graphics and fonts EVERYWHERE you look. Just a few types of medium and media that I have pulled inspiration and graphics from: Magazines, other church websites, other secular websites, clothing, photography sites, and so on...You can pull inspiration from everywhere. Just start collecting stuff that grabs your eye. Here are just a few things that I have created for our youth ministry in the past.

RENEWVAL '08 Highlights Video

Well, here are just a few of the highlights from this year's RENEWVAL. Some of the camera work is questionable, due to the fact that I was shooting video with a High-Def camera that I have never used before and all focusing and zooming had to be manually operated, but it was fun nonetheless. I hope you enjoy!

Being Loving Not Religious

I came across this video the other day on Ed Young's site and I thought was interesting. I'm not the BIGGEST Ed Young fan but he has done a couple things here and there that have really caught my heart. This video, once get past the commercial at the beginning talks about his unusual meeting with a local porn star. I love that he didn't focus his attention on the sin but on the sinner instead. Too often we look at someone sin and we automatically write them off and want nothing to do with them but we must remember that Jesus welcomed all sinners into his company. If you think about it...the only people Jesus got angry at was the religious people. We had this situation a while back in our church and this video reminded me of that situation. Our church is located right down the road from a gay night club and so we have quite of few homosexual couples in our churches neighborhood. Well, one day a lesbian couple started attending the church and the attended on a regular basis. I loved that they were attending. Notice I didn't say I loved that they lived a gay lifestyle but I just loved that we had an opportunity to pour Jesus into their life and maybe after time it would change their lifestyle...who knows? My point is, you have to catch a fish before you can clean. The word says that He came to this world not to condemn the world but that the world MIGHT be saved. Well, to make a long story short...the lesbian couple began to make long time church members uncomfortable with how close they sat to each other and eventually they felt negativity and left the church. This was a real upset to me. When will the church stop looking at the sin and see the sinner that needs Jesus. I began to ask myself, "What made their sin any different from the sin of the struggling addict that sits two rows back?" or "What makes their sin worse than the husband that struggles with pornography?" or "What makes their sin more sinful than the wife that lies to her husband about how much she spends at the mall?" I think we ALL need to evaluate how we see sinners and ask ourselves, "Are we looking at the sin or do we see the sinner that needs the love of Christ?"

RENEWVAL RECAP

Well, the craziness of this past week and our 3rd annual RENEWVAL has finally slowed down a bit and I have finally got to work on posting some of this years photos. Here is just a taste of what this past week was like. It really was a successful event this year and I am so proud of my team of leaders and the ID youth band for the amazing job they did. WOW! We have come such a long way and I can't wait to see how God uses Identity Student Ministries in the future. Stay tuned for a RENEWVAL Highlights Video...

Kingdom Minded

Well, our 3rd annual three day youth conference "RENEWVAL" is finally over and it has left me with a loaded question..."What ever happened to being Kingdom minded?" Let me explain. Our vision for this amazing youth conference we host has always been to build relationships, to build ourselves and to build the kingdom but somewhere along the way it seems that people have lost the most important element of what RENEWVAL was birthed to accomplish; the aspect of building the kingdom. Let me explain further. Every year me and the Identity Student Ministry leaders bust our tails to plan, promote, and host RENEWVAL and every year we pursue other youth ministries in the Orlando area to come and participate with us in worship. Our goal is that we all (all Orlando youth ministries) benefit from the amazing atmosphere RENEWVAL creates to share the message of Christ with as many teens as possible and every year multiple youth pastors promise me they will be in attendance with a van full of youth and every year, all but one youth pastor disappoint. Whatever happened to integrity? What ever happened to being a man/woman of your word? I just don't get it. Is it a fear of losing their kids to another youth group? Is it a fear of comparison? There have been many times that I have brought our teens to other's youth ministry events in support of what other ministries are doing and even if I had no youth with me I would still come alone to support. I just guess I don't understand prioritizing the success of a "ministry" over the success of the "Kingdom." Am I making any sense? I think that somewhere along the road of building ministries churches have lost the most important aspect of what God called us to do; seek the lost. Somewhere we've turned to focus on ourselves and we've lost the element of evangelism; and it's not just other youth pastors. I was also left scratching my head after RENEWVAL because our own youth. Some of our youth brought unsaved friends to RENEWVAL and they got saved (PTL) but others... When will we get past our fears of rejection and start inviting our unsaved friends to church. Are we so insecure of how people will perceive us that we choose our comfort zone over someones eternity. Don't get me wrong...I could use work in this area as well...I just thought that "our" youth would have come through with their end of the deal for such an amazing event that they are so proud of. I guess somewhere along the road it became all about..."What can "I" get out of RENEWVAL?" instead of "What can "THEY" get out of RENEWVAL?"

ready, set, BLOG!

Hey Guys,
Well, I'm not foreign to technology but I am new at this whole blogging thing. I know it's all the rage in this generation but for me it's just a healthy outlet to get things out of my system. If you know anything about being in the ministry you know your choices of open candid conversations are limited. I figured this is as good a place as any. It will probably be a great place for unedited creative juices to flow...like I needed one more website to maintain. Well hopefully good things will soon come justincaseyouwantedtoknow. - J