Category: youth ministry

  • Lunch at Rodeo’s Meat Market

    If you are ever near the YS offices in El Cajon. Drop by and we’ll grab a street taco at Rodeos.

  • Go and Do Discipleship Model


    [video link]

    My view of discipleship has radically changed in the last two years. I’m increasingly convinced that my role as a shepherd to high schoolers is about putting them in moments of spiritual crisis so that they recognize that they need to learn more from God’s Word.

    This is in stark contrast to my previous model. Before I spent way too much time preparing them to do ministry and giving them information that just didn’t seem relevant to their walk with Jesus yet. The more I turn that upside down, putting them in situations where they know they need to learn more, the faster they grow up. When you couple that with my desire to see students take greater responsibility for themselves earlier in life… you start to see a new view of what we used to call a “description of a discipled person.”

    As more time goes on I see my role in disciple-making less as a manager of a program and more as a curator of the spiritual life. (see Richard Dunn’s pacing concept in Shaping the Spiritual Life of Students for that concept.)

    Here are the three links mentioned in the video:

  • Dedication and Leadership by Douglas Hyde
  • Teens 2.0 by Dr. Robert Epstein
  • Inward, Outward, and Beyond’s “New Heights Project“

    • I’d love your feedback and thoughts as I work this out in my life and ministry.

  • Jesus Calls the Ordinary to Do the Extraordinary

    Tonight I have the fun opportunity to talk to a group of interns from our churches New Heights Project.

    Basically, we hire high school students from our community to a month-long leadership development internship in which they go through a couple weeks of preparation and a couple weeks of doing children’s outreach. It’s a bit funky, which is what I like about it, but one aspect I love is that we don’t just hire students from our youth group. Ultimately, the group is made up of both Christian and non-Christian students alike who spend weeks learning and telling other kids about the Gospel. And in the process we hope that they have ample opportunity to explore a relationship with Jesus and perhaps trust Christ with their lives.

    Yes, we really do have students who don’t even profess Christ asking other people to profess Christ! Hey, if God can talk through a donkey… [See Hyde’s Dedication and Leadership for more on this principle.]

    At any rate, here’s the notes for my talk. Feel free to use this as a jumping off point on your own talk from Matthew 16. (Um, please let me know if you plan on publishing these somehow. Didn’t think I needed to say that… but then I find my words in weird places!)

    If you don’t know me in person, this is kind of a home base talk for me. It communicates a lot of my story and my vision for what God is calling each of us to do.

    Download File[download id=”7″]

  • What is NYWC all about?

    I have the coolest job in youth ministry. I get to do what I love, connecting with youth workers around the world and I get paid for it!

    At the core of it this video demonstrates the 2 things I love most about working at YS.

    1. Tic lays out the heart of why we do the National Youth Workers Convention. This is really the heart of YS. We do all of this to minister to youth workers… that’s why it is worth it to us.
    2. I get to work with amazing people. Setting aside the amazing people I get to connect with outside of YS as part of my job, I have gotten to work day-by-day with some amazing heroes of youth ministry. These folks continue to be a daily inspiration to me.

    When we were shooting this video (ht to Ian) I just kept thinking about those two things.

    Dang, I am fortunate.

    And dang, I want to be a part of carrying on this legacy.

  • Ah, Subjectivity

    “Subjectivity” has been the word of my week.

    On Tuesday, I released a list of the top 20 youth ministry blogs.

    Just like people argue incessantly about sports polls– there has been a lot of discussion about the release of my poll. Thank goodness no one gives these folks time on ESPN. I’d go nuts!

    I knew it would create discussion, debate, and maybe even some sour grapes. I even warned the call center at work that they may get some calls complaining. (Which never happened) But I felt strongly about making the poll public. Transparency, right?

    I knew/hoped/even prayed that by publishing the list it would make the entire genre better. At least that’s my working theory.

    Like it or not, the youth ministry blog genre has been fading for the past 1-2 years. Several of the bigger names (some of which are friends of mine)  have either stopped blogging, slowed significantly, or started to morph their blog from a blog to more of a resource/ad driver site. And I thought, subjectively, that if I drew some attention to the genre it just might wake up the once vibrant community.

    Of course the poll is subjective. It’s created by a human. 66% included a composite of publicly available stats, all of which are dependent on the individual blog being set up correctly and pinging those ranking sites. (More subjectivity) Additionally, the method included a 33% weighting specifically called “influence.” I took the top 50 blogs statistically and pushed out a survey asking 20 of the top 50 to rank each blog on a scale of 1-10 for who they thought had the most influence in youth ministry. (Can it get more subjective?) I even asked that group, “Who is missing from the top 50?”

    Only 2 new blogs were suggested, neither of great statistical influence.

    So there was a bit of subjectivity in every arena. Even in the 100 or so blogs who got indexed there was subjectivity since it was limited to my ability to find the blogs in the first place.

    This is the nature of any poll or rankings. There is criteria, but the creation of the criteria is subjective no matter what. My hope is, just like in sports, enough people will want to move up and the end result is that it makes the genre better.

    Competition isn’t always bad, is it? Doesn’t it, on some level, make people try harder to be better?

    Bottom line: I’m loving the discussion. And I love the fact that people are thinking about youth ministry blogs once again.

  • Is this a safe place?

    Photo by ekai via Flickr (Creative Commons)

    About 10 months ago a group of people sat on Chris’ back porch talking about starting a youth ministry for our church, Harbor Mid-City. As we chatted, dreamt, and prayed about this ministry one of the things that came out was… “We want it to be a safe place for students to explore a relationship with Jesus.”

    That phrase stuck. It actually became a part of our ministry description which we recite during every meeting. “IOB is a safe place for students to explore a relationship with Jesus.”

    That phrase got tested a bit last night.

    Stephen, our teaching/senior pastor, came to youth group last night to teach on and invite students to participate in baptism. His teaching was pretty simple… this is what baptism is, this is what it symbolizes, this is who should get baptized, this is how our church does it, we’d love it if you would consider getting baptized. He did a great job.

    I could tell during his teaching time that some students were uneasy about this whole thing. They didn’t feel safe. It wasn’t that Stephen was teaching anything bad or that they were intimidated in any way or even that he was manipulating them to make a decision they didn’t want to make– there was just something about the truths of Scripture that Stephen was saying that gave the room a funny, rare vibe.

    You could see it in their posture. You could see it in the way they looked at him. You could see it in the way they listened to his talk.

    To follow-up, we broke up into small groups and the leaders were asked to dig a little deeper with the students and ask if any of them would like to be baptized.

    Three responses from my circle that tested me in my response.

    • Is there any way I can get unbaptized? My parents baptized me as a baby and I don’t want to follow God.
    • I’m not ready to get baptized. I understand the Gospel and I get what Stephen was talking about, but I’m just not ready to put my faith in Jesus yet.
    • Why did my parents baptize me? If they made a covenant to God than they didn’t live up to it at all.

    Mince no words. These were questions that pushed me back to that discussion 10 months before. Was IOB really a safe place to explore Jesus? If so, how I responded either validated that statement or invalidated it.

    Open questions for readers:

    What would be answers to these responses which would communicate that IOB isn’t a safe place?

    What would be some “this is a safe place” answers to these questions?

  • Slow motion fun

    I think we’ve all had this moment. I love the relationship between the youth pastor, the students, and the senior pastor.

    If you had a day to play with a sweet slow motion camera, what would you shoot?

  • Good News for High School Students

    I’m always at odds with this reality:

    If Jesus offers good news, what is it about how we do youth ministry that is only attractive to 1% – 2% of the high school students on our campus?

    That always lead same  to a place where I say, “I don’t think we’re doing this right just yet.”

    • Good news spreads like wild fire.
    • Good news is unstoppable.
    • Good news releases energy.
    • Good news releases joy.
    • Good news is contagious.

    In 1994, as a high school senior our basketball won the Indiana state basketball championship. If you’ve seen the movie Hoosiers than you get a glimpse of how important this is to the state of Indiana. It’s a really big deal. Not only do the finals fill the RCA Dome, the same building which hosts the NCAA Final Four, it is a much bigger tournament as every high school in the state got a chance to enter the tournament. So as the final seconds ticked off the clock in overtime and our team was up 93-88… the student body of Clay High School collectively lost it. We poured onto the court. We screamed and danced. And then when we got kicked off of the court we ran around the inside of the stadium screaming, chanting, bouncing, skipping, and dancing! And then we got kicked out of the RCA Dome and we literally just ran through the streets of downtown Indianapolis screaming, chanting, bouncing, skipping, dancing, and stopping traffic to tell them, “We won!”

    That was good news worth celebrating. It unleashed unstoppable joy. It was universal on our campus. It was even universal in our city as everyone felt good about this good news!

    If youth ministry were good news to the high school students on our campus.. you’d see this same unstoppable release of joy. It’d be nearly universal. Even those who didn’t embrace it would be excited it. Good news is worth celebrating, dancing, and running through the streets for.

    I know it. You know it. 1% – 2% of people running through the halls… that’s just creepy!

    The only question is, are we will to think and dream of ways to be good news to our campus so they might desire to hear Good News?

  • Youth Ministry as Life Ministry

    Photo by bipolarbear via Flickr (creative commons)

    A few years ago I was talking to a senior pastor about youth ministry. In a moment of honesty he said something like this.

    “I don’t get it. Tell me why you want to work with high school students your whole life. You’re qualified to be a senior pastor. You have all the qualities people look for in a senior pastor. And your teaching style moves high school students to a type of faith that most churches would love. Plus, you could be the boss and you’d make a lot more money. What don’t I see?”

    The truth was that it took me by surprise because I’d never been asked that question. I’ve only been asked it’s annoying cousin, “When are you going to be a “real” pastor?”

    Here’s a summary of what I told him:

    • I love the process. In the 5-6 years that you have a student in your ministry you see them go from squirrelly middle schooler to mostly grown up.
    • I love that adolescents are moldable. The reason you can teach them radical truths and they will respond is pretty amazing. You just don’t see many adults looking for truth to move them.
    • I love the fun factor. When was the last time you’ve preached to adults and illustrated something by covering a kid in shaving cream or dunking for oreos in chocolate syrup. Like never. There’s a middle schooler in me that is highly amused by this kinesthetic goofy learning stuff. Adults just don’t go for it.
    • I love that it doesn’t end unless you want it to. Seriously, this is a beautiful time of year. I love the longitudinal factor of youth ministry. And I love the fact that you can chose to continue investing in some students while having a perfectly good excuse to move them out of your life. You can’t do that as a senior pastor, can you?

    How would you have answered this question?

  • Mexico + Fear = Stupid

    Hanging with Phil in Baja

    As I mentioned last week, I spent Friday in Mexico with Phil Cunningham of YWAM. We had a fun time meeting some people for coffee and talking about life, touring the YWAM Baja base, grabbing an amazing taco in Rosarito, and getting a glimpse of the vision they have for reaching Baja for Christ.

    I live about 30 minutes from the Tijuana border. And I’m ashamed to admit that the last time I crossed the border into Mexico was 2003. Kristen and the kids have never been. (In fairness, the five years that we lived in Romeo, a mere 45 minutes from Canada, we crossed the border three times.)

    The Tijuana/San Diego border sees an average of 300,000 people moving between countries daily. Considering San Diego has 1.2 million residents and Tijuana has 1.5 million… you’re talking a lot of people who cross one way or the other each day.

    Two Types of San Diego Residents

    There are really two types of San Diego residents when it comes to TJ. There are those who go often and those who never go. The average San Diego resident who doesn’t go has a visceral reaction when you mention going to Tijuana. Almost universally you’ll hear people say “Don’t go to TJ. It’s dangerous.” It’s a mantra I’ve had drilled into me since moving here and its had the intended result– I’d never gone to TJ since moving here!

    Likewise the news media on the U.S. side does its best to reinforce this concept that TJ is super dangerous. Drugs, human trafficking, gang violence, murders. While it’s true that those are serious issues the end result is that there is an increasing fear of our neighbors to the south building up.

    As if any city of 1.5 million in the United States didn’t have drugs, human trafficking, gang violence, or murders?

    Fear vs. Reality

    YWAM guest housing near Rosarito.

    Now that I’ve been there I can affirm that not much has changed in Tijuana since my last visit in 2003. If anything, crossing the border both ways is a little simpler. Just like any border crossing around the globe there are procedures. You pull up, show some ID, answer some questions, and hope you don’t get waved in to an inspection lane.

    If you’ve never been to a developing nation– or only been to a resort city in a developing nation– than Tijuana will come across as dirty and disorganized. In truth, TJ isn’t unlike many major metropolitans in the United States. There are nice areas and there are nasty areas. There are places where you are likely to get robbed and there are places you can relax. Being that Mexico is a developing nation and Tijuana is a fast-growing city it is no surprise that there are many parts of TJ which are slummy and could use some help. I’m not going to say that Tijuana is an awesome place to visit but I do want to point out that its a typical big city in a developing nation.

    But if you watch the news, particularly conservative news, all of the Mexican border areas are filled with people who want to brutally murder Americans on site. Burned in our consciousness are all the Dateline NBC shows, Geraldo standing at the border and saying beheading as many times between commercials as possible, and documentaries showing us how people are being brutally murdered. Let’s remind ourselves of a simple fact… if you aren’t in a gang or not buying drugs or not soliciting a prostitute, you are unlikely to get caught up in anything having to do with drugs, gangs, or prostitution.

    The news media, particularly the conservative news media, is well-aware that scaring people leads to good ratings. (Which translates to ad revenue) So it pays well to scare you away from Mexico. And it is working. Big time.

    Here’s a little fact for you to think about. Killing innocent Americans is bad business for a drug cartel. With a little street smarts and a good dose of common sense I don’t think there is any reason to avoid going to Mexico altogether. (Obviously, there are plenty of places to avoid after dark! But you’d avoid those same types of places in any city in America.)

    Mission trips to Mexico

    I think the thing that shocked me the most during my day in TJ was to learn how Christians have stopped coming to Mexico to do missions. Participation is down 50%-75% in recent years.

    And why? All of the agencies will tell you the same thing: People are afraid of traveling to Mexico.

    I saw this same phenomenon on my Facebook status the other day. Had I posted that I was going out for a taco with my friend Phil, no one would have thought much of it. But because I said I was going to TJ… lots of people were praying for my safety. Now, I appreciate the prayers. But this reveals the fear factor.

    What’s changing?

    I couldn’t help but go down there, see the ministry locations, and hear the news that people aren’t helping as much anymore without being touched.

    What’s changing first is my behavior. I know I can’t do a lot but I know that I can both raise awareness of ministry opportunities in TJ as well as make time to go and participate in small ways. Maybe that will mean finding a place to plug in as a family? Or a community group? Or inviting friends to go down to check out ministry stuff? I’m not sure on the exact details yet… but I do know that I can’t serve in Jerusalem and Judea without thinking about the Samaria next door.