Category: youth ministry

  • You are Youth Ministry

    I really like this promotion for the Dallas diocese. It’s well done and draws me in.

    Not sure where this will be shown, but I really dig it.

    ht to D. Scott Miller

  • The Naysayer

    It still giggle every time I hear this. Just the “Ticky” cracks me up.

  • Properly Loading Volunteer Staff

    Your role as a ministry manager isn’t just to plan programs and teach students. Successful ministry largely lies in your ability to properly manage a group of volunteers.

    Take five minutes and identify which category each of your volunteers is happiest in:

    • Low capacity
    • High capacity
    • Super capacity

    What are some ways you can vary what each volunteer contributes to reflect how God has gifted them?

  • Front-loading ministry in the discipleship process

    A couple weeks ago I shared a post about discipleship that raised some questions about how we do things in our student ministry. Most of the comments were affirmative. Some of the more critical questions which arose required some follow-up.

    With that in mind, I grabbed a few moments with Chris and Kathy, our staff members who run the New Heights Project to drill down into some of the questions that came up.

    • What is the New Heights Project internship all about?
    • Who we are and who we partner with?
    • Why intentionally hire non-Christian students to do children’s ministry?
    • What has been the effect of this method in students lives?

    One additional thought. The thing that freaked most people out was the concept of intentionally hiring a mix of Christian and non-Christian students as interns. Every church I’ve ever done ministry with had students help in ministry areas who weren’t Christians. Any ministry leader is fully aware of that same fact. The only thing that is different here is that we’ve made it part of our strategy. Typically, ministry leaders know it but don’t acknowledge it because we’re talking about children of church members.

  • You never stop being a youth pastor…

    You might need to click on the image so you can take in the awesomeness of this moment. This couple was completely oblivious.
    1. This was Sunday, early evening, at La Jolla Shores. (The most kid-friendly beach in San Diego, one of the best beaches in California.)
    2. There were families and young children everywhere.
    3. Lisa (former youth group student of mine and retired RA from Grace College) couldn’t resist the cameo. She tried, it was too awesome.
    4. My favorite part of this picture is the kids playground in the background. We’re not talking about a secluded beach spot for a private make-out session… this literally is in the middle of family-friendly central.
    5. They cleaned it up by the time we took this picture. There was a time when she was on top of him. And also a time when when hands were in all sorts of places.
    6. Yeah, it’s weird we took a picture. You never stop being a youth pastor and this is always funny. It’s like a middle school girl farting in the church van. You just find it funny!

  • The state of youth ministry blogs

    It’s been a couple of months since I published my list of Top 20 Youth Ministry Blogs at the YS Blog.

    And for the most part the list did what I was hoping it would do. People took notice that YS had taken notice of blogs enough to rank them. And the net effect has been that many who had stopped taking the genre seriously are now take it seriously again.

    It’s hard to explain and its impossible to pin it on just the rankings. But it was clear that youth ministry blogs were on the decline. Now they are noticeably getting stronger.

    Am I taking credit for that? All I’m saying is that publishing the rankings didn’t hurt the genre.

    Here’s a few observations: (In no particular order)

    • The quality, quantity, and effort put into youth ministry blogs has increased in the past two months since the rankings went public.
    • There are lots of new youth ministry blogs to index– awesome!
    • The method used to calculate the top 50 will continue to refine.
    • It looks like I only missed a few sites that could have hit the top 50. (This was my big fear!) I did ask those who voted on the top 50 to tell me who was missing, that group brought up only 2 blogs that weren’t indexed. For a first public shot… that’s not bad.
    • For 2011, I’m glad that I’m just the math guy and I get to turn over the influence ranking part (33% of the overall ranking) to the 2010 top 20 bloggers.
    • Basically, everyone from #11-20 wants to be in the top 10. Which is fantastic because it forces EVERYONE to grow and get better just to stay in the top 20. I’d be impressed if anyone can crack the top 5… there is a big statistical hurdle between a top 5 blog and the rest.
    • I’ve noticed a lot of folks in last years top 50 are making changes. They are getting right with Technorati and Google. They are making sure their RSS feed works. They are probably doing some SEO stuff. In other words, the whole class of youth ministry blog is getting better not just from a content side… but from a set-up side.
    • I think I’m going to exclude from index if they haven’t updated in 30 days. It’s tough because it takes me a couple of weeks to get through the data. So I might just index everyone and scrub the data right before I send the top 50 for influence ranking to the top 20.
    • Those of us on the list have had some weird effects. I know I’ve heard more bizarre product pitches in the last two months than I’d ever heard before. And marketers have definitely taken notice. Crazy town.
    • Yes, I think it is possible for a new blog to make a first year appearance in the top 20. Because some of the indexes that go into the composite score take time to build… I sincerely doubt anyone could amass the traffic to go from launch to the top 10 though. But I’m sure its possible.
    • I’ve had to laugh at the humility thing of those on the list. Lots of people on the list don’t know how to react. Christians try to act humble when they are proud. I think it’s OK that they are OK being on the list. It’s not like they politicked to get on the list… no one knew it was coming!
    • Speaking of politics, unlike other rankings in our world, the YM blog ranking is open. If anyone thinks their blog has a legit shot at getting into the top 20, let me know so I can start indexing it. Last year, I indexed more than 100 blogs. I have a feeling I’ll be indexing 200+ in 2011.
    • A lot of people have asked me about adding Twitter/Facebook numbers into the mix. I’m resisting that urge for a number of reasons. I actually think blog indexing and social media indexing are two different things. Truth is, size of a social media circle is completely meaningless.

  • New Heights Project highlight video

    A few weeks ago I mentioned something our youth ministry does over the summer. We hire a group of high school students to run our children’s ministry outreach program. Here’s a highlight video they showed in church at the end of their experience.

    I’m so thankful for the impact these students had on our community! Of course, they didn’t do it alone. The whole staff of Harbor was fully engaged as well as a big crew of adults from the church as well as some other missionaries from InterVarsity’s urban project.

  • 4 Types of Youth Ministry Teachers

    Teaching is a core competency for youth ministry. If you’re going to make it… you had better be an above average communicator of God’s Word. Titus 1:9 gives a simple description of a ministry overseer that is tough to escape:

    “He must hold firmly to the trustworthy message as it has been taught, so that he can encourage others by sound doctrine and refute those who oppose it.”

    As I chat with professional, full-time youth workers around the country I think I can categorize most of them into basic 4 categories. Forgive the generalizations. It’s not clean and I think people hop in and out of different categories at different parts of the school year and their life cycle in ministry. I think I’ve been all of these at various times in my life.

    4 Types of Youth Ministry Teachers

    1. The artist: These people consider their teaching a craft. In their eyes, their lessons are as much art as a photographer, an architect, or a ballet dancer. They spend countless hours lost in crafting their teaching series, messages, etc. These folks look down on those who buy resources. Though, they may buy stuff occasionally for inspiration.
    2. The time manager: These people understand and were maybe once “the artist.” But they don’t have time for that anymore. They look at their role as a teacher a task and they want to prepare quickly. They are always on the look-out for a quick idea. They love ministry resources, video curriculum, and have a mantra that if they spend a little money on a resource that they’ll spend more time with students and less time preparing lessons.
    3. Copycats: These folks are always looking for someone else’s idea. It’s all equal in the Jesus economy, right? They listen in 6-8 sermons a week to glean ideas… not be taught, they love free downloads and hunt them, and they are always trying to take something someone else did and tweak it for their own use. They may not have many of their own ideas in play, but they’ll also be the first people to label their ministry as “very creative.“
    4. Processors: These youth workers believe that their teaching will be better when they work through the content as a team. So they draft concepts and have a team of friends/volunteers look at it. By the time a lesson is taught, it has gone through 4-5 levels of revision. These people love their process.

    Here’s the kicker. I don’t think any of them are necessarily better or worse than the others. I think they all have a place. And I think each category can lead you to be a better-than-average communicator of biblical truth to adolescents.

    Ultimately, it doesn’t really matter that much which process you use. It matters far more that the message/teaching/lesson is delivered in a way it is absorbed than it is how the message/teaching/lesson was produced.

  • Savior: The Adult Desire to Save Teenagers From Themselves

    Photo by fengschwing via Flickr (Creative Commons)

    Am I the only one who notices that adults seem to obsessed about teenage lives? More to the point, we seem obsessed with pointing out how we need to intervene before they destroy themselves and the human race.

    Our culture takes a very negative view of people between the ages of 13-18. If you work with them, you are used to folks turning up their noses when you tell them you love working with that age group.

    Here are some recent headlines to illustrate the point:

    School: Little as they try, students can’t get a D here [New York Times] more articles…

    Sleep: Lack of sleep linked to obesity for teen boys [Time Magazine] more articles…

    Sex: Teenage girls rely on the rhythm method [What is the trend] more articles…

    Crime: States rethink “adult time for adult crime” [CNN] more articles…

    Forgive me if the links provided aren’t damning evidence. You are welcome to browse my entire body of hundreds of news articles on adolescence to get a better flavor. What I am talking about is not a hot pile of evidence. It is a slow burn of negative views on adolescents as well as adult desires to fix teenagers.

    Another angle that demonstrates this is our wonderment over a teenager who does something good. Sail around the world? Shocking! Raise money for a worthy cause? News at 11! Start a successful business? Give her an award!

    It seems that those news stories are of interest, in part, because we expect teenagers to only do negative/self-destructive things and when they do something amazing it must be newsworthy.

    Three observations I want to point out on this topic

    1. Jesus is their savior, you aren’t.
    2. Have you ever wondered why sports are so popular with adolescents? Maybe it’s the easiest place for them to achieve and/or exceed expectations.
    3. Teenagers have about the same grades, sleep about the same, have the same amount of sex, and commit the same amount of crimes that they always have. Our obsessing over it only reveals something twisted in our lives and not theirs.

  • 4 Prayers for Walt Mueller

    Walt Mueller

    I’ve got great respect for Walt Mueller. If you are in youth ministry, there is a good chance that you’ve bumped into Walt and his ministry, The Center for Parent/Youth Understanding, many times.

    Last fall, Walt and his wife Lisa, were great friends to the YS staff as we went through a rough period. Going through a convention season without Tic, the sudden dismissal of Marko, and the unknown of the companies [and our jobs] future… Walt and Lisa’s presence in the quiet areas of the convention meant a ton.

    Their comforting words of encouragement spoke volumes of care and cut through the awkwardness I was feeling.

    Last week, Walt was in a nasty bike accident. Here’s the story from the CPYU website:

    CPYU’s founder and President, Walt Mueller was in a serious bike accident on Friday, July 30th. Please pray for him and his family. He suffered 8 broken ribs, a punctured lung, as well as a fractured collarbone and many bumps, bruises and abrasions. His injuries are not considered life-threatening, but he remains in the hospital and he is experiencing substantial pain. Walt and his family would really appreciate all of your prayers.

    I’d like to offer 4 prayers for Walt to our Heavenly Father. Perhaps you would join me in these prayers?

    1. Healing of his body. Walt spent nearly a week in the hospital in considerable pain. Pray for his body to be completely healed of all the broken bones, tissue damage, as well as all the other injuries. Pray that his pain quickly becomes manageable and that he can physically get back to the things he loves soon.
    2. Healing of his mind. No doubt a trauma like this comes with many emotions to work through. During this time of recovery please pray that he’s able to process this experience, seeking Christ through it. (1 Corinthian 8:6 seems to capture this well)
    3. Pray for his family. No doubt, an accident like this causes stress on Lisa and the rest of the family. Please pray for them as they rearrange their lives to help Walt.
    4. Pray for CPYU. Having the boss away for a couple months is a big deal. Pray that the team would be able to continue strongly through this period. May this be a time when emerging leaders flourish.