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Back to School Kickoff Growing Deeper Worksheet

September 21st, 2009 -- Posted in Youth Ministry | No Comments »

We launched something new the past couple of weeks – and I’m pleased with the results so far. Our weekend is designed to reach several audiences from crowd to core, but from time to time regular attenders ask for “more.” To that end, we’re providing some homework each week, written by the weekend speaker and designed to flow hand in hand with the sermon that weekend and help them to grow deeper on their own.

If you want to check it out, here’s the Growing Deeper worksheet from kickoff weekend.

Labels Sermon Series Released

September 21st, 2009 -- Posted in Youth Ministry | No Comments »

Excited to see our LABELS series just get released this week as a sermon series from Simply Youth Ministry. If you didn’t read the two weekends in review back in April when we did the series (week 1 and week 2), it was a mirror-smashing series that we really had a lot of fun with. To check it out, click the image above!

HSM Weekend in Review: Volume 66

September 21st, 2009 -- Posted in Youth Ministry | No Comments »

Weekend Teaching Series: Happy: Week 1
Sermon Title: Step One: Realizing I am not God
Sermon in a Sentence: A study of recovery and hope from the beautitudes.
Service Length: 78 minutes
Bible: Matthew 5:3 (NCV)

Understandable Message: Doug Fields kicked off the new series this weekend in HSM. The entire church is doing this study – Life’s Healing Choices its called in big church and Happy in HSM and Wildside (jr high). He covered the first step in happiness, which is realizing that you are not in control but that God is. Doug used a couple of powerful illustrations to help our students think about the path they had planned for their lives, and presented them with the opportunity to follow God’s path. He kept things interesting a clip from Shark Tank, and a fantastic story of one of our high school students from a local high school.

Volunteer/Student Involvement: This was choir weekend which we do about once a month, so we had students everywhere and the energy was fantastic. Students sang and played in the band, and also made up the greeters, cleanup/setup and even helped me host an opening game. Students also manned lights, sound, cameras – and for the first time ever – completely ran all of the positions in video control room and computers, too. TONS of students involved!

Element of Fun/Positive Environment: We had some fun with a little character called FACE, an animated smiley face that we could have do all sorts of funny expressions and voiced totally improv by Jake Rutenbar. We also had a fun game up front – a Search and Seizure game that turned into Let’s Make a Deal – all in keeping with the theme where the winner would become ‘very happy.’ Lots of fun, and epic music rounded out a solid weekend. Download the program sheet here.

Music Playlist: Sweet Home Alabama (during countdown), Yours Forever, Your Name High, Song of the Broken, Hold Me Now, Your Name High (reprise)

Favorite Moment: Doug used an illustration about playing in the dirt vs playing at Disneyland that has really stuck with me (and I hope our students this week). Really clear illustration of what we think is happiness, but God opening the gates to His kingdom to us when we follow His ways.

Up Next: Happy, week 2

GUEST POST: 6 Thoughts on Networking

September 20th, 2009 -- Posted in Youth Ministry | No Comments »

Networking can be difficult in our already, way too busy lives. But there are many of us who see youth ministry networks as an important way to re-energize, fellowship, and unity. Networking happens to be a passion of mine so I thought I would share with you six things that are important to think about when starting or maintaining a youth ministry network in your community.

1) Focus on soul care: When youth pastors get together we tend to create things, this happens naturally. However we often forget that part of why we network is to recharge, and encourage each other. So many youth workers are on all the time, let meeting together be focused on relaxing, praying and laughing together, not busting out our schedules for a collaborative event.

2) Tell stories: Veterans and rookies, we have all had that one time, great ministry blunder. It’s important for us to remember where we came from, but also share success and encourage one another with stories of student’s whose lives have been changed. Be careful not to let it become a senior pastor or parent bashing session. It’s important to be honest, but it is equally important to respect people and those who are in authority over us.

3) Be intentional about time together: Get creative with the meeting place, or what activities you do together; being respectful of people’s time of course.

4) Split responsibilities: Don’t let one person handle everything. Besides, shared responsibility keeps the network from dying when that one person leaves (the number one reason I hear networks collapse).

5) Commit to each other: A network doesn’t work very well when there is no one to “network” with. Be consistent with meeting times and be realistic about how often you meet.

6) (Last but not least) Food: Good fellowship revolves around good food! Take turns providing it or see if a local coffee shop will donate food and beverage for everyone (the worst they could say is no).

Jonas Knudsen is a youth worker who loves students and blogs at Raising Ebenezer. If you want to write up a guest post for next weekend, submit your article this week.