• Clips, the newest app for youth ministry

    One direction I think youth ministry resources need to go is mobile

    In the latest edition of Immerse Journal I have an article called “Technology Swiss Army Knives” that’s all about apps that help you spend less time in your office and more time with students. I’d actually like to see apps for youth ministry get to the point where we could ditch our offices altogether. It’s not like any of us went into youth ministry hoping to maintain office hours. More on this concept later…

    Clips is one of those apps that is a great resource for on-the-go youth workers, small group leaders… even parents.

    About the creator – RJ Grunewald

    It was created by one of my long-time youth ministry network guys from Detroit, RJ Grunewald. He’s a middle school pastor who fell in love with the iPhone and started dreaming about how to use his phone for ministry. Back in 2008, fiddling around after church, he created an app that farts. (Perfect for middle schoolers!) He submitted it to the iTunes store as the WhoopieCushion app and it blew up. (Get it, blew up?) I actually heard about it because RJ called me for some advice about starting a business. It was perfect timing because YS was just starting to think about apps for ministry, too. Long story short, RJ built the MyGuitar app and Tough Topics. (Both successful, but now retired.)

    What is Clips all about?

    It’s really simple. You’ll be mad you didn’t think of it. If you have a set of Videos that Teach in your office– this is an updated and mobile evolution of that. (I’ve bought at least five sets of Videos that Teach over the years, it’s my most stolen resource.)

    The app has a library of popular movies with amazing and powerful clips. The app suggests a clip and provides Bible-based discussion questions and some suggested Bible verses. You can search by movie name or topic. You can save things as favorites so you can come back to it, stuff like that. In a future version he’s opening it up to the community a bit more by allowing users to suggest clips to include in the app. But there’s enough there to last you quite a while.

    It’s a great idea. And for any youth worker who is an app junkie, it’s a must-have. It’s available now in the app store for $2.99.

    It’s a resource you’ll want to make sure is in the hands of your small group leaders and parents, too. Help them turn movie time into worthwhile discussion. Tip: Use the iTunes “gift this” button and you can send it to the youth workers in your ministry. If you need a raise… gift it to your senior pastor.

    Last thing, I love the fact that RJ owns Clips. So literally, buying this app is supporting RJ and encouraging him to not only make this app better, but to make more apps like it.

    Question 1: What’s your favorite movie for teaching students?

    Question 2: If you have the app, what do you think?

    Full-disclosure — RJ is a client of The Youth Cartel. 

  • Which Sasha is the new High School Pastor?

    My friend and co-worker, Sasha Morgan, is joining the student ministries team at Irving Bible Church in Dallas. (Hooray for a conservative church hiring a female high school pastor!)

    David Grant [her boss and an amazing dude I’ve grown to know, love, and respect greatly] asked Sasha to shoot a quick video introducing herself so he could show it on Sunday night. So Sasha borrowed my phone and shot her segment and emailed him. All from my phone and email address.

    And I smelled a prank coming.

    So I shot the video you see above and sent it to him as a joke. He thought it was funny. Then he showed it to his students on Sunday night. And then it was posted it on the churches blog. And then it went out in the churches email newsletter.

    Fantastical.

    And now you know that I have the worst Russian accent in the world, which progressively got more French towards the end.

  • Speaking Schedule so far this Fall

    I’m definitely not an “on the road all the time” speaker dude. But I do love teaching and training and I’m stoked to have a few opportunities coming this Fall.

    Here’s my next three:

    • WordCamp LA – September 10th, Loyola Marymount University – Tickets – If you’re a WordPress junkie you know WordCamp is the place the local community gathers to learn from one another. I’m leading a workshop on creating and maintaining an online presence for your brand.
    • National Youth Workers Convention San Diego – October 1st – 3rd, Town & Country Resort – Tickets – I’m doing a lot at NYWC! I’m leading a fishbowl discussion called, Expanding the Vision: Rethinking Volunteers. I’m teaching a workshop called, Creating an Online Ministry. And I have a few sessions in the interactive media area, Getting Started as a Blogger, Free and Awesome Communications Tools for Youth Workers, and How to Customize a Facebook Page.
    • National Youth Workers Convention Atlanta – November 18 – 21, Marriott Marquis – Tickets – Same sessions as San Diego.
    If you have a training event, retreat, or even want to bring me in for a day of consultation – Send me a note.  As a reader of my blog, you know I’m not limited to the topics I’m speaking on this Fall.

  • If in Doubt… A Prayer for the Week

    He spoke to the Woman: “Do I understand that God told you not to eat from any tree in the garden?” Genesis 3:1b

    O, the temptress. I hear you in the shadows. You slither into my lonely moments and whisper in my ear.

    And yet… despite you. To spite you. Stomping you out! Ignoring your coy tactics! I make a choice. I rest in my choice. I cling to my choice.

    I will not allow your sneaky voice of doubt a defining foothold. No whisper, seeking clarity, will recast my mission. I will not be defined by you, I will define you!

    Instead:

    • If in doubt… I’ll teach the Bible.
    • If in doubt… I’ll say I don’t know.
    • If in doubt… I’ll take the challenge.
    • If in doubt… I’ll spend time with people my own age.
    • If in doubt… I’ll compliment and encourage instead of criticize or question.
    • If in doubt… I’ll be bold with what God’s laid on my heart.
    • If in doubt… I’ll invest in people instead of projects.
    • If in doubt… I’ll go with less planning, more doing.
    • If in doubt… I’ll say yes to a wild idea.

    Yes, these are scary times. And scary times make counter-productive doubts seem reasonable.

    I’ve made a choice to stand as a crazy man, convinced that God can use me to change things. Circumstances mean nothing. Opposition is a joke. Logic is often illogical. Realism is veiled fatalism!

    While it seems natural to teeter-totter, like Thomas, between faith in what God can do and doubt in what I can barely allow myself to dream about God doing– I reject doubt’s gravitational pull and fling myself forward in faith.

    Let doubt not define me today. Instead, allow me to define my life as one who overcomes doubts with  radical, ridiculous, simple, and audacious faith.

    Lord, hear my prayer.

    Lord, hear our prayer.

    Amen. 

  • August Garden Tour & Today’s Harvest

    A few minutes ago Kristen and I picked a ton of tomatoes, check out. 32 full-sized tomatoes and about 1.5 lbs of yellow cherries.

    Can’t wait for those watermelons!

  • Behind the Veil of Calling

    Illustration by Frits Ahlefeldt-Laurvig, HikingArtist.com – via Flickr (Creative Commons)

    I’m not a psychologist. Nor am I a sociologist. But I know my profession pretty well. And I know a ton of people in my profession.

    Why do we do what we do?

    It’s an important question. In many ways it is the only question that our students want to know the answer to.

    My intuition tells me that most of us have been trained that the right answer is, “I’m called to this. I couldn’t do anything else because it is who I am more than what I do.”

    But behind that veil of the right answer– we find deeper, less correct, more driving motivations.

    • We want to see teenagers involved in the church.
    • We want them to steer clear of sex and drugs.
    • We want to help parents navigate the stormy waters of early & middle adolescence.
    • We want students to avoid the mess we got in; we want students to be the shining example we were in high school
    • We want to work at a church and this was the open door.
    • We want to be important in the lives of teenagers, we want to make a difference.
    • On and on…

    Not all motivations are equal in nobility. While most motivations seem pure not all are with merit. And some might actually be contributing to a new problem more than solving the problem youth ministry was created to solve.

    What are some examples of pure motivations which lead to ignoble motivations? If you work in a church or parachurch doing youth ministry– What are your points of contention with donors/supports/parrishners motivated to support your ministry with motivations that could be less than helpful?

  • Dear Church, You Can’t Buy Followers

    There are dozens of services online that let people buy followers.

    Prices start at about $15-$20 per thousand, with bulk orders costing less – 50,000 followers will typically run less than $500. Those followers, though, are often dummy accounts run by computers, some in a very obvious way, some in a more sophisticated fashion.

    —

    “If you’re not familiar with Twitter and someone says I can have 10,000 people follow you, that sounds great,” says Mack Collier, a social media strategist and trainer (and frequent speaker at events like South by Southwest Interactive). “They’re not going to talk to you about how to use Twitter to meet your goals and objectives. … When we don’t really understand something, we go back to ‘what’s the number?’ The biggest number always wins until we understand how something works – especially with social media.”

    Follower for Sale: Buying Your Way to Twitter Fame, USA Today

    While no church would attempt to buy Twitter followers, churches who want to grow often think that a really slick marketing campaign is the difference between their growth and their demise.

    Church! You Do Not Have a Marketing Problem

    Unless you are a brand new start-up, plenty of people in your community already know you exist. Marketing isn’t your problem.

    You do a marketing campaign for one of three reasons:

    1. You have a product or service that is new to the market.
    2. You are trying to remind people who have used your product or service and not returned that you have something new.
    3. You are trying to convince people who already know they don’t want your product of service that they really do.
    SAT Question: Which of the speakers in this set does not match?

    In the past two days church leaders from around the country have voted on who they’d like to see speak at an online leadership conference called, The Nines. Scrolling down the list from the top you’ll see a bunch of pastors and theologians until you come to #14… Seth Godin. A marketing blogger and conservative Jewish man.

    The last thing church leaders need is to be convinced that they need a better marketing plan for their church.

    Spending money on marketing without changing the reason people already aren’t coming to your church is just validating the message people already know about your church– That’s not for me.

    Church! You Do Have a Follower Problem

    We have bought into a lie that the way to grow a church is one of two extremes. (And our inability to grow is a marketing and not a discipleship problem.)

    Extreme #1 – To lower the expectations we place on people who attend and follow us. Come as you are, listen if you want, that’s between you and God.

    Followers are free but the cost of following is high. In John 6 Jesus fed five thousand people and walked on water and as a result had a whole slew of people who wanted to become his disciples. So Jesus held a quick disciple orientation class to explain what the cost of following him was.

    Jesus said to them, “Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them. John 6:53-56

    Yeah, that wasn’t going to work. They just wanted to follow Jesus for the free lunch and magic show. John 6:66 says, “From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him.”

    In reality… that’s what a lot of people come to church for. The free lunch and magic show your church is offering. When you actually challenge them to count the cost and follow Jesus they just move on.

    Extreme #2 – To raise expectations to a non-Biblical level by adding things to the Gospel message. To be a part of our team, you have to meet these 26 extra-biblical requirements as laid out in our church constitution… 

    Followers are free but you keep raising the cost. Acts 15 documents a case of this.

    Certain people came down from Judea to Antioch and were teaching the believers: Unless you are circumcised, according to the custom taught by Moses, you cannot be saved.”  This brought Paul and Barnabas into sharp dispute and debate with them. So Paul and Barnabas were appointed, along with some other believers, to go up to Jerusalem to see the apostles and elders about this question. Acts 15:1-2

    This isn’t unlike what we see today in many churches. They add extra-biblical requirements to being on board with the church. You have to be baptized in a certain way, attend certain classes, volunteer a certain way, on and on. While none of those things are typically “bad” they are extra-biblical requirements which weed people out falsely.

    In Acts 15:28-29, the council replied to these extra requirements that people were teaching with this, “It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us not to burden you with anything beyond the following requirements: You are to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality. You will do well to avoid these things.”

    You don’t need a new marketing campaign to grow your church. The best growth plan you could ever have is to start eliminating the extremes. (Too little or too high.)

    Question: If you have an existing congregation and the community has already decided they don’t need you. How do you change that perception?

  • An Ode to the Pancreas

    Preamble

    My buddy Marko is in the hospital with a bout of pancreatitis. He wasn’t feeling well when we went to the Padres game on Tuesday night and was admitted to the hospital Wednesday.

    I tried to convince him that the only possible cure would be eating hotdogs, handfuls of peanuts, and drinking over-priced beer. But he wouldn’t take my sound medical advice. He drank water. And look who is in the hospital now?

    Dedication: To Marko’s pancreas. May you be less irritated and inflamed in the days to come. I hope for you that you will soon be happily hugged by your friends the gall bladder and small intestine.

    An Ode to the Pancreas, the most phallic of internal organs

    The Pancreas – A Limerick

    Seeing your tail makes me giggle

    I can imagine that sometimes you wiggle

    To know when inflamed you must be even more round

    With giant scopes and crazy cameras, perhaps a lost quarter is found?

    But mostly your picture makes me giggle

    The Pancreas – A Haiku

     O sad pancreas

    Only rhyme with couple things

    Like pain in the ***

    The Pancreas – A short sonnet

     Let me not delay this decree

    Admit impediment, impurities I oft partake

    Thou pancreas please, in thou’st head whilst thou forgive me

    All of thine yummy treats, I shall now forever forsake

    O, no I promise I shall never re-embark

    To mock you, my beloved pancreas, for thine striking shape

    For thou doth look as male genitalia– I’m forced to remark

    Proudly serving other organs, you deserve to wear a cape

    The pancreatic juice, while gross, I require

    Thine juices flow from duct to duct to Duodenum

    Without you in my life I may expire

    For these juices are needed, and more than cool denim

    To thine own bile I will be true

    To thine own bile I will be true

  • Keep it simple

    Discipleship – One of the most straight-forward concepts in Christianity. Instead of keeping it simple we turn it into a complicated mess. How hard is it? A person comes to you and wants to grow in their relationship with Jesus. Cool, tell them to find a Bible, read the book of John, and lets meet in 3 days. In the process of trying to make it easy (with a process) we make it hard.

    Bible study – Another straight-forward concept. To lead a Bible study you need a couple of people, a Bible, and maybe a notebook. Pick a starting point, any starting point, read a section and ask the text… who, what, how, when, where, and why? In the process of trying to make it easy (with tools) we make it hard.

    Community – We are hard-wired to form community in our DNA. It couldn’t get more simple than following your instincts. Share life with some friends, be open to making new friends, and take care of one anothers needs. The only thing hard about it should be the relational stuff. You don’t need a pastor to teach you how to do this, or a program at church, or anything else. You just need to do it.

    Sometimes I wonder why we make things so dang complicated?

    I know one reason: Making simple things complicated keeps people busy/employed/powerful/empowered.

    When in doubt– keep it simple. 

  • Radically Local

    Photo by Doc Searls via Flickr (Creative Commons)

    I don’t drive my car very often.

    We are a one car family and I choose to take the trolley to work most days. I’ve learned to love the slowness of riding my bike and taking public transportation.

    When I do drive it tends to be with the five of us crammed into our Passat. A fun and usually noisy experience that I’ve learned to adore.

    But, the other day was different and found myself in the car alone. And I did something even more rare… I turned on the radio and surfed some channels.

    I found a local station that just plays local bands. Their commericals said something like this, “Sure, we could be like everyone else and copycat the LA stations. But we’re local. We’re San Diego. We favor local music over commercial hits.”

    It was cool. Fresh even. And something deep in me resonated with the knowledge that I was hearing music on the radio you wouldn’t hear on the radio anywhere else.

    Radically Local

    All of this is a movement towards local. Farmers markets have become popular across the country– a celebration of locally grown foods. Food trucks are all the rage– cooking up local eats in a way that is both local and mobile. Local food chains are a growing market. Local festivals are as strong as ever.

    In the past 3-4 years people have grown a taste for all things local. And increasingly people are radically local and radically loyal to locals.

    It is a pendulum swing against the rapid nationalization of the past decade. You could get a Chicago style pizza in LA. You could get buttered grits in Seattle. You could get a Krispie Kreme donut at any gas station in North America.

    And for a time I think people thought that was novel and cool. But people tired of this trend quickly. It was awesome that in the same restaurant they could chose between a Texas steak, a Pad Thai, or Kansas rub BBQ ribs until they woke up to the realization that while novel, it wasn’t authentic. People began to realize that convenience was coming at the cost of destroying what made their community interesting.

    And the pendulum has swung the other way.

    People’s preference now shifting towards local. And people are getting radical about local. It starts with food and music. But it won’t stop there.

    God’s call to become radically local

    I have an assumption that God is smarter than I am. He isn’t surprised by the street I live on or who my neighbors are. I’d like to think that God has you right where He wants you for His purposes. When Jesus was asked what the Greatest Commandment was Jesus said, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind and love your neighbor as yourself.”

    We aren’t called to hide from our neighbors. Or pretend they don’t exist. Or justify that since our neighbors are weird or jerks or old or drunks that they aren’t the neighbors we are supposed to love.

    That’s radically local. It’s too easy to focus on what we do at church or what we do when we are leading teams or what we do when people notice or even what we do to serve the greater community as “loving our neighbors.”

    Loving your neighbor is often private, small, and even simple.

    Simple, minor, radical local— love.