Time Out (by Jerry Schmoyer)

Maybe you’ve heard someone refer to a “God moment.” This usually is a special time when it is clear that God has intervened and shown Himself in an exceptional way. It is important to notice and appreciate these unique moments and interventions of our Heavenly Father. We must enjoy them and thank Him for a clear answer to prayer, a sudden revelation of His will, a perfect circumstance that is no chance happening, a provision for a need, or a deep feeling of love and worship. These moments are important to recognize. They can become special teaching moments when we use them to minister to others. They can increase faith and intensify worship. Too bad there aren’t more of these God moments in our lives.

But wait a minute! Who are we to limit “God moments” to only those special events we notice and appreciate? Aren’t all events and occurrences part of God’s plan and purpose? How many God’s activities bypass our recognition because they do not seem special or unique enough for us to recognize them as coming from God? After all, God is good all the time and in every way. In happy moments we must praise God. In difficult moments we must praise Him. In quiet moments, worship Him. In painful moments, trust Him. At every moment we are to thank God. So appreciate the “God moments” as the “icing on the cake” special love notes from God, but do not limit God’s involvement in our lives to these. Realize that every activity and every event in our life is, in fact, a God moment.

Scripture
Romans 8:28, “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.”

Romans 5:2-5, “And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.”

Reflect

• Think of some of the recent, clear God moments in your life. Why did God provide them for you? What should your response be?
• How can you use these God moments to teach and encourage others?
• Where has God been working in your life that you may have forgotten to give Him the credit?
• What difficulties are you experiencing that God has willed for a purpose?

Make a very conscious effort all day to notice how and when God works in your life — in obvious and subtle ways. Carry a paper and pencil to write them down so you can read over them at the end of the day. This will help keep your eyes on Him rather than of the world around you.

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Jerry Schmoyer has been a minister in Pennsylvania for over 25 years and has worked with teenagers for 14 years, ever since I became one myself. He authors the weekly Time Out series here at Life in Student Ministry in hopes to spiritually refresh your soul as you continually pour so much of yourself into students. God bless!

Dennis Poulette, a youth ministry seminary prof in Mexico, is offering a free PowerPoint trivia game about Peeps. Kinda interesting. If any of your kids actually know all the answers to this game, you probably have reason to be concerned about what they actually do all day.

Download the PowerPoint game directly from Dennis’ site here: Free Easter PowerPoint Game

Be sure to comment on his site and thank him for freely offering his game!

CONTRIBUTE TO FREEBIE FRIDAY: If you’ve benefited from others who have freely shared their youth ministry resources online, consider giving back to the community by sharing your own materials here. Send me your donations for review and if I publish them in a Freebie Friday, you’ll receive full credit, a link, lots of gratitude and a warm feeling inside that comes from sharing with others.

Extending your youth ministry to families
One guy’s experience and recommendations for reaching families through the youth ministry.

The Walmart effect and the smaller church
Have you ever lost one of your students to the local mega church? David equates it partially to a spiritual battle. I think it’s because people view church with a consumerism mindset.

Youth Game: Underground Church and Subliminal Scavenger Hunt
An over-spiritualized version of sardines with a way-cool “brain washing” video twist.

Marketing Techniques for Ministry
Some good things to do, but maybe the motivation should be to reach more people for Christ, not to “increase visitors and numbers at church or youth group.”

The Essentials of Youth Ministry
Great advice! Identity and destiny, yes, just make sure that purpose flows out of them, not the other way around.

Looking for a youth pastor?
Steve Blanchard, friend of mine and author of YouthMinistryIdeas.net, is looking for a full-time youth ministry position. Wanna hire him?

Views on Managing Ministry
Five different perspectives on how to lead your ministry and the various consequences thereof.

Youth Ministry Links
A compilation of websites Joe uses to find youth ministry resources. There’s a couple good ones there that I didn’t even know about.

CNN Study: 1 in 4 teenage girls has an STD
Every other youth worker on the Internet is linking to this article as the latest “we’re failing miserably” craze. Figured I’d link, too, but not for that reason.

Part of what I really enjoy doing through Life in Student Ministry is encouraging and resourcing youth workers in ways that other organizations aren’t. I have no desire to repeat the ideas that are successful for others — I want to do things that are unique and help you guys in ways no one else is. That’s why I offer weekly devotionals specifically for youth workers and why I don’t offer a youth ministry forum.

For a while now I’ve had the idea of developing a one-on-one mentorship program for new youth workers. Then I heard from some of you rookies asking for it, so I knew there was a need. I searched and couldn’t find anyone already doing it, which seemed kinda odd to me. Why don’t the people who are mentoring youth have mentors themselves? With all the Web 2.0 stuff that’s being developed, this should be easier now than ever before, especially over great distances.

I’ve talked with some people I know and have decided to put together a mentorship program for youth workers and offer it online. There’s a potential that some of the mentors who come on board will be youth ministry college and seminary professors along with some other life-long youth workers from a variety of backgrounds. I’m very excited about all the experience that will be on the mentorship team!

Right now I’m in the process of developing the program, which is very difficult since every mentoree will come with different needs, different values and different gifts in ministry. The trick is to make it flexible for each individual, yet still take each individual from goal A to goal B by whatever path is appropriate.

As I work on all this, I need two things from you all:

1. Leave your thoughts and ideas about a mentorship program for youth workers in the comments below. What would you like to see in this program? What outcomes would you expect from it? What specific issues should be addressed?
2. If you have been in youth ministry for two years or less, I’m looking for two people who would like to go through the mentorship program as “guinea pigs” to be mentored by me personally.

1. Youth pastors don’t work all day.
Yeah, you got me. I just sit in my office playing Xbox, checking Facebook and chucking paper airplanes around the room. lol Whatever. Forget preparing Bible lessons, interviewing and screening new volunteers, planning events, further education and training, dreaming the vision, connecting with kids after school, preparing reports, church meetings and all the miscellaneous stuff.

2. Youth pastors are supposed to fix kids for parents.
Shoot, I missed that in my job description. Dear parent, lemme check your job description in scripture… Yup, that’s your responsibility. Now, how can I help you?

3. Youth ministry isn’t a real career.
It’s good for those who still aren’t sure what they really want to do when they grow up, which is why I don’t ever plan to “grow up” to what the world expects. Sure, it doesn’t pay the salary that a normal job would, but a short 50 year career on earth is nothing compared to an eternity of treasures in heaven.

4. A strong healthy ministry WILL produce numbers!
Healthy ministry never guarantees spiritual growth let alone numerical growth. Spiritual growth is solely a work of the Holy Spirit in a person’s life. Numerical growth happens in both unhealthy ministries and healthy ones a like. I know many healthy ministries that aren’t growing numerically. Why? I guess because God’s plan for them right now is be diligent in focusing on the few students who are already there. Numerical growth can be an indication of health, but never a decisive one.

5. Students have no desire for God’s Word!
“Studies show that, out of the 66 books of the Bible, teenagers can only say something about the contents of Genesis, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John and Revelation. They have no desire for God’s Word!” I agree that Biblical literacy is an issue, but you’re making a pretty bold assumption to equate illiteracy to no desire for the Word. Biblical literacy and desire for the Word are two different things. Can not a new believer have a desire for the Word and still be Biblically illiterate? Can not a teenager have a desire to apply Biblical principles to his/her life without knowing the synopsis of every book of the Bible? The opposite is also true. A person can be thoroughly familiar with every book in the Bible and have not desire for growth or personal application. (Hint: Pharisees.)

Got any others to add?

Time Out (by Jerry Schmoyer)

As pastors, we enter ministry to serve God and change the world for Him, but somewhere along the way we find that our ministry has become a job that only brings in a weekly paycheck. We started the journey with specific dreams and goals we wanted to accomplish before we picked up expectations from the senior pastor, parents, and others in the church. Then we go to a conference or read an article and find out more worthy goals that we should accomplish. Before long, we’re trying to meet all the expectations and, in so doing, find that we don’t meet any of them. How can we know which goals to pursue and which ones to drop? Perhaps all are worthy, but not all can be accomplished. So what should we do? Should we pick the easiest, the most flashy, the ones that make us look best? Or should we choose the hardest, the most challenging?

Clearly, there is no right or wrong answer. We can only focus on one thing: God’s vision for our ministry. He has a plan and a purpose for us and our service for Him. He has a path for us to follow, an image to be created. He wants all of us to become like Jesus. That is His goal for every believer, but how that goal translates for each of us will be different, as is the path He leads us on. What is God’s plan for your ministry, your marriage, your students? What are His dreams and plans for you and those you serve? Often, we purchase a program or curriculum because it looks attractive to us when we should first know God’s vision for those we minister. We must first be able to see the complete picture. Only then can we start seeking a program or curriculum to paint that picture.

Scripture
Proverbs 29:18, “Where there is no vision, the people perish.”

Matthew 16:18, “I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.”

Philippians 3:10-14, “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”

Reflect
Spend some time in prayer asking God to share His vision for your life and ministry. Get away for a few hours or a whole day — whatever it takes for you to feel you understand what He wants to accomplish through you. Then, and only then, can you start to look at programs or curriculum to accomplish this vision.

• What does God want to see in the lives of the people you serve ten years from now?
• What should you be doing, today and tomorrow, to move in that direction?
• Write down a description of what you believe God’s vision is your ministry. Re-read it and pray about it every day for the next week.

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Jerry Schmoyer has been a minister in Pennsylvania for over 25 years and has worked with teenagers for 14 years, ever since I became one myself. He authors the weekly Time Out series here at Life in Student Ministry in hopes to spiritually refresh your soul as you continually pour so much of yourself into students. God bless!

Student Life Bible Study and Grahame Knox are both offering complete “Easter youth meeting in a box” packages with lessons, games and ideas for this Easter season.

Student Life Bible Study
Although the the curriculum these guys create is usually not free, right now they’re offering a free Bible lesson about the resurrection called, How Can I Believe That?, using their website’s pretty slick interface. It’s got a lot of creative ideas for teaching kids about the importance of Easter. Go to FreeEasterLesson.com and sign up under Student Life Bible Study to access the lesson. (Note: You’ll have to surrender some personal contact information first.)

Easter Eggstravaganza
Grahame Knox, a youth worker in the UK for over 27 years, is offering a themed meeting of icebreakers, activities, quiz and a talk, all for free. It’s called Easter Eggstravaganza and you can download all 10 pages of his Easter ideas from his site here. Thanks, Grahame!

CONTRIBUTE TO FREEBIE FRIDAY: If you’ve benefited from others who have freely shared their youth ministry resources online, consider giving back to the community by sharing your own materials here. Send me your donations for review and if I publish them in a Freebie Friday, you’ll receive full credit, a link, lots of gratitude and a warm feeling inside that comes from sharing with others.

Over the past couple months I got used to leaving my church office every afternoon to head up to the high school and help coach the wrestling team. I loved it because it got me on campus every day, put me in regular contact with a lot of unchurched students, and gave me good visibility to some of my own youth group kids. It was such a great way to build relationships and meet kids on their turf every day, which is what I love doing more than anything else in youth ministry. But now that wrestling season is over, I find I’m starting to fall back into the old rut of gluing myself to office work all day and neglecting the personal interaction with students outside of church. With a youth group of a couple hundred kids, 60-some adult leaders, 18 small groups, events, programs, writing curriculum, meetings, etc., it’s way too easy to become overwhelmed with work and sit behind my desk doing important and necessary stuff. I just need to force myself to leave the office every day when school lets out and understand that work will always be here, but these students won’t be. They’ll be gone in a couple years, so if I have to push something “important” to a back burner and no one else steps up to take ownership of it, it won’t get done. And that’s just the way it is.

Now to call a couple kids and see who wants to go out to eat after school tomorrow…

Another great question showed up in my Inbox last week. The author wishes to remain anonymous, but would love to have your feedback.

I am in my first year of Youth Ministry…. My biggest headache has been that all of my volunteers including my wife are super busy and they don’t have much time to really invest in these kids. We don’t have a huge youth group (20 or so) but I can’t invest in them all or I’ll just be another statistic. Some have said, “If your volunteers don’t have time then they shouldn’t be youth leaders.” But if I do that then I won’t have anybody. I have kids that are excited about the Lord and ready to go, but my people don’t have the time to do that well. I can do it with some but not all. Do you have some thoughts?

You have a couple options:

1. You can try to do it all yourself and burn out faster than belly button lint in a forest fire.
2. You can continue trying to suck more time out of your volunteers.
3. You can invest into a couple kids on your own knowing that it’s better to impact a few than none at all.

Your message indicates that you’re wise enough not to do #1 and you’ve already figured out that #2 doesn’t work, so it sounds like #3 is the best option you have left. If you don’t have enough leaders to be able to invest into every student individually, then you’ll have to start with a couple yourself and pour your life into them. Don’t worry about the critics who accuse you of playing favorites. Read about that here.

As you set the example and invest into a couple students on your own, here are some suggestions that might help the other adults come on board with their priorities and commitments:

1. Share stories with the other leaders about your time with the students.
Tell them about the life-change you see taking place, show them how excited you are, talk about the ways God has rewarded you and stretched you through it. In essence, make them feel like they’re missing out on a HUGE opportunity — because they are. The opportunity to change lives for Christ.

2. Hold the standard high for your volunteers.
Nothing communicates to a student “you’re not that important to me” more than showing them that “I don’t have time for you.” For the sake of your kids, don’t let adults do that to them if you have the authority to prevent it. For adults who commit to the higher standard, hold them to it. It’s better to have one or two committed adults than 10 half-committed ones.

3. Pray for God to raise adult leaders in your community.
And don’t just pray with the same passion most people equate with standing in line at the DMV. Beg God for leaders, plead with Him. Present your case in prayer and desperately ask God to supply role models to partner with you. But in the meantime, be willing to accept His answer of, “Right now I just want to use you in this community of students even though you’re outnumbered like Gideon.”

4. Lovingly challenge their priorities.
Only you know if you have a relationship with the adults that will permit you to do that, and even if you do, make sure you talk with your Sr. Pastor or supervisor first. Seek their advice on how to best approach this.

Last December I posted about how to get an iPhone or $580 cash for free. Well, I did it and got my $580! Click the thumbnail to the right to see a full-size image of the PayPal transaction.

Here’s the timeline:

1. December 14, 2007: I signed up at a freebie site under someone else’s referral link and signed up for a trial month of GameFly.com.
2. December 17, 2007: My account is credited for doing the GameFly.com trial.
3. December 18, 2007: I posted on my blog that I got my free iPod Touch and also posted my referral link for the free iPhone or $580.
4. February 17, 2008: I had the 11 referrals I needed for $580 cash, so I submitted my account for approval.
5. February 22, 2008: My account was approved and I placed the order for the $580.
6. February 23, 2008: I wake up the very next morning to an email notification that the $580 was delivered to my PayPal account!

I got another FREE iPod Touch, too!
During this time I also completed another freebie site on the side and got the 32 GB iPod Touch. I already got the 16 GB iPod Touch for free from a different freebie site, but now that I have the 32 GB one, I’m probably going to sell the 16 GB iPod on eBay.

If you want to earn a free iPhone or iPod Touch, sign up here for the iPhone or sign up here for the iPod Touch, complete a 1 or 2 trial offers to reach 100% and then refer some people to do the same under your link.

Get a PlayStation 3 or a Wii!

Next I’m going to cash out on the PlayStation 3 and Wii sites. Obviously I have first-hand evidence that this is real and legit, not a rip-off scam or some pain-in-the-neck process. Here’s how you can get a FREE PlayStation 3 or Wii (or cash):

1. For the PS3, click this link: http://www.bonusps3.com/?referral=10265
2. For the Wii, click this link: http://www.bonuswii.com/?referral=10265
3. Complete 1 or 2 trial offers to reach 100% completion and then refer other people to do the same under your referral link. (PS3 requires 8 referrals, the Wii requires 6.)
4. Receive your FREE PlayStation 3 or Wii!

It honestly isn’t any more difficult than that. If you have any questions about the process, I’ve done it many times, so feel free to ask in the comments below.

One important tip
Make sure your browser is set to accept all cookies while you go through the sign-up process both at the freebie site and when you complete offers. If you click an offer and don’t sign up for it on that visit, make sure you clear your cookies before going back to it again. Otherwise the tracking cookie might not register that you signed up for their service from the freebie site and you’ll have to request a manual credit, which can take several weeks.

My experience with offers I’ve completed so far

• Stamps.com — This offer was painless and easy. I signed up for a free trial month of their service at a time when I was selling a lot of stuff on eBay. They gave me $5.00 of free postage just to try it out, but I liked it so much I voluntarily bought a lot more postage for my eBay items. To get credit for trying this offer, just sign up for the trial, download the free software (Windows only) and purchase some postage with the free $5.00 they give you.
• Photostamps.com — Another painless and easy one that credited my freebie site instantly. All I had to do was order a sheet of stamps for $24.98 using a photo. Since my wife was getting ready to send Christmas cards at the time, I order a sheet of stamps using a picture of the two of us together for the cards. It was also nice because there was no trial involved that I had to remember to cancel later if I didn’t like the service.
• GameFly.com — Since my free Xbox 360 Elite, Xbox Live subscription and Halo 3 arrived, I wanted more games to play on it. GameFly.com took a couple business days to credit my freebie account (as it said it would) and for $9.95 I enjoyed a month of unlimited video game rentals.
• Blockbuster.com — This was a fun one. For $10.68 I got a month of unlimited movie rentals through their website, keeping up to 3 movies at a time and 4 in-store movie exchanges. Again, this offer took a couple days to credit my freebie account, but that was on-time for this offer.
• Google SEO Supervisor — Figured I’d check this one out since a lot of my blog traffic comes from Google and I depend on the Google Ads here to cover the site’s expenses. It cost me $4.95 to get two trial weeks of access to their site’s members area to learn how to optimize everything for Google and Adsense.
• Emusic — At first I signed up for the cheapest plan at $9.99 for 30 downloads per month since I didn’t expect to find much music there that would be of interest to me, but actually I quickly found many recent albums from bands I listened to in my teen years that are no longer on the radio. My 30 downloads went fast and there was still a lot more I wanted, so I upgraded to the $14.99 plan for 50 downloads. NOTE: When I first signed up, I could not log into emusic’s site nor did I receive a confirmation email, but by the next morning the email arrived and everything was good to go. I also did not receive credit for this offer, so today I submitted a “manual credit request” with a copy of my confirmation email. I should receive credit within 10 business days.
• FreeCreditReport.com, Free Online Credit Report — Each of these worked the same way. For $1.00 I set up an account to check my credit report with the three big crediting agencies and monitor my credit for a trial period. I didn’t end up keeping any of the services, however.
• Bargain Homes — I never got credit for completing this $1.00 trial period offer. I reported it to the freebie site, sent them the email confirmation Bargain Homes sent me for signing up and the guys at the freebie site were gracious enough to instead give me double credit for different offer I completed there.
• RealtyTrac, Simply You, RealtyStore — All these sites work pretty much the same way. I paid $1.00 each for a trial period to access a members only section of their website, whether that be for personal care products or special real estate deals in my area (mostly foreclosures). My wife and I were looking to buy a house at that time, so I decided to give them a try. Didn’t find anything that compelled me to spend more than the $1.00 or keep the services past the trial period, though.

Freebies I’ve earned

• FREE Xbox 360 Elite, 12-month subscription to Xbox Live and Halo 3
• FREE 12-month subscription to Xbox Live
• FREE Halo 3 video game
• FREE 16GB iPod Touch
• FREE $580 cash in place of an iPhone (see above)
• FREE 32GB iPod Touch (see above)

How to earn referrals for your freebie site
Most people would love to earn some of these free prizes, but there’s three common excuses:

1. It’s a scam!
2. I’ll get hit with a ton of spam mail.
3. Completing offers costs more than the prize itself!
4. I don’t think I can get others to complete referrals for me.

For #1, check out the links above. I’ve done it several times and received several prizes, so I know it’s not a scam. Concerning #2, I have not received one single shred of spam as a result of completing these trial offers or freebie sites, not via email nor postal mail. These companies actually have pretty aggressive privacy statements. Number 3 also is not true. Read above about the offers I’ve tried. The most I ever paid for an offer was $24.98 for a sheet of photo stamps. Most offers cost between absolutely nothing and $15. And about #4, check out this post I wrote that gives 10 ideas for how to earn referrals for your freebie site. They work for me, anyway!