Here’s the new look for PDYM’s Student Leadership Conference this summer out here at Saddleback next July. Join us – stay tuned for more details soon on the official website of PDYM.

JG

The first 5 people to comment on this post RIGHT NOW win a copy of my book – 99 Thoughts for Youth Workers. No catch – I’ve got 5 copies to give away today, and I’ll sign them when I send them out. If you are interested in the book for yourself or your volunteers, you can check it out right here. Hope you win!

JG

In the 6 Roles of a Small Group Leader, I listed the 6 primary functions of our team of volunteer leaders that care for students in our life groups. Here’s a little more on the first and most important role of all in my opinion, the spiritual leader:

WALK WITH GOD: Active in your faith and a growing believer
We expect small group leaders to be spending time with God, praying and modeling the spiritual disciplines. We give plenty of grace for the ups and downs of walking with Christ, but expect leadership to be growing on their own. Most importantly we desire hearts that are sensitive to God’s leading and Spirit.

IN COMMUNITY YOURSELF: Pursuing healthy, godly friendships and relationships
Just like we challenge students to join a small group – it would make sense that we value this as adults as well. We realize this is an additional commitment and possibly another night out of the week, but modeling community is critical as a growing adult.

MODEL: Actively pursuing accountability in your life
The small group leader has to have healthy accountablity in their life – the student small group is not the place for adult accountability and confession.

FAITHFUL: Attend a regular church service
Church attendance is also important in the life of a small group leader. We are part of our church and want to be connected to the vision and direction of our senior pastor. At the same time, we realize that small groups are a pouring out, and we need to be continually filled up as well – church plays a role there for sure.

JG

We’ve tried it about every way possible – this year we’re letting groups choose their material from about 80 weeks of options. How about you?

JG

We gave some great resource to our small group volunteers, including this one: the Emergency Response Handbook for Youth Leaders. It is on sale for $4.99 this week at Simply Youth Ministry – $10 off! I’ll write up another post soon with the options we offered.

JG

The podcast forever affectionately known as “Josh’s New Volunteer.”

JG

Weekend Teaching Series: Happy: Week 2
Sermon Title: Be Humble or Be Humbled
Sermon in a Sentence: Happiness comes from humility, and healing comes from authenticity.
Service Length: 79 minutes
Bible: Matthew 5:5 (NCV)

Understandable Message: This week I went after another verse from The Beautitudes - that happiness comes from meekness. Meekness doesn’t equal weakness, but strength under control. I used the event from Jesus’ life when he healed the centurion’s servant as an illustration of humble submission to Jesus and a gateway to healing. A student named Michelle shared her story of healing after experiencing some awfully tough stuff in life, even to the point where she considered suicide. Lots of illustrations of humility (or lack thereof) from this year’s Video Music Awards on MTV, including Kanye’s example of what not to do, and Beyonce’s response of meekness to Taylor Swift. At the end of the message, I gave students several practical ways to put the lesson into action - one of them was writing REAL (a gesture of humility and authenticity) on one wrist and HEAL (a symbol of Christ making us new) on the other. We passed out permanent markers and told them to share their story when someone at school asked them what it was for. Dennis took the picture above after the service at Chic-Fil-A.

Volunteer/Student Involvement: Students ran lights, camera, sound, control room, band, greeting, stage design, and cleanup. Volunteers helped greet and sat with students. Lots of students involved this weekend, I love it!

Element of Fun/Positive Environment: We played a little game up front called “Sing That Song” – kind of a finish-the-lyrics game with popular Disney songs. Super easy to pull off and really fun. We also had a quick video from Disneyland where we filmed kids crying to prove you couldn’t truly find happiness – even at the Happiest Place on Earth. Download the program sheet for this weekend here.

Music Playlist: Help, Look to You, Only You, Lift My Eyes, Came to My Rescue

Favorite Moment: A student named Michelle share her story and it was incredible, the standing ovation she received after she was finished was awesome – a great story of God still in the business of healing people’s lives 2,000 years later. And there are few things I enjoy more than baptizing students.

Up Next: Doug Fields is back to teach Happy, week 3

Here’s 1 of the 2 baptisms from last night … one of my favorite parts of being a pastor to students.

JG

As technology and social capabilities grow, the chance of a church service engaging a student seems to shrink.
This scares the crap out of me.

I’m not even a youth pastor yet and I sometimes worry that students could care less about church. I don’t know what I will do the first time I can hear a full blown conversation going on while I’m preaching. I won’t know how to react when a kid answers his phone during a service. I sure as heck won’t know how to react if I can hear a kids iPod playing over the video on the screen.

Now, I pray and hope to have an incredible team of leaders someday that will defuse these situations before I explode, but it still concerns me. It concerns me because technology never stops growing, friends never stop talking, parents never stop calling during service, and students will always have short attention spans.

I never want a youth service to feel like it’s doing it’s best to compete with what’s outside the walls of the church. I believe that mindset results in cheesy presentation and superficial spirituality. I want a youth service that grabs hold of students and takes them from every struggle and care they face in the world and sets them on the lap of the Creator. I want a service that is led completely by the Holy Spirit but still connects with today’s culture. I want the videos, interactive worship, incredible presentations, and life changing message; but I want it all to come from the Heart.

I believe that is the kind of service that grabs God’s attention.

21 “I canʼt stand your religious meetings. Iʼm fed up with your conferences and conventions. 22 I  want nothing to do with your religion projects, your pretentious slogans and goals. Iʼm sick of  your fund-raising schemes, your public relations and image making. 23 Iʼve had all I can take of your noisy ego-music.When was the last time you sang to me?” (Amos 6//Message)

Shane Sanchez is a youth worker and blogger. Check out his blog here.

This semester I am taking a class called “Christianity and Culture.” I can tell already this class is going to have a profound impact on how I view the Church and it’s responsibility (yes, I did say responsibility) to remain relevant and impacting culture.  I think the Church has done a lousy job, especially in New England, in being relevant and engaging culture.  I really hope that this class will help me engage the culture and remain relevant in the community I am serving.

I thought I would write out a few tips to help people who are trying to actively engage the culture and remain relevant. Culture is: the what, the where, the when, and the why of a who.

The Who
The who is any group of people you are trying to engage.  In my position, the who are Middle Schoolers.

The What
The what is a great start to understanding a group culturally.  What are people listening to (music AND influential people)? What are people watching (movies and TV)? What are peoples’ values?

The Where
Didn’t someone once say, “Location, location, location”? The where is the places and location people are hanging out.  The where is a location that can be tied to people.  The big where right now in my culture (college age) is Starbucks.  A lot of college students can be found in a Starbucks or similar places.  But the importance of knowing the where is huge – it means you know a location where you can go to the people you are trying to engage.  Spiritually, the where takes on another aspect when trying to engage people when you look at where a person is spiritually and trying to engage them at that point.  I love the story of Jesus and the woman at the well (John 4), because He met her both where she was at (location) and where she was at spiritually.

The When
The when is the time period in which the people you are trying to engage are living.  It sounds sci-fiish (new word I invented) because there hasn’t been a time machine invented yet (at least not that I know of).  But unfortunately, the Church has done a bad job of reaching people when they’re at.  The 21st century is really the technological age.  Especially for teenagers, the era of snail mail is over.  Some people I know send and receive several thousand text messages a month! The when teenagers are at is a very technology and entertainment driven age. But if you’re trying to engage Baby Boomers or Gen Xers the when will be much different.

The Why
The why is a hard one to explain or describe.  But when you know the why of a culture, you’ve got it and you’ll be engaging the culture relevantly and right where they’re at.  The why is people’s motivations.  Why does a group of people do what they do? When you get to the point of understanding and knowing the why of a group of people, you’ve truly become part of the culture.

Tim Viola is the Middle School Team Leader at Trinity Evangelical Church and blogs over on LifeAsIronman. If you’re interested in writing up a weekend GUEST POST on MTDB, submit your idea and article today!

I really liked Kurt’s post on training volunteers over on SimplyKurt.com. Here’s a clip, hopefully you’ve already made his blog a regular stop:

-You Will Never Cover EVERYTHING! Our training for small group leaders last about 3 hours which seems like a long time until you actually get down to it. The reality is that there is so much involved in leading a small group of junior highers that 3 hours really only allows you to cover the bare necessities. Because of this it’s important to identify what those bare necessities are and make sure your leaders hear the most important stuff at the front end of their volunteer tenure.

-Embrace The Idea Of Ongoing Training. Because you can’t cover it all in one or two training sessions, create a culture of “ongoing training” with your volunteers. Take them to coffee, send them links to websites, attach an article to an email, point them to blogs, books etc. that will encourage them.

JG

Here’s the new Simply Youth Ministry 2010 Conference brochure … see you in Chicago February 2010!

JG

Oh man, how badly do I want to go to this game? Ha!

The STAR WARS festivities will start before the game with appearances by STAR WARS and Star Wars: The Clone Wars characters in Autograph Alley. The pre-game on-field ceremonies will include these characters, one of whom will also throw a ceremonial first pitch.

Dodgertown, Star Wars: The Clone Wars will be located in the Lower Reserve sections 56 and 60. All fans sitting in this section will receive the free T-shirt and enjoy unlimited ballpark favorites such as Dodger dogs, nachos, peanuts, popcorn, and soft drinks, as well as a STAR WARS themed menu including Cloneburgers with cheese, R2-BBQ pulled pork sandwiches, and Ice Sabers (popsicles). Group tickets for the section are $35 and individual seats are $45. Full details can be found at www.dodgers.com/starwars.

JG

Had the privilege of meeting the members of Casting Crowns this past weekend - one of our small group leaders gave us some great seats and meet n’ greet passes to the concert up at UCI. I’ve heard and enjoyed their music before, but didn’t really know the band’s whole story. It was great to see that youth ministry takes a front seat to their hearts and music. They have enormous credibility in that area – at intermission they invited all of the youth workers in the audience to a special room to meet the band and for encouragement and prayer. So great:

At the core of Casting Crowns is Mark Hall, a man who never would have thought leading a band into the wilds of the business of music would enter into his calling. His place, he thought, was to serve young people.

“I’ve been a youth pastor for about 12 years, and every church I’ve been in, music’s always been a part of it,” Hall says. “We’d usually start up a band made up of students so we could lead worship in our Wednesday night programs, and as the student ministry started to grow, the band would go off and play and do things in the area.”

The unit now known as Casting Crowns grew out of two of Hall’s stops along his youth ministry path, first coming into being while leading a youth group in Daytona Beach, FL., then transplanting and growing when Hall and his family accepted a position in Atlanta.

Here’s some lyrics from their song What This World Needs that was certainly inspired by youth ministry, right?

What this world needs
Is for us to care more about the inside than the outside.
Have we become so blind that we can’t see?
God’s gotta change her heart before He changes her shirt.

What this world needs
Is for us to stop hiding behind our relevance.
Blendin` in so well that people can’t see the difference
And it’s the difference that sets the world free.

And from Stained Glass Masquerade:

Cause when I take a look around
Everybody seems so strong
I know they’ll soon discover
That I don’t belong

So I tuck it all away, like everything’s okay
If I make them all believe it, maybe I’ll believe it too
So with a painted grin, I play the part again
So everyone will see me the way that I see them

Good stuff … very encouraging concert for any youth worker.

JG

Fun watching the Yankees take on the Angels yesterday – beats a day at the church office anytime! A friend of HSM generously gave the team access to their suite on the club level for yesterday’s game. It was so much fun, always great hanging with the high school team, even if the Angels lost.

JG

One of our fantastic HSM volunteers Parker created FACE, a character that turns our screen into a living breathing person. He was voiced by Jake Rutenbar during the service, and is sure to make a appearance again soon. You can now even control him yourself right now for fun!

Controls:
Mouse – controls eye movement (click and drag to move)
Q through O – controls the eyes
A through G – controls moving mouths (hold to make mouth move)
Z through B – controls static mouths (hold to make them stay on the screen)
Space Bar – controls talking mouth (hold to talk)

JG

Simple little montage video for behind the countdown during the HAPPY series.

JG

Doug Fields announced his departure from Saddleback Church today – you can read about it in the letter he wrote to our church family. Here’s an excerpt:

What am I going to do? Well, there’s not another specific job” that I’m departing to, but I am leaving staff to pursue some incredible opportunities to express my writing and teaching gifts. What I’m really doing is what I’ve taught you to do-listen for God’s whisper and obey it! Several people have said, You’re crazy to leave a secure Saddleback Church job during this unstable market.” Humanly speaking, they’re right… following God doesn’t always make sense, but I know I need to do the right thing: listen and obey.

Simply put, I am in youth ministry because of Doug Fields … very proud of him, very indebted to him and excited about what God is doing in his heart.

JG

The Simply Youth Ministry Podcast is in full swing these days – we’ve done 3 shows in 3 weeks and are planning another one Thursday. If you have never watched the show, join Doug Fields, Matt McGill, Jana Sarti and I on the team and sit in on some weekly youth ministry talk.

JG

Just saw these added to the Simply Youth Ministry website: ePods – stand-alone, video-based resources for youth ministries. They include a 7-10 minute video and a discussion-driven group curriculum with an icebreaker activity, discussion questions and a music/media option. Looks promising, can’t wait to check them out!

JG