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Josh GriffinMore Posts HSM Weekend in Review: Volume 212

Weekend Teaching Series: Crazytown (1-off)
Sermon in a Sentence: 5 Things Girls Wish Guys Knew
Service Length: 70 minutes

Understandable Message: This weekend I went after the guys! Had so much fun talking to girls and some college-age women to get some of their perspective and then mash it up with my personal experiences and use God’s Word for the authority of truth. It was SUCH a fun weekend, I was so happy with the student’s response and I was extremely direct, too! We talked through all sorts of practical stuff and hit on some big topics too like objectifying women, boundaries, and more. One of my favorite HSMs of all time!

Element of Fun/Positive Environment: We had a hilarious summer camp promo video and a near-perfect game show about celebrity couples. It was incredible and Travis did a great job hosting it. I love it when a game plays out like a skit/standup as well as something the contestants and crowd could participate in. Really strong program.

Music Playlist: When I Was Your Man (Bruno Mars cover), Christ in Me, Take It All

Favorite Moment: I loved this weekend in HSM! Excited to turn it into a resource in the future that other youth workers can use in their ministry, too. We tried something new with the stage design, too – notice in the picture above is half physical and half digital? The guys spray-painted gator board so we could light it from behind and then Parker made a digital “extension” of the buildings on the screen with a starry night that moved, complete with shooting stars. Simple, but striking. Perfect atmosphere for the talk!

Up next: Crazytown (week 2 of 3)

Add Comment 2 days ago

Colton HarkerMore Posts Student Art Wall

This weekend, our Create ministry launched our new student art wall! The Create ministry is a team made up of all of our painters, sculptors, doodlers, and pinteresters. It is such a fun ministry and we use them all the time to execute projects like our college destination map and even use them to help with stage design!

Their newest project was to put together a wall where students can display their art. I love this idea because this gives students the opportunity to show their art in a way that they don’t usually get to. Artsy students can often be the ones that don’t fit in super well with other students, so it is great to have another avenue to reach out to them. This wall gives our students a consistent goal and a piece of our ministry that they get to own.

We made sure to add a piece that told the purpose of the ministry and the wall in general.

I’m so excited about the future of this wall. I can see us using themed art for worship nights or art aimed around a specific weekend series (addiction, persecution, etc.). Easy idea that can be used in any ministry!

Colton [Email||Twitter]

Add Comment 3 days ago

Josh GriffinMore Posts Student Ownership is Excellent

Thought this post over on Junior High Ministry was super and totally worth the read. Kurt has some great points about how ownership increases the excellence, even when the program potentially suffers. GEnius observation, here’s a clip before you head that way:

What you wouldn’t have seen much of is excellence; at least not in the way it is traditionally defined! The worship team struggled quite a bit, the guys in the tech room were consistently a slide (or two or three) behind at any given moment in the service, My microphone kept popping and getting feedback, and Saturday after church our cupcake girl shared that she wouldn’t be able to be there on Sunday….and hoped we’d still be willing to sell her cupcakes (which we did, of course).

Our visiting youth pastors are rarely impressed with the level of excellence they witness. I’m surprised, though, at how often they comment on the level of student involvement and ownership happening.

I share this to remind you that as you lead your junior high ministry you have a decision to make, and how you answer is determined mostly by what you value. Do you want your ministry to be marked by excellence or by ownership?

JG

Add Comment May 15, 2013

Josh GriffinMore Posts HSM Weekend in Review: Volume 211

Weekend Teaching Series: Workshop Weekend (1-off)

Sermon in a Sentence: This weekend we had 4 messages – students got to choose which one they would hear.

Understandable Message: This weekend we had a couple videos and a couple songs, then divided up the students into1 of 4 workshops for them to hear about a topic they chose for the weekend:

1. The Comparison Trap: A workshop about the dangers of comparing yourself to your siblings, classmates, celebrities, etc. Learning about how to appreciate who God created you to be. Even showed the Dove video.

2. Modern Day Compassion: Learning to have compassion on other people because everyone has a story. Everyone has their own struggles. They went through Bible stories of compassion and learned how to compare them to everyday life.

3. Judging: Good or Bad? We all have heard about judging being wrong. It can be hard to live out. So they took an in-depth look at what the Bible says about it. Learn how and why God calls us to stay away from judging.

4. Self: Compassion: Learning how to let go of what you’re holding onto. God has forgiven you, and you should forgive yourself as well. The workshop helped students understand God’s love better through teaching them about God’s compassion for us. It is hard to have compassion on others if we can’t have compassion on ourselves.

Element of Fun/Positive Environment: Didn’t have much in this department this week – pretty straightforward service for sake of time. Good stuff!

Music Playlist: Holy Moment, Like an Avalanche, All I Am

Favorite Moment: Seeing students and leaders team-teach the workshops was SO cool. LOVED this idea. It isn’t sexy or flashy like some of our other stuff, but I like it a lot.

Up next: Crazytown (series premiere, week 1 of 3)

Add Comment May 14, 2013

Colton HarkerMore Posts Eliminating Cliques

We have been hearing a lot about cliques and other problems with student leaders. In the past, we talked about how our goal is never to try to eliminate the perception of cliques. Merely attacking the perception of cliques can be an impossible goal because, unfortunately, there will always be the few that will still voice their unhappiness. And chasing after an impossible goal can be incredibly discouraging.

What the goal should be is for your students to be doing everything they can to be loving other students and to be as inclusive as possible. This goal wasn’t new to our student leadership team, but we noticed that the student leaders were no longer doing their best to love other students. So we decided to talk about what it means to be a student leader. Instead of talking about the actions we can take, we talked about the characteristics of a student leader. That student leader is one that can’t help but to love and serve people. After compiling a list of the characteristics, we had a time where we could intentionally pray for those things to be true of them.

We are stoked about this exercise because it will, hopefully, not just combat cliques, but several other problems we have been seeing in our student leaders (setting an example on social media being a BIG one… probably a subject that deserves its own blog post!).

Here is the list our student leaders put together:

What are you doing to motivate your students into being more inclusive in your ministry?

Colton [Email||Twitter]

Add Comment May 10, 2013

Josh GriffinMore Posts “Where Are You Going?” Graduating Senior Calendar

I’m so excited about this! About a year ago I had this fun idea that we create a senior calendar to show where students are headed after they graduate from high school. One of the challenges of our youth ministry is keeping track of students once we get to the finish line – we were hoping this was a way we could celebrate and build community for students as they finished up. Ashley is one of the students who heads up the Create Ministry in our youth group and put in a ton of time making this random idea a reality. We started using it this weekend at youth group – during services students could fill out little cards with their information on it and drop it into a small collection bucket. Ashley or one of the other student leaders would then make pins for their school and/or add them to an existing school already on the map. For some seniors who have already dropped out of youth group (argh) we’re trying to get their information from Instagram and Facebook so it is complete as possible.

So in addition to the visual display for the next two months, we could use use the information to keep in contact with students all over the US, send care packages and help them find Christian community more quickly, too. It has already been such a fun exercise – I’m sure it will become one of the most interesting places for people to check out as they walk through our church.

Here’s a closer look at it, notice how each state is themed in some way in the fabric choice – the attention to detail is insane!

I absolutely love how it turned out, and a much simpler version could be made with a $10 map and pushpins if you want to get one up in your ministry by next weekend. I hope this is something you steal or inspires you to do something even cooler in your church!

JG