One of the things I love best about this ministry is that I get to research resources for church communicators and then pass on great ones to you. I do this in a way that is perhaps a little bit different than some reviewers or bloggers in that:

• I only pass on what I genuinely like. I pay for all the materials I review, I don't get free review copies.
• I don't take any kind of affiliate or referral compensation, to keep my referrals honest (I have a selfish heart and I couldn't trust myself if I did).
• I use what I like in real ministry settings. My husband is a bi-vocational pastor and we are responsible for two significant teaching ministries at our church. I do all the communications for them as well as a large part of the Bible teaching. If the products I try don't work in those settings, I don't pass them on.

With those disclaimers in mind, I'd like to share a resource that I have found extremely helpful:

Web Video University

This site is run by Dave Kaminski, one of the best online teachers I've observed. He knows his material really well and does a great job explaining and illustrating it.

To check him out, don't go directly to the website www.webvideouniversity.com, because it looks like just another sales pitch for making money with internet video. In ministry we have very different reasons for doing video and though his sales page wasn't tacky or as tedious as some, it didn't tell me what I needed to know. In fact, it was this page that kept me ignoring his site for months. My opinion changed however when I signed up for the free weekly video tip. A collection of these is at the link below and I STRONGLY recommend that you check this out:

http://webvideouniversity.com/podcast/

Once I started getting his weekly video podcasts and checked out the podcast site, I was impressed.More than impressed, I realized that Mr. Kaminski had a depth of knowledge that would be useful for the things I wanted to learn to do.

I had been looking for a way to improve my webinars and was very interested in learning how to do both Screencasts and videos with a flip camera. Screencasts are a sort of PowerPoint on steroids that you can then turn into webinars or videos. Though I've used PowerPoint, literally since it was invented and have taken a number of classes on it--I knew I was not making the most of it and using animations to make things move, expand, appear, etc. was not something I ever felt I made the most of. It seems like a lot of videos these days consist primarily of moving words. Though there are a number of ways to do this, a screencast using PowerPoint is probably one of the easiest. After watching his video training series Screencasting, —it has changed the entire way I approach teaching with PowerPoint and in the coming months you'll see the results of that on this site.

I have recently signed up for the course on creating videos with the flip camera and the overall video course--lots to learn, but I have been extremely impressed by the site and resources so far and wanted to share them with you.

Never let your videos stand alone

Video is a fantastic resource, but it is not the only resource you should you use to communicate your message or market your church. Please read this article: "Is video the best way to market your church" (Click on title or HERE to go to it0 for some advice on some excellent examples of church marketing videos as well as advice on the print and other communications you need to create to make the most of your videos.