More Than Dodgeball | Youth Ministry Blog by Josh Griffin

Josh GriffinMore Posts Help a Community Recover From a Natural Disaster

The recent flood in Bloomsburg, PA wreaked havoc on the community and surrounding areas when the Susquehanna River overflowed its banks. The American Red Cross is now reporting that the flood destroyed more than 1,000 homes and did damage to another 2,300 in Columbia County alone. Residents are still cleaning up the devastation… and need your help in October.

You are invited (and needed) to serve at a flood relief event in Bloomsburg on any Saturday during the month of October. Help is badly needed before the bitter cold of winter sets in. Register for The Big Day of Serving and help with projects like picking up debris, tearing out drywall, and cleaning walls to help residents get their homes prepared for repairs, if they are determined habitable.

The Big Day of Serving is typically a youth-targeted event, but we need your entire church and others you know to partner with us for one Saturday in October ($29/person).

October 8 | October 15 | October 22 | October 28

Lots more details if you hit one of the links!

JG

1 View Comments September 29, 2011

Josh GriffinMore Posts Appreciating Your Ministry Volunteers

Thought that Lisa over at CollegeMinistry.com had some great thoughts about thanking volunteers as they help serve in your ministry. Made me think about some of our leaders who could use a thank you this week. Here’s a clip of the whole article, head there for the rest:

A hand-written letter sent to their home. Yep, I like being old school sometimes. And in the sea of bills and junk mail, what a simple note has the capacity to mean to someone–who feels unappreciated, undervalued, unloved, forgotten–is ridiculous in comparison to the time and effort it takes to write one.
Show some love on facebook. During our weekly services, I write down students’ names who I see helping or who look like they need encouragement so I don’t forget. Then I just write a simple message on their facebook wall. Public acknowledgement of someone’s service allows and invites others to “like” and appreciate them as well.
For larger events that have required an extra-huge time and work commitment, I give gift cards to our volunteers, or take them to lunch or coffee, and make sure I tell them how much they mean to our ministry.
Pray for and with your volunteers. Ask them how their week was and how you can pray for them. What a powerful way to care for your volunteers!

JG

1 View Comments September 29, 2011

Josh GriffinMore Posts Fun With Footprints in the Sand

I Tweeted about filming this parody of the famous Christian poem “Footprints in the Sand” a while back … here it is in all of it’s glory. From a talk about walking with Jesus during our LAUNCH back to school series. Fun.

JG

6 View Comments September 28, 2011

Josh GriffinMore Posts The Top 2 Books That Have Influenced My Ministry

When Kurt and I came up with the idea of sharing a couple books that influenced us the most in ministry my mind immediately thought of a dozen books that have significantly shaped me as a youth worker. Without a doubt I am a better leader, husband, parent and youth pastor because of the influence of incredible men and women who have shared their hearts, learnings and failures with me over the past 15 years.

As for the Top 2 … well, these are the best of the best. If you haven’t read them, I can’t encourage you enough to pick them up and let the authors pour into you like they did me. Here’s the 2 most influential in my life personally, and a list of runners up you may also want to check out:

The Heart of a Pastor — HB London
I remember reading this book while I was serving in my first church. Ministry then was a series of extremes. It was extremely rewarding and I had a front-row seat to life change for the very first time as a pastor. And was extremely challenging and difficult to figure out how to do youth ministry for the first time. If it wasn’t for a grace-filled pastor and elders I would have (and possibly should have) been long gone. I read this book and one particular phrase continued to stand out to me as a stark reminder of my calling: bloom where you are planted. No excuses, no wandering eyes, no wishing you were somewhere else — God has called you HERE so until you hear from Him, act like it. So I did. Fantastic book.

Purpose Driven Youth Ministry — Doug Fields
This book came at another crucial time in my youth ministry experience. My wife and I had actually resigned our youth ministry position and were finishing up the summer out before leaving “to go to seminary” — translation: we wanted out, and this was the nice way of saying goodbye. During our final months I happened to stumble on Purpose Driven Church by Rick Warren and eventually this, Doug Fields’ student ministry version of the book. As I devoured the pages, it felt like what he was saying was what I had always felt — even intrinsically know — about how church could be. We went back to our church that summer and God blessed us with 4 more incredible years at that same church we had resigned from, and the student ministry became something really special. This book played an eye-opening role in my journey to become a real youth pastor. An absolute must-read.

Runners-Up
First Two Years in Youth Ministry by Doug Fields
Sustainable Youth Ministry by Mark Devries
Every Man’s Battle by Stephen Arterburn
Grace Awakening by Charles Swindoll
Bringing Up Boys — James Dobson
Handbook on Counseling Youth — Josh McDowell

What books have shaped you? I’d like to read them next!

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.

3 View Comments September 28, 2011

Josh GriffinMore Posts 20% Off Simply Youth Ministry … Today Only!

Want to take 20% off your order* from Simply Youth Ministry TODAY only? Use the morethandodgeball.com promo code: AirHorn but be warned it expires at tonight at 11:59pm PST. A few suggestions:

Rick Lawrence’s new book Sifted
Greg Stier’s new evangelism resource called Evangephobia
The Way I’m Wired Small Group DVD Kit by Katie Brazelton
99 Thoughts for Small Group Leaders by Doug Fields and I

JG

*excludes LIVE Curriculum and Simply All Access

1 View Comments September 28, 2011

Josh GriffinMore Posts Book Review: Pray for Kaia – She is Such a Gift

I received a copy of Pray for Kaia: She is Such a Gift from the author of the book – Ryan Donovan had asked about sharing his story here on the blog and eventually did in a moving guest post about grief in ministry. I expressed my interest in his book about his precious newborn daughter’s short life and I just finished reading it tonight. The book is a collection of emails written by Ryan and his wife to friends and family members as they walked through the journey from life to death. They are incredibly moving letters and demonstrate great faith in the midst of uncertainty, hopelessness and pain. About 12 pages in was the first time my eyes filled with tears, as they did twice more before I finally caved in at the end, tears streaming down my cheeks. The book is gripping and emotionally charged, but will do great things to your faith and remind you of the Father’s love for His children. Wow.

JG

4 View Comments September 27, 2011

Josh GriffinMore Posts Live Curriculum Video

We’re about to kickoff the Life Group year – training is tonight and tomorrow night!

This year we’re continuing to use the fantastic LIVE curriculum for our high school small group lessons each week. LIVE comes with a powerful web tool to help us communicate with our volunteer team and scales easily to add new groups and leaders. It is what we use every week of the small group year and we love it. Check it out in the video above and read more over on Simply Youth Ministry, too.

JG

1 View Comments September 27, 2011

Josh GriffinMore Posts Book Review: Small Groups with a Purpose: How to Create Healthy Communities

I’m reading Steve Gladen’s new book, Small Groups with Purpose: How to Create Healthy Communities. He’s one of the pastors on staff here at Saddleback and has been heading up the adult small group ministry pretty much forever. If you’re interested in learning how we do small groups, you’ve come to the right place – Steve does a great job of walking you through the model we use and gives some clear reasons why we’ve chosen it and it works for us. Keep in mind this is primarily for our adult programs (you can read more about our student ministry take on small groups in Doug Fields & Matt McGill’s Small Groups from Start to Finish). If you’re looking for a tool to help challenge you in the area of small groups, look no further than right here. Leader training, infrastructure, host homes, health assessment, evaluation, successes and failures – all in the book.

If you’re looking for a quick look at how small groups work at Saddleback (while you’re waiting for your book to arrive from Amazon), check out Saddleback Small Group FAQs or 8 Reasons to Join a Small Group.

JG

Add Comment September 26, 2011

Josh GriffinMore Posts SLANT33: How do you decide what to teach?

I recently contributed to the SLANT33 blog when they asked the question – How do you decide what to teach? I gave a wide variety of answers from where I find my inspiration, here is a selection of them, head there for the complete article on the subject:

Create a focus group and run your ideas by them. Every Tuesday during the school year at 4pm, you’ll find me in my office surrounded by a select group of high school student leaders who are my focus group. I run everything by them: rough drafts of sermons, object lessons, ideas, icebreakers, series ideas. They give invaluable insight into what they and their fellow students need to hear and how the message can best be shaped to meet them where they are living. And yes, they have veto power. It kills me when they use it, but I know it is for the greater good.

Be inspired by others. I love nothing more than devouring sermon and series ideas from other people! Youth pastors are creative, so if your idea well is running dry, find some people out there who are killing it. Stolen ideas I’ve had recently: a series on Facebook and a question/answer message where students text in questions to be answered live in the service.

Hit the majors. There are certain topics we are going to cover every year in our youth group. The majors for us would be things like friendship and purity. We make sure that specific perennial topics are being covered, though we might change the number of weeks or the voice speaking so it always feels fresh.

Excited to unpack these and much more at my NYWC seminars this weekend, too!

JG