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Josh GriffinMore Posts HSM Weekend in Review: Volume 207

Weekend Teaching Series: You Are Here (What on Earth Am I Here For? church-wide campaign, series premiere, week 1 of 6)
Service Length: 68 minutes

Understandable Message: You are not an accident! This weekend we kicked of Saddleback’s latest 40 Days campaign, What On Earth Am I Here For? We called it You Are Here and the first week was an overview of that focused on God having a purpose for your life and a specific calling on what He wants you to accomplish. My hope was that students walked away with a basic understanding of Psalm 139 and Ephesians 2. Students seemed to respond well to the talk, excited for what is ahead in the series!

Element of Fun/Positive Environment: This week we did “App Showdown” and had contestants go head-to-head to last the longest on the just-released Temple Run 2. It was a hit, although we stumbled with some technical difficulties for some reason all weekend as well. We also introduced our new intern Daniela, who did a fun bilingual bit on stage as well.

Music Playlist: Hall of Fame (The Script cover), He Is Alive, Here For You, 10,000 Reasons, Overcame

Favorite Moment: I loved a video from Right Now Ministries that Justin found that we dropped into the talk. It really helped students get the concept of turning their life from about them to about God, and asked a great question about what they would be willing to trade from the American Dream for God’s Plan in their life. I’ll post it later this week- good stuff!

Up next: You Are Here (week 2 of 6)

Add Comment January 23, 2013

Josh GriffinMore Posts GUEST POST: Instalife Stage Design

I got to help pull off our December series, “Instalife” – Travis and I were put on stage design. Our goal: Create the best stage pieces yet while spending as little money as possible.

Personally, I am proud of what we came out with. In the center of the stage, we hung an Instagram logo and two signs on either side that spelled out our series title, “Instalife.” On the walls, we hung 12 blown up images of some of our students’ Instagrams.

Sometimes I think people think that big churches just spends ridiculous amounts of money on everything we do, when we can actually try to be as frugal as possible. We have little (and sometimes no) budget that we need to stick to. Because of that… we improvise.

This is one of the Instagrams that we hung up on the wall. Looks clean on the front right? While the front may look like a million dollars, tells a different story. To put this together, we just “screen-shot” the student’s Instagrams and had them blown up to poster size as Costco. Because Travis and I are so cheap, we are huge believers in scavenging and recycling. The backing is made up of materials that we either “borrowed” from other ministries or found around the office. We glued the picture onto a Styrofoam board and duct-taped sticks to the back for stability.

The Instagram logo? We used a projector to trace the design onto a piece of wood that we “stole” from college ministry. Luckily, we have some of artistic students that volunteered to paint in the design we traced out. Looked incredible!

For the finished look, we wanted everything to look like it was floating, so we used fishing line to hang all of the pieces. The Instagrams went up easy, but we were terrified that the Instagram logo was going to be too heavy and snap the line. The fact that it stayed up for both weekends really proves the power of prayer!

Does your ministry do stage design? Share a story of a stage design that you thought killed it!

Colton Harker is the Student Leadership Director at Saddleback HSM. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to contact him at coltonharker@gmail.com or on twitter at @ColtonHarker.

2 View Comments January 13, 2013

Josh GriffinMore Posts InstaLife Series Arc

Excited to start a new series in HSM next weekend called InstaLife – it will use Instagram as a backdrop to teach biblical truths. Pretty excited about the series! I like it when we create an “arc” or journey we are hoping to take students through both in each message and the series. Here’s an overview of the next two weeks:

InstaLife: Jealousy – Wanting Someone Else’s Username
Being jealous shows that we are not satisfied with what God has given us, that what we have is not enough. The Bible tells us that we need to be content with what we have because God would never forsake us and leave us with nothing. In order to go head to head with jealousy we need to become more like Jesus and less like ourselves. We need to stop wanting and ogling what everyone else posts through Instagram.

InstaLife: Being Fake – Look Behind the Filter
We post pictures online for everyone to see. We will post pictures on this app to allow other people to get a little glimpse into our lives. Many post pictures of the life they wish they had or pictures from only the good parts, giving the false perception to everyone who sees it thinking that you are just fine and dandy when in reality you are truly hurting. It is time to stop pretending that everything is okay and come to Jesus get out from behind the filter.

JG

Add Comment December 6, 2012

Josh GriffinMore Posts Before and After Series Arc

We’re doing a new series in July called Before and After – a 3-week study from the book of Ephesians. For each series I like to do what I call an “arc”- a simple description of where we want to take students and what the messages will be about. Here’s where we’re headed in July!

BEFORE AND AFTER
3-week study through the book of Ephesians

Week 1: The Person I Used to Be (AC)
BEFORE we were broken, sinful and trapped in darkness by Satan. AFTER we have been freed by the mercy and grace of Jesus Christ. This message proclaims the truth that our past is past and our future is with Christ – a celebration of salvation and an invitation to those who have never followed Christ to step across the line today.
Central text: Ephesians 2
Keyword: Savior

Week 2: Above Nothing (Jess)
BEFORE we would live for ourselves and focus everything on us. AFTER we realize that God made us for a mission and we are to love and serve others. Our salvation is not of works, but the saved serve.
Central text: Ephesians 3
Keyword: Servant

Week 3: All Out War (Josh/Parker)
BEFORE we were unaware of the spiritual battle that rages on behind the scenes against us. Christ is our savior and we are His servants – but AFTER we still fight temptation, struggles and problems. Time to do battle by putting on the armor of God!
Central text: Ephesians 6
Keyword: Soldier

JG

Add Comment June 21, 2012

Josh GriffinMore Posts Church Stage Design Ideas

My friend Jason pointed me to a website I can’t get enough of right now. When I’m looking for inspiration for a set design or stage theme – this is where I look. Some are incredible, some will inspire you to create something fantastic for your youth ministry, some are good lessons on what not to do.

JG

5 View Comments May 16, 2012

Josh GriffinMore Posts HSM Weekend in Review: Volume 177

Weekend Teaching Series: Brainwashed (series premiere, week 1 of 3)
Sermon in a Sentence: Christians are brainwashed into thinking that living in the gray are (between walking in light and walking in darkness) is OK.

Service Length: 67 minutes

Understandable Message: This weekend we kicked off a new series that I am really excited about! I always like a strong series right out of the gate post-Easter and post-You Own the Weekend annual series – Brainwashed is it! This weekend I wanted to introduce the concept of brainwashed in our culture and begin to explain several of the ways that we live brainwashed as Christians. This weekend I choose to talk about walking in the light and walking in darkness – these concepts are familiar to our students since we often teach on God’s Way vs. World’s Way. This was fun though since that felt predicable, I was able to turn a corner and surprise them by challenging them to not live in the gray with one foot into church/Jesus/faith and the rest of their bodies out. I stole an illustration from Doug Fields’ blog last week that was really strong, too – and also opened with a video of a guy who wasn’t brainwashed but certainly lost his mind over Cheesedoodles.

Element of Fun/Positive Environment: This weekend we rolled out a ton of new stuff! We expanded our volunteers on the weekend and assigned each of them “zones” to work before, during and after services. We had free bagels and cream cheese on Sunday morning between services to “slow down” students into conversation and connections rather than just in and out of church. Over Spring Break we added a few IKEA couches to the hall entering the youth room that got a solid workout. The grow booth now has a gift for 1st time students who let us know they were there. Tons of students involved in every area of the weekend. Summer camp registration opened. Hilarious videos – a Hunger Games promo video for camp, a Spring Break Serve Week highlight video and a parody of spoken word to promote Killball.

Music Playlist: Yours Forever, Freedom is Here, Grace/The Stand, Your Love is Enough

Favorite Moment: There were too many great things to have a favorite this weekend – but the Hunger Game promo video had to probably be in the top spot. I loved SO many things about this weekend, I could go on and on! Oh, and one more thing: I think it is possible to have a GREAT program and a huge emphasis on RELATIONSHIPS. This weekend was another big step to doing both really well for us!

Up next: Brainwashed (week 2 of 3)