More Than Dodgeball | Youth Ministry Blog by Josh Griffin

Josh GriffinMore Posts HSM Weekend in Review: Volume 26

Weekend Teaching Series: Love in Action, week 1 of 3
Sermon in a Sentence: We didn’t have a typical message this week, we wanted a 7-minute devotional then plenty of time to actually put love into action.

Key Verse: James 1:22. But don’t just listen to God’s word. You must do what it says.

Weekend Scale of Difficulty: 8 out of 10.
Attendance: Down 14% from last weekend, up 22% from same weekend last year

Service Length: 30 minutes, then 30 minutes to do the 3 experiences
Understandable Message: This week we moved away from a direct message and went after a short challenge, some music and 3 experiences. Our goal with the new series, Love in Action, is to move away from talking about love and doing it. The experiences were next steps to the 40 Days of Love series from a few weeks ago. The 3 experience rooms: Love is Truth, Love isn’t Selfish and Love is Forgiving. The Love is Truth experience had Post-Its to write down the name of your friends you want to reach this year, and a friendship evagelism card to fill out and put into your wallet. It also had a secrets box where you could write down anything and we would pray for you this week. The Love isn’t Selfish room had all sorts of ministry opportunities to sign up for – working in the children’s ministry, AIDS ministry, weekend team and student leadership. Finally, the Love is Forgiving room had people who would pray for you right there for any request you might have, and pieces of paper for confession that could be nailed to a cross in the room.

Volunteer/Student Involvement: Students ran the lights, sound, cameras and media, which were all at a minimum this weekend.

Element of Fun/Positive Environment: Jake jumped up at the stage and did some fun hosting stuff on stage, and the overall atmosphere was good since we were changing things up and not sitting and observing like normal.

Music Playlist: O Praise Him; Take it All; God of Justice

Favorite Moment: I was actually gone this past weekend (!!), so can that count as my favorite part? If I had to chose one, it would be the cross with all of the students’ confessions nailed to it. A powerful image and reminder that God is love and we need to lean on his love.

Add Comment November 13, 2008

Josh GriffinMore Posts The -2, 5, 12, 19 Programming Meeting

Long range weekend preparation has been elusive for us, but I know we’ve got to get ahead and not run our ministry week to week. Starting soon we’ll be meeting from 3-5 on Tuesday afternoons working on debrief and long range planning of the weekend. Here’s the agenda:

-2 DAYS AGO DEBRIEF
This is what happened this past weekend.
What did we learn from this past weekend?
What should we do again?
What should we never do again?

5 DAYS AHEAD
This week should be ready to go.
What has fallen through the cracks and we need to scramble to get done?

12 DAYS AHEAD
This is what we’re working on this week.
What does the final program sheet look like?
What tasks need to be assigned?
Are there any adjustments that need to be made to the program?

19 DAYS AHEAD
These are the ideas for down the road.
What could we do?
What would be fun?
What would be impactful?

JG

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Josh GriffinMore Posts Live Simply Youth Ministry Podcast Today

You can watch the podcast live (embeded above right here in this post or click here w/chat) at 1PM PST today. Join Doug Fields and friends today!

JG

Add Comment November 13, 2008

Josh GriffinMore Posts 5 Ways to Create a Healthy Small Group Environment

Last night Jamie taught 5 Ways to Create a Healthy Small Group Environment to our leaders at the family dinner before our small groups. Here it is, modify/use it if you would like, too.

1. Be the first to arrive. Sometimes it can’t be avoided, but arriving late can throw off the whole night. Being there before everyone else allows you to set the tone for the night and make sure everything is in place. If you are scrambling around, it can lead to a messy night.

2. Communicate with host home family. Spend some time getting to know the home you’ll be staying in. Maybe visit them ahead of time and talk about expectations. Be sure to be completely filled in on the “house rules” about animals, furniture, food and drinks.

3. Make sure meeting area is set-up and ready to go each night. Look for distractions that need to be eliminated. Make sure the room is available, relatively clean with the lights on. Turn off the TV/iPod/Computer and think about placing a basket at the door for cell phones to minimize distractions. You can’t go wrong with plenty of places to sit, too.

4. Sit at same level with students. While as a leader you do control the night, keep the style of the night conversational by sitting with them and not above them. Make sure you keep the environment attentive and help students not to lay down and laying all over each other.

5. Put the meeting area back. If the host home family was gone, our goal is that when they return home they have a conversation wondering if you even met or not. Make sure the students completely reset the room and clean up trash, throw away food and put furniture back if it was moved.

What other tips would be helpful for small group environments?

JG

Add Comment November 13, 2008

Josh GriffinMore Posts You Must Caption This Photo: Jesus and PDL

This ended up on my desk today. Silly. Immediately you must caption the photo in the comments. Do it.

JG

Add Comment November 11, 2008

Josh GriffinMore Posts Praying for Post-Its

This weekend we started Love in Action, a new weekend teaching series that looks very different from the typical. It doesn’t have a formal message but puts the teachings from the 40 Days of Love series into action right there during the service. I’ll write up a full weekend in review shortly, but loved this image of a stack of Post-Its students turned in anonymously for prayer this weekend. Powerful admissions in there … kids are hurting in your student ministry.

JG

Add Comment November 11, 2008

Josh GriffinMore Posts Spend Less on Gifts. Give More Presence.

Liked this video … could fit well at the end of our Love in Action series as we turn the corner the end of this month toward Christmas. Saw it on YMGeek!

JG

Add Comment November 11, 2008

Josh GriffinMore Posts Your Students: 30,000 Hours Online and Gaming

Really appreciated the insights from this article from Business Week about the up and coming generation of students (that we minister to as youth workers). I thought it was a really interesting read on video gaming, social networks and learning styles of the Net Generation. Here’s a clip:

The digital world that Net Geners have been weaned on is profoundly interactive. Kids have grown up to expect a two-way conversation, not a one-way lecture. This interactive reflex has a profound effect on what one academic has called their “habits of mind.” Instead of simply absorbing information–from a teacher or even a book–they go out and find it. As O’Shea’s story illustrates, the Net Geners use Google when they want to find out something. When they do so, they construct their own story, their own idea, rather than following the line of thought drawn by someone else in a book. This obviously doesn’t replace conventional book reading, nor should it. But what we’re seeing is a new form of literacy that many experts say is just as intellectually challenging as reading a book.

Now some critics say that because Net Geners don’t read books cover to cover, they don’t get a chance to follow a fully developed argument. The result, according to these critics, is that they never learn to build a frame of reference that the intelligent reader needs to interpret the world. My own view is different: In the online hunt you can develop your own frame of reference, which is based on far more information than we ever had at their age. I think this makes the Net Generation smarter than they would have been had they just spent the time sitting on a couch watching TV.

JG