#3 – Service Opportunities
This was the only surprise to me in the Top 5 – people we surveyed in our membership class valued opportunities to serve even over children’s and youth ministry. I guess it shows the depth of people wanting to play a part in what is happening, not just watch it on stage. Churches that are attracting people are creating places for them to serve within and without. Within the church there are many opportunities to use your gifts, talents and passions. And we must also create missional opportunities to serve without in their community as well. In some senses, this creates a new pathway for other people to attend your church – they were served in some way and are so curious they come to check out the organization that sent out the people in the first place. If your congregation is just sitting they’re not sticking.

Youth ministry application: Focus on getting students in ministry inside and outside the church. Make a list of places students can serve on the weekend or in youth group and place a key volunteer over it all. Find another leader to oversee service projects in your community and schedule at least a few times a year. There is huge momentum in social causes right now, and it is a big reason why people choose a church.

When is your next serve project coming up?

JG

Weekend Teaching Series: Stories (1-off)
Sermon in a Sentence: Real-life stories of life change from core kids who are making a difference by serving and sharing their faith.
Service Length: 62 minutes

Understandable Message: This weekend was all about students sharing their stories. We typically do a couple “stories” weekends a year, but this time we concentrated on students raised in Christian homes that were living out their faith. I’ve noticed from time to time that when we ask someone to share, they have a great story – drugs, alcohol, messed up home, etc. So this time we looked at the core kids who have typical Christian, even stereotypical environments to be raised in and used that as a basis to encourage their peers in their faith. The result was an extremely positive service that had great messages about sharing your faith, getting involved in ministry, purity, sportsmanship and more. Really terrific.

Element of Fun/Positive Environment: This weekend we had lots of student greeters and students running the band, lights, cameras, sound, etc. They program included another push for HSM Summer Camp, and a interview with the lady who runs Saddleback’s food bank. Solid program that clocked in right at the hour mark.

Music Playlist: The Earth is Yours, Like an Avalanche, With Everything, Beautiful Things, Your Name High

Favorite Moment: I think my favorite moment was the students sharing and how positive the message was from the weekend. Everyone has a story – it was great to hear how God is working in our core students lives and to have them as an example to other students. So good.

Up Next: Communion (1-off)

In the process of finishing two books on the topic of Jesus. Here are a few thoughts:

The first, Jesus Manifesto:Restoring the Supremacy and Sovereignty of Jesus Christ by Leonard Sweet and Frank Viola, is a challenging read simply exalting Jesus above everything else. They contend that a complete emphasis on Jesus would completely change the world – if we can introduce people to the real, life-changing Jesus, everything else will follow. Lifestyle will follow. Church growth will happen. Discipleship will happen. Simply teach Jesus. Not sure how much of it I’m ready to go after, but preaching and teaching Jesus has to be what the church is all about. Definitely lives up to its subtitle elevating Jesus to the highest place. Pretty academic read, you’ll want to break it into chunks and not speed read for sure.

The second book I’m tackling is Humanitarian Jesus: Social Justice and the Cross by Ryan Dobson and Christian Buckley, and it is a much more accessible read. It attempts to tackle the social Gospel and evangelism question, giving a brief history of the concept and conflict of the ideas of sharing Jesus. The first half of the book is written by the authors, the second is interviews with people in key churches and organizations that are attempting to be the hands and feet of Jesus. Good stuff, drives me to my current thinking – the Social Gospel must be both social (helping people) and Gospel (spreading the Good News of Jesus Christ)! There are many books on this subject, this one probably isn’t the most academic or comprehensive, but by far the most current.

JG

Fun little video (made in seconds with Animoto) to play at this weekend’s services highlight a serve project HSM pitched in on called Operation Backpack.

JG

Well, we made the change from calling them small groups to calling them life groups – it only took me a year since I first blogged about the idea – ha! It is a bit of a semantic thing, but I’m a big fan of the switch. Rather then focus on their size (which remains important) the name focuses on what happens (sharing life, which is more important). Here’s some of the frequently asked questions we answer as people register:

What are High School Ministry Life Groups?
Life Groups are small groups for high school students. These groups are made up of 10 – 12 students (same grade and gender) that meet weekly with a caring adult leader.

Life Groups are a perfect place for you to form great friendships with other students your age, build relationships with adult leaders and learn more about God and grow closer to Him. Your group will be encouraged to establish accountability with each other, have consistent personal quiet times, get involved in ministry, and participate in service projects.

When and where do they meet?
Life Groups meet in host homes on Tuesday or Wednesday evenings from 7:00 – 9:00pm. Meeting in homes creates a warm, friendly atmosphere for sharing life together.

What does a typical night look like?
Each Life Group will look different, but a typical night will look something like this: welcome / snacks / hang out / Bible study / discussion / prayer.

Being involved in a Life Group will be an awesome time to grow closer to God; what better way to do that than by reading and studying the Bible? Every Life Group will choose their study topic from the provided LIVE Curriculum. Studies include: prayer, following Jesus, making good decisions, purity, having healthy relationships, studying the Bible, dealing with temptation, living in godly community and more.

What about my leader?
HSM has incredible, screened, and trained adult volunteers who are ready to serve and teach high school students. Our HSM leaders are there to encourage, teach, guide, and help strengthen your walk with Christ. It may turn out to be the most significant relationship of your high school years.

What is the Life Group Commitment?
Being part of a Life Group is a privilege. We expect each Life Group member to commit to the following:

1. Come to group prepared, equipped with a Bible, a pen, a notebook and a good attitude.
2. Respect your Life Group leader. They are giving you their time because they WANT to minister to you.
3. Respect and be kind to others in your group.
4. Respect your Host Home. Help clean-up your host home at the end of every night.

JG

A quick little highlight video from this past weekend we made using Animoto (If you don’t use it yet, it is an incredible and cheap tool). This one featuring pictures of students serving/cooking pancakes and playing with the kids at a local park as HSM served the community. Excellent!

JG

A little silly promo video made by a student to help promote our Oh Snaps! photography ministry.

JG

From time to time people ask who are the paid staff behind HSM – and to be honest, we’ve been in some transition over the past seasons of ministry so the answer would vary from year to year. But in case you were wondering who did what and how we’re structured, here’s some insight:

High School Pastor (full-time) – that’s my job! I cast vision, handle conflict, lead the team, teach and direct the ministry. The buck stops with me, so if something goes wrong – it’s on me. It might be the best job in the world, I sure love it, despite the massive challenges. The rest of the team is organzationally flat, and I report to Kurt, the Student Ministries Pastor.

My assistant/team admin Associate (29 hrs/wk) – Alaina just came on the team last week and functions primarily in a support role to my job as well as helping the team with admin tasks.

Volunteer Coordinator (full-time) – Ryanne is an incredible minister to our adults who serve students. She works diligently interviewing, training, encouragement and care. She is our first impression to adults, and pastors them well.

Service/Ministry Coordinator (full-time) - AC is also brand new to the team – he’ll be responsible for all of our service projects in the community and helping get students into ministry. He’ll also work with our guys small groups to help make sure they are cared for.

Events/Missions Coordinator (full-time) - Phil cranks out any event we have planned. The dude is a administrative genius, and his top speed blasts by most people. He plans Summer Camp, missions trips, events and activities.

Life Groups Coordinator (full-time) – Jessica has been with us just over a year and has a huge heart for our small groups effort. She works hard to make sure volunteers are the right fit, helps manage curriculum and makes sure things move smoothy in the puzzle that is small groups.

We also currently have 2 open full-time spots on the team – we just lost Jake (program, 2nd in command) to be the campus pastor at Saddleback Irvine, and in September we’re losing Robby (pastoral care) to be another campus pastor. In addition to this paid team, we’ve also got 3 amazing 2-year interns and 3 summer interns that function as full-on staff people as well – all of them are brilliant and work 40-50 hours a week and own significant parts of our high school ministry.

JG

Two years ago, I became a minimalist. Essentially, minimalism is about removing the nonessentials in life. And a minimalist is one who seeks to live with only the most necessary possessions and removes everything else.

Believe it or not, discarding the physical clutter from my life turned out to be one of the best life decisions I have ever made. As a result of removing the clutter, I found more time, money, and freedom to enjoy the things I truly love. And it has allowed me to intentionally promote the things in life that I most value.

At first, this principle applied only to the physical possessions in my life. But I soon began successfully applying this principle to other areas: goals, time commitments, spoken words, screen time, and social networking (just to name a few). Each time, I found the same lesson to be true. Paring down to only the essentials allows the things I most value to receive more of my time, energy, and resources.

I also found that the principles of minimalism apply to my job as a Pastor of Student Ministries. In youth ministry, too much “stuff” begins to clutter our ministry. We get involved doing so many different programs and tasks that we have no time, energy, or resources left for the most important. I am beginning to understand that in youth ministry, doing less can actually mean doing more.

Consider the reality that we all have a finite number of hours in a workweek, dollars to spend, volunteer hours, and facilities to utilize. Rather than spreading those resources thin by planning too many events, wouldn’t it be far wiser to concentrate our resources into doing just a few things and doing them very well? And in paring down to those essentials, we begin to elevate the most important aspects of our ministry.

To put this into practice, consider minimalizing some of these most common youth ministry activities so that the most valuable can really start to shine:

1. Outreach Events. Rather than doing 1-2 outreach events each month, try organizing just 1-2 each semester. You will find far greater success reaching students with 4 really good events than with 12 mediocre ones.
2. Retreats. Don’t plan more than 1 retreat each winter. It is far more effective to get a large percentage of students together on one weekend than it is to spread them out into smaller percentages over 4 retreats each year.
3. Social Causes. Community service is important to a youth ministry, but you don’t have to meet every need in the entire community. Rather than bouncing between unrelated community service projects, jump into 1-2 social causes completely with both feet and make a deeper impact.
4. Teaching Topics. You get to teach your students for less than 10% of their lifetime. They don’t need to understand every theological topic in your systematic theology book by the day they graduate. Instead, your students would be far better served if you taught on just the most important topics in their life on a recurring basis rather than always charting new ground each week.
5. Mentoring Relationships. Rather than feeling like you need to mentor every student in your ministry, choose 2-3 students to really mentor effectively. Then, surround yourself with quality adults who will also mentor 2-3 students. Trust me, if you allow others to do the ministry, you’ll find enough adults for every student who wants to be mentored.
6. Email Announcements. Refuse to send out e-mails or texts every week. Instead, pick your opportunities carefully. Spreading only your most important announcements this way will insure that they will always be received as the most important. (As a side note, this does not apply to social networking sites such as Twitter or Facebook. Always send announcements there on a regular basis.)
7. Weekly Programming. By the way, it wouldn’t hurt to take a week off once in a while either.

Remember, more is not always better. Sometimes, more is just more.

Joshua Becker is the Pastor of Student Ministries at Essex Alliance Church in Essex Junction, VT. He blogs regularly at Becoming Minimalist, a blog dedicated to inspiring others to minimalize their possessions and simplify their life. I think you’ll kinda like it.

Thought it might be interesting to show you the actual texts we sent parents during our recent mission trip to New Mexico. I didn’t come up with a fancy 3-point strategy beforehand, my heart is to simply help parents know that 1) their kid is OK, 2) a little bit of what we’re up to each day, and 3) invite them to share in this experience from a thousand miles away. Hmm … that looks an awful lot like a 3-point strategy. Genius!

• (3 days out) Hey New Mexico parents – here’s the first txt from HSM! Weather will be in the 60′s in the day, in the 20′s at night. Pack accordingly!
• (2 days out) Hey NM parents! Check in starts at 11pm this Sunday night, we leave at midnight. If you have any questions, hit up philc@saddleback.com
• (1 day out) Hey NM parents – you can get trip updates, starting this Monday, on the HSM blog: http://hsm.saddleback.com Have a great Easter wkd!
• (1 day out) Hey NM parents – Yes! HSM will get replies you send to these text messages. There is a delay, but we get them – now back to packing!
• (day 1) Good morning, parents! In Williams, AZ grabbing breakfast after a great night’s sleep on the buses to New Mexico. Lots of hungry kids!
• (day 1) We made it safe and sound! The NM team has arrived – thanks for your prayers and replies. Pizza time!
• (day 1) Hello from NM! Chapel time is over and everyone is heading to bed. Work projects start in the morning – everyone is doing great! ZZZzzz
• (day 2) Everyone is about to head back from all-day service projects here in NM – we’ve got a great chapel planned – dinner at Denny’s soon!
• (day 3) Back to serve projects today here in Shiprock – lots of paint on houses (and each other). 28 degrees this morning, but all is well!
• (day 3) Hey NM Parents – amazing day! Please take a second and reply with a funny message from you to be read in chapel to your child tonight!
• (day 3) NM Parents, you are AMAZING! I can’t wait to read these in chapel – HILARIOUS! Printing now, your kids are coming back from dinner …
• (day 4) NM work projects are wrapping up – so its time to ramp up for the carnival. This will hopefully be one of the highlights of the trip!
• (day 4) The carnival was a HUGE success! The weather was perfect, great crowds, amazing students pulling it all off. You’ll be so proud!
• (day 5) Everyone is packing up the bus right now, one last village share time and we’re headed home! Still tracking on late tonight-stay tuned!
• (day 5) We’re shooting for 11pm, and will text updates as we figure out the ETA. You bet!
• (day 5) WE ARE OUTTA HERE – buses are leaving Farmington, NM right now. We’re headed through Shiprock toward home! See you tonight!
• (day 5) We emailed everyone a summary of the week and discussion questions. If you didn’t get it read it here: http://hsm.saddleback.com
• (day 5) The buses crossed the state line. We’re in California!! We should be in before 11. Here we come!
• (day 5) Hey NM Parents! If all goes well, our ETA is 10:45pm. Meet in the UPPER parking lot (by the pedestrian bridge elevators.)
• (day 5) Tracking on 10:45pm at the church – see you there!
• (1 day after trip) Enjoying having your teen back from New Mexico? Yes! Encourage them to attend HSM this wkd – it’ll help cement the decisions/experience

JG