Category: light force

  • Germany’s solution for bored adolescents

    How many times have parents laughingly told me about their high school student who said, "I’m bored" and got glared at by a 15 year old too good to do a little work?

    Well, apparently this isn’t something that just happens in the United States. In Germany, they’ve been floating the idea of taking these "bored kids" and sending them to places that will put them to work.

    “Look, this isn’t really my responsibility, you know. I am the DEVELOPMENT
    Minister, okay? But I am more than willing to react to this unmet
    demand,” said the irritable, red-haired minister. “Every day, we are
    hearing from young people who want to ‘do something’,” she continued.
    “And these calls are reeeally starting to get on my nerves. After all,
    I have a lot of important DEVELOPMENT issues to deal with, too, you know.”

    Wieczorek-Zeul’s planned program will be aimed at people between the
    ages of 18 and 28 who have a high school diploma or an equivalent
    certificate and want to work in a developing country for three to 24
    months – and who are also willing to sign a statement promising not to
    call her ministry anymore. The ministry will also pay them 580 euros in
    hush money per month during their stay.

    “So you, too, please feel free to volunteer,”
    she snapped at the latest caller who finagled his way past her
    secretary. “Otherwise we might think about making this program
    mandatory.”     Full story

    You know, this isn’t the worst idea I’ve ever heard. In fact, it actually fits into what students want to do. They want to change the world… so it looks like Germany is thinking of making that happen.

  • Ahead of the curve

    Two things have happened this week that demonstrate that our little Romeo is far ahead of most churches curve. The really cool thing is not people in the church saying, "Hey, this is working." (While that is happening, these things are even more encouraging) This stuff comes from people who are outside of our church:

    1. I exchanged brief emails with my former pastor, Ray Pritchard, in the past week. I responded to a blog post where he asked pastors for how they plan their message series "I think you and your pastor are on the cutting edge of church leadership. Far too many churches operate as a "kingdom of kingdoms"
      where each staff member leads his own kingdom and the senior pastor is the
      "king of kings." We would never say it that way but that’s how most churches operate. But there is a huge
      new wave today of churches where the staff works together as a team to
      coordinate all the ministries in the same direction.      "
    2. This morning I read on Tim Schmoyer’s post about his experiences in looking for a new job at a church. He reports that while most church have a vision, they have no idea how to accomplish it. They only want to do church the way they know how. And overall are only interested in past successes and not new ones. Why is that encouraging to us? Well… that ain’t us!

  • We’re back

    Lf_bug_4Last night was the first time Light Force met, officially, since mid-December. It’s was weird to have that much of a lay-off. In all honesty I felt a little out of practice "doing what I do." All of my parts of the night felt weird. Not bad, just… somehow foreign.

    Fortunately for me, since I’ve done this for most of my adult like it didn’t take long to fall into those roles. At the end of the night, when the room  was dark and the front table was covered in candles, (each symbolizing a friend that a student is willing to invest/invite to Light Force) it was just Jason and I and we said, "Felt weird, but it’s good to be back."
    I love working with adolescents. I love what I do. I love being around my adult team and feeling their passion for kids pouring out each Wednesday night. I am thankful that God made me in a way that runs towards adolescents instead of running away from them.

  • Jesus is real, dude

  • Christmas on MainStreet

    Tonight was our last MainStreet of the year. (duh) For something a little special, we combined MainStreet with our Christmas eve service.

    Let’s put it this way… I wasn’t convinced that we could transition from the wild and crazy times of MainStreet into the very thoughtful and joyous traditional Christmas service. That said, I think it got pulled off quite well.

    I am very proud of our MainStreet crew. Tonight was obviously a "tough sell" since there were loads of people who aren’t used to being brought into a kids world… but let’s just sum it up in this simple fact: At the end, I saw plenty of "older folks" doing their best Rockettes interpretative dance. That… right there… that’s a huge success.

    Way to go MainStreet… and off we go into 2007.

  • Chainsaw, Sledges, Axes, and Couches

    Not sure I can accurately depict how much fun I had after church today. We got rid of two couches that were in the youth room. It would have been too easy to just call the garbage company and have them hauled off. It was so much more fun to cut, smash, and hack them up.

  • College and Youth Ministry in the News

    Katie
    I don’t catch the news too many nights per week, but I did see that Katie Couric of CBS News is doing a series called "Christ on Campus."

    Watch the video on iTunes
    Watch the video on the CBS news website

     

    Here’s the first line: "If you asked college students today who the Big Man on Campus is lately, you might be surprised to hear their response: Jesus."

    Mark Ostreicher from Youth Specialties is saying that something shot at their Anaheim convention is supposed to air tonight.

    So far, it’s been very positive. We’ll see where they take it.

    Update: Check out the story here. I thought it was a fair story. In fact, they weren’t really passing any kind of judgment on what they were reporting on at all. If I could poke at one little thing… something I completely am OK with… notice Marko’s product placement. Very funny!

  • Issues in Youth Ministry

    Issues_in_youth_ministry_border
    A few weeks back Tim Schmoyer asked me to give him my thoughts on Youth Ministry from a "big lens" perspective. He actually has a huge "What Needs to Change" series going on his blog… a fantastic idea and there are loads of good thoughts from a broad spectrum of youth ministry professionals, academics, practitioners, and thinkers. Read all of the authors comments.

    Here’s an except of what I wrote:

    In what ways does youth ministry need to change?

    • I think as a profession we need to develop some standard goals. Why
      do we do youth ministry? How does one get the label as a professional
      youth worker? What are the standard things ALL youth ministries should
      be doing? Stuff like that.
    • Youth workers need to care less about attracting kids and care more
      about fitting their youth ministry into their church model and visa
      versa.
    • Youth workers need to get serious about training their adult volunteers.
    • We need to get past games and music and into something deeper. In
      the 1980’s Dan Spader, president of Sonlife, said “It’s a sin to bore a
      kid with the gospel.” I want to revise that to say, “It’s a sin to
      never teach a kid the gospel.” I can’t tell you how many times I’ve
      heard a kid from other youth groups who visited our YM say that they
      have never heard the bible taught to them. When ministries begin
      teaching solely topically, they are truly missing out on something big.

    Kudos to Tim for pulling this together. And thanks for asking me to contribute.

  • MainStreet, Light Force in Action?

    Last night was our 3rd MainStreet. MainStreet is a big kids event where we invite parents into a kids world to learn biblical virtues.

    Something I adore about MainStreet is the amount of involvement with our middle and high school students. Last night, there were a few skits that where 90% Light Force students performed and 10% of adults were involved. I can’t articulate it accurately, but seeing them being so integral to MainStreet just rocks.

    One bit of feedback we’ve heard at all 3 MainStreet’s is "Can you ever top this?"
    My simple response is always… we’re trying to do each MainStreet better than the month’s before. Each month we sit down and take apart the whole evening. There were about 15 things that we improved on from last month… and most of them were things people "felt" and didn’t see.

    So, will the next one be better?     Yes! Will it be bigger? We don’t know yet. It depends on a lot of factors.

    And for the next 48 hours or so, in all honesty, I don’t want to think about MainStreet.

  • When do I stop forcing?

    TantrumI’ve been thinking about this question lately. It’s a question I get in various forms all the time for various reasons.

    "At what point do I stop making my kid come to youth group?"

    Some may see that and say "I would never force or coerce my kid to go to church." But for the 99% of families in 99% of churches… at some point there is a battle with most kids. (After all, there are some people who go to the perfect church where every single kids longs to be at the church 24 hours per day)

    This isn’t a complete thought, this is mostly laying the groundwork for an article that may come in the future.

    This is my experience. About 50% of kids in the churches I’ve attended or worked at don’t need to be pushed to come to youth group. They like it so they come. But about 50% need to be motivated, coerced, bargained with, or even forced to come.

    Parents do see the problem.     See, with a child… you can force them. I would argue that there shouldn’t be a choice with kids up until adolescence starts. (So, 10-12 years old.) Then they need to learn… when is it time to force/coerce/bribe my kid to come to church and when is it time to let them come on their own?

    I’m stopping here intentionally… I just want pose the question… when to force, when to not.