Josh Griffin | More Than Dodgeball

Josh GriffinMore Posts Adoption Rocks

My friend Neely is adopting a child, and have these awesome shirts for sale to help them raise the funds to make this happen. Here’s me modeling the 2XL version this afternoon – head to her site and read about the process and to give to make it happen.

JG

Add Comment October 28, 2008

Josh GriffinMore Posts Early Birds, Steak Dinner, $75 and the NYMC

I mentioned this in an earlier post, but Simply Youth Ministry and Group National Youth Ministry Conference are now deadly serious about the podcast crew and steak with someone at the conference this year. I couldn’t be more hungry … and excited. See you there? 4 days left for the early bird rate!

JG

Add Comment October 28, 2008

Josh GriffinMore Posts GUEST POST: 5 Things Senior Pastors Don’t Say Enough to Their Youth Pastor

Charles Hill writes in with a guest post this week about senior pastors and their youth workers. Good stuff here, send in your article submission as well!

1. I want to protect you. Help me out there by letting me in on what is going on before a pissed off parent does. Talk to me. HELP me HELP you.

2. I see you as more than just the “youth pastor down the hall.” I really desire to develop community with you too, even though you do odd things at odd hours and odd places and are generally … odd.

3. I want to see the YOUTH group as a part of the CHURCH as a whole, and not a separate ministry arm. And I want to see the CHURCH become a part of the YOUTH MINISTRY as well. We should compliment, not compete. Like 2 sparrows in a hurricane (that will make sense to your rural youth worker audience, I promise).

4. I care deeply about the students as well. I have watched them be born (well, not really, that would be awkward), visited them in the hospital when they were sick, helped their parents through the teen pregnancy, and by the way, my kids are on their way down the hall soon so get ready.

5. I love and appreciate you more than I will ever say. I appreciate your love and support for me as well. Let’s do this thing. Ball up. Charge the gates of Hell. Kick some… umm… and whatever other Braveheart image flashes before your eyes.

Special shout-out to my Youth Pastor and great friend (who is 16 years older than me) and his sidekick (who was in MY youth group years ago). Love you both, even when I don’t.

JG

Add Comment October 27, 2008

Josh GriffinMore Posts 4 Youth Ministy Instincts

I’m teaching a section of our Student Ministries team meeting tomorrow – in some recent conversations with Kurt we felt that we needed to establish and/or reinforce some instincts, things that we have to just do automatically for our ministry to move forward. I like to think of these as our default settings, when there’s no direction or we’re standing there wondering what to do – this is what we do. These 4 things are what should be natural for all of us:

Check my heart
Youth ministry can be intensely demanding and nothing less than a completely dependent relationship with God will do.
- Am I walking close to the Father?
- Is this a job or a ministry?
- What is my attitude or body langauge telling others right now?

Take initiative
Youth ministry needs people of action. If you’re always waiting to be told what to do, you’re holding the team back. Jump in and take something to the next level or brainstorm about what might be then start running to take the team there.
- Is there something I can do to help?
- What needs to be done right now?
- Is there something new I can do to help us fulfill our purposes?

Bring someone along
Youth ministry isn’t meant to be done alone. Any project you are working on should have some volunteer component. Many hands make the load light.
- Is there a volunteer leader I can share this with?
- Who on our volunteer team can run with this?
- Is there a student who has the skills for this project?

Put the “customer” first
Youth ministry needs people people. We cannot walk by people’s need in order to get tasks done.
- Are people my number one priority?
- Is there somebody I need to serve right now?

JG

Add Comment October 27, 2008

Josh GriffinMore Posts The New Pepsi Logo

Not convinced I like the new logo for Pepsi and Mountain Dew. Especially considering it cost 1.2B dollars. Here’s a little article on the history of the Pepsi logo as well.

JG

Add Comment October 27, 2008

Josh GriffinMore Posts POLL: Summer Calendar Planning

POLL: How far in advance do you plan your summer calendar?

JG

polls

Add Comment October 25, 2008

Josh GriffinMore Posts 5 Steps to Calendar on Purpose

We laid out HSM’s spring calendar this past week – it was a great time of focusing our energy on the purposes and laying out the direction for our ministry. The process we followed to get our calendar set up went really well, so I thought it might be helpful for you as well as you work ahead, too:

Strive for balance
The first mission is for the leadership to be clear that one purpose or agenda isn’t going to dominate our calendar. We are a youth ministry that wants to be purpose-driven, not driven by one particular purpose. We will spend time talking about evangelism, fellowship, discipleship, ministry and worship – not letting any one thing drive the direction.

Take one purpose and run with it
So after the balance conversation, we spent time going through each month (January through June), putting on events, classes, trips and meetings that focus on one purpose. We also look at what we did the previous year and debrief them on the fly. If they worked, we consider it for the new year. If it didn’t, we do our best to go after something fresh. So we look at January and talk just discipleship, then hit month by month all focusing on that one purpose.

Repeat that process for each purpose
Then we went month by month again, this time through the eyes of evangelism. After that we hit fellowship dates for small groups, then dropped in discipleship retreats, camps and trainings. The goal was for each purpose to be represented clearly on the calendar.

Drop in the deadlines
Once the calendar is more or less “set” we dropped in deadlines for registrations and various milestones that related to the projects. For example, our mission trip requires a registration start and end, as well as 3 parent meetings and a celebration weekend. Small groups don’t just start day one, they need registration dates, deadlines and enough time for us to process the students into groups. When you plan an event, be sure to also include the follow-up dates as well.

Look at the big picture and cut away
Then we took a look at the overall big picture and goal for balance and health and start the painful process of figuring out what needs to be cut. We also came in with the mindset of what items need to be adjusted – could we partner our event with another time our target audience is already at church, instead of asking for another night out of the team and the committed.

JG

5 View Comments October 25, 2008

Josh GriffinMore Posts HSM Weekend in Review: Volume 24

Weekend Teaching Series: 1-off Weekends (1 of 2)
Message Title: Show Who You Are
Sermon in a Sentence: The friends that carried the paralyzed man saw someone in need, took action and let Jesus do the rest – we should do the same by living a life of friendship evangelism.

Key Verse: Mark 2:1-5 The story of Jesus healing the paralytic.

Weekend Scale of Difficulty: 4 out of 10, last minute changes to our teaching schedule made things interesting, but the actual program was pretty straightforward.
Service Length: 60 minutes
Understandable Message: Jake thought to use this story as a backdrop for friendship evangelism challenge. He and I team-taught together in a conversational style using a couple of stools on stage. The story of Jesus healing the paralytic is a powerful story of friends bringing people to Jesus – we likened it to not letting selfish eyes and obstacles get it in the way of us bringing friends to Christ. The message and challenge was clear, but as always it is interesting to teach “bring your friends” to an audience that could be made up of people that are bringing their friends.

Volunteer/Student Involvement: Students ran the band, lights, sound, cameras and assisted with media this weekend. Student and volunteers handed out 3-packs of flyers promoting PumpkinFest as well. Grabbed a few students to do an opening bit on stage, and used one for an up-front game as well. Overall there was good volunteer involvement.

Element of Fun/Positive Environment: Jake and I played the mayo video just for fun to reintroduce him to the weekend crowd since he’s been serving at the San Clemente regional campus for the past couple of years, recently back as the outreach pastor for Student Ministries. We also played a quick little trivia game on each other (he quizzed me on Star Wars, I quizzed him on baseball) that illustrated how what we care about shows up in our relationship and Christ should naturally be a part of a friendship, too.

Music Playlist: Beautiful Lord, How He Loves Us, Blessed Be Your Name

Favorite Moment: Having Jake back on the main campus regional team is a huge blessing. His heart for the community students and the unchurched is clear. It was so cool to see him take the stage for the first time (again).

Add Comment October 25, 2008

Josh GriffinMore Posts Pumpkinfest Promo Video

Here’s a fun little promo video for our upcoming Pumpkinfest event on Halloween night.

JG

Add Comment October 22, 2008

Josh GriffinMore Posts 6 Ways to Connect With Your Audience

There are many elements of healthy communication during the weekend service. These are not exclusive, in my mind each of these weaves together to cast a compelling message. These are not about personal style, but rather tools in your toolbelt to connect the audience to the message. Here’s 6 ways to connect with your audience:

Humor
One of the universal languages of humanity is laughter. Laughter breaks down barriers and disarms people to accept truth. The highs of laughter make the serious points that much more compelling. I love listening to people who can make me laugh but cram truth down my throat at the same time. Use humor in some form every week – you don’t have to be funny to have fun.

Call to Action
A great way to connect with your audience is to call them to something much bigger than they dreamed possible. Show them what could be, take them places they didn’t know they should care about. Dare to challenge students to live a different life with a practical action step connected to the weekend.

Authenticity
Find ways to inject yourself into your talk to demonstrate the journey of following Christ. Unpack your life with your learnings, struggles and flaws. Show that you are human and not always the hero.

Object Lessons
Several of my favorite moments of the “talk” recently hasn’t been the talk at all. Illustrations or object lessons can help connect your students to a particular concept more easily. A few weeks ago we talked about the debt we owe Christ by dropping $100 in nickels on the floor – a compelling image of forgiveness of our debt through Jesus. A few weeks before that we had a little water dropper to show the world’s love, and a pitcher to show God’s overflowing love for us and a challenge to settle for nothing less. Use images like this to memorably connect.

Using Multiple Senses
Don’t let students just hear you for a half an hour – engage more than the ears. If you’re talking about an upcoming mission trip, have sample food from the country you’ll be heading to this summer. If the story is of Jesus in the desert, turn up the heat in the room. OK, don’t be lame, but think about ways to connect more than the ears to the message.

Testimony
Students will never pay better attention then when a student is speaking on stage. Just this weekend we had a super powerful testimony of an 18-year old atheist turned Christ-follower. Use a testimony to show a next step and/or the benefit of choosing the way God asks us to live – I bet it will connect.