We wanted to wish everyone a happy Memorial Day. We hope you enjoy the day with family and friends. And don’t forget to take some time out to reflect on and remember those who have given their lives so that we can have the freedom to enjoy days like this. Thank you to all the soldiers past and present who have served and are serving.

And thank you to everyone out there who helped make our Memorial Day video, For Freedom, our best selling video ever. We are so humbled and honored that our simple tribute video resonated with so many people out there. To think that we were a part of so many of your Memorial Day services all over the country just blows us away. We thank you and we thank God for his inspiration, for his blessings, and for the freedom he has afforded us all in Christ.

We’re really excited that our brand new Memorial Day video, For Freedom has been received so enthusiastically. We’re setting daily sales records with it on our site and it’s also selling really well with other distributors. It’s always really gratifying to make something that so many people can use. It’s humbling to think about and we’re really grateful that God is blessing the video in this way. You can check it out by clicking here.

I’m also really excited about the reponses we’ve received on last Friday’s post, Been Caught Stealing. Check out the comments we’ve gotten and jump into the fray with your own. I’m thinking we need to talk some more about what actually constitutes a parody. So, that will be food for a new post some time soon.

In other news, it’s been a busy week here in eleven72 country and that’s kept me off the blog. It’s mostly personal stuff, but I’ll let you in on some of the what’s goings ons…

I wrecked my car a couple of weeks ago (no serious injuries but the car was totalled) and so I’d spent the last 10 days or so hunting for a replacement. Yesterday, after much research and agonizing, I became the proud owner of a 2003 Ford F-150. There was much rejoicing as I can now get back to work and eleven72 now has a work truck to haul around production equipment, props and what not.

And earlier today, I helped Lee and his family move into a new place. So, their family is in transition to a new house today. And this should be the start of a great new chapter in their families history. So that’s exciting.

Talk to you later.

There’s still time to sign up and get our free Mother’s Day Media pack. Click here to go to the homepage and sign up. Once you’ve signed up, you will be emailed a link to download the free Mother’s Day media. If you’d like to see what you’ll get, click here to see our FREE MEDIA page.

We’ve also got a great Mother’s Day Sermon Illustration and Countdown available on the Seasonal Tab of our website. For Mom: A Breakfast Story is our best selling video ever, so we must have done something right with that one. Here’s a comment we received about For Mom:

Well done! Way to give Moms a good laugh and recall good memories at the same time.
Michael Yaeger
Temple Baptist Church

We’ve also got a great Mother’s Day Countdown where real women share their answers to the question: What’s the worst Mother’s Day gift you could get? Hint: Don’t buy her a Dieting Cookbook!

Here’s wishing you all a very Happy Mother’s Day.

We’ve got a whole lot of Mother’s Day content up on the Seasonal Tab (click here to see it now). The Sermon Illustrations and the Countdown are some of our best selling videos ever, so we’re really excited to have them all available this year at eleven72.com. And don’t miss the new Worship Backgrounds and Still Backgrounds (most of them free - read below for details).

In the why did we make it category- We’d like to think For Mom: A Breakfast Story is a great video for setting up Mother’s Day. Show the video, let everyone get a kick out of it, and then get up there and welcome everyone to the service and wish all the moms a Happy Mother’s Day (this would be a good way to lead into a special portion of your service that honors the moms). Or use it to lead into your sermon and when you come out of it, say something like, “any one have a morning like that?” or “can anyone relate?” Whether you use it to kick off your service, lead into your announcements or get your sermon started, we made it to be a realistic, yet funny/heartwarming way to introduce Mother’s Day.

For the Worst Mother’s Day Gift Ideas and Mother’s Day Countdown videos, we actually surveyed all the real moms and mom’s to be we could and came up with this video based on the real answers they gave us. We thought, who better to let us know what moms don’t want! The answers are a whole lot of fun. Use this as a stand alone video to give your congregation a laugh and lead into your sermon or announcements and/or use the countdown as a funny way to get your service started by pointing out what not to get mom for Mother’s Day.

FREE ALERT Don’t miss the new free stuff. We’re giving away 10 (yes 10, they’re somewhat similar, but still 10 freebies, that’s good stuff, right?) Mother’s Day themed Still Backgrounds and two new Worship Backgrounds. Lee did a great job on these backgrounds and I can’t wait for you to check them out. I just can’t get enough of the slomo rose petals - they’re totally mesmerizing - and the loopable Gerber Daisy Background is just really clean and awesome looking. See it for yourself by clicking here. The freebies are available to email subscribers. If you’re not yet a subscriber, click here to sign up on our homepage and we’ll email you a link to download the new content. If you are a subscriber, stand by, and you’ll get the link in our newsletter that goes out on Wednesday.

Signing off…

I wanted post an update on what’s happening around eleven72. First, we’re hard at work getting our April round of free still backgrounds and free worship backgrounds ready to post and send out with our next newsletter. Look for that newsletter early next week. If you’re not in the know, we give away free stills, backgrounds and other stuff every month to our email subscribers. To sign up, go to our homepage and you’ll find the information in the lower right hand part of the page. If you sign up now, you can still get last months free stuff and then the new stuff when the newsletter goes out next week.

The National Day of Prayer is coming up May 3rd. If you’ve got plans to do a Prayer focused service the weekend before (April 28th-29th), we’ve got some resources that would work great for you.

Check out our Prayer Volume 1, a bundle of prayer related media pieces that include two Sermon Illustrations, a Countdown, five Still Backgrounds and two moving Worship Backgrounds. This has been a very popular volume for us, in particular, people have really responded well to the Prayer Illustration, which features thoughtful and inspirational quotes on Prayer, as well as original photography by esteemed photographer Joel Salcido. You can get a great deal by purchasing the entire volume, or you can order ala carte and get whatever you need.

Next up, in May, Mother’s Day falls on May 13th. We’re currently working on some new Mother’s Day resources which I’ll post about in the next few days. In the mean time, check out our wildly popular Sermon Illustration, For Mom: A Breakfast Story, which is a really honest, funny and heart warming look at some kids who are trying to make Mom’s day extra special. While you’re looking, don’t miss our even more popular Mother’s Day Countdown, which is based on an actual survey we took asking Moms the question, what’s the worst Mother’s Day gift you have either received or can think of (hint: getting her a scale is a really bad idea). The answers we got are hilarious. These two videos have been the most popular seasonal videos we’ve ever produced. Check them out.

Finally up in May is Memorial Day on May 28th. For those of you having Memorial Day services on May 27th, we’re working on a brand new Sermon Illustration just for you. It’s going to be a powerful piece that highlights the history of Memorial Day and ties that rich history into our remembering those who have fallen today. I’ll be sure to post about that video when it’s finished and available. Another great video we have that would work well on Memorial Day is Let Freedom Ring, a thoughtful collection of quotes and scripture that highlights the God centered values and principles our nation was founded on Let Freedom Ring is available as an Illustration and as a Countdown.

Two thousand years ago, on a day much like today, God, in the form of his son Jesus, was tried, tortured and crucified on a Roman cross. The God who created the heavens and the earth hung on a hill with common criminals. To pay the price for our sin. To bear our ultimate burden and to save us from death. What an incredible, unbelievably amazing act. But why do we call a day when such an injustice was paid to God by man Good Friday?

I found an explanation that I like on the United Methodist Church’s website that I wanted to share:

The source of our term for the Friday before Easter, “Good Friday,” is not clear. It may be a corruption of the English phrase “God’s Friday,” according to Professor Laurence Hull Stookey in Calendar: Christ’s Time for the Church (p. 96). It is the common name for the day among English- and Dutch-speaking people. It is a day that proclaims God’s purpose of loving and redeeming the world through the cross of our Lord, Jesus Christ. It is a day that is good because God was drawing the world to God’s self in Christ. As seen in John’s gospel, particularly, God was in control. God was not making the best of a bad situation, but was working out God’s intention for the world — winning salvation for all people. We call it “good” because we look backward at the crucifixion through the lens of Easter!

“Good Friday” is not a universal name for the day. The liturgical title for the day in the Western church was “Friday of Preparation,” since the time Jews used the word paraskeue (getting ready) for Friday, meaning the “day of preparation.” Popular names for the day are “Holy Friday” among the Latin nations, “Great Friday” among the Slavic peoples, “Friday of Mourning” in Germany, “Long Friday” in Norway, and “Holy Friday” (Viernes Santo) among Hispanic peoples.

I’d like to wish everyone a Good Good Friday. As I write this, the Body of Christ all over the world begins to celebrate the most incredible act in human history. God’s sacrifice, perfect blood shed, blood that makes us clean. Grace that none of us deserve, extended by the hand of the Creator of the universe. And through this act and our belief in Jesus Christ, we pass from death to life and become the adopted sons and daughters of the Most High. As we move from Good Friday to Easter, we rejoice as the apostle Paul says in Romans 5: 10-11:

10For if, when we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life! 11Not only is this so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.

Happy Easter everyone. Our redeemer lives. And that is more than good!

This is a message for all you last minute shoppers :). We’re getting a lot of traffic this week from Google folks who are searching for free Easter resources. For those of you who don’t know or haven’t been here before, our free Easter resources are available by signing up for our email list on the homepage (Click Here to go to there now). And while you’re here, please check out our other great Easter videos here in our Seasonal store.

Sign up for our email list and you will receive a link to download two Easter themed loopable worship backgrounds and two awesome Easter themed still backgrounds that would make great backgrounds for your Easter Power Point slides. The free Easter pack is really well done. I have to give props to my partner Lee for that. He’s done a great job designing these. We have these media pieces available on other sites for sale this Easter season and they’re selling really well. But you can get them for free here! You can check out the whole package by visiting our Free Media page. Then go back to the homepage and sign up!

Once you sign up, we’ll send you links to free stuff like this every month. So we really hope you’ll sign up.