friendship evangelism | More Than Dodgeball

Josh GriffinMore Posts Twitters and Gamertags of the Youth Ministry Team

Many fell in love with Twitter this week at the Purpose Driven Youth Ministry (PDYM) Conference, and I got a few requests for Xbox 360 Gamertags, too. Here’s a who’s who of the youth ministry team on both platforms here at Saddleback Church:

Twitters:

@joshuagriffin – Me!
@dougfields – the big guy
@jakerutenbar – evangelism pastor
@mattmcgill – regional campus pastor
@bethanyjj – jr high small groups
@leogalarza – regional campus student ministry pastor (Irvine)
@mbrook23 – regional campus student ministry pastor (San Clemente)
@danielscotti – sound guy, Refinery
@kurtjohnston – student ministry pastor, junior high pastor
@dbeckner – HSM volunteer, communications
@therefinery – director of Refinery building
@kateedwards34 – student ministries volunteers
@neelym – PDYM community director
@ryannewitt – HSM volunteer coordinator
@philchenery – Wildside team
@bertran – Wildside programming
@peaseplan – HSM student leadership
@bshwanbeck – regional campus student ministry pastor (Corona)
@kshann – HSM team admin
@rickwarren – the other big guy
@allihibb – PDYM programming
@bradbaker – college pastor
@staceyfarr – Wildside team

Gamertags:

theforcenet – Me!
a matt mcgill – Matt McGill
gentleBREEZE – Jake Rutenbar
KingofHavana – Jaime Bertran
Poguer – Jason Pogue

JG

Josh GriffinMore Posts 3 Learnings from You Own the Weekend

We just finished up a weekend teaching series called You Own the Weekend where students from various high schools planned and executed our weekend service. You can read the “weekend in review” for each here, here and here. The heartbeat is two-fold: 1) get students involved in the weekend service and serving in a ministry, and 2) make sure an invitation of some sort hits every student from that school that week. Here are 3 of the big picture learnings I had coming off the series:

There’s a direct connection between student ownership and friendship evangelism.
Without a doubt this brought me the biggest excitement – when students build it, they will come. I can’t count the number of times I heard someone say “I was brought by…” or “I wanted to see my friend…” We always emphasize friendship evangelism to our entry-level program, and I know it does happen on a regular basis. But this blew ‘normal’ away.

There are pastors in your crowd.
One of the favorite moments of the series was when a student who attends every week got up and shared his testimony. There are star kids who were born and raised to take the stage and teach and I’m super proud of them as pastors. But I’m also excited about the invisible students who showed up during the series. Unexpected people pitched in, decorated or took the stage to share in the message. This series served as a great reminder that some of your best pastors are probably already sitting in youth group.

Students should own every weekend.
Here’s an obvious ministry-changing takeaway – why doesn’t this happen every week? To some degree, that’s a question I want to answer with action. We are doing another You Own the Weekend series this Spring (teaching calendar here) but I want to see this momentum spread through every series we do. I want student teachers, student editors, student pastors every weekend. This is a game changer for us!

JG

Add Comment February 9, 2009

Josh GriffinMore Posts HSM Weekend in Review: Volume 39

Weekend Teaching Series: You Own the Weekend: Capo Valley High School (Series Finale)
Sermon Title: We are Ambassadors
Sermon in a Sentence: Jesus has been represented poorly in the world, it is time for a generation of students to rise up and represent Him well.

Key Verse: 2 Corinthians 5:20 So we are Christ’s ambassadors; God is making his appeal through us. We speak for Christ when we plead, “Come back to God!”

Weekend Scale of Difficulty: 5 out of 10
Attendance: down 11% from last weekend, up 85% from same weekend last year
Service Length: 59 minutes

Understandable Message: The talk was divided up into 3 parts again this week – the first was a junior Cap guy who talked about commons forms of Jesus – most representing Him incorrectly to the world. He showed, animated Jesus, Yes Jesus, giant Jesus and Jesus who loves puppies. The second student, a Capo senior guy, talked about how we are the ambassadors of Jesus to the world. He apologized to the non-Christians who have been hurt or wounded by Christians, and admitted that we all failed when living the life God calls us to. He also challenged the students to represent Jesus at all times, like we represent our high school when we’re on campus or not. The final part of the talk was another senior Capo guy, who shared his story of abuse and divorce and how he is doing his best despite those challenges to represent Christ in his school and to his younger brother.

Volunteer/Student Involvement: Students did everything! Students ran the lights, cameras, music, programmed, announcements, shot/edited video, ran the control room, emceed, greeted, taught and decorated.

Element of Fun/Positive Environment: The building was impressive to look at – they had an inflatable football entrance tunnel as you entered The Refinery, and the 10ft tall inflatable Cougar’s mouth had to be seen to be believed – I’ll try to post pictures soon. Capo was represented well with a ton of cheerleaders, balloons and streamers. They played a cool “takeover” video and song at the beginning, and a funny dance video filmed at the school, too.

Music Playlist: Take It All

Favorite Moment: The series ended well – we announced this week that You Own the Weekend 2 will come out this May – Tesoro, Mission Viejo and “Everyone Else” will get their shot this Spring. There’s been an exciting connection between student leadership and friendship evangelism, and I’m excited to take it through all of the campuses this year. This is almost for sure going to become an annual series.

Next up: Taffy is doing a 1-off on Love and it is also our Chi Alpha discipleship retreat weekend.

2 View Comments February 8, 2009

Josh GriffinMore Posts 5 Steps to Calendar on Purpose

We laid out HSM’s spring calendar this past week – it was a great time of focusing our energy on the purposes and laying out the direction for our ministry. The process we followed to get our calendar set up went really well, so I thought it might be helpful for you as well as you work ahead, too:

Strive for balance
The first mission is for the leadership to be clear that one purpose or agenda isn’t going to dominate our calendar. We are a youth ministry that wants to be purpose-driven, not driven by one particular purpose. We will spend time talking about evangelism, fellowship, discipleship, ministry and worship – not letting any one thing drive the direction.

Take one purpose and run with it
So after the balance conversation, we spent time going through each month (January through June), putting on events, classes, trips and meetings that focus on one purpose. We also look at what we did the previous year and debrief them on the fly. If they worked, we consider it for the new year. If it didn’t, we do our best to go after something fresh. So we look at January and talk just discipleship, then hit month by month all focusing on that one purpose.

Repeat that process for each purpose
Then we went month by month again, this time through the eyes of evangelism. After that we hit fellowship dates for small groups, then dropped in discipleship retreats, camps and trainings. The goal was for each purpose to be represented clearly on the calendar.

Drop in the deadlines
Once the calendar is more or less “set” we dropped in deadlines for registrations and various milestones that related to the projects. For example, our mission trip requires a registration start and end, as well as 3 parent meetings and a celebration weekend. Small groups don’t just start day one, they need registration dates, deadlines and enough time for us to process the students into groups. When you plan an event, be sure to also include the follow-up dates as well.

Look at the big picture and cut away
Then we took a look at the overall big picture and goal for balance and health and start the painful process of figuring out what needs to be cut. We also came in with the mindset of what items need to be adjusted – could we partner our event with another time our target audience is already at church, instead of asking for another night out of the team and the committed.

JG

5 View Comments October 25, 2008

Josh GriffinMore Posts HSM Weekend in Review: Volume 24

Weekend Teaching Series: 1-off Weekends (1 of 2)
Message Title: Show Who You Are
Sermon in a Sentence: The friends that carried the paralyzed man saw someone in need, took action and let Jesus do the rest – we should do the same by living a life of friendship evangelism.

Key Verse: Mark 2:1-5 The story of Jesus healing the paralytic.

Weekend Scale of Difficulty: 4 out of 10, last minute changes to our teaching schedule made things interesting, but the actual program was pretty straightforward.
Service Length: 60 minutes
Understandable Message: Jake thought to use this story as a backdrop for friendship evangelism challenge. He and I team-taught together in a conversational style using a couple of stools on stage. The story of Jesus healing the paralytic is a powerful story of friends bringing people to Jesus – we likened it to not letting selfish eyes and obstacles get it in the way of us bringing friends to Christ. The message and challenge was clear, but as always it is interesting to teach “bring your friends” to an audience that could be made up of people that are bringing their friends.

Volunteer/Student Involvement: Students ran the band, lights, sound, cameras and assisted with media this weekend. Student and volunteers handed out 3-packs of flyers promoting PumpkinFest as well. Grabbed a few students to do an opening bit on stage, and used one for an up-front game as well. Overall there was good volunteer involvement.

Element of Fun/Positive Environment: Jake and I played the mayo video just for fun to reintroduce him to the weekend crowd since he’s been serving at the San Clemente regional campus for the past couple of years, recently back as the outreach pastor for Student Ministries. We also played a quick little trivia game on each other (he quizzed me on Star Wars, I quizzed him on baseball) that illustrated how what we care about shows up in our relationship and Christ should naturally be a part of a friendship, too.

Music Playlist: Beautiful Lord, How He Loves Us, Blessed Be Your Name

Favorite Moment: Having Jake back on the main campus regional team is a huge blessing. His heart for the community students and the unchurched is clear. It was so cool to see him take the stage for the first time (again).