I get asked a lot why we have youth group on the weekend – and honestly it is a good question since even context I’ve experiences both as a teenager and as a youth pastor before Saddleback was that we did youth group in the middle of the week. So why don’t we, and what are some things you should consider about moving to the weekend? I was answering just that question to a youth pastor over email this week and thought I should expand on those thoughts here on the blog.

Here’s the top 4 reasons that HSM has chosen a weekend service over services another night of the week:

… to make space for adults services
From what I understand historically (I wasn’t at Saddleback when this happened) Pastor Rick asked HSM to free up seats in the worship center for adults and to have youth group meeting simultaneously to the adult services. The main reason we shifted was basically to help the church accommodate significant growth and give it room to keep moving forward.

… Sunday is when visitors attend anyhow
If you don’t have youth services or a presence of some sort on the weekend – you are missing out on a potential audience. We’ve found that if a family is going to visit it is during Sunday services, so having youth group then gives us the chance to meet/connect them right from their first time through the doors.

… to offer youth group at a convenient time for parents
Without a doubt the best time for students to attend youth group is while their parents are already doing something at the church, too. I talked to a youth worker this week who was struggling with youth group meeting on Wednesday nights for this very reason. As students get older and can drive this becomes less of a big deal, but it at least is a factor in our decision when to have services, too.

… to not take out students out another night of the week
This one is similar to the one above, but tweaked a little. Everyone is super busy – me included! Having youth group as part of our church services help consolodate the ask that is made for time during the week.

I’ve done youth group on Wednesday nights, Saturday nights, Sunday mornings, Sunday night – they all work! But hoope these few reasons why we landed on the weekend helps your processing and vision, too!

JG

Pastor Rick used this video in his message in our adults services this weekend. Looks like an organization called Get Out The Box made it, good message!

JG

Weekend Teaching Series: Stories Weekend (1-off)
Sermon in a Sentence: Students share their lives, experiences and faith with their peers.
Service Length: 80 minutes

Understandable Message: This weekend we didn’t have a typical message – it was time for another Stories weekend. This weekend 6 students shared their stories combined with great music made for an awesome weekend. The students shared on many topics drawn from their experiences, including eating disorders, self-image, faith, loves, abuse, sumer camp highs, salvation, walk with God, worship, serving and much more. The stories were inspiring and incredible – I would highly recommend you trying out a service like this in your youth group!

Element of Fun/Positive Environment: This weekend we played a modified version of this “no services” video that played great as well as a new video promoting The Landing (Celebrate Recovery for students). The opener this week was a super fun rendition of the 12 Days of Christmas with a whole group of energetic students on stage, too. Students in the band, did lights, sound, cameras, control room, greeting and speaking!

Music Playlist: 12 Days of Christmas, I Found a Love, Hosanna, Burning Ones, With Everything

Favorite Moment: Without a doubt it is the students sharing – the attention when a student takes the stage is absolutely incredible. There was no pastor on stage this weekend, but there was plenty of preaching!

Up next: Good Neighbor Weekend (no HSM services – more details later this week)

Weekend Teaching Series: Thankfulness (Thanksgiving 1-off)
Sermon in a Sentence: Fix our eyes on Jesus – and be thankful for everything.
Service Length: 62 minutes

Message: this weekend I thought it might be fun to change up the format and let you SEE part of the weekend service instead of just hearing about it. Here are two clips of Jessica teaching over Thanksgiving weekend in HSM:

Fix your eyes on something solid… like God! from HSM on Vimeo.

Stop the winky faces!!! from HSM on Vimeo.

Favorite Moment: Jessica is a great speaker – she doesn’t get to speak too often in HSM and that needs to change!

Up next: STORIES (1-off)

This week’s poll isn’t for everyone – but I’m curious whether or not you can drive a bus. In my first church, I was asked by the leadership to get a Commercial Driver’s License (CDL) to drive the church bus for big events and camps – I ended up driving it for everyone and everything! Where I serve now it isn’t a necessity so I let it lapse. How about you? Just curious!

JG

1. Many books have been written on the topic of pain and suffering. How does your book differ from the others?
Well, you can find the “scandal” in Jesus’ response to Peter right here: “Satan has demanded to sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you….” Like a violent assault that’s too hard to watch, we turn our attention from Jesus’ “but” because the impact of it is hard to swallow. Satan asks permission to sift, and the Trinity gives it. If God is a co-conspirator in our pain, then what hope do we have? In the end, Sifted is a bait-and-switch sort of book—it’s a book about the pain we experience in life, but it’s really a book about the glory of God and His “beyond category” love for us. There are many mysteries about God and His movement in our life, but sometimes we use “mystery” as an excuse to not drill down into His beauty more deeply until our understanding of Him compels us to worship Him. The story of Sifted is not an answer to our pain—it is moving the blockage of our pain away from our lips so we can drink deeply the Living Water.

2. What was it about these verses in Luke 22 that jumped out to you? Why did you decide to make them a focus of your study?
The older I get, the slower I read the Bible. Most of us miss who Jesus really is because, simply, we read too fast. We assume we understand what He says, what He does, and how others react to Him. But mostly, we’re functionally skipping over His essence in our impatient commute through the stories that chronicle His life. So I read the Bible very slowly now. And one day, while reading slowly, I rammed right into this little vignette that happens at the end of the Last Supper—it’s so short and odd that it’s easy to skip over. But when I stopped to ask myself if I understood what was really happening here, the story seemed like a grenade with its pin pulled. I saw something of God’s glory, and my own story, in this little interchange. God’s goodness surpasses our definitions because we’re hampered by our own limitations—but when we “taste and see” that God is good we’re forever longing to live in that taste.

3. Do you believe that all Christians will go through a sifting process?
Sifting comes in many forms, and from many sources. Simply because we’re alive, we will be sifted—whether from our own choices, or from living in a fallen and broken world, or from Satan demanding permission to mess with our life. Sifting is a reality for everyone, everywhere. But sifting—it means we are beaten, separated, and revealed—is a process that’s, in a way, neutral. I mean, the outcome of the experience can either destroy us or strengthen us. Satan intends to destroy when he sifts, and God (who makes beauty out of ugly) intends to reveal His glory in us. If God is merely the god of “good outcomes,” then our faith in Him is purely circumstantial. But if God is merely good, then our faith in Him is like Job’s—“Though He slay me, I will love Him.” This is the kind of love that leaves no leverage—no ledge to stand on—for the Enemy. And this is the kind of love that is our chief end in life.

4. Why do other Christians so easily judge those who are experiencing hardships?
In the end, the reason we judge others who are in the throes of sifting is the same reason why Job’s friends hammered away at him—we believe that bad things ultimately happen to people who deserve them. In our heads, that’s our insurance policy against tragedy and crisis and disappointment in life—as long as we assess ourselves as basically “good people” we should not be a viable target for suffering, or at least unjust suffering. We would never say that repeated experiences of suffering are a marker for hidden sin in a person’s life, or for God’s vote of un-confidence, but that’s how we act when we encounter people who have more than their fair share of suffering. We make assumptions about people who suffer because, we believe, we are judging them the way God judges them. We are wrong about this, just as Job’s friends were wrong about what was happening to him.

5. Peter did not make the right choice when he was first tempted, yet his experience still brought a change in his life. Does the process itself bring about change even when our initial reactions are wrong?
The short answer to this is embedded in God’s habitual behavior: “[He] causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose” (Romans 8:28). No matter what we give Him to work with, He is always using our “raw material” like a master sculptor would—making something beautiful out of something ugly. And, as Paul reminds us in Romans, we do not use this character trait against Him. No one who truly loves another takes their beloved for granted or abuses their grace. But it’s the grace and artistry of the Sculptor that draws out of us our only rational response—worship.

6. How can we be better prepared for the pain and suffering that will come?
Understanding the depth and breadth and height of God’s love for us is the only rampart against the destructive power of pain. The way we “better prepare” ourselves for pain and suffering is to orient our whole life toward “tasting and seeing that God is good.” And His goodness is better than we can dream—we know this because Jesus is a perfect reflection of that goodness, and Jesus is good beyond measure.

You can pick up a copy of Sifted right here! To find out more about the book, also visit the official website for Sifted is http://www.siftedbook.com/, and you can also follow Rick Lawrence on Twitter.

Another 1,000 point increase in my Xbox360 Gamerscore means another blog post documenting the joirney. Here are some super quick letter grade reviews of the games conquered to get the aciehevement increase: Sonic Generations (B), Bulletstorm (B+), Ice Age: Age of the Dinosaur (C+) and Modern Warfare 3 (A+). Solid month of gaming, done in bursts because of the busy fall. Excited about more gaming as we slow down over the holidays!

JG

I (Josh) remember during one of my most painful seasons in ministry I got an email from a fellow youth pastor. The message was short and sweet – it consisted of 3 words:

“Hang in there.”

Today I’m heading into a painful meeting with a volunteer. He needs to be removed for us to move forward. I had a tough interaction with a parent who was upset about an illustration I used during our recent series on relationships. I had to call out someone for spreading gossip and hurting the unity of our church. It feels like every day this week I’ve been hit with something big or tasked with something extraordinarily difficult. What I need someone to say to me right now is, “Hang in there.”

Thankfully I’ve got some genuine cheerleaders on the sidelines of our ministry. They realize the long hours, tough conversations and painful weeks in ministry add up and, if unchecked, run you straight into burnout. I’ve heard a ton of encouraging words this week that even in a season like this – God isn’t quite done with me at this place. That even when things are tough, God is good and faithful. Remidners that He is changing lives even when the circumstances around our ministry are less than ideal.

So today, please hear this from me: Hang in there.

Fight the battles you need to fight today. Be strong where strength is needed and give in and be weak when it doesn’t really matter. Ask your mentor for prayer this week, grab coffee with a friend in your youth ministry network so you can vent and then gear up for another run.

No one said youth ministry was going to be easy. In fact, I think Jesus might have said our lives would be just the opposite.* But know that He is faithful and is building and shaping you and the people around you. I would imagine that you’re probably not done where He’s got you – that maybe you need to bloom where you’re planted, even if there is a little frost on the ground this morning.

So hang in there. And please remind me of this article the next time I’m about to quit, too.

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.

After 12 years of working in youth ministry, I have seen many trends come and go. We used to have to phone students (gasp), and then came email, then text, now Facebook. It’s a technological wonderland out there, but my experience lately has been that social media specifically has become more and more of a white noise in students lives. They are engaging where they need to and want to, but event invitation, group updates etc are reaching only those that really look for them and the lack of response to them has meant a major shift in our communication strategy.

Like many ministries, we have worked with mass texting programs, but are finding more and more that they are a “shout” of information but lack the relational foundation that Christianity is about. I am troubled by many studies that are showing that students are becoming more and more incapable of carrying on a conversation and that verbal communication skills are suffering as a result of texts, and Facebook becoming primary communication vehicles for students. Sometimes I just want to talk to our students in blocks bigger than 140 characters.

So this year we have taken a very strategic and intentional page from the days of old and we are picking up the phone with increasing frequency. We are calling students weekly and have recruited teams of like-minded volunteers to come in one day a week after school and call every student who has visited our program this year every week. The process takes about 2 hours with a team calling, but the time is well spent and here is why I think it’s the most important part of our follow up strategy:

Reminding: If you have worked with middle schoolers before you know that they have trouble remembering to put socks on, let alone what night youth group is on. The mid-week call is a great reminder to them that youth is coming, and that you want them there. I would hope that a students would leave that conversation feeling that youth group is not the same without them and that we love when they show up.

Affirmation: When we call students and ask for them by name, the reaction on the other end of the phone to someone calling and inviting them back communicates that they are valuable and memorable. The conversations are not always life changing and often awkward, but if you were to ask your students what a phone call checking in on them mid-week means to them, you would be shocked to hear the value.

Belonging: I have heard that if a student does not attend for three weeks in a row, they likelihood of them ever coming back is slim. When we call students to invite them back and check on how they are experiencing our program it’s a chance for us to let them know indirectly through that conversation they belong, and that their opinions matter to us. Having a solid follow up strategy means that the likelihood of a student coming to our program and leaving unnoticed is much less likely.

I wrote a post last week about making “the ask” on the phone with students which is a key part of our phoning strategy. We are so convicted that having a conversation with students on the phone ;albeit a much larger investment of time, it by far the most effective, intentional and loving way that we can follow up with our students. I don’t do much of the calling myself and I am sure that if you ask around, you have volunteers, and parents willing to come in and do it.

Geoff Stewart is the Pastor of Jr & Sr High School for Journey Student Ministries at Peace Portal Alliance Church and regularly contributes GUEST POSTS to MTDB. Be sure to check out his Twitter stream for awesome ministry goodness. Want to get in on the fun and write up a guest post yourself? See how right here.

There’s a lot of talk in the student ministry world about how to cultivate a good relationship between the student ministry and the “big church” ministry. People write blogs about it. There are break out sessions at conferences about it. And I’m pretty sure that there’s a 37-point plan in a book at a bargain bookstore to make it work exactly right

We talk a lot about that relationship, but we don’t talk a lot about the relationship inside of the student ministry house. What relationship is that? It’s the relationship between the high school ministry and the middle school ministry.

At most churches where the student ministry is split, the middle school and the high school ministries rarely ever do anything together. They each have their own band, their own leaders, their own traditions, and generally just do their own thing.

We combine our middle school and high school for our fall camp each year. Over the past couple of years we have noticed a really cool vibe between them. All of our students interacted really well together. The high school students modeled what worship looked like to the younger students. The younger students reminded the older ones that were “too cool” to worship what it looks like to worship Jesus without caring what people think about you.

It was an environment that we realized needed to happen more than one weekend a year.

Last week we combined the two ministries for a worship night. We took over our worship center, combined bands, and planned a night that we thought could be very special. We wanted to base the entire night around baptisms and what came from that surpassed any of our expectations.

• We were able to baptize 18 students and a leader.
• We had at least five students accept Christ for the first time.
• We were able to “recreate” that camp/retreat experience where students put everything aside and focus completely on Jesus.

One of the coolest moments of the night didn’t happen between two students. We invited family and friends of every student that was getting baptized. One grandma brought a friend of hers to the service. At one point during the night, the friend leaned over to the grandma and said, “I think it’s time we bring Jesus into our conversations.” This friend had no connection to our ministry other than being friends with the grandma of a student that was getting baptized but she still heard the Gospel and still was able to meet with Jesus.

The pictures from the night blew up on Facebook. Students were talking about it all over Twitter. We were able to get a recap video in “big church” this past Sunday to celebrate the night. All of the attention was able to be focused on Jesus and students making the decision to follow him and be baptized. We were able to build up our students and celebrate their decisions in front of our entire church.

Oh, and as for the whole relationship between the student ministry and “big church,” I haven’t written a book but having your senior pastor and executive pastor witness a ton of students worshipping together is a pretty good way to establish that relationship.

Have you ever combined your high school and middle school ministry? Do you do it consistently? Why or why not? How does it work?

Jonathan Carone is in his second year of internship at Two Rivers Church in Knoxville, TN. See video, pictures and a photo recap of the weekend he wrote about here, here and here.