Freebie of the Week!

StuffICanUse.com – Free Sermon/Teaching Resources

Formerly known as VineResources.com, www.StuffICanUse.com is a wonderful site provided by the extremely innovative media team of Southeast Christian Church (www.postworship.com and www.betheblock.com).  They have provided media from their creative sermon series’ to the public at the best price…FREE!

www.StuffICanUse.com

Check out this website and you’ll be blown away by some of the great stuff you’ll find there.  Now if only everyone could take on this mindset of sharing the love…

Here’s what they have to say for themselves:

StuffICanUse.com is a collection of resources, links, and other materials produced mainly for the student and college/young adult ministries at Southeast Christian Church in Louisville, KY. The idea came from us making sweet stuff for our programs and then it was sitting on someone‘s computer doing nothing, so we decided to setup vineresources.com in order to make our stuff available for you to use in your ministry. We adopted an open source philosophy and decided to give away free swag to you. We hope you can use these resources to help your ministry communicate the love of Jesus.

Free Online Photo Editing

I am a photoshop fiend and always love doing things on a computer that I could never possibly do with a pencil and paper.  Adobe Photoshop is likely the most powerful photography software available today and well known by many, but also extremely expensive.  Thanks to Adobe’s work at both developing quality editing suites and asking for exorbitant amounts of money, many others have developed free photo editing software.  The even greater thing is that many of these tools are online resources that don’t need to be downloaded to be used and are available on nearly any computer with an internet connection.

First of all, after picking on Adobe, I’ve got to give them props for offering the world their beautiful  (albeit reduced)software free to anyone online in the form of Adobe Photoshop Express at www.Photoshop.com.  In other words, photoshop can now be used anywhere on any computer with an internet connection and your work can be stored online.

 

 

1. GIMP

GIMP stands for “GNU image manipulation program”, and it is one of the oldest and most well known alternatives to Photoshop in existence. Although it doesn’t quite have all of them, you’ll find most of the features included in Photoshop somewhere in GIMP. GIMP is cross platform and supported by a large community.

If just having the feature set isn’t enough for you, there is an alternative based on GIMP known as GIMPShop. It’s the same as GIMP, except the layout has been structured as close to Photoshop as possible, so anyone making the transition should still feel right at home.

2. Krita

Krita has been lauded for ease of use and won the Akademy Award for Best Application in 2006. Part of the Koffice suite for Linux, Krita is slightly less powerful than both Photoshop and GIMP, but does contain some unique features.

3. Paint.NET

Paint.NET has grown out of a simple replacement for the well known MSPaint into a fully featured open source image editor with a wide support base. You’ll need Windows to run Paint.NET.

4. ChocoFlop

ChocoFlop is a design application designed exclusively for Mac, optimized for Mac architecture. It’s quick and fairly well featured. This program won’t always be free, but until a stable version is released (it’s currently in beta) they are allowing free use. The program works pretty well as is, and if you’re the type who doesn’t mind an occasional bug it’s certainly worth a look.

5. Cinepaint

Cinepaint is designed primarily for video often used to make animated feature films by major studios, but it is also a great image editor capable of high fidelity 32 bit color. Currently there is no stable version for Windows.

6. Pixia

Pixia was originally designed in Japanese but English versions now exist for this rich editor. Although the original focus was on anime/manga, it is a very capable editor in general. Some of the features are a little counter intuitive, but there are plenty of English tutorials available now if you want to give it a shot. The website seems to have changed recently, so be sure to use our link if you don’t want a Japanese error message. Pixia works for Windows.

7. Pixen

Pixen is designed as a pixel artist’s dream, but has expanded into a smooth and well featured overall editor. It’s definitely best at animation though, if that’s your style. Pixen is Mac (10.4x or later) only.

8. Picnik

Picnik is a web based photo editor that has recently taken off due to a partnership with Flickr. It has all the basic features plus a few advanced ones like layers and special effects. It is cross platform since you only need a browser.

Social Bible Reading

A new phenomenon in social networking is happening through the greatest book ever written.  Several websites have been developed to encourage sharing life and faith through the reading of God’s Word.  This week’s freebie includes links to two of these great online resources that I highly recommend…and they’re both free.

The first one was created by one of my friends and fellow pastors, Nick Hauenstein.  This guy is a genius, especially when it comes to computer programming and he’s put together BibleShared.   This is a great resource for Bible studies, discipleship groups, couples, and other groups of people wanting to share what they’re reading and learning with others.

On a bit larger scale, Lifechurch.tv has put together YouVersion.  This is also a free resource founded on the concept of sharing what we’re reading in the Word of God with people around the world.  You’ll find pastors, leaders, and others on YouVersion, providing insights, links, photos, videos, and other resources to go along with what you’re reading. 

Check out both of these great resources and begin to dream big.  What is the next area of innovation you might be able to provide to the global community?  How will you share the Gospel in new ways in the years to come?

Frozen Time 5 Min Countdown by Igniter Media

Worship House Media is one of my favorite church media sites on the internet.  On a monthly basis, they provide one free loop, countdown, video, or other resource.

This month’s free resource is a great 5 min countdown you’ll love.

Get it here

Also, throughout December, they put up one free resource each day as their gift to us for Christmas.  Enjoy!

The Exponential eBook – Leadership Learnings from 20 Top Leaders/Bloggers

Freebie Week 1 –

One of my favorite leaders out there right now is Mark Batterson.  He is Lead Pastor of National Community Church in Washington, DC.  He put out a great blog with a powerful resource linked to it.  Here’s what he had to say:

My friend, Todd Wilson, along with the Exponential Team has put together a really cool resource for leaders. They surveyed thousands of posts from a handful of leadership blogs. The end result is this free eBook.

For what its worth, the posts they choose from my blog are the ones I would have chosen myself. Whoever read all of our 2008 posts deserves a special crown in heaven!

Here are a few of the contributers. Some of my favorite people and favorite bloggers! By the way, this is probably the most links I’ve ever had in a single blog post.

Ben Arment
Chris Elrod
Dave Ferguson
Mike Foster
Seth Godin
Craig Groeschel
Alan Hirsch
Scott Hodge
Gary Lamb
Brad Lomenick
Shawn Lovejoy
Tony Morgan
Perry Noble
Ed Stetzer
Tim Stevens
Tullian Tchividjian
Jud Wilhite

This is an amazing resource and I’m enjoying everything I’m reading.  In case you missed it, here’s that link again:

Free eBook