student leadership | More Than Dodgeball

Josh GriffinMore Posts GUEST POST: Dealing with Busy Students

Captain & Tennille blaring through the 8-track of our cutlass station wagon made our family high tech. Backward facing seats made me feel like one of the Jetsons.

No doubt, the times are changing.

In fact, I remember watching movies that required a reel change halfway through… now my kiddos can carry those same movies in their pockets and watch them whenever they feel like it! We must remember that the exponential growth of the tech industry is normal for this generation. All the new stuff that was promoted to give us more free time has done the exact opposite. We have been duped!

It has never been about getting stuff done faster so we can spend more time at the lake, but so we can pile more stuff on our plate to get done. The current generation also knows this to be true. So how do we manage ministry to students who are living at the speed of light? It’s simple. we have to catch up. We’ve been entrusted with this generation where they are, not where we were.

1. embrace the busy
We have to be flexible with students who are busy. Too many times, we have been guilty of writing them off as flaky and uncommitted. Trust me, i’ve tried the cold shoulder approach with busy students, and it doesn’t make them jump on board. at all. We must be understanding, – warm and friendly when we see them, or we’ll lose some of the strongest potential leaders in our group.

2. engage the busy
We have to equip and empower students who are busy. Human nature law #41: Busy people get things done. Sometimes, our busy students’ lack of involvement is due to our lack of preparation. Be intentional, creative and early in handing off specific responsibilities to your busy kids as future events are being mapped out.

3. encourage the busy
I have heard almost a kajillion sermons that encouraged christians to make an impact outside the four walls of the church [even preached some of them]. So why would we ever be upset when it actually happens?! Our kids are busy – perfect. My desire is that stays the case – outside the four walls of the church ministering to real people. My goal has become teaching them to be salt and light. Train them to be extensions of Jesus’ hands and feet. Don’t try to shut down their busyness, but disciple them while they’re living in the middle of it.

Deal with busy students in your ministry by following these three practices. Not only will those students grow personally, but the group will grow naturally as well through their leadership. and this is the kind of momentum that we all dream about.

Matthew Davis is a part of the Pocono Community Church team in Mount Pocono, PA. You can check out how the students at PCC are growing deeper at www.undergroundfellowship.info.

5 View Comments August 10, 2009

Josh GriffinMore Posts Couple of Fun Pictures from Student Leadership

Couple of fun pictures from PDYM Student Leadership Conference 2009 earlier this month:

Doug Fields and I comparing calves on stage
Jake and I play Wii together … handcuffed

Join us next year (July 13-16, 2010)!

JG

1 View Comments July 27, 2009

Josh GriffinMore Posts The Purposes in Conflict

Always enjoy taking in the Purpose Driven conference – I seem to learn something new in whatever place I find myself as a leader. We’re coming off the week-long PDYM Student Leadership Conference this past week (join us next year – July 13-16, 2010), and something fresh hit me in the face.

The purposes (evangelism, fellowship, discipleship, ministry, worship) always live in tension with each other.

It isn’t just making sure that the biblical purposes are present or represented in your student ministry, it is that they literally fight with each other. The values of each purpose are in competition – here are a couple of examples:

Evangelism fights with Fellowship
Bringing in new students and having a heart for bringing the lost seems opposite of creating a safe place for students to be known, loved and cared for. People with a heart for fellowship will bristle at the thought of outsiders coming in, and people with a heart for evangelism can’t imagine a place were outsiders aren’t allowed to become insiders.

Worship fights with Discipleship
Singing about God could replace learning about God and growinga student’s faith. Students might be tempted to only express their love for God and celebrating his presence at the expense of reading His word and growing on their own.

We should expect tension in team members. We should expect misunderstandings. We should realize this will be a constant battle that requires active leadership, training and vision. A good youth worker must work in this paradox and keep the purposes at peace. Thoughts?

JG

Add Comment July 19, 2009

Josh GriffinMore Posts SYM Podcast Episode #106

The latest youth ministry podcast, filmed during last week’s Student Leadership Conference.

JG

Add Comment July 19, 2009

Josh GriffinMore Posts PDYM Student Leadership Starts Tonight!

This week is the PDYM Student Leadership Conference! We’re excited that tonight our students join up with hundreds of other student leaders from across the country and learn from Doug Fields about the purposes, servanthood and leadership. This is going to be GREAT – can’t wait!

JG

Add Comment July 14, 2009

Josh GriffinMore Posts HSM Weekend in Review: Volume 52

Weekend Teaching Series: Backward$: week 2 (series finale)
Sermon Title: Good for Your Heart
Sermon in a Sentence: Learning to give is a backwards way of thinking.
Weekend Scale of Difficulty: 6 out of 10

Attendance: Down 5% from the previous weekend, up 104% from the same weekend last year
Service Length: 78 minutes
Understandable Message: This weekend we ended up our 2-week series on giving with a look beyond money. I recapped last week’s talk and used the illustration of our robbery to talk about holding things loosely. I talked specifically about thinking backwards about tithe, talents and time – I loved using a current movie clip from WingClips (from UP), a poll from PollEverywhere and a great failure story about my holding money too tightly. Really enjoyed creating and delivering this talk.

Volunteer/Student Involvement: Students did lights, camera, sound greeted and ran the control room. The student band (freshman!) sounded about as good as last week’s senior band – and this week, Taffy took away the words to the song and the music stands. It was a huge improvement over recent services. Some adults were present throughout the weekend – the ones who come are so faithful and solid, we just need to double the number of them!

Element of Fun/Positive Environment: We played another round of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, and it was a total blast. The key to a successful round of game shows is the right questions, a strong host and a competent contestant. We were usually at least 2 for 3 so it worked pretty well. Jake was brilliant on stage as well, always playing the “angry at the audience for giving away the answers” game show host.

Music Playlist: Money, The Grateful, The Stand, You Deserve

Favorite Moment: Each service we gave away some dollar bills to random people in the audience. Each bill had the word “opportunity” written on it. They were told that every dollar in their wallet/purse was an opportunity to serve themselves or serve others – oh, and that the word written on the bill would soon disappear – it was written with disappearing ink and would look like all of their other dollars in just a few hours.

Next up: You Own The Weekend: Seniors

1 View Comments June 7, 2009

Josh GriffinMore Posts The 5-Year Plan for HSM

I just realized that in my last post I referenced a 5-year plan, then in a search of my blog archive I realized I’ve never articulated it here before. This isn’t exhaustive by any means, I should probably save this to drafts and scour my moleskin for more detail, but oh well. Here’s the plan of focused attack in the first 5-years in HSM, each building on the previous year’s goals and success:

2007

Observation – see where the ministry is currently strong and weak

Team assessment – see who the players are, figure out capacity

2008

Invitation – invite everyone to get on the bus

Reorg - put the players in the right position

Weekend service – make in entry-level: understandable, fun, inviting, student-driven

Refinery – grand opening of our student building

Volunteers - make them the core of our ministry, eat dinner with them once a week for 3 months

Small groups – revamp, unify, experiment in The Refinery then homes

2009

Communication – add mass texting, update HSM blog in real-time

Discipleship – relaunch HABITS, connect it to small groups and weekend teaching

Student leadership – relaunch Student Leadership with campus emphasis

Ministry teams – overhaul ministry teams to serve the church

Response - start a response card system and followup process

Pre-steps to fellowship – the jump from the weekend to small groups is big, can we make it smaller?

2010

Next step ministry – baptism, CLASS 101, Fresh Start

HSM LIVE - live stream our services

Track attendance and follow-up - thumbscan attendance swipe, automated follow-up

Hit the web – relaunch web presence, finally fully embrace social media

Missions – partner with PEACE projects world-wide

Upperclass Ministry - specific events, classes, trips for juniors and seniors

Local service projects

2011

Parent ministry – website, newsletter and regular meetings

Take a deep breath … then fix everything that’s broken

JG

6 View Comments June 4, 2009

Josh GriffinMore Posts 5 Ways to Get the Word Out About Your Student Ministry

Your youth ministry might be your church’s best kept secret. And in some churches, the only secret. Ha! Don’t let that be the case – here’s 5 ways to think about getting the word out about youth group:

Friendship evangelism – this is our primary vehicle to “get the word out” about HSM. We promise to make an entry-level program that will be safe, fun and have an understandable message. We ask our students to bring their friends – not to everything – but to threshold events and the weekend series. Pray for your friends, share your story with them and when God’s Spirit leads you, invite them to check it out.

Word of mouth – this one is like friendship evangelism, but focuses on the ‘remarkable factor.’ If someone says to a friend, “you won’t believe what they did in youth group” then you’ve hit something remarkable – you have to talk about it again and again. While you probably don’t want to program with this as your main focus, it is a great byproduct to help get the word about about your youth ministry.

Viral Videos – this is a new one for us! During Tesoro’s You Own the Weekend they made a really strong rap video. When the service was over, we uploaded it to YouTube and as of this post it has close to 8,000 views in the past 8 days. Make sure what you make is titled promoting your student minsitry and there are clear links to the youth group website or next steps.

Advertising – This is one we’ve yet to experiment with, but I’d like to work some connections within the church and see if some local businesses would put up posters of our youth group events. If a local teen hangout like a froyo shop would allow a few postcards to be left on the counter. I dream of a day when a student walks into a theater and sees a youth ministry commercial. Why aren’t we using Facebook ads? What if several local ministries went together on some and gave credit to everyone so many could benefit from it without breaking the budget.

Be visible in everything your church prints/does – you know this is a big one for me recently if you read about when I realized that we’re largely invisible to a casual attender of our church. Get space in the bulletin. Make sure there’s an announcement about something in your youth minsitry every other week. If the church sends out a postcard, getting banners made or designing a new website – make sure you ask to get on there somewhere. No one cares about your youth ministry as much as you do.

What other ways are you using to get the word out? Share with other youth workers in the comments!

JG

9 View Comments May 25, 2009

Josh GriffinMore Posts HSM Weekend in Review: Volume 50

Weekend Teaching Series: You Own the Weekend: The Others (all of the remaining schools outside of the 5 we’ve already done during the series this year)

Sermon Title: The Names of God
Bible: Colossians 2:7 Let your roots grow down into him, and let your lives be built on him. Then your faith will grow strong in the truth you were taught, and you will overflow with thankfulness.
Sermon in a Sentence: The meaning of God’s name mean and how we can connect with him.
Weekend Scale of Difficulty: 4 out of 10
Attendance: Down 10% from last weekend, up 121% from the same weekend last year
Service Length: 51 minutes

Understandable Message: The message was divided into three parts – the first about the obstacles that keep us from connecting with God taught by a junior guy, the second part was taught by a sophomore girl about the names of God and how He is worth connecting to. Then Josh came back up and finished by giving 5 practical ways to connect with God. They had a reminder card at the door given to each student as well.

Volunteer/Student Involvement: Students once again owned everything – great decorations, the message, band, games, cameras, lights and control room. They even planned a little dance upstairs after the Saturday night service to encourage students to bring a friend to the service. We did have one adult on stage, who graduated from an “other” school, to help keep the energy high.

Element of Fun/Positive Environment: We kicked off this weekend with a hula competition on stage, which was fun – complete with grass skirts and leis. We also had a stunning camp promo video made by a student that got a good response each service, too. Lots of great decorations and window paint, too. Fun!

Music Playlist: So Contagious, Sing Sing Sing, Cannons

Favorite Moment: School pride was so evident with this series. I’m excited to see how our students can take what they’ve learned back to their schools and lives, and bring friends from their schools back to church. A great series, sure to be an annual event in HSM from now on.

Next week: Backward$ (2 week series on giving)

3 View Comments May 24, 2009

Josh GriffinMore Posts HSM Weekend in Review: Volume 49

Weekend Teaching Series: You Own the Weekend: Tesoro High School
Sermon Title: Be Who You Are
Sermon in a Sentence: God made you to be you, knowing and living that out is His plan – don’t be swayed to be anything or anyone else.
Weekend Scale of Difficulty: 5 out of 10

Attendance: Up 13% from the previous weekend, up 65% from the same weekend last year
Service Length: 79 minutes
Understandable Message: A senior guy kicked off the teachng part of the weekend, talking about living up to the image his dad had in mind for him. After that intro, a freshman girl shared the first part of the talk, talking about the lies the world would have us believe about ourselves. Then a second girl shared a testimony about her finding her identity in a boyfriend but now finding it from God. Then the senior guy came up and finished off the talk – all of them did excellent, good living illustrations of the principles they were sharing.

Volunteer/Student Involvement: Students once again did everything! From the planning meetings a while back or decorating the building, students did everything.

Element of Fun/Positive Environment: The whole environment was Tesoro HS-themed through and through. Lots of shirts, window paint and streamers. Loved having the Titan mascot roaming the halls! The rap video was excellent, one of the best student videos we’ve ever had.

Music Playlist: You Deserve, Shout Unto God, Give Us Clean Hands, Fire Fall Down

Favorite Moment: Lots of great moments, but I loved it when Mckensie shared part of the talk – I’ve seen her grow so much this year and it was great to see her be so bold to take the stage.

Next up: The grand finale for You Own the Weekend