About once a week I’m contacted by a youth worker saying, “Hey, I’m prepping a lesson on such-and-such passage. Do you know of any good resources that can help?” If something comes to mind, I’m happy to make the referral, but most of the time I’m pretty unhelpful.

To be completely honest, I think it’s a better practice to exhaust the passage yourself before jumping to other sources, but once you’ve done so, other sources can provide some background, illustrations, and insights into what you’ve just studied. That’s what MinistryMatters.com attempts to do.

MinistryMatters.com is a brand new website that just launched this month with several online tools and resources to help those who preach, teach and lead worship. There’s reference books, commentaries, illustration collections, devotions, videos, podcasts, articles and much more and they’re all completely searchable from a single search query. When you find some content that you want to save and refer to later, simply click the “add to bin” button at the top of each page to save it publicly or privately to one of the bins you’ve setup. They’ve even built in some social aspects through discussion forums, blogs, and comment sections, too.

The site is currently in testing and will remain completely free during this beta phase. Right now you get unlimited, free access to all the search tools, personal and shared resource “bin” collections, and social elements of connecting with other ministry leaders, so if you think you want to check it out, now is the time to do so.

There are some paid resources there, as well, such as the 852 different curriculum titles (who knew that many even existed?!). I was hoping I could purchase a book or resource and immediately have it available in my digital library to show up in search results along with everything else, but apparently the books, resources, curriculum and other products available for purchase are all physical products, so they show up at your doorstep instead. Still, their prices are significantly reduced from retail prices, so you’re still getting a good deal.

Visit MinistryMatters.com

[ Full Disclosure: This is a sponsored review. ]

Posted on July 13, 2011