Welcome to post #3,000 here on MoreThanDodgeball.com. Here are the results of our little contest from the past two weeks - all winners will chosen at random with duplicates removed. Thanks to everyone who entered the contest, and is a part of the community.
1 GRAND PRIZE - A Classic Sack Chair from SackChairs.com || shipping included!
Comment #101 ~ Jeremy
2 RUNNERS UP - $100 in youth ministry resources || compliments of SimplyYouthMinistry.com
Comment #193 ~ Ryan
Comment #74 ~ Mike
10 HONORABLE MENTIONS - A free MoreThanDodgeball.com T-shirt
Comment #2 ~ Jonathan Hinton
Comment #25 ~ Matthew McNutt
Comment #46 ~ Alex
Comment #297 ~ Jon Smalling
Comment #317 ~ JonRobinson7707
Comment #208 ~ Cameron
Comment #48 ~ TylerV
Comment #91 ~ Amanda Nelson
Comment #13 ~ Marc
Comment #300 ~ Traci
I’ve got another contest brewing … believe it or not, it will blow this one away. Get your video cameras ready … I’m telling you it will be worth it. Having said that, Simply has extended their 20% off coupon code for 1 more day in honor of the contest winner annoucement - use BLOG3000 for 20% off your entire order only through the end of tomorrow!
Day two of North Point’s Drive Conference wraps up tonight with a fun road trip up to one of their regional campuses for a bluegrass band and surprise comedy hour with Jeff Foxworthy. It was a fun nightcap to a solid day of training and hanging out with the team. The breakouts were pretty good (Kurt has a good perspective here) and I got to meet up with Joby, Ben and meet some new friends like Justin.Lots of little nuggets all day, but the general sessions are the highlights for sure. Andy Stanley is cooking up some great stuff on building trust and developing a great team. So a good day! Looking forward to the last day of the conference tomorrow, with a Braves/Padres game to end the trip. Great fun!
The first book I finished on the plane ride to Atlanta was Pop Goes the Church by Tim Stevens. I loved the book - Tim makes no apology for fully engaging and leveraging the culture to reach people for Jesus. I find the approach refreshing and encouraging - especially to pastors of students who feel the additional pressure of relevance and connection to their fickle audience.
Chapter 4 is the best in the book, where Tim goes after three responses to the culture. We can condemn it, separate from it, embrace it, ignore it or leverage it. Tim lands firmly in the leverage camp - hoping that we use pop culture to discover biblical truth and engage our media-savvy audience.
The only drawback of the book is that while it is refreshingly current today, it will quickly become dated. I would read it this year to get the most bang for the buck. A-
Finishing up a workshop at Drive today on healthy staff culture. It can be summed up with 4 things:
the right people = everything
the right focus = focus
the right way = fun
the right reason = vision
Good stuff … the discussion centered on taking time hiring people and being certain of their fit and skill so that you can play and go through the challenges of ministry life together.
Unrelated note: the workshops have 20 minutes of content, and 20 minutes of Q&A, and then the conclusion.
Weekend Teaching Series: Bringing Sexy Back (Week 2 of 4) Message Title: Your Basic Sex Talk Sermon in a Sentence: The uniqueness of males and females and boundaries for the sexual relationship. Weekend Scale of Difficulty: 6 out of 10 Attendance: Up 9% from last weekend, up 38% from same weekend last year Service Length: 73 minutes Understandable Message: A Doug Fields brought the talk and students were engaged the whole time. Not as much rustling as last week. Volunteer/Student Involvement: B+ Not as many volunteers on stage, but one of the best parts of the program was a skit with all students. Element of Fun: A Positive Environment: B Students, Leaders and Students were all “up” and the message went over very well. Music Playlist: N/A There was really only one song and it was a comedy part of the program - not something for students to sing with. (This is the second week without a praise experience for students.)
Notes: This week seemed to be more in the sweet spot for HSM programming. It didn’t seem that it was as “hard” as last week to pull off, but the results were visibly better. Students weren’t nearly as restless, and were more engaged. The only improvement would be that the game (at the service I was at) took a little long to setup, but it made up for it by ending very strong. I think the main difference between last week and this one is that the on stage programming was very funny and the primary focus with video as secondary and illustrative. That and the programming was much “tighter” without as many silences in between parts of the programming.
Overall grade: A-
(This week’s report was written by HSM volunteer Tony Steward.)
Enjoyed some of the most amazing flavors of soft drinks in the world - the World of Coke offers over 60 different tastes from all over the world. Here’s a shot of Jeff, Kurt and I drinking a ’suicide’ of all 60 mixed together. By the way, it tasted terrible, a lot like cough syrup. So fun!
Here are the top 13 posts from April 2008. Thanks for reading the blog - tell a friend to join in on the conversation (and the contest, while it lasts)!
It doesn’t matter how much you travel or what airlines you choose - you should use a frequent flyer card every single time.
They are totally free and you accumulate points/miles toward future trips. As a youth worker, you might fly to attend a conference - points. Flying out on a mission trip - points. You might attend a family gathering or funeral - show me the points.
Each of these events, even on different airlines, add up miles and help you get free trips. And if you’re also like me, the main consideration for the flight is cost, not airline dedication. No big deal, just get a card for the airline you’re travelling on that trip.
I know how much youth workers like free stuff, and this might be one you’ve been missing out on. Next time you head to the airport, get a frequent flyer card from that airline and start toward a free trip. Hey, if you would have started earlier, you might already have one.
We don’t do too many skits in our ministry these days, honestly. But this weekend we did what I would consider to be a Saddleback classic - The Hormone Shuffle. It absolutely killed … you can get it in the resource bundle pictured above. So funny! Just an aside … download the sample on that page and you get one full script free (The Mask I Wear).
We’ve got a good one planned for this August … but it’s been too long since our family took a break from youth ministry. I’ve got some time saved up right now.
I’ve been working on a few books at the same time, which is unusual for me. I’m reading Pop Goes the Church (Tim Stevens), Going All the Way (Craig Groeschel) and Martha Rules (Martha Stewart) currently. I’m hoping to finish them up and get to Simple Strategic Volunteers as well during the break we’re taking this week to Drive.
Time to wrap up a few books on these flights - expect a flurry of reviews later this week.
I’m super excited - tomorrow after services the whole HSM team is headed to the Drive Conference over at North Point. While I’m never excited to leave the family, a chance to be gone a couple of days with the team to relax and grow is just what I need right now. Anyone else headed to Drive? If so, I’ll bring a few MTDB T-Shirts to give out.
As we prepare for the upcoming Congratulations You’re Gifted Series, one of our staff (Josh) came up with this structure for the 3 weeks. Going to be cool - I really like this:
LEARN is taking a S.H.A.P.E. profile test and setting up an interview time where they learn what ministry opportunities are out there.
LIVE is serving in one of these ministries you are gifted for.
Tony Morgan has a super post today about people driving by and missing the message, when maybe the message needs to change. Super stuff, a must read this Friday. Here’s a clip:
The other day I was driving down the road going about 50 mph. Just in case you’re wondering, that’s not quite fast enough.
I passed an organization with a big sign out front. Part of the sign includes an electronic message board that rotates messages. I don’t know how many messages there are. At 50 mph, I only saw one. And, because of that, I know that it was precisely “8:28″ when I passed the sign.
The funny thing about that is that I didn’t really need to know that it was 8:28. I already had that information from my car and cell phone clocks.
Just a quick note about the Simply Youth Ministry Podcast eBay auction this week - remember that all proceeds go to hurting youth workers and Doug will match up to $1,500 we raise. Win Matt’s Oregon coat, a MoreThanDodgeball.com T-Shirt, a Simply All Access and any 5 signed Doug Fields’ books. Check it out!
Weekend Teaching Series: Bringing Sexy Back (Week 1 of 4) Message Title: The History of Sex Sermon in a Sentence: A cultural look at sex through the years and an introduction to God’s eternal plan for sex. Weekend Scale of Difficulty: 9 out of 10 Attendance: Up 17% from last weekend, up 19% from same weekend last year Service Length: 63 minutes Understandable Message: B+ Volunteer/Student Involvement: B+ Lots of volunteers … but not a ton of students except for the band Element of Fun: A Positive Environment: A- Music Playlist: A- The 60’s, 80’s, 90’s and today were the best (playlist here and tips on doing songs like this from Taffy)
Thoughts:
Great weekend - lots of effort and it paid off! The videos were super, especially Doug Fields’ promo video for next weekend and the actual 1950’s sex education clip. The spoof Chastity Corporation videos made me laugh because of church history references but for some reason didn’t “click” as well with students. The decade intro videos were good, too, and connected surprisingly well with students. If I could change anything it would be to have Griff’s 9:00am talk on all 3 services and some of the other ad libs and bits at 6:30 mirrored all 3 as well.
Overall grade: A-
(This is hopefully a new series we’re starting on the blog - we’ll try to post the “weekend in review” the following Tuesday of each week. This week’s report was written by discipleship pastor Jason Petty.)
Got a chance to sneak out with the guys tonight to a preview screening of Iron Man. Audi, who’s cars are featured in the movie, had a early show just down the road and a friend scored 4 tickets.
The film has a familiar feel, almost a Spider-man meets Transformers mashup. We see how the suit is born, we get to enjoy Stark learning how to use the suit and finally we see him mastering it and taking out bad guys in rare form.
The film easily becomes a basis for a series of Iron Man films in subsequent summers. It contains some super moments of action, but the film definitely knows it is a foundational film for the characters and narrative and spends a good amount of time there. I would actually say it spends a little too much time setting things up and not quite enough payoff. But still, great lines, amazing special effects, and a super comic-book style story make it entertaining.
So all in all just a bit slower than I expected, maybe missing a last compelling action sequence, but a nice fun start to summer 2008. A-
Another installment of the Power Play series lands at Simply Youth Ministry today. Hit the image above to go there and grab a free sample - 1 of the 20 screen games on the disc. So fun!
JG
PS: 20% off your order if you use the promo code from this post, too!
Thursday at 12:15 (Pacific) we’ll have the Simply Youth Ministry Podcast live - followed shortly thereafter by a special podcast with Doug and Cathy Fields on youth ministry and marriage. Be sure to check them out LIVE tomorrow or in iTunes next week!
My friend Tony left a comment on a post (Working at 100% Capacity) earlier this week - thought it deserved it’s own post today as well.
First, what 100% means to someone today, if they don’t grow or get better at getting results - will become 75% in 12-36 months or less for them. Second, The only way to get above 75% is to learn the work of work. I would say that consists of four core proficiencies:
1. Productive Delegation (It take work to set someone up to succeed)
2. Consistent Review (at least weekly evaluation of progress and planning in advance)
3. Ruthless Prioritization (this is of time, and selecting the highest value tasks and projects to accomplish)
4. Effective Communication (This has more to do with diligence to use the appropriate mediums for the right messages)
If you were like me, you left last night’s Idol with a few question marks in your head about Paula Abdul and her critique of the contestands midway through. I heard an interview with her on KIISFM this morning (Ryan Seacrest’s show here in LA) where she talks about it. They just posted it here. Fun tohear how crazy it is behind the scenes!
More Than Dodgeball Joshua Griffin is the High School Pastor at Saddleback Church, dabbles in community for Simply Youth Ministry and loves other like-minded youth workers in the PDYM Community.
