Just finishing up Hero: Becoming the Man She Desires from Fred Stoeker, and I really liked it. He doesn’t pull any punches calling men out on falling short of the hero women want. He goes after everything the world holds dear to “being a man” and says that giving in on our standards shows how little we know about masculinity. In one chapter he talks about how Christian men say we love God then prove how little we do by our actions – illustrating the statement in the fact that we write out our favorite Bible verses in our social network profiles then list our favorite movies alongside them – like Wedding Crashers and The 40-Year Old Virgin – and it doesn’t add up. Powerful stuff, very conservatively written, hoping that we stand up to be men and heroes not be weak and lose the battle for manhood. Familiar content, dozens of references to Every Man’s Battle, interesting perspective from his son who coauthored the book with him. I’m not sure how an entry-level teenager would respond to the book, but a committed Christian student (and my sons) should eat this up on their way to becoming a man. B+

JG

Weekend Teaching Series: Labels (week 2 of 2)
Sermon Title: Man in the Mirror
Bible: Ephesians 2

Sermon in a Sentence: We need to be most concerned with how God sees us, and not be too concerned with anyone else’s opinion.
Weekend Scale of Difficulty: 6 out of 10
Attendance: Up 4% from last weekend, up 29% from same weekend last year
Service Length: 64 minutes
Understandable Message: This weekend was the Refinery Student Art Festival, so we wanted to hit on that theme for sure. The simple premise of the message was that you are a special creation of God, designed and loved by Him. Essentially this should be how we label ourselves, instead of establishing our value from the validation we get from others.

Volunteer/Student Involvement: Student greeters handed out bulletins, response cards and pens. A key volunteer made the mirror holder on stage. I used a couple of adults on stage as an object lesson, too. Students made up the band, ran camera and the control room, too. I especially loved it when the team also walked through the aisles at the beginning of the talk to make sure everyone had a pen/program. A solid weekend effort by our students and volunteers. Sweet!

Element of Fun/Positive Environment: We had a little fun up front with the announcements time and videos up front, but most of the “fun” was contained in the talk itself. I opened with an illustration of a label I put on myself – MOVIE STAR – and showed a clip of the time I was an extra with Tom Cruise in Far and Away.

Music Playlist: Everything, Holy Moment, Beautiful Lord, From the Inside Out

Favorite Moment: Breaking the mirrors! We had a mirror on stage, and throughout the talk I wrote labels of self-image on it. I wrote words that represent how we see ourselves and how we internalize and eventually believe the labels people put on us. Good or bad, labels aren’t the way we should look at ourselves. Then I hit the mirror with a hammer to reveal another one underneath it that had “I am God’s Masterpiece” on it. We also gave out dry erase markers to everyone who attended – so they could write “I am God’s Masterpiece” on their mirror at home, too.

Next week: You Own the Weekend 2: Mission Viejo High School

For our labels series, we shattered some mirrors this weekend. Full review coming soon, man that was fun!

JG

OK … got a last minute ask from Group Magazine to do a funny Top Ten list. The assignment? Write a light, sarcastic but not cynical list called the “Top 10 Events We’ll Never Do Again.” Want to join in on the fun? It is due Monday morning, so you’ll have to be quick. No prize, no credit, no nothing (sorry!) … except for the satisfaction of your awesomeness being in the biggest youth ministry magazine.

Here’s a couple to get you started! Leave your best one in the comments if you want:

• “Slap the youth pastor in the stomach” game
• Mission Trip to Antarctica
• Salvation 101: Pastor’s Kids Only
• Grand Theft Auto All-Nighter
• 40 Days of Fasting
• Any event with the word “all” and “nighter” in it

JG

Do you separate junior and senior high ministries in your church?

JG

My man Ryan Wilke posted a great video of his friend Max for the Refinery Student Art and Film Festival. So great! Played it this weekend in our services, too!

JG

Funny. Just use the newly updated YouVersion instead.

JG

One of our projects for our Core team staff retreat yesterday was to list three parts of our job we absolutely love the most. I love my job on a whole bunch of levels, so it was hard to choose! I shared these three things with the team, thought I would toss them online for you to see, too. Here’s some of my favorite things to do:

Creating -  I love to brainstorm and generate ideas that could connect a student to the message of Jesus. I like coming up with new ideas, I love to search for innovation. I love programming! Creating something is so fun for me.

Crafting – I love preparing a message to give to students. I love starting with a white board and a blank document and struggling through what God would have us say. I love looking at a series from a distance and shaping the arc it will follow, or even crafting the arc of a specific talk or lesson. I definitely like speaking, too, but love crafting the most.

Seeing - I think I might be a fixer. I love seeing holes in our ministry, and figuring out a plan to fill them. I love seeing our discipleship process strengths and weaknesses and devising a plan to make it work as it should again. I love leading a team and figuring out shapes and looking for volunteers and student leaders to lead the charge wherever needed. I love spending time with a student seeing where they are at and pushing them to the next step. I love jumping into a conversation with a volunteer and looking for ways to build them into more.

What parts of your job do you love the most?

JG

I really enjoyed A Tale of Two Youth Workers, a new YS book due this summer by Eric Venable. Kurt asked all of us to read it before we left on our Student Ministry Core Team retreat this morning. The youth ministry fable tells the story of a small town youth pastor from Michigan that makes it big, only to be disallusioned with the way things are done at that “level.” He finds a mentor in another local youth pastor and begin to focus on helping students doubt their faith (!!) to cement their beliefs instead of programming and attendance. I don’t know if it was the format of the book (which I love) or my resonance with the story that made me like it so much. Quick read, good stuff. B+

JG

Vacation is critically important in the life of a youth worker. Last week there was a post about escaping annually, and I was thinking about how we do this. Next week we’re sneaking away for a Legoland overnighter with the family, and this summer we’re doing the big road trip to see family. How about you? Vote today in our new poll.

JG

Remember the Simple Awesome Bundle Sale from the other day? I guess it has sold more than 250 of them, so now as an added bonus they’ve added a super series I did called Save the Planet (just in time for Earth Day) if they get to 500. This might be one of the best sales of the year on these youth ministry resources.

JG

We played a clip of Pastor Rick talking about Susan Boyle in HSM this weekend … fit really well with the LABELS series. Here’s part of it that someone put on the web, you can listen to the full talk here.

JG

Being a father of four, you just have to be OK with giving certain things up. Here are three things I’ve not had this week because of my kids:

Drinking water, free of floaties
If you can’t handle some Cheez-Its floating around in the bottom of your Aquafina, you might not want to have kids. It’s been almost 7 years since I’ve had water that went down like … well, water. I like my water chunky.

A dry toilet seat
Three of my four kids are boys, so they pee standing up AND they manage to pee on everything except the lightbulb in the ceiling (but not for lack of effort). Why the bathroom upstairs is carpeted we’ll never know, but we do know it has a bunch of pee on it. My boys are the sole reason we have the carpets cleaned every few months. I wish I knew a tile layer in the church.

A good night’s sleep
With four kids, you can’t really count on a good night’s sleep, either. Between just the normal baby rhythm, bad dreams, sickness and more, it just seems that a full night’s sleep remains elusive. I remember when 10am was a great mark to wake up to – now I’m just happy with 7:30am.

I wouldn’t change it for the world.

Sure, water that you don’t have to chew would be nice. Sitting down on the pot and not jumping back up with an “aggghh!” would be refreshing. Sleeping through the night and even sleeping in would be a luxury I could really use somedays in the craziness of youth ministry. But I’ve heard from so many well-meaning people that it “goes fast” so I’m committed to not miss a thing.

Someday I know I’ll miss it when my water pours boringly down my throat. I’ll miss it when I wake up in the night to check up on the kids and they’re not living with us anymore because they grew up. And I’ll wait with eager anticipation for the day the grandkids get out of diapers and begin to pee in and all over grandpa’s toliet.

My kids make my life richer. My kids keep me humble. My kids are the best thing in the world. I’m commited to spending my life raising them, pouring into them, loving them and helping them have every opportunity to meet Jesus for themselves.

I guess I can give up a few things if I have to. Crap, what is that floating in my drink now?

JG

I really enjoyed Kurt’s transparent post this weekend about doing lots of good things, but questioning if they are the right things. Right now I see myself and my team doing lots of things away from our core ministry, and I’m struggling through this same concept right now. Appreciate his leadership on the subject for all of us:

Ever find yourself super busy doing all sorts of super good, even important, ministry stuff but wondering if you are doing the right ministry stuff? I know that just because something is good, doesn’t mean it’s necessarily good for my schedule, my ministry, my family etc. Below is a list of the major “stuff” I’m participating in over the next 6 weeks or so. It’s all good, but is it all good for me?

JG

Kurt and the gang at Simply Junior High have their latest resource catalog ready to go – this time you can view it online as well and man is it sweet. Check it out!

JG

Weekend Teaching Series: Labels (week 1 of 2)
Sermon Title: The Race Card
Bible: Luke 10 – The Story of the Good Samaritan

Sermon in a Sentence: We need to see all people as valuable; we are created in the image of God.
Weekend Scale of Difficulty: 5 out of 10
Attendance: Up 0% from last weekend, up 29% from same weekend last year
Service Length: 66 minutes
Understandable Message: Leo from Saddleback Irvine campus student ministry joined me in teaching this weekend. The goal was that students would walk away realizing that we are all judgmental, and that judging people leads to dark places like stereotypes, profiling and racism. The story of a Good Samaritan made for the perfect illustration, the words of Jesus about loving your neighbor are awesome and powerful.

Volunteer/Student Involvement: Student involvement continues to be strong in the control room, lighting, sound and cameras. We didn’t have as many student greeters as I would have liked, and I did notice too many students that missed pens and bulletins.

Element of Fun/Positive Environment: We had a crazy opening bit with a live Mona Lisa painting on screen promoting next week’s Refinery Art Festival. Jake played “the mouth” of the famous piece of art for the familiar Conan bit. It was SO funny, I think our students liked it, but I know the adults liked it the most – either way it was fun seeing an announcement given so creatively. During the message Leo and I used labels to stick on each other in the introduction, which was fun, since we taught with them stuck on us the rest of the service. When I slapped “migrant worker” on him and he slapped “fatty” on me it was truly priceless.

Music Playlist: Solution, Awesome God

Favorite Moment: This weekend was the last weekend for Jamie, a long-time HSM staffer of 10+ years. We celebrated her at the Saturday night service with flowers and a prayer of commissioning. She’s heading to a part-time role with our Interns Ministry and we’re all thrilled she gets to spend more time as a new grandma as well. Oh, and I also loved the fact that we played a clip from our adult services, where Pastor Rick unpacks the Susan Boyle song and the audience’s reaction. Students were rivited to both the clip and Pastor Rick’s analysis of it. Good stuff!

Next week: Labels (week 2 of 2, series finale)

Finished up the High School Ministry (HSM) summer teaching schedule this week, thought you might enjoy a glance at where we’re headed. We wanted to rip off School Wars from junior high, and I’ve been wanting to teach a series called Post Secret, but neither of those are in the cards for this summer. We also pushed back the sex series we had planned to the Fall as well:

May
LABELS – week 2
You Own the Weekend – Mission Viejo
You Own the Weekend – Tesoro
You Own the Weekend – Everyone else

June
Giving Series – 1 of 2
Giving Series – 2 of 2
Senior Weekend
Promotion Weekend
Summer Kickoff Weekend (Grow)

July
Summer Road Trip – 1 of 5
Summer Road Trip – 2 of 5
Summer Road Trip – 3 of 5
Summer Road Trip – 4 of 5
Summer Road Trip – 5 of 5

August
Summer 1-offs – 1 of 4
Summer 1-offs – 2 of 4
Summer 1-offs – 3 of 4
Summer 1-offs – 4 of 4

September
Summer’s End Extravaganza Gladiator Weekend
Fall Kick off Weekend

JG

In the past few weeks, I’ve been able to Google my way out of some costly repairs around the house.

First, it was the garbage disposal after the potato skins went down the drain. Then the dryer quit working, and while I couldn’t actually fix it, I was able to verify the estimate to get her running again. Then, a couple of days ago the Michael Scott Sebring had an ignition issue, which Google (and a rubber mallet) solved in .02 seconds. Oh, and my Motorola Q9C was freaking out as well, and a quick search and a couple of settings changed and presto-chango, life was back to normal again.

Next time a small appliance in your house quits working, throw it out and by a new one at Wal-Mart for $6. If something more costly goes out, Google it, and you just might be able to fix it yourself.

JG

Pastor Rick shared some thoughts at Catalyst West today – he was on stage with Andy Stanley at the same time (which was awesome in and of itself) and shared some thoughts about pace and margin. Here’s the 3 thoughts, follow everything live on Twitter from CatWest right here:

Divert Daily – spend time with the people and what you love to do every day.

Withdraw Weekly – if you’re not taking a Sabbath, you are breaking the 10 Commandments. Don’t just take a day off – you can cheat on that – take a Sabbath.

Abandon Annually - the world will survive without you. Get away from everything.

JG

I was at Chipotle yesterday talking to a couple of seniors who are thinking about becoming youth pastors. It hit me as we were talking that youth ministry is a calling of extremes. The more I thought about it, the more the concept resonated with me. Then it came up during another discussion this afternoon. Here are some thoughts, and feel free to leave another youth ministry extreme in the comments, too.

• They’re aren’t really any typical weeks – every day is completely different from the last.
• Youth ministry is called on most at both ends of the spectrum – when things are good and when things are really bad.
• Youth ministry pays extreme. Extremely little.
• We minister in extremes – when marriage is at an extreme, and the kids are about to face their parents’ divorce. When a life is at an extreme, we’re at the emergency room or performing the funeral.
• Youth ministry is focused on essentially an extreme age group – when students are figuring themselves out and parents are at the most challenging point in relating to them.
• Youth ministry is about asking a student to give over total control of their life to Jesus – an absolute extreme.
• We ask students to be baptized, to demonstrate their faith to their friends, family and the world at the time when peer-pressure and image are the most crucial in their life.
• Extreme pressure and expectations – from senior pastors, staff, parents and from yourself.

Extreme hours, extreme emotions, extreme work. Youth ministry seems to be about pushing everything to the limit.

So why would anyone want to do it? Seems like a nice, safe, well-paying nine-to-five is more what people look for in life.

Extreme fulfillment. Wouldn’t want to do anything else. You?

JG