program ideas | More Than Dodgeball

Josh GriffinMore Posts Do Something Series Idea: Operation Christmas Child Boxes

Shane wrote in and asked this:

I wanted to see if you guys would be putting the “Do Something” or “Love in Action” Series online somewhere? I like the idea you guys had tying in the Operation Christmas Child boxes and wanted to use the same series progression if possible.

For the past couple of years we’ve done a couple of really fun and active series with our students in HSM. One series was called Do Something, another similar one we called Love in Action. Both were great series where instead of a traditional message we had students get out of their seats and really do something instead.

If you want to read about the weekend services in more detail you can right here:

I love it when youth workers ask about this series and how they can get involved with some of the same organizations we used. We had students write letters to the families of fallen soldiers (Children of Fallen Soldiers), pack food for families who will visit a local food pantry (OC Food Bank) and many more but my favorite of all was packing shoe boxes for Operation Christmas Child (visit their website here).

It would be so awesome if you wanted to give it a try – maybe a 3-4 week series or 1-off project like this could work in your youth ministry, too! Start by choosing which one to take on (like Operation Christmas Child in this example) and have your students join in on helping your students add to the over 100 million children around the world have heard the Gospel of Jesus Christ through a simple shoe box. We even set up a little “store” where students could shop for products to put in their shoebox and took up a collection at the end of youth group to pay for shipping. Everyone had such a blast with this particular weekend – and it is poignant to see how simple items like soap, a toothbrush/toothpaste and school supplies, we can meet a very physical need while sharing the powerful message of eternity.

I’d love to read about what you choose do to demonstrate Christ’s love in action. Tweet it or talk about it on your blog when it is over. Be creative and come up with new one – we’ll steal it next time we do the series, too! Just make sure you have your students DO SOMETHING soon!

JG

1 View Comments September 24, 2012

Josh GriffinMore Posts Details on Creative Elements of the SYM Conference

Right after the Simply Youth Ministry Conference I always get asked the same question: how did you do that!?! I love a good idea – I love stealing good ideas, too. If anything you saw on the main stage was interesting to you or maybe inspired you to bring something back into your ministry setting – here’s the scoop on what we used or how we did it!

Poll Everywhere – the polls on the big screen were powered by PollEverywhere.com. The technology is free for up to 40 responses (perfect for most youth groups) and scales really well to have thousands of responses per poll. Be sure to check them out – we use it all the time in our youth ministry, it is so fast and fun!

AR.Drone – one of the new ideas this year was to use an AR.Drone to hover over the crowd with a gift card attached to it on a long string. The Drone is controlled by an iPad/iPhone/iPod/Android and streams live video from the hovering airship to the big screen. With all of the signals in the conference room it got bogged down a bit, but overall it was a super fun experiment.

Facebook Hack – This is a game we invented in our youth ministry a couple of months ago. You can read more about the game and download the title slide right here.

The Interlude – a fun dance you can download right here.

Digital Stache – these are the dudes behind lots of magic on the screens. We had an idea, they did it. Really stunning guys with tons of freebies and youth ministry resources totally worth checking out!

Twitter – this is actually a feature in the latest version of Propresenter (5, from what I understand). It is a super cool way to put up a paricular hashtag on the screen – it includes full moderation capabilities as well. Looked super slick up there!

Was there something else at the event you would like to know about? Hit me up in the comments!

JG

5 View Comments March 14, 2012

Josh GriffinMore Posts You Matter Spoken Word

So proud of our students this past weekend in HSM at Saddleback. Students from Mission Viejo took over for You Own the Weekend – no adults took the stage, it was completely student run! The video above features one of our students performing a spoken word she wrote called You Matter. Strong!

JG

1 View Comments March 13, 2012

Josh GriffinMore Posts GUEST POST: 11 Great Ministry Moments of 2011

Meeting our new 7th graders — Every year we get to welcome in a new class of 7th graders into our Mid-High ministry. I have LOVED every one of these guys!
Mission Trip to Arlington, TX — We sold out for this trip in 2 weeks and had an incredible time serving the city of Arlington, learning Spanish on the fly, and playing dodgeball in Cowboys Stadium!
NERF War — It’s every kid’s dream: have a massive NERF war with no adults around. We expected a few students to come, but we blew the doors of the place and we’re STILL picking up ammo from it!
Thanks for Abortion – Two years ago I spoke about abortion. Two days ago a student (who is now in high school) came up to me and thanked me for that message. This student has a friend who is struggling with what to do with her unborn child and that message two years ago has been really helpful!
TRIBES — Last summer we did a 6-week competition designed to bring students to Christ through recreation. Towards the end, individual tribes were larger than our entire first night!
DISCipleship Hole-In-One – We played disc golf all summer. I got a hole-in-one. The guys in my group got to see a reaction they’ll never forget. Moving on..
Greeters Kidnapping a Student – We have a greeters team in our ministry. One Sunday they “kidnapped” a new student who had walked in with her parents and brought her down to the youth area. She’s been coming ever since.
The Change to Cell Groups – We used to do small groups one way, realized it wasn’t achieving the goals for which it was designed, so we’ve overhauled the way we do things. Now our students are being pushed to be “on mission” and they don’t have teachers, they have coaches. It’s awesome!
Night of Impact & Goats – We challenged our students to raise money to buy goats for an orphanage in Africa. In one month they raised enough money to buy over 13 goats!
Transfer for the Gospel – One of my students (who grew up going to a private Christian school) decided to follow God and transfer to a public school this year so he could have MORE opportunity to share the Gospel. Put that in your pipe and smoke it cultural stereotype of teenage boys!
My Entire Volunteer Team – Without my team, none of this could have happened. They love God and like teenagers and I am proud to serve with them in this crazy ministry to 7th, 8th, and 9th grade students!

Sean Kahlich is the Mid-High Youth Minister at The Kirk of the Hills — check out his youth ministry blog called Awaiting Epiteleo.

Add Comment December 29, 2011

Josh GriffinMore Posts Links from Creating a Series from Scratch Workshop at NYWC

Hey everyone from NYWC 2011!

Thanks for making our youth ministry workshop so fun this weekend — I enjoyed meeting many of you and here are the links from Every 7 Minutes: Keeping Students Engaged During Your Talk workshops I promised you today:

JG

2 View Comments October 5, 2011

Josh GriffinMore Posts Room Raiders Video from Summer Camp

Fun program idea we had for HSM Summer Camp called Room Raiders. We filmed this video the week before camp, he had no idea until it was being played in front of hundreds of students. He was such a good sport, too. Obviously most everything we made fun of we planted, but still … so fun.

JG

Add Comment July 19, 2011

Josh GriffinMore Posts Top 6 Posts of Christmas Past

The past few Christmases I’ve blogged quite a bit about fun programming ideas or youth ministry tips. Thought I would post the most popular as we start the holiday run. Enjoy the posts from Christmas past:

JG