Josh Griffin | More Than Dodgeball

Josh GriffinMore Posts HSM Weekend in Review: Volume 213

Weekend Teaching Series: Crazytown (week 2 of 3)
Sermon in a Sentence: 5 Things Guys Wish Girls Knew
Service Length: 71 minutes

Understandable Message: This week was another huge hit with students – we covered 5 things from guys that they wanted girls to know. I mashed up some very insightful conversations with guy students, my personal experiences and what the Bible says into a fun talk on relationships and sex. It was super fun to talk frankly with the students and push them into really thinking about the choices they are making and the consequences of a life outside of God’s path. Excited to make this into a resource for others to use in the future as well, too!

Element of Fun/Positive Environment: We had a great weekend planned – we played a hilarious new screen game called Taylor Swift Lyric or Lamentations that was one of the most clever games we’ve ever played. We also had a fun dating video spoof and lots of student involvement. Great energy on a tough weekend (prom at one of our key high schools) and met several students for the first time, too!

Music Playlist: Heart Attack (Demi Lovato cover), Hosanna, Divine and Holy

Favorite Moment: I’m really proud of Travis, he is our new weekend guy and is doing a GREAT job planning the program and keeping things on track. What a great series this has been – 1 more week to go!

Up next: Crazytown (series finale, week 3 of 3)

1 View Comments 14 hours ago

Josh GriffinMore Posts Infinite Reasons to Go to HSM Summer Camp: Team Rec

Loving this simple series of promo videos for HSM Summer Camp. So fun! Ouch …

JG

Add Comment 17 hours ago

Josh GriffinMore Posts Instagrams of My Message Each Week

We’re trying something new with the Crazytown series we’re doing right now – honestly we stumbled into it when a student started doing it. Honestly, I am absolutely loving it!

Last week after my message Melanie made a ready-for-Instagram image to share in her social media. It stunned me how she captured that point of the talk perfectly:

Then after this week’s service, she nailed it again:

We’re hopefully going to continue it every week after our youth services – let people share the message virally.Would love to see maybe a youth group logo in the corner or even a verse on them in the future, or maybe that would be too forced andobvious. Either way … I love this so much!

Steal the idea if you want!

JG

3 View Comments 1 day ago

Josh GriffinMore Posts POLL: Excuses for Missing Devotions

Last week’s poll was interesting and made me want to do a follow-up on the same subject. Spending time with Jesus every day is certainly a discipline, one that apparently many of us are faking or failing at. Vote today and help share some insight into why!

JG

Add Comment 3 days ago

Josh GriffinMore Posts GUEST POST: My Terrible Ideas

90% of my ideas are terrible. No, for real. They’re really bad. What sucks is that I’m full of ideas. I’m constantly dreaming up how to tweak or completely transform our approach to student ministry. I generate so many bad ideas that my team often just tunes me out. I get the courtesy, “That sounds cool” with a plastic smile. Currently I’m doing my best to convince our team that what we need is a ginormous student building with 5 attached houses. I’m telling you it’s the future—for so many reasons. Someday when every church has a student building with 5 attached houses and our church missed the boat everyone will realize how innovative I am and promote me.

Here’s the thing about my ideas. While 90% of them are terrible and following them they could lead to immediate dismissal, the loss of thousands of dollars and probable hospitalization, 10% of them are genius. 10% of my ideas could potentially change the world. The trouble is that I can’t predict which ideas are in the 90% and which ideas are in the 10%. You really don’t want to guess wrong because great ideas invent the Internet and bad ideas take you to a Nickleback concert.

My guess is that whether you realize it or not, you also have more bad than good ideas. The thing is, if we could better discern the quality of our ideas we’d save ourselves and our teams a lot of grief. Nothing is more demoralizing than when the team is chasing down an idea that everyone knows is a dead end.

The good news is that somewhere along the line I stopped implementing all of my bad ideas. When? What was the big moment? It wasn’t a big moment but it was when my ideas were forced into community. When my ideas are stuck spinning within my own head almost all of them sound fabulous. However, when having to verbally explain and defend my ideas, 90% of them are revealed for what they are. Dumb. I know you’ve been there, when you realize that the words coming out of your mouth are exceeding illogical and you wish you never started talking in the first place—humbling.

Within the context of community (that is well intentioned debate over the validity of ideas) my 90% was revealed to be what they were and my life and ministry was protected from stupidity. The unforeseen byproduct of submitting my ideas to community is that my good ideas were refined and became significantly more awesome. “I like this idea that you call the Internets. But what if we could connect our gaming systems and play each other? And what if you took the “s” off it and just called it the Internet?” GENUIS! You might say that in the context of community my 10% became 90% better. If you’re not strong at math I probably lost you right there. I think I lost myself.

The point is, when you have the humility to submit your ideas to your community before implementing them you will uncover the fact that most of your ideas are terrible but a few of them are genius. Failure is not the best way to learn. Realizing that an idea is a failure before failing is a cleaner and less destructive way to learn. The moral of the story is this: if you don’t have an ideas community, get one! Honest community will save you from your terrible ideas and help reveal and refine your great ones.

Aaron Buer has been a student pastor for 10 years and currently serve as a high school pastor at Ada Bible Church in Grand Rapids, MI. Read his blog here.

Add Comment May 19, 2013

Josh GriffinMore Posts GUEST POST: When Too Many Show

Last week I wrote a post called “When One Student Shows” to talk about the issue of when only a single student shows up and how to handle it. Let’s look at the opposite “problem” today.

You have just finished your running around to buy all the food and supplies you needed for tonights big event. You ran through your check-list and have the exact amount of stuff you need to make it all work. You put it all down, organized it then the students start showing up. Quickly you realize all the students your students who are suppose to show are there, but you have another 5 to 10 students (change the values for your church size).

Oh what a problem to have, we always would love to see more numbers but when this moment happens its an “uh-oh” kind of moment. How are you going to deal with it?

So you have too many students show up and you are suddenly confronted with their eager faces; or their “my mom made me come” faces. You have to snap into action to make things happen.

A few steps I think are very important to take are:

Be Welcoming
Its not the students fault you aren’t prepared, and they matter just as much as the kids who RSVP’d to the event. If you can take the student do your best to make them feel welcome and bring them into the event.

Have a chain of command
I believe that if you have the volunteers it is important to have roles defined. Make sure you have a person you can rely on to run and grab more supplies or free up a seat in a car to be able to drive (if possible)

Be ready to say ‘no’
If for some reason you can’t accept the student for that event, you just have to be able to say no. Stick to deadlines for RSVP’ing if it is a major event that requires pre booking or lots of transportation. But don’t leave it there, be ready to be able to answer that student or parent why they cannot attend

Plan ahead
In my ministry there have been times when too many students have shown up and I get frustrated. I think to myself ‘why can’t they just RSVP?’, but I knew there was a good chance extra students might have come. So I have had to think hard about certain events. Well extra people might attend this one, so I make sure each vehicle going has an extra seat so we can fill those up if need be.

Maybe this isn’t an issue for your ministry, for others this can be a huge issue because of budget, number of volunteers or venue space. But one thing we can all learn from too many students is how we deal with people. Could this even be too many ministry volunteers? (In my dreams).

Kyle Corbin has been serving youth as a volunteer or pastor for over 10 years. He is currently the youth pastor at the Bridge Church in North Vancouver B.C. You can follow his blog at: kylecorbin.blogspot.com or Twitter: @CorbinKyle

3 View Comments May 18, 2013

Josh GriffinMore Posts Skipping Out on Sabbath

Really enjoyed this take on time off, rest and sabbath from Doug Fields’ blog the other day. If you’re struggling with margin, balance and time away from ministry, read on:

Almost daily I get an email from a ministry leader who is tired and on the verge of burn out. There is so much about “ministry-world” that is exhausting. I understand this reality… firsthand. It’s real and ugly!

Too many leaders don’t even slow down enough to be faithful to God’s call for a Sabbath rest.

When I was a young leader I received great advice from a mentor who urged me to faithfully guard and protect a weekly day of rest. I’m so grateful for that advice and encouragement! Without intentional action, it’s simply too easy for a leader to slip into justifying non-Sabbath actions like, “I’m just going to pop into the office,” or “I’m so far behind, I just need to catch up” or “They need to spend time with me and I don’t think I can say ‘no’.”

Sound familiar? Me too! Want to see how he approaches his day of rest? Head there for more!

JG

Add Comment May 17, 2013

Josh GriffinMore Posts Youth Ministry Transitions

This is a season of transitions in our ministry. In just a couple of weeks the 6th-graders will be moving into our junior high ministry, our new freshman will be entering high school, and our just-graduated seniors will be moving up into the college-level program. It’s a bittersweet time of excitement for the new, mixed with the loss of incredible students who are no longer formally in your care.

Today we hope to provide you with a few keys to make the transitions smooth in your church. As we learned yesterday, the youth ministry “handoff” can be a time when students fail to make the move up in one of their life’s most challenging times. Here are some thoughts to make them go well.

Work in harmony with the other areas of ministry.
If you work in junior high ministry, you should be in relationship with the children’s ministry leaders. If you’re the new college pastor, one of your first steps should be to develop a relationship with the youth workers who care for your high school students. Know their programs, their wins and losses, and reach down to grab students to pull them up.

Prepare your students for what is ahead.
As recently as this past year we had a few graduating seniors that LOVED our youth ministry but had never been to “big church” before. We love that they loved us, but it was sad that they only really knew youth group and had not become part of the whole church. Some of those conversations became the genesis of the Worship Together Weekends we’ve talked about so much in the past. (If you don’t know what WTW is, click here for more details.)

Create spaces for questions.
Another simple win is to invite the leaders of the ministry ahead of yours for an informal “Q/A” with your current students about the ministry they are about to join. This will ease the nerves and help them feel relieved and loved before they move up. Or consider creating a “preview” night where students can sit in on a full service and get an idea of what it is like when promotion weekend finally does come along.

Celebrate every step of the way.
One of the things I’m (Josh) most excited about next week is our senior Life Group dinners. We’re going to host our small group leaders and their seniors for a special hour-long program to cheer them on beyond high school. Our leaders are incredible so there are going to be some tears, but most of all lots of rejoicing that students have made it and are prepared for what is next.

How do you help ease the transition between grades and programs in your ministry?

This post was written by Josh Griffin and Kurt Johnston and originally appeared as part of Simply Youth Ministry Today free newsletter. Subscribe to SYM Today right here.