About a year ago many of you shared your ideas for naming a new international youth ministry by my friend Bill Scott (founder of the former radio ministry, Zjam). His new ministry, Xtreme Youth Alliance, is taking off all over the country, both on the radio and online.

Xtreme Bible Study Facebook App
Earlier this week I finished building a Facebook application for them that displays a new teen Bible study on Facebook profiles every day. It also shows up in the left sidebar in Facebook so every day when your kids login they can start with a fresh look at God’s Word. Check out the application and, if you like it, use the app’s Invite link to share it with your students.

Add the Xtreme Bible Study Facebook App

Xtreme Bible Study RSS Feed
Here’s the RSS feed that the Xtreme Bible Study app reads to get the new studies, in case you’d rather subscribe in your RSS reader: http://feeds.feedburner.com/xtremebiblestudy

Xtreme Bible Study Podcast
Also check out their daily 3-minute Xtreme Bible Study Podcast in iTunes. Teens can sync the Bible study with their iPods to listen to short daily Bible studies while riding the bus, working out in the gym, riding their bikes, etc.

Between Facebook and iPods, there’s seriously no way to make the Word of God more easily accessible to teens through mediums they actually use.

If you find these tools to be valuable. feel free to add the links to your youth group website, like I did.

Check out this page if you’d like me to build a Facebook application for your youth ministry.

Thanks to Gerrard Fess of Deep Thoughts by Gman for writing this guest post for Life In Student Ministry!

Top 10 things to know a month after being a post-youth pastor.
by Gerrard R. Fess

1. Your investment in teen’s lives wasn’t the number #1 influencer - seems their parents are still influencing them.

2. References from your former church are important! So don’t burn any bridges.

3. Don’t expect to be called on by your former church. After a few weeks they have moved on. It is a little harder for you though since you were there a few years.

4. Learn to spend lots and lots of time in prayer.

5. Remember how important you thought your Bible College and Seminary degree were? Turns out in applying for jobs outside of ministry - it is only worth the paper it is on.

6. Get some counseling. Counseling never hurt anyone. It is good to know where your heart is at. Your relationships with God, family and others are vital. It is best to know one’s self.

7. Network. Network with as many people as possible to get that position. So often it isn’t what you know as to who you know and their contacts. A big source of encouragement as well.

8. Friendships are important. Those volunteers that you invested your life into - let them now invest in you. Your past sponsors can be the best source of encouragement and help you with references, resume help, and just helping with the family.

9. Keep your attitude positive. If God called you to step out on the water, then He’ll help you walk on the water too. Right now I’m stepping - just don’t know about the walking.

10. Just because you are done this chapter of being a “formal” youth worker doesn’t mean youth ministry is totally behind you. God maybe changing your calling but past lessons and helping others goes a long ways. Just like Joseph Wrestled with an Angel. So we too can struggle with our own calling and where God would have us.

———————————————————–

Gerrard Fess recently resigned from his Youth & Family Minister position and is currently searching for where the Lord might be leading him in the mainstream marketplace.

Here’s how you can be featured as a guest blogger at Life In Student Ministry.

I sometimes post the youth ministry questions readers submit, with permission, of course. Figured I’d turn it into a regular series starting today. Please voice your answer in the comments below.

Wes Olsen of Seattle, WA, is currently leaving his Christian school junior high teaching position to enter full-time vocational youth ministry. As he and his family begin the transition, he asks:

What is the strain that being a youth pastor has had on your family?

Hey Wes! That’s a great question. The strain youth ministry has on my relationship with Dana is actually pretty minimal. I think there’s a couple reasons for this.

1. Before we met, we were both youth workers at different churches. I was working part-time at a church while attending seminary and she was the interim youth director at a church near Houston. When we started dating we both already had an idea about the demands of ministry, expectations, and pressure of working in a church environment. There wasn’t a whole lot of adjustment required for her except to shift from being the main Youth Director to being my main supporter.

2. We’re both P.K.’s (Preacher’s Kids), so we each grew up having a “behind the scenes” outlook on ministry. We married somewhat knowing what to expect and how Pastor marriages work.

3. We’re intentional about not letting it strain our marriage. I say “no” all the time, not because I don’t love people or want to serve them, but because I already spent 5 hours in the office and 3 hours out with kids that day. It’s time to go home and hang out with Dana. Rarely do I have meetings in the evenings. In fact, I have an evening meeting at church about once every 3 months or so and that’s it. I arrange my schedule so I’m either home with her or she’s out doing ministry with me.

4. She’s involved in the youth ministry with me, so she has a handle on what’s going on, personalities I work with, and has the same heart for the kids that I do. She understands what I’m talking about when I ask her opinion on various issues we’re facing. Since we do ministry together, it’s less of a strain and more of a mutual affection.

———————————————————————-

Have a youth ministry question you’d like me and other readers to answer? E-mail it to me! Please keep your question brief and to-the-point. Thanks!

Time Out (by Jerry Schmoyer)

Howard Hendricks says that everyone needs a Paul, a Barnabas and a Timothy in their life. A “Paul” is someone who is spiritually mature and experienced to give wisdom and guidance. A “Barnabas” is an encourager and a peer and to share common experiences with as we journey through life together. A “Timothy” is someone younger in the faith to invest into. We need all 3 in our lives. The hardest relationship to develop, by far, is the “Paul” mentoring relationship. Finding someone with the time, experience and heart to build into your life isn’t always easy. I always had trouble finding men to fill this role in my life when I was younger. Now I look for “Timothy’s” God sends my way so I can pass on some of what I have learned. It’s one of the most rewarding aspects of ministry.

We all need a Paul to hold us accountable, to ask the tough questions, to go through with us whatever are going through, to give encouragement and direction. The lone sheep gets picked off by the lion, so we need to connect closely those who have experience fighting the lion (I Peter 5:8). Busyness, pride, fear of disclosure, moving around a lot and other issues make it hard to find and keep a “Paul” relationship going in life, but it is well worth the trouble. It takes a bit of sacrifice and vulnerability. It requires time and honesty. But its essential for you to be all God created you to me as a person and servant. Remember, even Paul needed a “Paul” in his life.

Scripture
2 Timothy 1:3-6, “I thank God, whom I serve, as my forefathers did, with a clear conscience, as night and day I constantly remember you in my prayers. Recalling your tears, I long to see you, so that I may be filled with joy. I have been reminded of your sincere faith, which first lived in your grandmother Lois and in your mother Eunice and, I am persuaded, now lives in you also. For this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands. For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline.”

Exodus 18:13-14, “The next day Moses took his seat to serve as judge for the people, and they stood around him from morning till evening. When his father-in-law saw all that Moses was doing for the people, he said, ‘What is this you are doing for the people? Why do you alone sit as judge, while all these people stand around you from morning till evening?’”

Reflect

• Who is your “Timothy?” Who are you taking the time to really disciple in the faith?
• Who is your “Barnabas?” Who is your closest ministry friend (not spouse) with whom you can share your victories as well as your defeats?
• Who is your “Paul?” What mature believer have you developed a mentoring relationship with so you can regularly connect with them to glean from their wisdom and experience?
• If you lack any of these make that a regular prayer request.
• What can you do to deepen your “Paul” relationship and get the most out of it?

———————————————————————-

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!

Earlier this week I mentioned that I’m currently doing a series with my youth group called, How To Study The Bible. I can’t share my notes or PowerPoint because it’s heavily based on copyrighted material from my Bible college and seminary professors, but my dad wrote a similar series back in 1992. I’ve taken it and changed it into an 8-day devotional series. There are several ways to use this. I’ll probably hand out to my youth group to go through on their own time, but you could also use it for one-on-one discipleship (especially with a new believer), use it as small group curriculum, or even teach from it.

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. Feel free to modify it however you’d like for your non-commercial purposes as long as you freely share it with others and include attribution to me and my dad.

Day 1 - Introduction
Day 2 - Observation
Day 3 - Interpreting History
Day 4 - Application
Day 5 - Interpreting Teaching
Day 6 - Interpreting Poetry & Prophecy
Day 7 - Interpreting Parables
Day 8 - Interpreting Types

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.

We’ve all heard the dilemma about the missing 20-something-year-olds from our churches: students graduate high school, go on to college and don’t seem to connect to a local church until their 30s when they’re starting to have kids of their own. There’s a lot of theories flying around about why this is happening, but here’s one that makes some sense to me:

In the ’70s and ’80s youth workers started telling their church’s leadership, “Hey, we need to get these kids involved in the church, but we have to change church a little in order for them to connect because right now it’s just for adults.” The church leaders considered this and promptly replied, “No, we’ve been doing church a lot longer than you have and we know how it works best.” So, in an attempt to keep the kids in church, youth leaders started having their own little Bible studies instead of sending kids to hear the sermon.

A bit later we said, “Hey, here are some kids who can play instruments and lead worship in church, but it’s not the piano or organ.” Again the leaders said, “No, we like our music exactly the way it is. We’re not going to change it.” So again, youth leaders responded by forming their own worship bands and eventually started having their own worship services, essentially creating a mini-church within the larger church, both of which were grossly disconnected from each other.

Throughout this time teenagers continued to develop relationships with only their youth group peers and adult leaders, and by the time graduation came around they knew no one in the “big church” and had little to no attraction to it because they had spent all their time in the mini youth church.

Fast forward to the end of a student’s first year of college. He returns home, goes back to church, pops in on “youth church” because that’s where he is known and feels comfortable, but quickly realizes he doesn’t belong there anymore. However, he doesn’t feel connected to anything else in the church, so he drops out altogether.

I realize this is a gross over-simplification, but the point is clear: Youth ministry must abandon this “mini youth church” approach and purposefully integrate teenagers into the life of the body as a whole. No more “Youth Sundays” — youth are to be involved every Sunday. No more having youth service during the main church service. No more church leaders who are too stubborn and too comfortable to accept change. No more delegating responsibility and leadership roles only to adults. No more adding 20-something programs that do nothing more than continue to segregate the body.

It won’t solve all our problems, but our fundamental approach to giving students ownership must change nevertheless. Otherwise, we die and pass on a church system that is incredibly broken, disconnected and outdated.

NOTE: This is not an actual letter I ever plan to send to my youth group parents, nor do I currently experience all of these problems in my youth ministry in the first place. It is a fictitious letter based on common issues many youth workers would love to address but often don’t have the guts nor freedom to express.

Dear parent,

It seems like more and more of your kids are coming to church without you. I know you see this as a pretty good deal for your student since you get some quiet time at home and most of the events we do are paid-for, but you should know that there is no greater influence in your child’s life than you. Whether they tell you or not, your kid actually wants you involved in their life, even here at church. Come visit us sometime with your student and see how your relationship can grow together!

And then there’s some of you who actually forbid your teenager from attending youth Bible studies. You should know that the church is one of the last places on earth where basic morality and values are still taught, since schools are now forbidden to do so. We teach your teenager to obey you and respect you because that’s what the Lord expects from them. We also help your teenager address matters like relationships, making good choices, and setting priorities. With all the negativity and lies the media is using to bombard teenagers, we remain a light to help steer your student toward a growing relationship with the Lord.

Parents, please guide your child to be faithful in church attendance. Teenagers aren’t allowed to choose whether or not they want to go to school. Neither should you assume that they are mature enough to decide for themselves about church. Please, do not enable them to form the idea that church involvement should be based on the level of entertainment it provides. Teach your student not develop a consumerism mindset of, “What can the church do for me?” but instead approach church with the biblical mindset of, “How can I serve the body?”

What I don’t understand is how you’ll never ground your student from school, yet grounding him/her from church is acceptable, as if academic education is more important than spiritual training. You keep your student at home to watch TV, play on the Internet and listen to the radio when they actually need a good dose of spiritual encouragement. Maybe you should ground them to church instead of away from it.

We love going on trips and pulling off events for your student, but please ensure that he/she honors their commitment. The church invests many resources into these activities and when your child drops out at the last minute, it wastes money that was sacrificially provided by others.

The most important thing you can do is communicate with your student’s youth leaders. If you’re struggling with your child in a specific way, we’d love to pray for you! If you’re trying to teach him/her something at home, we’d love to help reinforce that at church. What you have to share with us can be critically important to how we interact and teach the student at church. Plus, the youth leaders may see and hear things that you should know about, too. Team up with us!

Whether you’re supportive of the youth ministry or not, please do not gossip about it or spread your negativity unless you’re speaking directly to me about it. Especially do not share your “critical evaluation” of the ministry or about individuals in it when you’re at home. You’ll only raise your children to be cynical and negative toward the church. They will grow up viewing church with the perspectives you model, so please be a gracious in your speech and attitude.

I’m actually not against criticism at all. In fact, I embrace your loving and respectful feedback since you can often see important issues I may never notice. However, please come straight to me with your concerns. Going to anyone else first is what the Bible calls gossip. When you come to me with a problem, also come prepared to offer a solution and the willingness to be a part of resolving the issue.

Thank you for your support! I pray for you regularly and hope we can continue to partner together in seeing your students’ lives transformed into a reflection of Christ.

– Your Youth Pastor

Time Out (by Jerry Schmoyer)

Many youth workers seem to have a love-hate relationship with their senior pastor. While respecting and admiring him/her as their boss, you may not agree with everything he/she says and does. Sometimes hidden jealousy arises from within the senior pastor. Or, they hurt your feelings since the youth program may not be getting the focus it needs. Other times a senior pastor may criticizes you and thus harm your relationship. These situations can be fertile ground, a danger zone, a place of destruction that the enemy can use to ruin ministries and churches. If you allow negative feelings toward the senior pastor to fester, the rightly lit spark can set a volatile fuel on fire.

Consider the following scenario. Someone in the congregation comes to you with complaints and accusations against the senior pastor. This happens over time until finally this person approaches you, and tells you that you’d make a better pastor. Perhaps they start a movement to eradicate the pastor – and your name is attached as support, because you listened to the gossip. Maybe the movement wants to withdraw completely from the church, and appoint you as pastor of a new church where things will be done “right.”

These temptations can appeal to our ego in an impressive way. But seldom, if ever, does God work in this way. If there is a legitimate complaint against the pastor, steer the unhappy person, or group, to the proper board or committee. If it is your own complaint, take it to the proper channels only. Be sure to walk through this minefield very carefully. Get good advice from a mature believer outside of the church who is informed of and understands the situation. Do not speak to others and thereby gossip. Search your own heart for hidden hurts, revenges, jealousies, etc. Pray for wisdom and discernment. Do the right thing, the mature thing, not the easy thing, or the ego-motivated thing. Put yourself in the senior pastor’s position and apply the Golden Rule. Treat him as you would want to be treated, because chances are, one day you might be in his position!

Scripture
1 Timothy 5:19-21, “Do not entertain an accusation against an elder unless it is brought by two or three witnesses. Those who sin are to be rebuked publicly, so that the others may take warning. I charge you, in the sight of God and Christ Jesus and the elect angels, to keep these instructions without partiality, and to do nothing out of favoritism.”

1 Chronicles 16:22, “Do not touch my anointed ones; do my prophets no harm.”

Psalms 105:15, “Do not touch my anointed ones; do my prophets no harm.”

Matthew 7:1-3, “Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?”

Reflect

• Do you harbor any hidden jealousy or secret resentment against the senior pastor or anyone in church leadership?
• Are there any hurts you have not forgiven? Forgive them now!
• Are you in any way responsible for passing judgment on anyone in church leadership? Confess it as sin to God. If the leader is aware, apologize personally.
• Ask God to protect you from wrong feelings toward anyone in authority over you.

———————————————————————-

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!

There’s been a lot of hype over this movie, especially among conservatives who felt like they would finally have a voice on the big screen. Normally I’m not a huge fan of ban-wagon stuff, whether it’s Narnia or even Passion of the Christ, but at the St. Louis National Youth Workers Convention last year my wife won a free screening of the movie for our church and community. Since our church didn’t feel comfortable blindly slapping its stamp of approval on the film (and rightly so), Dana and I drove two hours tonight to see Expelled at the closest movie theater playing it.

The first half of the film was dreadfully boring. Walking into the theater I already knew that Ben Stein’s quest was to expose the “behind the scenes” censorship of Intelligent Design in the academic world, but in the beginning I seriously had a difficult time trying to figure out what his point was and where he was going with it. The arguments were less than compelling, Ben Stein was not funny, and the constant little TV clips from the ’40s started to get on my nerves. If I had been watching it on DVD at home, I probably would’ve turned it off and found something more interesting to do.

It wasn’t until half-way through the film when Ben Stein started making the connection between Darwinism and German Nazis that I started paying attention to the film, mostly because some emotion was finally pricked as Ben Stein, a Jew, toured the concentration camps. From that point on the movie seemed to flow with a sense of direction and interviews that were actually intriguing. Richard Dawkins’ perspective was fascinating as he clearly tied religion and worldview to the position one takes on science, specifically human origin. Religion and science cannot be two different categories.

Dana and I decided that for the price of free, it’s worth bringing to our community for a screening since it’s not playing anywhere close. We’ll target mostly high school and college students in our community while intentionally keeping our church’s name off the event.

For your purposes in youth ministry, don’t expect the movie to convert all your students to Intelligent Design, nor to even turn them off to evolution as a science. It may help spark some discussion in your group, though, so be prepared to respond accordingly.

Grahame Knox, a veteran youth worker in the U.K., sent me a copy of his Prayer Discussion Starters to check out and share with you guys. It’s actually quite good (as all of Graham’s material is), but you should check out his site to get it. He often releases great youth ministry tools and resources like this as free downloads, so I recommend subscribing to his blog if you want to have it all delivered automatically.

Visit Graham’s site to download the prayer discussion starters:

Talking to God: three youth group discussion starters on prayer

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.