Fundraising is one of those things that can come around fairly regularly in youth ministry. And it is not always easy to come up with a new idea. So when I recently stumbled across this at studentministry.com I thought that it would be worth putting up here. Some of the ideas may be a bit weird (a bit North American!) but if any of them help you with fundraising for your youth group then it is definitely worth it.

Check out 71 fundraising ideas for youth group.

I would also recommend my favourite fundraising idea. We make Pizzas. I get people to order pizzas before hand and then get the youth group to make hawaiian pizzas one night letting everyone know we expect them to pick them up the next day. One word of advice, always make sure you have more than enough of your ingredients. If you do a bad batch of pizzas no one will buy them from you the next time. It costs me about $3 to buy all the ingredients and I sell them at $8 to make a $5 profit.

Animoto has got to be one of the coolest toys I have seen on the web recently. It enables you to create videos out of your photos that you have taken at youth group. You can create 30 second videos for free and then you can pay US$30 for a years worth of as long as you like videos. This is definitely value for money. If you have videos you can also load those in and have them incorporated into the Animoto movie.

Here is a couple of short 30 sec one we did using some of the photos from Easter Camp 09.

Music is from their website, royalty free, you don't have to worry about copyright laws and they have a large selection of music to choose from. I would highly recommend this as a way to update your website or show photos at youth group nights.

Why not try "Life: The Missing Dimension in Discipleship..."

How can I live the Christian Life? The answer is simple yet profound. "You can't. Only God can live it through you." If that answer strikes a chord within you, or at very least arouses curiosity then you must read Life: the Missing Dimension in Discipleship, a new book by YouthTRAIN Director Murray Brown. In it he contrasts two approaches to the Christian life - living it according to the (tree of) the knowledge of good and evil and (the tree of) Life.

Even though we say that "Christianity is a relationship not a religion", we so often lapse back into presenting it as a religion of rules to follow rather than Life to be lived. Our discipleship, particularly in the West, seems to so easily become one of filling people with as much knowledge of good and evil and possible rather than introducing them to the concepts of "Life" and teaching them to grow a relationship with this Author of Life, who comes to live within them at the new birth.

Life: the Missing Dimension in Discipleship is an excellent resource for your congregation and for your young people. Check out their website http://www.youthtrain.com/life/