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This morning Pastor Tim made announcements in both of our morning services that Jess and I have sensed God’s calling again at this stage of our life to pursue something outside of our current ministry situation.
We believe that His calling is outside of traditional youth ministry and we are anxious to begin pursuing any possibilities that God begins to bring our way.
Please join me and Jess as we pray for God-clarity in knowing our next-steps. We plan to fulfill our ministry duties at Armbrust Wesleyan through the next few months and transition after the 1st week in July.
We understand first-hand the faith-leap that resigning without the ‘next step’ in place, and we are excited to see just how God provides for his faithful servants through this transition!
I am doing all that I can to make my resume available to as many as would take a look at it. If you have interest, please visit the online version here – http://resume.stevansheets.com – there is also a downloadable .pdf version available here.
UPDATE: New post with downloadable resources is here. (updated on March 24, 2011)
There is a new show coming to NBC called, “Minute To Win It”, which by the look of things was thought up by a round-table full of youth pastors. The games are genius, and even though the show hasn’t yet aired, as a youth pastor I am already excited about it and have begun using it’s premise (and more) in our youth group!
Last night was our first opportunity to begin our “Minute To Win It” segment. I created an on-screen graphic, a 60-second countdown video, and even managed to play the REAL show’s intro/instruction videos on-screen, too!
We played three games, “Defying Gravity“, “Tipsy“, and “Hanky Panky“.
“Defying Gravity” was tough on our small stage. None of the students that tried could keep three balloons up off the ground for 60-seconds. We went down to 2 balloons and still no one could do it.
“Tipsy” was a blast, balancing three soda cans on their edge after ‘chugging’ part of each can’s contents proved to be challenging, but students that completed the task were handsomely rewarded.
“Hanky Panky” was a fun-to-watch game as well as participate in. Our problem was that I skimped on the tissue-brand and only had WalMart boxes of tissues. The WalMart tissues are only 110-count instead of the “standard” 160-count, so all three students who attempted the feat completed it with time-to-spare.
Some videos from our students participating in “Minute To Win It”:
I just spent the last few minutes downloading and editing a quick-video for my Sr. Pastor that he will be using tomorrow as a part of his message. The video comes from the popular video-sharing website, YouTube. After I finished this quite simple task I wondered to myself, “I wonder how many people don’t use resources like this simply because they haven’t been taught how to?!”
It’s really quite easy.
The video we’re using tomorrow is here – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNkgyIRBBLQ
My pastor’s instructions included editing the video down to the first 1:50 – cutting out about :16 at the end of the video.
I visited the video site and then clicked a bookmark I had saved months ago that I labeled “Get YouTube Video” in my Google Chrome browser. The link points to this string of code: javascript:if(!document.getElementById('download-youtube-video')){var%20video_id=null;var%20video_hash=null;var%20video_player=document.getElementById('movie_player');if(video_player){var%20flash_variables=video_player.attributes.getNamedItem('flashvars');if(flash_variables){var%20flash_values=flash_variables.value;if(flash_values){var%20video_id_match=flash_values.match(/[^a-z]video_id=([^(\&|$)]*)/);if(video_id_match!=null)video_id=video_id_match[1];var%20video_hash_match=flash_values.match(/[^a-z]t=([^(\&|$)]*)/);if(video_hash_match!=null)video_hash=video_hash_match[1]}}}if(video_id==null||video_hash==null){var%20args=null;try{args=yt.getConfig('SWF_ARGS')}catch(e){}if(args){video_id=args['video_id'];video_hash=args['t']}}if(video_id!=null&&video_hash!=null){var%20div_embed=document.getElementById('watch-embed-div');if(div_embed){var%20div_download=document.createElement('div');var%20div_download_code='%3Cbr%20/%3E%3Cspan%20id=\'download-youtube-video\'%3E%3Ca%20href=\''+'http://www.youtube.com/get_video?fmt=18&video_id='+video_id+'&t='+video_hash+'\'%20onclick=\'blur(this);\'%3EDownload%20as%20MP4%3C/a%3E';try{if(yt.getConfig('IS_HD_AVAILABLE'))div_download_code=div_download_code+'%20|%20%3Ca%20href=\''+'http://www.youtube.com/get_video?fmt=22&video_id='+video_id+'&t='+video_hash+'\'%20onclick=\'blur(this);\'%3EDownload%20as%20MP4%20HD%3C/a%3E'}catch(e){}div_download.innerHTML=div_download_code+'%3C/span%3E';div_embed.appendChild(div_download)}}}void(0)
Clicking on that link changes the YouTube video-page from this:
To this:
(note the ‘Download as MP4’ link)
Clicking on that link downloads the file video.mp4 directly to my downloads folder with a file-size of about 9.5mb.
I then open up my favorite video-editing suite, Sony Vegas to trim the video to size and re-render the video into mpeg-format for use on our Sanctuary PC’s PowerPoint software.
Love this new album from various artists –
