Part of the Glue

This summer we had several events that were water or underwater related.  We went to the beach, schlitterbahn, had pool parties and most recently created some water/mud activities at our youth camp.  For these events I could not afford to spend $3,000 on an underwater case for our camera so we decided to buy the kodak playsport.  This little camera shoots in 1080i and 60p in case you want that slow motion into the water shot.  In my opinion this camera is better than the flip and dual purpose because you don’t have to use it in the water but when you do its perfect.

Student Life has done it again. Year after year Student Life has been a leader in understanding teenagers and the world that they live in. Having worked for Student Life for several summers, I believe strongly in this organization and have grown to admire their passion to help teens to discover God’s word in a creative way.

I love this piece they created and can’t wait to share with other youth leaders in our youth ministry.

I posted about this earlier here.  In January our student ministry embarked on a reality tv show format for a four week series we called True LYF.  You can see all the videos on the facebook fan page we created.  Four four different weeks we followed various students in our ministry and challenged them to do various spiritual disciplines such as (bible reading, prayer, scripture memory and fasting).  The idea was to expose these disciplines to students in a fun and thoughtful way that was similar to that of the show “The Biggest Loser.”

Below is the promo video we created for the series.

True LYF Promo from LYF on Vimeo.

Sunday is a big day for most churches….hint it being sabbath and all.  A lot of times we focus so much attention on Sunday we ignore the rest of the week at least in a programming since.  Now with the advent of things such as facebook pages and blogs…content can more easily come into the homes of students more than once a week.  For our series that started last night called TRUE LYF we created a documentary that follows various students in our ministry and challenged them to do various spiritual disciplines.  These documentaries ended up being pretty long (30 minutes) so we decided to show a highlight clip at church and the full versions each day during the rest of the week on the facebook page.  We also decided to develop a devotional guide for students to follow the same challenge the students in the video had to do.  The benefit to adding these extras in this series is that it really allows the message to come home where life really happens.

You can check out the facebook page HERE and watch the promo below.

In our youth department we have been experimenting since the beginning of summer letting our high school students pick what they want to study on Sunday mornings.  Recently I got an opportunity to teach a class on film and faith in which we watch clips of a movie and then draw out spiritual meanings in the film. The first week we talked about 1. being able to use films as conversational tool with non-believers and 2. being able see spiritual fingerprints in culturally relevant films that can allow us to experience God in new ways when we start looking for themes of redemption and metaphors in these films.  This Sunday will be the third week of the class as we look at good and evil in the movie “The Dark Knight”.  I have found that doing this series has been something the students have enjoyed and has really helped me to look a little closer at some of my favorite films.  Here is the syllabus for the class.

5 week Outline
Pirates of the Carribean 2 (the power of metaphor)
Dead Poets Society (coming of age)
the Dark Knight (good vs evil)
End of the Spear (Christian films and their message)
Hotel Rwanda (true stories)

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Reality TV is everywhere these days.  The other day I was heading to lunch with some guys from work and everyone was talking about the biggest loser and who they thought should have stayed on the show.

This idea of ordinary people becoming tv stars even if only for a week is a fascinating idea that most of us seem to gravitate towards for some reason.  We like to see regular ordinary people on the screen and we like to see real life situations we encounter everyday.

Recently in our youth ministry we decided to create a reality type show for an upcoming series in our youth ministry.  We decided to follow four students and show them going through various spiritual disciplines (quiet times, scripture memory, prayer and fasting).

This week I am filming a student as he attempts to do a quiet time every morning before going to school. This was a new concept to this student and so far has been an interesting exercise to get him thinking about God early in the day.  After filming for 2 days I am really excited to see how this project will turn out.  Perhaps a project like this will help other students to get excited about spiritual disciplines and see them in a very new and practical way.

I recently created a video where we took the script from a skit guys script.  The script was originally designed to be a drama, however with the time crunch we deal with in our services we decided to video the skit and condense it down to two minutes. Most of the time the videos we create are pretty original, however this time we decided it was okay to steal the general idea and make it our own.  Below is the video

Run in such a way from LYF on Vimeo.

A couple of months ago our student media team at my church entered the 24 hour film race.  We had to write, shoot and edit a short film in 24 hours.

Our film has gone on to the national competitions and we need your help.

Vote for our film “the choice” HERE and spread the word.

The truth is most students in your ministry are not actors and the few that can act probably still aren’t incredible.  We recently did a series on evangelism in our youth ministry called ASK.  The concept was to thread a series of videos together that show students being afraid to ask something.  The last video focuses on asking your friends about God, while the first three are other real life situations.  These videos were actually easy to shoot because we didn’t have to record audio on site.  After filming each video we would go into our studio and record the voice over separately.  I recommend this approach as an easy means to creating videos because the acting is all through facial expressions and is not dependent on a students ability to say lines.

Ask – Bathroom

Ask – Girl

Ask – Text

Ask – Faith

Every third Wednesday of September See You At The Pole takes place at campuses around the nation.  This is a great opportunity for not only students to pray for their schools, but for churches to encourage students to see their schools and friends as their mission field.  Below is a video we shot at a local school for syatp this year.  We weren’t pleased with the videos syatp offered and decided to make our own.