Kem Meyer has a great article today on overpromising in the church – something that I think I might not be alone in in youth ministry. Here’s a clip, worth the read and the evaluation of what you’re promising:

“Come experience a community of grace.”
Again, nice goal, but you can’t control the outcome. I had promised a “community of grace” for a friend of mine and she finally joined me for a weekend service. During the message, her cell phone went off. A man sitting behind us scolded her for being rude and selfish. He even asked her not to come back if she couldn’t have the decency to turn her phone off during church. True story. Yes, it’s a distraction for others when a cell phone goes off. Obviously. However, what isn’t obvious is that my friend was taking a gigantic step by attending church for the first time in years. My friend didn’t look at the man as an individual, she looked at him as the church. And, I had not delivered on my promise.

Are we making statements as if they were facts, when in reality they are subjective and left to personal interpretation?

Are we promising something we can’t deliver on?

Are we baiting people with exaggerated benefits?

JG

Weekend Teaching Series: Do Something series kickoff (week 1 of 3)
Sermon in a Sentence: Biblical leadership requires serving.
Service Length: 70 minutes
Bible: Matthew 9

Understandable Message: This week’s message was super short – one of my goals for the series is a little less talk and a lot more action. Hmmm … that would make a good song. Anyhow, I shared the vision for the series and our goals for November as HSM’s Do Something Month.

The series donation/action goals:

500 canned goods

400 pieces of clothing

500 boxes of cereal

$6,000 dollars to cover shipping/projects

110 small group service projects

100,000 meals packed

HSM Hunger Day – November 18th

This week, we partnered with Operation Christmas Child to pack 500 shoeboxes with Christmas gifts so kids around the world could hear about Jesus. Our small groups have been collecting a large amount of what we put in the boxes, creating some great synergy between the weekend and the next step in our disciipleship process: Here’s what they collected for the event:

• 237 bars of soap
• 295 washclothes
• 270,380 crayons and pens
• 216 notebooks
• 71 tubes of toothpaste
• 253 toothbrushes
• 3,999 pieces of candy

Volunteer/Student Involvement: Students made up the band and ran lights, camera, sound and the control room. Volunteers met for prayer before the service then positioned themselves as greeters and helped everyone feel welcome. We also had students and volunteers placed around the room to make sure the shoebox-packing went smoothly and to answer any questions that came up.

Element of Fun/Positive Environment: We had lots of fun this weekend – but it was different from the games and videos we might usually do. Because we let everyone build a shoebox during the service, there was some great buzz and people had a chance to talk and hang out for most of the service. The atmosphere was both moving as we set up the weekend, and relaxed when everyone got a box and started to work on it. So much fun! We also started a “create a custom” series T-shirt contest, and gave everyone an envelope as they left with 30+ challenges to take action this week (see the list here).

Music Playlist: New Born (Muse cover), Solution, Tears of the Saints

Favorite Moment: We opened a few of the shoeboxes and read some of the letters inside. Some were absolutely priceless, the students totally got this project and the heart behind it.

Up Next: Do Something (week 2 of 3)

As students left the the Do Something service this weekend, we gave them a sealed envelope with 30 pieces of paper in it – different challenges to pull out and take on this month. Here’s some of the list:

Post a status on facebook.com with a statistic involving the poverty of the world.

Read the TOMS shoes story www.tomsshoes.com and think about what you could start to help people in need.

Pick up trash after you eat lunch every day this week to serve the custodians at your school.

Go through some park/school/house trashcans and look for bottles/cans to recycle and raise money to donate.

Write Romans 12:2 on your mirror to read everyday when you wake up.

Iron-on or use a permanent marker to write statistics on an old T-shirt and wear it around your school.

Write Matthew 25:40 on a Post-It note and put it on your binder.

Babysit for a single mom to give her some quiet time.

Sit with someone sitting alone at lunch and be friends with them.

Sit with someone sitting alone at church this weekend.

Take a minute and pray for someone close to you in need.

Light a birthday candle, and pray for a need until the candle burns out.

Open every door for every person you can this week.

Ask your mom how you can help with dinner, set the table without being asked.

Help your little brother or sister with their homework, then take them out for frozen yogurt.

Go to Isaiah House (homeless shelter once a month through HSM) and have conversations with widowed women and their children.

Collect your loose change around the house and donate it.

Wash someone’s car for them. No Charge!

Talk with someone who is struggling emotionally and provide them with words of comfort.

Write a letter to a soldier and send it to www.soldiersangels.com.

Help someone who dropped their books at school, pick them up.

Sign up for the next Compton work day which is January 23^rd.

Fast for a day. When you get hungry, think of those who go multiple days in hunger.

Create a sign to remind yourself to turn off the water while brushing your teeth; it can save up to 2 gallons of water a day.

Buy reusable bags to give out in your neighborhood to eliminate the usage of plastic bags.

Collect canned goods in your house and donate them to the HSM food drive next weekend.

Collect 100 canned goods in your neighborhood and donate them to the HSM food drive next weekend.

Be creative! Create a bumper sticker for your car that raises awareness of poverty or encourages others to “Do Something”

Spend an hour researching poverty on wikipedia.com to educate yourself on the strife our world faces today.

Search www.youtube.com  for compassionate or inspiring videos and post them on Facebook.

Turn off your phone for a day, and use the quiet to reflect on how much we have and how little so many others have. What will you do about it?

Go through your closet and donate clothes you don’t wear anymore to the HSM clothing drive. Our goal is 400 people contribute pieces!

Invite someone to church with you and ask them to join you in doing something.

Give your weekly allowance to someone who needs money for lunch at school.

JG

you’ve never heard of the Pareto Principle, chances are you’ve probably experienced it. The Pareto Principle basically states that 80% of the effects are produced by 20% of the cause. In ministry, as it relates to volunteers, this is usually translated into 80% of the work is done by 20% of the volunteers or congregation. This has got to change, especially in youth ministry.

Why? One simple reason–it leads to volunteer burnout. You will undoubtedly weaken your ministry if your best volunteers are carrying the weight of the work. A weakened youth ministry is a disservice to the students that are currently in the program and to those students that have not yet stepped foot into your building.

As you think about your own ministry, here are some ways to reverse or avoid falling into this principle:

1. Don’t over program. The more programs you have the more they are going to need staff, leaders & volunteers.

2. Clearly communicate your ministry’s vision. Make sure every volunteer, student & parent knows the vision. If you want to know if you’re communicating the vision, ask them. If they don’t know, you’re not communicating it clearly.

3. Organize yourself. If you’re not organized, neither will your ministry. People will notice this right away. Disorganization can appear that you aren’t taking this seriously and then neither will they.

4. Reward your volunteers, often. Rewarding volunteers regularly is cheaper than hiring staff (you can tell that to the senior pastor)

5. You do the hard stuff. Don’t pass on the responsibilities that you don’t want to do or have time for to the volunteers (see number 3).

If you or your ministry is experiencing the Pareto Principle, we’d love to hear how you’ve overcome or dealt with this issue.

Kevin Cooper serves in student ministries at Meadow Park Church in Columbus, OH. Find his lifestream mini-blog at http://kevincooperblog.com

Last night our Student Ministry team welcomed twenty new volunteers into the LifeLine family.  It was exciting to look around and see the fresh energy and potential.  As they drove away I couldn’t help but wonder what God was going to do in each of their lives this year, and how He will use them to intersect the lives and journeys of the students we serve.  

Scott has been around our ministry for eighteen years.  In fact, when I began serving as a volunteer nine years ago, Scott single handedly ran the Jr. High ministry as a volunteer.  While our ministry has grown and changed over time, Scott has selflessly served, lead and loved Jr. high students and leaders for almost two decades.  

1. He loves God… and He loves students.  It seems so simple, but longevity in student ministry takes constant commitment to maintaining health in your relationship with God and maintaining a passion for students.  When one of these is out of place, it’s easy to feel discouraged.  

2. He believes that God made him for this.  He believes that God has put Him where he is on purpose and trusts God to use him, even when he can’t see growth or change.

3. He believes in what we are doing. He believes that the mission is greater than the politics and keeps the big picture in front of him.

4. He maintains a spirit of humility and grace. If anyone would be entitled to have opinions about “the way things should be done,” it would be Scott.  As a staff we realize that our volunteers are our greatest asset, so we work hard to consult their thoughts and opinions on much of what we do.  While Scott often has thoughts, ideas, and wisdom to offer, he always brings them with grace and understanding.  Additionally, when we make decisions as staff, he always respects them, even if he disagrees, even when we are wrong.   

5. He has the support of his family.  Scott has an awesome wife and four very cool children.  His volunteering certainly comes at their expense from time to time.  Over and over again I have seen their encouragement and understanding fuel Scott on.

Jon Grunden is the Jr. High Small Group Minister at Ada Bible Church in Ada, MI. You don’t subscribe to his blog yet?

Enjoyed this post on Stuff Christians Like about youth group rules. Hilarious! Here’s a clip, lots more goodness if you hit up the link:

1. The youth group bus or van will not be purchased from a dealership named, “Vans that like to catch on fire & buses that break down in the middle of the night on the side of the road on the way to New Hampshire ski retreats.”

2. Only one “dude with an acoustic guitar” will be allowed per youth group.

3. If you go on a retreat and you’re boyfriend/girlfriend doesn’t go, they should expect to get dumped when you return home. Cause that’s happening.

4. All youth group ministers should expect at least one kid to ask for a precise definition of “what it means to be a virgin.”

5. Only tankinis and swim shirts shall be worn on youth group beach trips.

6. All youth group retreats should be held at locations that could double for horror movie backdrops because it adds to the intensity of the weekend.

JG

HSM is coming out of what is maybe the busiest season of the year: Fall. The school year has officially been kicked off, our big campaign is over, small group leaders are trained, small groups have been launched and everything else is really starting to roll. Of course, that meant work … and lots of it. I find the Fall fits into an extra category of busyness, sometimes with serious hours.

How about you? Vote in this week’s poll now!

JG

T3 is a cool new resource that is new this week at Simply Youth Ministry. If you’ve ever heard of Kingdom Assignment, this is the student version of that awesome adult series. We’ve done some work before with Denni and Leesa at our PDYM Student Leadership Conference this summer, and had a blast seeing what God could do with $1 and an afternoon. Here’s more details about the pack:

What would happen if your students took the Parable of the Talents literally for 9 weeks? What would they do if you put money in their hands and told them to exercise some creative stewardship?

Find out with T3, a 9-week small group curriculum based on the life-changing book Kingdom Assignment. You’ll help your students see that stewardship isn’t just about tithing, but it’s about using all that God has given them — their Talent, Treasure & Time — to make a difference for his kingdom.

JG

Doug Fields has a great new article about mountain bike-riding and discipleship. I like his connection to help students “grow on their own” but walk with them down the path first. Here’s a clip, I think it’ll bring up some interesting conversations in your head today:

As I was riding and wishing for a safe and caring riding partner/coach I began to think about the teenagers in our ministries. What are we doing with all their questions? Do we even know the questions they’re asking? Or do we assume they’ll catch everything about Jesus as they begin their ride with him?

Like I need a riding coach, teenagers need a Jesus coach. While mountain biking is much more complex than “jump on a bike”…so is following Jesus much more complex than a simple “come to church.” For a month I’ve been riding every day, tinkering around at the local bike shop, reading magazines and Web sites to try to find coaching tips, downloading trail guides to my iPhone, and asking a lot of questions… And I’m still confused, frustrated, and wanting someone to coach me. I want someone else to care enough to care about me.

Could it be that our youth ministries have become good at getting teenagers to come to church… but we’re not so good at coaching them on how to walk with Jesus? Then, if they don’t know how to walk with Jesus, they graduate from our ministry and graduate away from church. Do the kids entrusted to your care (as a youth pastor over several or as a volunteer over a few) know that you want to coach them in the ways of Jesus? Do they leave your youth ministry knowing that there is a caring, loving and available adult who wants the best for them? Who won’t laugh at their questions? Who will walk beside them as they struggle and fall? If so…great! Way to go! Those teenagers are blessed. But if not, what might need to change within your youth ministry and your personal leadership style so teenagers will know that they’re not a number to be counted or a seat-filler, but rather a young follower of Jesus who needs a little help with the call of Jesus to “follow me”?

JG

Episode 115 of the Simply Youth Ministry Podcast hit the web this week, we just recorded a really fun Episode 116 live yesterday, too. Just enough youth ministry to say that you’re working!

JG

Enjoyed reading the sometimes painful blog 15 Signs a Church is in Trouble by Perry Noble this morning. Good stuff in here, hope it stings us a bit so we fight against it! Here are a couple of them before you head there for the rest:

#2 – When the church becomes content with merely receiving people that come rather than actually going out and finding them…in other words, they lose their passion for evangelism!

#9 – The church is reactive rather than proactive.

#10 – The people in the church lose sight of the next generation and refuse to fund ministry simply because they don’t understand “those young people.”

#11 – The goal of the church is to simply maintain the way things are…to NOT rock the boat and/or upset anyone…especially the big givers!

#15 – When the leaders/staff refuse to go the extra mile in leading and serving because of how “inconvenient” doing so would be.

JG

Every weekend I post a GUEST POST written by … you!

This past weekend was the last one that I had in my ready-to-post archive of articles. The experiment this past couple of months has been fun – would you like to submit an article? I’d love it if it was written specifically for the MTDB audience, but if it played well on your blog or another site and you’d like to get more exposure to it, I’m in!

Shoot me a note and attach your submissions – I need one for this Saturday!

JG

I really like this drive that Simply Youth Ministry is running this month to help get resources in the hands of some youth workers who can distribute them to churches in need. Buy 1, Give 1 – all this month on selected products. Very cool, I think I’m gonna toss up a banner at the top of the blog for a couple weeks in support. Nice!

JG

Really liked this article over on pdymcommunity.com called The Message Rut. It gave some tips for message prep when your talks all start sounding familiar. Good stuff, here’s a clip of it:

Change up your Prep Routine
If you do the same thing week in and week out you get set on a routine for getting everything accomplished on time.  My typical routine is 100% on my computer.  Sometimes the place it happens changes, the exact day it happens changes, but my laptop is always involved, from beginning to end, no matter what.  Last week, instead of starting my message staring at a blank document on the screen, I sat down with a yellow pad, a pen, and my thoughts.  It definitely took a little longer to get the end result of a printed outline and finished PowerPoint, but the change in routine was refreshing.

Surprise the Audience
This is similar to mixing up the illustrations, but different.  Once people (students and adults) have been attending church for a while, it seems that when someone steps on stage to speak, they check out.  They go into the ‘I have heard it all before’ trance and don’t hear anything you say.  Your message, no matter how good or creative it is, will have no impact if they don’t hear it.  If you do things that they aren’t expecting, they will listen.  A few weeks ago, part way through the message I walked off the stage and walked around in the audience.  I just kept talking like normal but just walked around.  Then I finished the rest of the message from the back of the room.  It definitely got their attention.

JG

Had a fun 4-hour niche event this weekend playing “Halo”ween. Here’s a video of the setup taken by one of our volunteers, and we even had a guest appearance of another as Master Chief. So much fun!

JG

Weekend Teaching Series: none, between series
Sermon in a Sentence: Biblical leadership requires serving.
Service Length: 77 minutes
Bible: John 13

Understandable Message: This weekend Jason Petty (HSM discipleship pastor) taught the passage about Jesus washing the disciples feet. He asked a strong question: What do you do when you’re the most powerful person in the room? He talked about Jesus’ serving as a model for us to serve, and how so many use their influence for their own gain. He also announced the start of Student Leadership this year, too.

Volunteer/Student Involvement: Students made up the band and ran lights, camera, sound and the control room. We had a volunteer help run one of the games on Sunday morning, and other volunteers positioned themselves as greeters and helped everyone feel welcome.

Element of Fun/Positive Environment: We had a costume contest on Saturday night that had some good energy (Sunday not so much) - the kids dressed as John and Kate + 8 did very well, I might add. We also played a “throw it on the ground game” called Smashing Pumpkins where we tossed the PumpkinFest decorations toward targets and watched them splatter. Fun shooting a live bit outside of the High School room, too.

Music Playlist: Everything, You’ll Come, Center

Favorite Moment: This weekend was the last weekend for HSM team member Zack Barker. He’s a great music/worship leader and is asking God what is next for him. He’s praying about leading music and letting God lead. Great dude, happy for him heading toward where God is leading, but very sad to see him go.

Up Next: A new 3-week series called “Do Something” starts next weekend!

Silly video for this weekend’s service featuring some of the HSM staff.

JG

One of the things I LOVE about our church is that we really try to get out in to our community and do our best to share the love of Jesus. One of the things that is said often around here is that, if our church ever moved … would we be missed? So, it’s just part of our DNA to get out and love on people and share Jesus with people. Loving God can be shown by how we love others.

Anyway, above are a few of the logos from outreach events that we’ve done in the past. Below is just a brief explanation of how we try to think through ways to reach our community:

1. Pray. We are always asking God to give us fresh ideas on how to effectively reach people.

2. Notice the needs. We try our best to be in touch with our community and look for what needs really need to be met.

3. Is it being done already? That’s a question we often ask. Sometimes we’ll notice needs, but find out that something is already in place to try to meet those needs. If so, that’s awesome! We’ll often try to support the things already being done. If not, we move to the next step.

4. Be creative. If a need is not being met, we try to then think of creative ways to meet those needs as a church. We come up with a creative plan.

5. Get others on board. We cast vision. We let our people know about the positive effect this outreach will have on our community, and then we challenge them to get on board.
6. Help our people serve. One of the most fulfilling things for us is to see the Church be the Church. We love seeing our people step up and do the good works God has planned in advance for us to do (Ephesians 2:10).

7. Celebrate. After the outreach, we celebrate. We’ll celebrate with testimonies, pictures, worship. We come back “filled with joy” and we love to talk about it and hear others do the same.

8. Repeat. We repeat the process. Sometimes this means we’ll repeat our outreaches in following years if they are still being effective and other times it means we’ll scrap them all together because they’ve lost their effectiveness. We always want to be fresh and relevant and are constantly asking God to help us to be that.

Rich Yauger is the Youth Pastor at Grace Community Church in Indiana and blogs regularly at www.theyaugblog.blogspot.com.

Met this week with the weekend program team to talk through the process of creating a strong service. For us, our main visible program is on the weekend, so here is what we’re now calling The Weekend Tornado. Some weeks it is an F5, others not much more than some whipping wind, but never just a gentle breeze. Here’s how the process works each week:

Collect
This is the brainstorming stage, where ideas are thrown up on a whiteboard and randomly bantered and tossed around. There are no bad ideas. Some of the best ideas each week come from students, who gather every Tuesday in my office to do just this. Don’t worry if they are possible, and don’t worry about the size of the idea. Big ideas are little ideas that no one killed to soon. If we were really good, we could be doing this several weeks in advance, like the -2, 5, 12, 19 meetings.

Compile
This is where we turn the ideas into an order of service called a program sheet. The program sheet gives a framework from which to work for the week, and proposed idea of the emotional arc/tone of the service.

Assign
Using the program sheet as a guide, assign tasks and projects to various volunteers or students. Who is making the bumper video, creating announcement slides, etc. You can also begin asking people to help on stage as well, figuring out who is giving announcements or running the game, too.

Manage
If you’re going to survive the weekend tornado, you have to follow-up on the projects that have been assigned. Talk to the students or volunteers who are owning tasks, help them fight through roadblocks or adjust the idea so that it can be accomplished by the service time. You might have to cut bits at this stage, but it is better than being surprised/dissapointed a few hours before the service starts.

Execute
This is the step of actually holding services. We do 4 student services a weekend, so execute actually takes two days. Making sure each service improves and is as good or better than the last is always a challenge. Execute with excellence is tough, especially when you’ve seen/given the message, songs or game 3 times already.

Debrief
After the first service we gather the main players together and talk through what happened. We make tons of adjustments and tweaks to the next service. Sometimes it is small, sometimes we almost start over with the order (like last week). There is also a weekly debrief focusing on big picture thoughts, major changes, and adding to the list of things we’ll never do again.

Archive
At the end of a series, everything gets archived. MP3s of the talk, outlines, handouts, videos – everything ends up on the team network drive to be stored permanently. We post a ton of elements online as well.

When it’s all done – get ready for the next weekend tornado to hit – it’ll be here in  days!

JG

Matt’s amazing testimony from the series finale of the Happy weekend series. Matt is part of the security team on campus, but so much more than that. He’s a great pastor and small group leader, too.

JG