you own the weekend | More Than Dodgeball

Josh GriffinMore Posts HSM Teaching Calendar 2009-10

Here’s the HSM teaching calender for the next 5 months. Titles are subject to change, but this will give you an idea of where we’re going this next season:

November
POVERTY – Operation Christmas Child
POVERTY – Kenya
POVERTY – feed my starving children
1-off Message – STORIES

December
Christmas Series Week 1
Christmas Series Week 2
No services (Christmas)
Combined services with Wildside

January
Discipleship Series Week 1
Discipleship Series Week 2
Discipleship Series Week 3
The Sex
The Sex

February
The Sex
Apologetics
Apologetics
Apologetics

March
You Own the Weekend: Freshman
You Own the Weekend: Sophomores
You Own the Weekend: Juniors
You Own the Weekend: Seniors

JG

Add Comment October 9, 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 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

Add Comment May 17, 2009

Josh GriffinMore Posts Tesoro Owns the Weekend – Rap Video

Easily the best student video we’ve ever had in HSM. Done for Tesoro’s You Own the Weekend. Awesome!

JG

7 View Comments May 17, 2009

Josh GriffinMore Posts HSM Weekend in Review: Volume 48

Weekend Teaching Series: You Own the Weekend: Mission Viejo High School
Sermon Title: Complicated
Bible: Col. 3:17; Matt. 5:14-16
Sermon in a Sentence: Living a less complicated life by living out our identity in Christ in every moment.

Weekend Scale of Difficulty: 5 out of 10
Attendance: Down 11% from last weekend, up 49% from the same weekend last year
Service Length: 67 minutes

Understandable Message: We had three students speak this weekend. Erice used a great illustration about how our life gets complicated when we try and play a dozen different roles. She brought items that illustrated each role she plays in her life, and explained the difference between Christianity being a role we play, and something that infiltrates every activity. Joe explained what it means to be “the light of the world.” And then Zach told his story about how God changed his life. During the second Saturday night service, a couple dozen of Zach’s non-Christian friends were there to see him … it was a really cool moment.

Volunteer/Student Involvement: EVERYTHING was student-run. They planned, organized, and executed everything: decorations (streamers everywhere!), music, games, the message … it was all them.

Element of Fun/Positive Environment: At the Saturday night services students were called up on stage to arm wrestle a teacher from MVHS who also happens to be one of our volunteers. Our students did a good job of giving away creative prizes they got from goodwill: a typewriter, a giant map of California, a Norman Rockwell book, and posters of Elijah Wood from Lord of the Rings. One of the (guy) students did a funny cover of Avril Lavigne’s song “complicated.”

Music Playlist: Heart of Worship, Beautiful Lord, Yes You Have, Sing Like the Saved

Favorite Moment: Zach giving his testimony. Also, we encouraged people to come in/around the stage for “Sing Like the Saved” and had a lot of fun with it. Our student band leader, Jason, did a great job of getting a bunch of kinda-resistant teenagers to dance and shout and have fun with it.

Next week: You Own the Weekend 2: Tesoro High School

1 View Comments May 13, 2009

Josh GriffinMore Posts HSM Weekend in Review: Volume 47

Weekend Teaching Series: Labels (week 2 of 2)
Sermon Title: Man in the Mirror
Bible: Ephesians 2

Sermon in a Sentence: We need to be most concerned with how God sees us, and not be too concerned with anyone else’s opinion.
Weekend Scale of Difficulty: 6 out of 10
Attendance: Up 4% from last weekend, up 29% from same weekend last year
Service Length: 64 minutes
Understandable Message: This weekend was the Refinery Student Art Festival, so we wanted to hit on that theme for sure. The simple premise of the message was that you are a special creation of God, designed and loved by Him. Essentially this should be how we label ourselves, instead of establishing our value from the validation we get from others.

Volunteer/Student Involvement: Student greeters handed out bulletins, response cards and pens. A key volunteer made the mirror holder on stage. I used a couple of adults on stage as an object lesson, too. Students made up the band, ran camera and the control room, too. I especially loved it when the team also walked through the aisles at the beginning of the talk to make sure everyone had a pen/program. A solid weekend effort by our students and volunteers. Sweet!

Element of Fun/Positive Environment: We had a little fun up front with the announcements time and videos up front, but most of the “fun” was contained in the talk itself. I opened with an illustration of a label I put on myself – MOVIE STAR – and showed a clip of the time I was an extra with Tom Cruise in Far and Away.

Music Playlist: Everything, Holy Moment, Beautiful Lord, From the Inside Out

Favorite Moment: Breaking the mirrors! We had a mirror on stage, and throughout the talk I wrote labels of self-image on it. I wrote words that represent how we see ourselves and how we internalize and eventually believe the labels people put on us. Good or bad, labels aren’t the way we should look at ourselves. Then I hit the mirror with a hammer to reveal another one underneath it that had “I am God’s Masterpiece” on it. We also gave out dry erase markers to everyone who attended – so they could write “I am God’s Masterpiece” on their mirror at home, too.

Next week: You Own the Weekend 2: Mission Viejo High School

2 View Comments May 3, 2009

Josh GriffinMore Posts HSM Summer 2009 Teaching Calendar

Finished up the High School Ministry (HSM) summer teaching schedule this week, thought you might enjoy a glance at where we’re headed. We wanted to rip off School Wars from junior high, and I’ve been wanting to teach a series called Post Secret, but neither of those are in the cards for this summer. We also pushed back the sex series we had planned to the Fall as well:

May
LABELS – week 2
You Own the Weekend – Mission Viejo
You Own the Weekend – Tesoro
You Own the Weekend – Everyone else

June
Giving Series – 1 of 2
Giving Series – 2 of 2
Senior Weekend
Promotion Weekend
Summer Kickoff Weekend (Grow)

July
Summer Road Trip – 1 of 5
Summer Road Trip – 2 of 5
Summer Road Trip – 3 of 5
Summer Road Trip – 4 of 5
Summer Road Trip – 5 of 5

August
Summer 1-offs – 1 of 4
Summer 1-offs – 2 of 4
Summer 1-offs – 3 of 4
Summer 1-offs – 4 of 4

September
Summer’s End Extravaganza Gladiator Weekend
Fall Kick off Weekend

JG

4 View Comments April 24, 2009

Josh GriffinMore Posts Student Leader Letter After You Own the Weekend

Here’s a copy of a letter I sent out to our student leaders after this past series:

Student leaders – I couldn’t be more proud of you! I just had to write and share the 3 awesome things I love about what you did the past few weeks:

1) You invited your friends - we had 3 of the highest weekends in HSM history during this past series. That could only happen if you are inviting your friends – and you sure did! Not only that, I know several students that accepted Christ this past month and you had a HUGE part in that. So proud of you!

2) You served the church – it was incredible seeing your creativity and energy. From great object lessons to inflatable cougars, face paint, greeters, awesome, rocked out versions of the alma mater, skits and great music, you used your talents to serve God and do His work. My prayer is that this is just the beginning — that you’ve got a taste of what it would be like to own every weekend. What a great model for other students to see in action.

3) You started a movement in your schools – don’t let You Own the Weekend end with this series! Start a movement on your school campus, create a culture where students are invited to church and are greeted warmly and openly when they arrive. Live out your faith this week wherever you go.

Love you guys SO much – have a great week!

JG