Remember who it’s all about. It’s all about Jesus.
but also remember that it’s not just about Jesus on Easter – but every single day!
Mark Batterson tweeted on Easter Sunday morning, “If Jesus was raised from the dead then the only logical and theological response is a complete surrender of your life to his Lordship.”
Watch this powerful artistic interpretation:
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.
Last night when I reminded Ella, “tomorrow is my day off!” Her over-joyous response was, “It is?! We can play games tomorrow morning!”
As soon as the sleep was out of our eyes this morning we broke out the Wii Fit board and game and enjoyed a few hours of randomness! Now that my wonderful Palm Pre phone takes video I can capture quick-moments of adorable-ness like the following taken from this morning’s Wii Fitness Workouts!
