Paul Turner of TheDiscipleProject.net recently finished another youth devotional called, “God, What’s Your Status?” It’s a 21-day journey through the Book of John for teenagers. It includes interactive widgets for comments and creativity.

He usually charges $7.00 for it, but he’s providing it free of charge to Life In Student Ministry readers. Download it below.

Download “God, What’s Your Status?”

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Join us at 2:00 PM EST this afternoon in our LIVE YM Talk. Brian Eberly joins us to talk about, “The importance of building a youth ministry team.” He’s been learning more and more about this in his own ministry and comes to share about it with us. See the LIVE YM Talk page for details on how to join the call and/or the live chat.

Time Out (by Jerry Schmoyer)

The story of Hosea and Gomer is one of the strangest love stories in literature. Imagine God telling a prophet, a committed servant of his, to marry a woman who was (or who would become) a prostitute! God gave him a deep love for a woman who would break his heart over and over. She didn’t share his commitment to God. She wasn’t faithful. She wasn’t a good mother. It doesn’t even seem like he was the father of the children she bore. She didn’t love Hosea back. She was bitter, angry and self-seeking. She only thought about herself. Even when the life she was living led to slavery and Hosea sought her out and paid good money to buy her back she didn’t seem to love him. But later on, love and appreciation would grow. Still, imagine how this was for Hosea, a prophet who spoke for God and tried to turn the people back to God. His own wife was among the worst. How it must have hurt him and burdened his heart. So why did God make such a demand on Hosea?

Hosea was living out his message. Day after day he preached about God’s unconditional love for His people. Even though the Jews were unfaithful to Him and committed spiritual adultery with false gods and pagan idols, He still loved them. They took advantage of Him, used Him, hurt Him and deserted Him. So what did He do? In love He pursued them and paid the price to buy them back and restore them to the place that was rightfully theirs. He did this because He loved them. He loved them. It was one thing for Hosea to speak the words but another to actually live them out right in front of the very people he was speaking to.

God wants us to tell others about Him and His love. But more than that, He wants us to show it by how we love them. Loving those we like is easy, but to love those we don’t like, those who hurt and take advantage of — that’s the kind of unconditional love the world needs to see because it reflects God’s love. We can only do that through His strength, but He calls us to do more than preach a message — He calls us to live it first of all. That means starting in our home, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, be a reflection of His unconditional, sacrificial love. Standing up and speaking God’s message is easy and rewarding, but living it? That can be tough. But that’s where it must start, in our daily lives. Does your life reflect the unconditional love of God which your words speak. It better, for words alone won’t do much good.

Scripture
1 John 4:7-12, “Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.”

1 John 4:16, “God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him.”

1 John 4:19-21, “We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. And he has given us this command: Whoever loves God must also love his brother.”

Reflect

• Are there any areas in your life where your walk is not matching your words? Confess it and ask God to help you be faithful in that area.
• God has a higher standard and greater expectations for those who commit their lives to serve Him. Are you willing to be more than a mouthpiece for Him, but to be an example as well, no matter what it will cost?
• Who are you having trouble showing unconditional love to now? Why? Ask God to give you His love for them and for you to see them as He sees them?
• What can you do today to show unconditional love to someone you’ve been having a hard time loving?

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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!

Today Shawn Shoup joined us for our LIVE YM Talk and talked with us about rest, setting boundaries, saying “no,” time management, priorities and burnout in youth ministry. Shawn and several others who joined the conversation shared a lot about their own experiences in ministry and just how difficult it can be to maintain healthy boundaries in ministry. It was a great discussion with questions, advice, and helpful comments from many people. Definitely worth listening to whether you feel like you struggle in this area or not.

Some of the things we talked about:

• What leads to burnout
• Advice for setting boundaries
• Why we feel that we should overwork
• The self-inflicted pressure of trying to perform
• And a lot more…

You can listen to the whole conversation below or grab it in iTunes.

Play this episode

Subscribe to LIVE YM Conversations in iTunes

Next week’s discussion

July 24: Next week Brian Eberly is our featured guest. He’ll share from his recent experiences about, “The importance of building a youth ministry team.”

Join our next LIVE Youth Ministry Conversation!

I think Brett Hetherington has contributed more to our Freebie Fridays over the past couple years than anyone else. The best part is, his stuff is always quality material. Besides serving as one of the Youth Ministry Mentors, he’s contributed eight other youth teaching series’ and resources here in the past, and today’s series is no different. Visit his site and let him know how much you appreciate his generosity in equipping your ministry with great resources time and time again!

Salt & Light Prayer Stations are an interactive walk through of Matthew 5.13-17, in which Jesus informs the disciples that they are the salt of the earth and the light of the world. It is such a familiar teaching and topic of Scripture that often we miss the details of the passage. What is saltiness? Why is it important to be a light? What would salt be like if it truly lost its saltiness? These stations are designed to offer answers to these and a host of other questions that you and your teenagers might have – or never realized that you had – about this passage. This can be used as it’s own event/lesson with a small debriefing time after the walk through or as a supplement to a larger teaching element.

Included in this download:

• PDF and WORD documents with the instructions, also includes a link to a video tour of the stations.
• PDF and WORD documents with all the necessary signs for these stations
• PDF and WORD documents with Matthew 5.13-17 in 7 different translations to hang around the room.

Download the Salt and Light Prayer Stations package

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Join us at 2:00 PM EST this afternoon in our LIVE YM Talk. Shawn Shoup joins us to talk about, “Rest, burn-out and time management in youth ministry.” He’ll share from both his experience and the wisdom of others in this area. See the LIVE YM Talk page for details on how to join the call and/or the live chat.

The following is an article I wrote for one of my denomination’s publications. I have permission to republish it here for you all.

A lot of different social media websites have popped up in the past couple years: YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, Twitter, Virb, LinkedIn, MetaCafe, DeviantArt, Friendster, Ping.fm, Orkut, Tumblr, and a whole lot more. As if that wasn’t enough, just as many communication services are being developed online, too, like Google’s soon-to-be-released Voice and Wave services. It’s almost impossible to keep up with it all!

So where can your ministry communicate online without hiring someone full-time to oversee all the possibilities? These communication methods can be highly effective and can greatly enhance your ministry in so many ways, but the options can definitely be a bit overwhelming. Here are some tips that might help you in determining what communication method is best for your church.

1. Determine who your primary audience is for the info you want to communicate.
Different audiences look for information in difference places. For example, people who are new to your neighborhood probably are not going to search Twitter or Facebook for your church’s information. They will typically go to Google and search for your town’s name and “churches,” hoping to find some helpful local church websites. Thus, the information on your church’s website should be geared primarily toward newcomers and first-time visitors, not necessarily to church members.

To communicate with people inside your church, though, it is important to first know how they communicate. Is it by Facebook? Email? Text messaging? Twitter? If you have a lot of church members who are active on Facebook, then creating a Facebook Page (not a Facebook group) may be a great direction for you to go. If only a few members are on Twitter, than do not worry about jumping on board there.

2. If you choose to use social media, put someone in charge of it who knows how to use it.
Whatever social media you use, never put someone in charge of it that’s mostly clueless about how it works. Every network has unwritten etiquette rules that should be followed in order to be respected. Don’t let that scare you from using it, just put someone in charge who is familiar with the territory. Or, enter it yourself as a personal user for a little while before pulling your church into it.

3. Understand that it may be necessary to train the congregation to use your new forms of communication.
If you continue to add new methods of communicating and never eliminate old ones, you’ll eventually become overwhelmed with distributing the same info in too many places. It is more effective to be focused in a few methods rather than spreading yourself out among many methods. That means when communication methods shift, you may have to do a lot of re-training so people know where to look. Even if you start putting church information on your Facebook page and active Facebook users become fans, that does not mean those fans will remember to go to the Page Updates and find information. You may have to train people regardless of how active they are on the social network you church uses.

Also be prepared for the vocal minority to share their opinion about the shifts in how your ministry communicates. There may be those who resist the change and will give many valid reasons why abandoning the older method is a bad idea, so you’ll have to determine ahead of time if the time and energy you put into the old method is worth continuing it for those who use it.

4. Always evaluate what works best.
Just because 100% of your congregation frequently uses email doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the best way to communicate with them. All of us often see mass messages and click delete without even opening it. In fact, the mass email service I use for our youth group shows that less than 20% of subscribers open my weekly news emails. That means 80% of the parents and teenagers in our group are not even looking at my messages there even though they all actively use email. The obvious solution is seemingly to send mass Facebook messages instead, but using a tracking link in those messages indicated that only 2% of my youth group kids ever clicked through those messages for information. Again, very poor results. Don’t assume that putting information in the most “obvious” places will always be the best communication method.

For my ministry, the evaluation process revealed that people in my church will not take 2 minutes to read an email or Facebook message, but they’ll take 10 minutes to watch a YouTube video. Similarly, if I stand in front of the youth group and make announcements, no one listens, but if I say the exact same thing on a screen via video, they’re all glued to it! So now I do my weekly communication by recording a video with some added value (giveaways, contests, polls, funny YouTube clips, etc.) and distribute it via email and Facebook. Plus, the videos spread much more viraly to people in our community via Facebook and YouTube than one-on-one emails and private Facebook messages can. Even a random stranger at Wal-Mart recognized my wife by her last name because of the youth group news videos I do on YouTube!

Whatever method you use, just make sure you evaluate it. Not only do communication methods change over time, but so do the ways people use those tools.

A video that goes into more detail
Earlier this year I taught a seminar at the National Youth Ministry Conference on this very issue in much greater detail, giving more insights into communication trends in my ministry, how to evaluate communication effectiveness in your ministry, and ideas for improvement. You can watch the seminar in it’s entirety here.

Two weeks ago I wrote that I was temporarily slowing down my blog postings to prepare for our first baby that’s due very soon and to give some extra attention to this season of transition in my own youth ministry.

I also mentioned that some major changes are coming to Life In Student Ministry. Much of the time I normally spend on generating content I’m using to work on that project instead.

Future vision for this site

Basically, this site will be relaunched on a new domain with a new design that will allow it to reach far more people than it currently does. More new youth workers will be able to connect to the Youth Ministry Mentorships, blessed by resources, content, videos and LIVE YM Talks. MinistryQuestions.com will receive a boost among other things, but perhaps best of all, it will no longer be branded around my name. I will remain the primary voice, but the community of youth workers who have surrounded this site over the past several years will become a bigger emphasis. I’m really excited about the possibilities of growing, learning and being challenged together!

As with most things, there’s a price tag for all of this. Life In Student Ministry has never charged for anything and it rarely asks for donations, but the vision I have in mind will cost about $8,500 (yikes!), which is why I anticipate doing it in stages as funds are available. The first stage costs $2,500 and would work best if it was reached within a week from today.

I have about $900 of personal funds to contribute (instead of buying a TV) and am more than happy to do so in order to bless you and your ministries, but I can’t do it by myself. I know your ministries can’t always get away with just giving away funds — that’s why several organizations have partnered with me to offer their products as thanks-yous for your donation to Life In Student Ministry.

$10 donation – Interlinc “Welcome to youth group” videos

Interlinc creates “drop in” videos of Christian music artists doing little promos like, “Go to camp,” or “Join the worship team.” They’re easy to drop in to PowerPoint announcements, iMovie, or burn to DVD.

For a donation of $10, Interlinc will send you

• 5 “Welcome To Youth Group” drop in videos by Christian music artists
• An article from their Youth Leader Only book titled, “An Old Guy’s Advice for Strategic Ministry”
• A great download Bible Study for a Kutless song

$25 donation – 36 Parables video from Youth Specialties

For a $25 donation, you receive both Interlinc’s gift above, plus a free download of a 36 Parables video, “The Car Lot,” from Youth Specialties.

If you like that video, check out the entire 36 Parables series!

And as an additional bonus for every Life In Student Ministry reader, regardless of if you donate or not, register for the 2009 National Youth Workers Convention, with coupon code LSMN09 to get a free convention t-shirt! The early-bird rate is good until August 14, 2009.

$50 donation – “One Month To Live” from Simply Youth Ministry

For a donation of $50, you receive Interlinc’s gift, Youth Specialties’ gift, and a free download of the 3-week sermon series, “One Month To Live,” from Simply Youth Ministry.

This series helps students identify the values that define them — while also shedding light on parts of their lives that may be holding them back from living for God. It covers topics like determining what matters most, deepening relationships, leaving a legacy.

$100 donation – 3 random ministry books

For a donation of $100 or more, you receive the 3 gifts above, plus I will mail you 3 random books from my ministry library.

(Limited to first 10 doners. 8 left.)

How to donate

Visit my ChipIn page to “chip in” and give securely online via PayPal. I will be in touch via email with links to download your gifts.

Contact me privately if you prefer to donate with a check instead of online.

Other donations

Any size gift is appreciated, whether it’s $10 or $1,000. Thank you!

Other ways to contribute

If you’re unable to donate or would like to contribute in a different way, consider building a website for your ministry through MinistryWebsites.biz or completing a referral for a free iPod Touch, iPhone, Xbox 360, Macbook, and more.

Time Out (by Jerry Schmoyer)

Wouldn’t it be great to have a magic gene to grant your deepest wish? You could immediately have whatever you felt you needed. Sometimes it’s easy to think that’s how God should respond to our desires. We just assume He’ll show up on time and make things perfect once again.

The people in Jeremiah’s day faced these same things. God had warned they would go into captivity for their sin and turning from God. But like today, they didn’t believe it would really happen. They felt their country was safe. After all, God delivered them from the Egyptians and the Assyrians; surely He would deliver them from the Babylonians as well. As is often the case today, they had an entitlement mentality as far as God went, assuming that God would deliver them and they would all “live happily ever after.”

Only the Jews were taken into captivity. So God gave them His message through His prophet Jeremiah. Jeremiah wrote a letter from Jerusalem to those in captivity in Babylon which is recorded in Jeremiah 29. In it he tells them not to get discouraged but to settle in and make the best of it for God would deliver them, but not for another 70 years. To us God says the same thing, He will deliver but not right away so settle into this life and make the best of things until He returns. We, too, are living in captivity in a foreign environment longing for our real home.

God’s promise through Jeremiah started in 29:10: “This is what the Lord says: ‘When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfill my gracious promise to bring you back to this place.’” This is the prophecy that prompted Daniel to ask God what would come after these 70 years. In response God gave Daniel the outline of history until He returns recorded in Daniel 9.

God affirmed that deliverance was coming eventually, but not quickly. He could have done it immediately but needed to teach them things first. They needed to see their need to repent and get back right with God. If He’d have delivered them right away that might never have happened. When you pray, make sure God’s delays aren’t to bring you to repentance. If there is anything between you and Him remove it immediately.

Another reason for delaying is because God was doing other things during this time. Daniel ministered in Babylon and wrote his book. Nebuchadnezzar and many others in Babylon became believers. Several Old Testament books were written (2 Kings, Lamentations, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel and Psalm 137). If God is delaying an answer to your prayers it is because He has a good reason. There are things is He currently accomplishing by delaying. Remember, His delays are not denials. God answers eventually, just not quickly.

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.”

James 5:16, “The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.”

Reflect

• Could God be delaying something in your life because there is a sin of which you need to repent? If so, pray and confess it now. If you aren’t sure, ask Him to show you anything that might be there.
• Think of a request you feel God has not been meeting. What has He been teaching you while you wait?
• What other things has He accomplished while you wait?
• Pray and ask for the fruit of patience so you can persevere until He knows the time is right to provide.

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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!

Today Andy Brazelton joined us for our LIVE YM Talk and gave us some very valuable input about what it’s like to be a volunteer in youth ministry, how youth workers can work better with the youth leaders on their team, and how volunteers can balance their full-time jobs and families with ministry.

Some of the things we talked about:

• Tips for paid youth workers who serve with volunteer leaders
• Ideas for supporting, encouraging volunteer leaders
• Balancing a full-time job and family with volunteer ministry commitments
• How to celebrate volunteer ministry
• And a lot more…

You can listen to the whole conversation below or grab it in iTunes.

Play this episode

Subscribe to LIVE YM Conversations in iTunes

Next week’s discussion

July 24: Next week Shawn Shoup is our featured guest. He’ll share from his recent experiences about “rest, burn-out and time management in youth ministry.”

Join our next LIVE Youth Ministry Conversation!

This week’s Freebie Friday comes from Jasper Rains, a youth pastor in Saint Louis, MO.

Jasper has written 40+ dramas and skits for youth groups to use for various events, occasions, and as teaching illustrations. Fortunately for all of us, Jasper makes all of them freely available on his site. You can print off scripts in a ready-to-go format. Perfect for camps, vacation Bible schools, and youth group meetings throughout the year.

Check it out at Kerusso Drama Ministry’s site.

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Join us at 2:00 PM EST this afternoon in our LIVE YM Talk. Andy Brazelton of Simply Youth Ministry joins us to talk about, “How to be a volunteer and still have a full time job and a family.” This will be great for both paid youth workers to know how to work with our volunteers, and also for those who are the volunteers. See the LIVE YM Talk page for details on how to join the call and/or the live chat.