I have preached a lot of sermons and heard even more in my life in the church and each time as I prepare, my hope is that each time I prepare, that some part of what I am teaching would go from head knowledge to heart and God would speak through my teaching and He would transform lives as a result.

This unfortunately is not always that case and sometimes those well-prepped and researched talks fall on arid and crumbly soil. While this can be really discouraging, what amazes me is the fact that while sermons can often be forgotten or tuned out, there is something powerful and disarming about a student or leader sharing their testimony. Make them part of you youth program and here’s why:

Stories are personal and real: What I love about testimonies is that they are a story that isn’t over, they are in process and there is something exciting about that. For students to hear where their friends are really at, what they have struggled with, been through and experienced and how God has been faithful through all of it, they hear that. Students crave authenticity and can smell disingenuous people a mile away; testimonies are a window into the inner workings or someone’s very personal Christian walk.

Stories are hard to refute: When I am talking to my non-Christian friends or skeptical students, they often have well-rehearsed arguments about why God can’t exist and have opinions on the validity of the Bible. They can refute God to certain extent, but cannot deny what He has done in someone’s life. Tangible encounters with God, sudden and dramatic heart change, miraculous healing, freedom from sin. All of these are part of student’s story, and those are hard to argue against.

Stories bring the Bible to life: For students who are new in their faith or just seeking, the Bible is a not a book that they know well or at all. So when we teach from it, it’s not always easy for them to understand how the Bible can actually impact and affect their life. But when you hear students sharing stories about their life verses and how God used a certain scripture to transform their heart and life. Stories bring the Bible to life for other students.

JG

Here’s one of the student testimonies from STORIES weekend in HSM a couple weeks ago. This was the first story of the weekend, powerful stuff and a great point to God’s grace!

JG

Weekend Teaching Series: Stories Weekend (1-off)
Sermon in a Sentence: Students share their lives, experiences and faith with their peers.
Service Length: 80 minutes

Understandable Message: This weekend we didn’t have a typical message – it was time for another Stories weekend. This weekend 6 students shared their stories combined with great music made for an awesome weekend. The students shared on many topics drawn from their experiences, including eating disorders, self-image, faith, loves, abuse, sumer camp highs, salvation, walk with God, worship, serving and much more. The stories were inspiring and incredible – I would highly recommend you trying out a service like this in your youth group!

Element of Fun/Positive Environment: This weekend we played a modified version of this “no services” video that played great as well as a new video promoting The Landing (Celebrate Recovery for students). The opener this week was a super fun rendition of the 12 Days of Christmas with a whole group of energetic students on stage, too. Students in the band, did lights, sound, cameras, control room, greeting and speaking!

Music Playlist: 12 Days of Christmas, I Found a Love, Hosanna, Burning Ones, With Everything

Favorite Moment: Without a doubt it is the students sharing – the attention when a student takes the stage is absolutely incredible. There was no pastor on stage this weekend, but there was plenty of preaching!

Up next: Good Neighbor Weekend (no HSM services – more details later this week)

Weekend Teaching Series: LAUNCH (week 2 of 3)
Sermon in a Sentence: Accountability will make you uncomfortable but is critically important in the life of a believer … and join a Life Group this school year in HSM!

Understandable Message: This weekend Jessica Torres taught the second weekend in our LAUNCH back to school series. Every year about this time we want to intentionally move students toward life groups, so we intentionally plan a weekend to encourage students to go  beyond the weekend service and jump into a group. Jessica taught specifically about the accountability aspect of groups and had great stories about the influence of both peers and adults in her formative years. She did a great job  teaching these principles from Scripture.

Element of Fun/Positive Environment: This weekend we’re wrapping up summer and headed into Labor Day holiday and back to school next week. The atmosphere was great – we had a new student on lights who did an incredible job with the energy before the service and the team made a couple of great videos to point students toward Life Groups and to become a part of HSM. Lots of student greeters, too!

Music Playlist: Go, You’ll Come, Majesty, Let My Words Be Few

Favorite Moment: One of our students, Connor Kim, shared his testimony about the impact accountability and his Life Group have made on his high school years. He’s such a stud, it was awesome for students to see a real-life example of what Jessica was teaching from the stage. Between her heart and his experience, I know tons of students will take this next step in our discipleship process. Strong.

Up next: LAUNCH (series finale, week 3 of 3)

Above is a picture my niece Hayley gave her “papa” for his 70th birthday. To the outside observer it’s a cute picture. Something any child may give to mom, dad, or “pa pa” so they can hang it up on the refrigerator. But, when you dig a little deeper in to the history of this drawing, you’ll find out that it is so much more than merely a “cute” picture.

Hayley was born pre-maturely with a hole in her heart. She had to have open heart surgery before she was a year old to repair this hole. This has caused some physical problems for her as she has gotten older: low muscle tone and sensory integration disorder. Because of this she has been in physical and occupational therapy for 2 years.

The “cute” picture above is the culmination of $75,000 spent on over a thousand hours of therapy for Hayley. Just two years ago this picture would never have happened. It would have been nothing more than a few scribbles on a piece of paper. But, hard work, persistence and dedication has paid off with words, a face, and a smile. Sure, for someone on the outside, it’s a cute picture, and that’s nice and all. But for those on the inside this picture represents so much more.

Those of us in youth ministry have a unique opportunity to be on “the inside.”  Each of our teenagers has a story.  When we’re willing to dig just a little deeper in to a life, we’ll often find stories … stories of successes and failures, joys and pains, fear and courage … there is always more to their life than what we see on the outside. That teenager who is one of the leaders in your ministry may have had countless hours of somebody pouring in to their life, guiding them and helping them become a leader while that “one” … and we all have that “one” … who causes problems or who seemingly just doesn’t care about anything may represent a life of hurt and pain and they are acting out because no one has spent time trying to invest in them.  Understanding this means we won’t be so quick to criticize but more willing to listen. We won’t be as quick to expect a non-believing student to act as a passionate Christ-follower.

As we learn to do youth ministry together, let me encourage you to be willing to dig a little deeper in to the lives of others and to realize that each life has a deeper story.  Part of our role is to help students see how their story is woven in to the God’s greater story.  But unless we’re willing to dig a little deeper, we’ll never have the opportunity to do that!

Rich Yauger is a husband, dad, and youth pastor.  He’s been trying to point teenagers to Jesus at Grace Community Church in Goshen, IN for 9 years and blogs a bit at www.theyaugblog.blogspot.com and Twitter’s at @rich_yauger.

Shell Eastman is one of HSM’s graduating seniors who deals with Cerebral Palsy that causes her to limp significantly. She talked during our Senior Weekend how her disability and suffering helped her to see and begin to understand God’s love. Enjoy the clip – good, good stuff. SO proud of her.

JG

Here is one of the student testimonies from this past weekend in HSM. It was part of our occasional STORIES weekend where students share what God is doing in their lives. Good stuff, if you want to see the other 5, hit up this link, too.

JG

One of our Life Group leaders, Blair Wilson, shares his story on video on the last week of the How to Raise Your Parents Series.

JG

Weekend Teaching Series: How to Raise Your Parents (series finale, week 3 of 3)

Sermon in a Sentence: Real-life parents answer your real-life questions. Each service will be completely different!
Service Length: 76 minutes

Understandable Message: This week we tried a first in HSM – the parent panel. I’ll post more later about my learnings on how to run a good panel, but for now, I’ll just say it was awesome. We had parents commit to at least 2 services if possible, so we had different parents throughout the weekend. It was incredible to hear their heart and passion, as well as their vulnerability and love for their kids. We had some parents, who I introduced as not perfect by any means, but that loved Jesus and loved their kids. It was awesome. I have almost 500 questions that students sent into us during the 4 services, excited to do a series of posts on them in the future – I think they will be super insightful for youth ministry or even parents themselves.

Element of Fun/Positive Environment: We had pretty straightforward programming this weekend – lots of student greeters and student leaders running the night. We had a video testimony about trust/parents featuring a Life Group leader, Blair Wilson, who really messed up as a teenager – that was solid, too. Tons of student involvement with students texting in their questions to polleverywhere.com which we moderated and pushed to the screen.

Music Playlist: Dancing Generation, Mighty to Save, Sing Sing Sing

Favorite Moment: The parents were incredible. They made the services – and I loved the unpredictability of each service. You didn’t know the questions, you didn’t know the answers – so each service was unique and honestly, really interesting. Oh, and using my iPad2 to push the questions students had texted in right on to the big screen was techno-fun, too.

Up Next: Stories (1-off)

This weekend in HSM Steven shared his story about finding identity in Christ. Part of Tesoro High School’s You Own the Weekend services.

JG