youth group intern | More Than Dodgeball

Josh GriffinMore Posts Hope Schoen — Newest Member of the HSM Team

This is Hope Schoen — the latest addition to the HSM team! Hope just came aboard through Saddleback’s 2-year internship program. She was a volunteer at summer camp and a recent graduate of Biola University – we’re so excited to have her on the team!

Do you know someone who is looking for a year or two of concentrated, in the trenches youth ministry experience? I’ve got one open spot on the HSM team right now, send them my way!

JG

3 View Comments October 12, 2010

Josh GriffinMore Posts HSM Weekend in Review: Volume 110

Weekend Teaching Series: LAUNCH: Ready for Re-Entry (week 4 of 5)
Sermon in a Sentence: Launching into a successful school year requires dedication, investment and using the gifts God has given you for Him.
Service Length: 79 minutes
Main passage: Luke 5:1-11

Understandable Message: This week we had the final summer guest speaker teach our entry-level program. David Hughes grew up in the ministry and has become a long-time volunteer and most recently a seminary student. He did a great job introducing himself to our students and challenging them to follow Jesus’ call on their life. He focused on Jesus calling the disciples, causes their boats to overflow with fish and them leaving everything to follow Him. In some ways our lives become a cycle of faithfulness – God entrusts us with more, and we find joy when we use everything in our lives for God.

Element of Fun/Positive Environment: We had a text poll from polleverywhere.com as well as a simple Race This! game featuring Spaceships – we divided up the crowd into 3 sections and the winning section got a candy shower. We haven’t used Race This! much in high school, but it definitely worked with the crowd and tied in nicely to the theme. We sprinkled in a few announcements and a fun video promoting the Shake It! greeting ministry, too.

Music Playlist: My Heart (Paramore cover), Awesome God, The Stand

Favorite Moment: This was a bittersweet weekend – we said goodbye to a couple of great members of our HSM team. Becka finished up her 2-year internship this week and has been an absolute star the whole time. Robby was asked by Pastor Rick to head up a new campus in Huntington Beach that will launch this Christmas. VERY proud of both of them, and VERY hard to see them go. Shoot.

Up Next: LAUNCH series finale [Fall Back to School Kickoff]

Josh GriffinMore Posts The HSM Staff

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

Josh GriffinMore Posts Top 5 Reasons You Should Go to Camp

The first in a new series of videos created by our summer interns to help promote HSM Summer Camp.

JG

Add Comment June 10, 2010

Josh GriffinMore Posts HSM Summer Intern Intro Video

Fun little intro video of our summer interns. Then I brought them on stage and tried to do some love triangle matchmaking. We’ll see what this summer holds!

JG

Add Comment June 7, 2010

Josh GriffinMore Posts HSM Weekend in Review: Volume 98

Weekend Teaching Series: Camp Promotion Weekend (Doug Fields 1-off)
Sermon in a Sentence: Faith is developed when life goes off the script.
Service Length: 79 minutes

Understandable Message: Doug Fields, the guy who literally wrote the book on Speaking to Teenagers, was really incredible this weekend, teaching students about a deeper faith that is built on the back of tests and trials. He used the analogy of the script and ad libs in life that cause many students to graduate from their faith. It was one of my favorite messages I’ve ever heard Doug teach and completely memorable.

Volunteer/Student Involvement: This weekend the control room was completely run by students – not a single adult in the back – and they did great! So director, lights, cameras, sound computers, producing, everything technical was run by students. Yes! We had an all-u-can-eat pancake breakfst on Sunday morning (largely because of 3 major proms Saturday night) and there were a ton of volunteers flipping flapjacks, too.

Element of Fun/Positive Environment: We played a game of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire: Summer Camp Edition” where the grand prize was a free registration to camp! That and a couple videos (the Killball Old Spice one was the highlight for me) made for some good fun setting up the weekend. We introduced the 3 HSM summer interns as well, they’re going to be a great help for the next couple of months.

Music Playlist: The Time Has Come, Rise and Sing, The Stand

Favorite Moment: Lots of great moments – my favorite was that the team covered for me to go to a birthday party with my son. Doug has always encouraged this culture, calling them planned absences, and everyone stepped up so I could be a good dad.

Up Next: Senior Weekend (1-off, graduating seniors speaking)

Add Comment June 6, 2010

Josh GriffinMore Posts My 5 Favorite Ministry Moments This Summer

Every summer, I take a second to reflect on what went down. Too often I rush right into the next season without the necessary reflection and celebration of the past few months. Vacation was a great time to smile about several great moments this summer. These were my favorite out of a stack of contenders:

8 Baptisms at Camp
We hadn’t planned on it, but after a few calls to parents and some eager students to display their newfound faith, we did some epic baptisms at camp. 8 students, in the cold pool water, told the world they had accepted Christ. Awesome.

Celebration Dinner with 15+ Year HSM Volunteers
A couple who has served our ministry for more than a dozen years retired this year, and we went out to celebrate. Tons of memories, great stories and great hearts. Amazing part of our team, sad to see them go!

Great crop of summer interns
Summer interns are my favorite. This year, they were once again brilliant.

Teaching PDYM in the Dominican Republic
Seeing our students in action was amazing – the BBQ at the orphanage was a total highlight. The stories of them at the leprosy clinic were powerful. And teaching more than youth workers with some friends was fantastic.

The Parent Newsletter Begins
This is one of our goals for 2010, and we got a chance to launch it a little early with this 3-issue summer experiment. Parents got a taste of it, and are hungry for more. So, we’re working hard to put a volunteer process in place that will help us produce a monthly issue. Success!

What were your favorite ministry moments?

JG

1 View Comments September 1, 2009

Josh GriffinMore Posts HSM Weekend in Review: Volume 59

Weekend Teaching Series: The Road Trip (week 4 of 5)
Sermon Title: “Loneliness”
Sermon in a Sentence: We must overcome many obstacles on the road of life — this week we take a look at loneliness.
Weekend Scale of Difficulty: 5 out of 10
Service Length: 61 minutes

Understandable Message: This weekend was actually the first episode we filmed on the Road Trip – but it aired in the number four slot of the actual series. We’re in Death Valley, California this week talking about loneliness. The imagery really supported the theme, the video was divided up into two parts – half setting up the concept/location, the other half giving help and hope from the Bible. In between we played Hillsong’s Desert Song, and then Jason Petty came on stage to wrap it all up live on stage. He was great, a clear message pushing students toward small groups and into a close walk with God whatever season of life they face.

Volunteer/Student Involvement: Students ran cameras, lights, sound, greeted and directed the weekend. Volunteers jumped in to greet students and sat with them in the service, some passed out bulletins/pens at the beginning of the message, too.

Element of Fun/Positive Environment: We had a fun roadtrip countdown video and “welcome to HSM” video. Our summer interns led a fun game based on some Flip videos we shot at the OC Fair this week. Students had to guess how fast someone from our team could throw a baseball, who would come down the giant slide the fastest, etc. Totally fun, and the great cover song got everyone having a good time right from the start.

Music Playlist: A Thousand Miles (Vanessa Carlton cover), Sing Sing Sing, Desert Song, Beautiful Lord, How He Loves Us

Favorite Moment: I really enjoyed the last couple of songs the band did this weekend – the band overall sounded great, and everything just came together in a powerful and responsive way at the end of the night. It was also great seeing two of the summer interns on stage, and had a great celebration dinner with the three of them afterward was super fun, too.

Up Next: The Road Trip Series Finale