The problem with youth ministries

Too many youth ministries are busy and crammed full with programs and calendars, as if having a lot of people involved in a lot of stuff somehow equals spiritual growth. We strive for the wrong goals, measure our ministries by the wrong standards and strive to give kids an overload of spiritual “opportunities.” Maybe these values are not explicitly stated as such, but they often lead and guide our ministries whether we realize it or not. The result is a youth ministry with a lot of independent programs all somewhat functioning in their own separate silos. How much more effective could our youth ministries be if every program helped teens move through a process of discipleship that was clearly defined and easy to understand?

A better solution

Simple Student Ministry presents a clear process for strategic youth discipleship that seems to coincide a lot with Andy Stanley’s book, 7 Practices of Effective Ministry. After pointing out the draining, frustrating and ineffective strategy most youth ministries take for growing disciples, Jeff and Eric proceed to lay out several principles that have the potential to change all that. It starts by bringing clarity to the discipleship process, focus to the programs, and placing those programs in alignment with each other in a way that helps students move through a discipleship process. In Andy Stanley’s book, it’s a little like “defining a win” and “thinking steps, not programs.”

Jeff and Eric also give a lot of practical examples of what this simplified student ministry looks like in many different church and para-church contexts around the country. Basically, the results are same: a simple student ministry increases life-change exponentially, not because there’s anything magical about the strategy, but because you’ll finally have a clear and focused ministry that’s aligned with itself and with the church that is moving people toward Christlikeness in a clear and focused manner.

My criticism and questions

However, my thoughts about the book are not without criticisms or questions. For example, most of the churches that are featured in the book see evangelism as part of the discipleship process, which I wholeheartedly agree, but their approach seems to be largely a “bring your unsaved friends to our church turf so a speaker can share the gospel with them.” (I’ve expressed reasons why I’ve abandoned this form of outreach in an earlier post.) Also, the assumption seems to be that spiritual growth is a straight-forward linear process. I struggle a bit with the idea that moving teenagers through a process of programs can make them a more devoted follower of Christ. We all know that the graph of spiritual growth over time is never a straight upward arrow. It’s ups, downs, setbacks, stumbles, growth spurts, and failures over and over and over again. So how do teens move through a linear strategy for discipleship when the growth process itself is not necessarily linear?

Talk with Jeff yourself!

These questions and more I’ll be asking Jeff Borton himself this Friday during our LIVE YM Talk when we talk more about Simple Student Ministry. If you’re free this Friday (June 5, 2009) at 2:00 PM eastern time, Jeff and I would love to have you join us. Bring your own questions and thoughts and share them with us during our open conversation. The conference phone call is open to anyone who wants to call in and join the conversation, or whoever wants to just listen in online and participate via the live chat room. Find the phone number and the chat room link on the LIVE YM Talk page.

[ Buy "Simple Student Ministry: A Clear Process for Strategic Youth Discipleship" on Amazon ]

Not too long ago Lifeway did some extensive research on why 18 to 22 year olds drop out of church and their views on eternity. Generally speaking, they found that teens graduating from high school were pulling away from faith and church due to a host of reasons and influences, including life changes and biblical illiteracy.

So they started asking questions like, “What must a graduating high school student know, understand, or believe in order to take ownership of their faith and remain grounded in God and His Word after high school? How can we help that take place best?” What they came up with is a pretty holistic approach to student ministry that involves a couple key ingredients.

1. The example of Jesus’ life

Lifeway focused on the Sermon on the Mount and Luke 2:52, “And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men” and broke it down into three main goals they want to see happen in the lives of teenagers.

1. Know: Upward Development. Jesus grew in favor with God. The Sermon on the Mount breaks this down into discipleship and Lordship.

2. Own: Inward Development. Jesus grew in wisdom and in stature. The Sermon on the Mount breaks this down into character and discernment.

3. Known: Outward Development. Jesus grew in favor with man. The Sermon on the Mount breaks this down into relationships and influence.

2. Parents and the Home

Every study I’ve ever seen, both formal and informal, indicates that parents are easily the #1 spiritual influence in a teenager’s life, which makes sense because that’s the way God established the family to work in the first place. Lifeway found this to be true, as well, and wanted to capitalize on it. So as they worked on putting together a comprehensive approach to student ministry, they knew they had to integrate both the home and the church.

The Compilation: Known Curriculum

Once the goals and strategy were set in place, it took on flesh in the form of the Known curriculum. Lifeway has seriously done a tremendous job of packaging an entire six year Bible course for jr. high through high school that flows from their research and their vision for students to “grow in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and man.” It pretty much includes a ready-to-go youth ministry, complete with Sunday morning lessons, Wednesday night lessons, games, options for creative ideas, planned events, parent meeting, student journals, worksheets, deeper theological training sheets, devotionals and more. I don’t think they’ve left a single thing out!

Known is split into quarterly packages for fall, winter, spring and summer of each year. Each package spends a month focusing on know, own or known aspects of the strategy that incorporates studies that’s a nice blend between topical and exegetical approaches.

My Criticism

The assumption is that teaching specific content from a stage or in a small group is the answer to all the teen dropouts from church and biblical illiteracy. I agree it’s critical to have solid content, but I guess I’m wondering if our delivery mechanism is part of the problem, not necessarily the content we teach. Maybe we need to teach more through real-life experiences than sitting under florescent lights in church classrooms. Yeah, we all try to help students talk through ways the key scripture passage applies to their life, and then we naively assume that they leave and actually do it. Maybe the way we are communicating the solid content just doesn’t connect with teens. I don’t really have many solutions, just thinking out loud, but I do believe that teaching should become more experiential because teaching through experiences is where real-life and faith can truly intersect. That could be a different topic for a later blog post, though.

Of course, the other thing to be careful of is that it doesn’t become a crutch as a canned “one size fits all” youth ministry. That’s true for any youth ministry curriculum, not just Known. Regardless of what curriculum you use, you must contextualize it for your kids and you must never use it as an excuse to shut off your vision casting and direction for the future. Otherwise, your ministry will definitely get stuck in a rut and become focused on its function rather than its identity. But again, another blog post for another time.

That said, I am seriously considering a switch to Known in the fall for our high school meetings on Sunday mornings. Of course I’m going to run it by some youth leaders and a couple teenagers first, but I do believe it has potential and is definitely worth the $149.95 for a quarterly digital download bundle at least to try it out. It seems to fit in our Deep and Wide strategy pretty well.

For more information

Check out Lifeway’s website for more information.

• Know. Own. Known. Student Strategy
• Known Curriculum

Recording: Interview with Lifeway

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It’s no secret that my wife and I are big Dave Ramsey fans. We spent 15 months paying off $21,521.66 of debt on a combined take-home pay of about $39,000/year, which doesn’t really work mathematically, but somehow it worked when we started keeping track of our money and living on an extremely tight written budget every month. God did amazing things to bring us to where we are today with a completely funded emergency fund and now savings for our kid’s birth in August. Soon we’ll start saving for a down-payment on a house, too. Because we no longer have any payments, we’re able to securely drop my wife’s income so she can be a stay-at-home mom when our child is born. Exciting! (A video of my wife and I sharing more details about our financial story can be found here.)

Since Dave Ramsey’s teaching has alleviated a lot of stress and pressure on me and Dana and our marriage, we thought it would be something important to teach high school kids as they start getting jobs, earning an income, and saving for the future. Me, Dana, and two other high school small group leaders have all made a lot of financial mistakes and wanted to help some teens avoid those same “normal” mistakes by having a biblical perspective on money and how it works. Naturally, we looked into Dave Ramsey’s Generation Change curriculum for youth groups and decided to try it out.

Generation Change

• At $169 for an 8-person start-up kit, it’s definitely pretty expensive. If they dropped the tshirts and charged half the price, I think the value would be more reflective of the kit’s contents.
• There’s 4 lessons total in the kit, each with an accompanying two-part DVD. Every lesson is supposed to take about an hour, but we found that with all the discussion, questions, stories, examples, and everything else that came up in the group time, each lesson really took about two hours. We ended up spreading it out over 8 weeks comfortably.
• At first our high school kids were a little leary of talking about such “grown-up” stuff, but after we got into the series, they really started appreciating it and were very thankful for it by the time we finished.
• Although the curriculum is laid out very clearly and is very easy to follow, it’s not something that could be given to just any youth leader and expected to go well. It definitely must be taught by leaders who agree with Dave Ramsey’s principles and are actively following them with their own personal finances. In fact, that’s where most of the value came for our group, as me, Dana and the other leaders put real-life flesh on the principles being taught with examples from our own mistakes, misconceptions, and even greed. All of us leaders were very transparent about our personal finances, which really helped the kids a lot. Without a passionate leader, the curriculum will probably have little to no affect.
• The DVD sessions are very well-done and professionally recorded. Most of it consists of Dave sitting with a group of teenagers, teaching one of the 4 major principles for about 7 to 10 minutes.
• The curriculum isn’t really as anti-debt as what you’d probably expect from something that comes from Dave Ramsey. Of course credit cards and school loans are addressed, but the emphasis is clearly on changing teens’ perspective of money. Themes like materialism, personal self-worth, giving to others, and saving are much bigger issues than debt.
• It would be easy for a curriculum like this to be really heavy on the nerdy stuff and really light on scripture, but fortunately it is not like that at all. Every lesson digs through scripture in addressing the financial principle and raises discussions from those passages. The curriculum does not really address the mechanics of money and how it works, but it is easy for the leader to include that kind of teaching if the kids are interested, like they were in our group.
• Generation Change is clearly geared toward high school students. I wouldn’t even attempt to do it with jr. highers.

Since it is over-priced, I recommend that you not purchase a student kit for every person going through it. Take the 8 student kits that are included with the leader’s kit, of course, but purchasing additional kits for each teen is not absolutely necessary. Give them a pen and legal pad instead if you really want them to write things down. The leader’s guide and DVDs are sufficient to teach the curriculum.

Oh, and remember, you can’t purchase Generation Change with a credit card. Debit cards only!

Summary

Generation Change is strong on helping communicate a biblical perspective of money to high school teens and it does so in a very practical and engaging way. It’s very well done, very professional, and very easy for any leader to follow and teach. However, it only gets three stars because it feels overpriced for the content, even when you stretch four sessions out to be eight.

Tim: How are youth group t-shirts worth the financial investment for ministry?

Ryan: As a former Youth Pastor, I witnessed first hand how a simple order of t-shirts helped us form community! It was really cool to watch students get excited about wearing our shirts to school and to hang out with friends. Getting Youth Group t-shirts was also a huge help in building our Leadership Team. Our leaders would wear their shirts weekly to help students recognize the leaders. (As if the 50 year-old bald guy didn’t already scream I’M A LEADER!!!!)

Tim: What are some things to look for or keep in mind when ordering shirts from someone?

Ryan:

• Not all t-shirts are created equal! Always take note of the brand & weight of the t-shirt quotes you get.
• Watch out for extra fees! Often times the price per shirt will be low, but then you have a $20 charge for each screen or location on the shirt you want to print. So, if you want 3 locations that’s an extra $60! Plus, find out about shipping costs!
• If you’re planning on using shirts for giveaways, always remember that white shirts are cheaper than colors. Don’t blow your budget on black t-shirts with 4 colors on the front & back if you are just giving them away.

Tim: The hardest part is often coming up with a cool idea or logos for the shirt. What are some ways we can spark creativity for the design?

Ryan: I think one of the best things to do is make a special trip with a few students to the mall. Check out Abercrombie & Fitch, American Eagle, the Buckle, Gap, Old Navy. These places spend tons of money guessing what teenagers will like. Why not learn from the best?

We know that not every church has a graphic designer. So, we’ve got an art team that can custom create something just for you. We’ve had people scan and email us napkins with concept design or email us a link to a retailer’s site. Our art guys then turned it into a Vector file and had it printed on their shirts. Our art fees aren’t hundreds of dollars either. We’ve never charged over $75 for custom artwork. This way you will be getting exactly what you want, not a “cookie-cutter” design template that every other youth group is wearing!

Tim: What makes Ministry Monkey unique from all the other t-shirt printing companies out there?

Ryan: We seriously have trained monkeys that do all the work on your shirts. That’s one major thing that sets up apart. Now, if I had to come up with a few more, I’d say that fact that we don’t charge anything for screen fees, set-up fees, or shipping.

Plus, we’ve really tried to make the whole “ordering t-shirts” thing simple. We don’t assume everyone has ordered shirts before. We give you the creative input to make sure your shirts reflect your goals in making them. Once we’ve got the design finished we send you a PDF art-proof so that you can approve and make sure everything is correct before we actually print the shirts.

Tim: How can we get in touch with you if we have more questions?

Ryan: You can snail mail us at…

Just kidding! You can connect with us in a bunch of ways!

• Twitter @MinistryMonkey.com
• Blog @ blog.MinistryMonkey.com
• Facebook @ http://www.facebook.com/pages/Ministry-Monkey-Custom-Apparel/95539525415
• Email me directly at Ryan@MinistryMonkey.com
• And of course our handy website… www.MinistryMonkey.com

Note: Since I only write reviews on products I’ve actually used, each of these product reviews comes from my personal and practical experience from actually using them in ministry with teenagers, not just by looking at a box or flipping through some pages of material.

Disclaimer: Every ministry has different values and works with kids who are coming from different backgrounds in different contexts at different levels of spiritual maturity. The following reviews are only based on my own values and experiences. Your experience(s) may be very different from mine.

The Gospel Journey

Published by Dare 2 Share Ministries. Website. Price: $149 for 7 lessons.

To this day, The Gospel Journey has sparked the most spiritually significant discussions I have ever had with a group of high school teeangers. In fact, it was even an influential piece in shifting my own approach to youth ministry.

Set in mountains of Colorado, Greg Stier of Dare 2 Share Ministries takes a group of teens and young adults of various backgrounds (wiccan, atheist, agnostic, and others) on a journey through the Gospel. It attempts to be a reality show, but even Greg admits it’s not really a reality show as we typically think of. Rather, it is a show about reality.

The DVD sessions mostly consist of Greg teaching through the Gospel Journey acronym followed by very significant objections and questions by youth of other religions. Watch the trailer on YouTube to get an idea of what it’s like.

The included leader’s booklet includes two different guides: one for using with your churched kids and one for using with unchurched, unsaved kids. I personally started by using the guide for churched kids, but quickly had to supplement it with some of my theology books from seminary because the high school kids took the discussions very deep. In fact, there were some weeks we went almost 30 minutes over our meeting time and no one wanted to leave.

Check out my earlier post about The Gospel Journey for a more detailed review. Also see Dare 2 Share’s new Gospel Journey: Maui.

SUMMARY: The Gospel Journey definitely gets 5 stars for it’s depth in content, creativity, and unique approach to helping teens think through very critical theological issues. Best geared for high school students.

Goin’ All the Way

Published by LifeChurch.tv. Website. Price: FREE!

LifeChurch.tv has an amazing amount of resources available for free, but probably my favorite for use in youth group is Craig Groeschel’s 4-part sermon series called, Goin’ All the Way. (Watch it online here.) I downloaded the DVDs of his messages, showed them in their entirety to the small group, and then led a discussion afterwards. You may think that sitting kids in front of a TV to watch someone preach is kinda lame, but it’s definitely not when it comes to this series. I’ve used this series a couple times and every group has been completely glued to Pastor Craig Groeschel, listening intently, and even answering his rhetorical questions out loud to the TV!

Craig also has a book by the same title, Going All the Way: Preparing for a Marriage That Goes the Distance, which addresses this issue in more detail. Could be used as a good accompaniment to the video series.

SUMMARY: Goin’ All the Way is an excellent sermon DVD series that talks about dating, relationships, sex, how to find “the one,” and how to make marriages go the distance. I highly recommend it. Geared best for high school students.

YouthBtytes

Published by YouthBytes. Website. Price: $300 for 40 lessons (individual pricing available).

YouthBytes is a video-based curriculum with content that is very solid. It focuses on only a single point, and has a very fast-pasted, professional, MTV-style production. The format of the videos is to set the youth leader up to have a meaningful discussion with kids about the topic at hand. To help leaders do that best, each DVD includes of a version of the video in different lengths: a 1-minute, 3-minute, 7 to 12 minute, and even a 30-minute version. Of course, each video includes a lesson guide that includes key scripture verses, illustrations, ice-breakers, stories, and discussion questions.

Although the videos are excellent, the lesson guides are a bit lacking. Any lesson you buy from any vendor must be tweaked and tailored to the individual needs of your specific students, but these guides leave you tweaking a bit more than you might expect. For example, the ice-breakers are typically stories that introduce the topic in some way. However, I think experiential learning is always much more effective, so I like to engage the students in an activity of some sort to introduce the subject matter, which means I have to come up with more creative introductions for each lesson. The discussion questions also do not probe as deep as I like to go with my students, so I always re-write those, too.

Check out my earlier post about YouthBytes for a more detailed review.

SUMMARY: The videos are 5-star quality, but the lesson guides do not yet have quite the same value. However, in the near future YouthBytes will be updating their lessons to include many of my ideas, activities, and discussion questions. At that time, the whole package will definitely be 5 stars. *wink* Best geared for jr. high students.

Go Wide Kit

Published by Dare 2 Share Ministries. Website. Price: $74 for 3 training sessions.

If you’re looking for a tool to help train your kids in normal, every day, social evangelism, Dare 2 Share’s Go Wide Kit is definitely the way to go. The kit includes several things, but the core of it is a DVD containing three sessions where Greg Stier both trains and motivates teens to share their faith with their unsaved friends. He teaches them to first Pray for them, Pursue a relationship, and gently Persuade them into a relationship with Christ by taking opportunities to steer conversations toward spiritual matters.

The reason I gave it 4 stars instead of 5 is because in a separate section of the DVD, Greg talks about his idea for starting an e-team (evangelism team) in your youth group. I resist the idea that sharing Christ should be expected primarily of whoever joins an e-team, and fortunately, from my own conversations with Greg, he agrees with me. If he had the choice, he’d remove references to an e-team idea, but what’s published is published.

Check out my earlier post about the Go Wide Kit for a more detailed review.

SUMMARY: The Go Wide Kit is an excellent tool for training teenagers to share their faith. It gives them confidence to “bring God up” in normal conversations with their unsaved friends. Just ignore that e-team parts. Best geared for jr. high and high school students.

The Journey

Published by the Evangelical Covenant. Website. Price: $12.95/student journal; $39.95/leaders guide

The word “confirmation” carries a lot of different meetings for different people in different denominations, but if you’re willing to strip away all that baggage, my denomination’s discipleship (confirmation) material really is quite excellent. It’s a small group discipleship experience for 7th and 8th graders that takes them through the entire Bible in 2 years — Old Testament one year, New Testament the next. Students are expected to complete journal work each day during the week where they interact with scripture and answer questions about how it connects with their daily life. In their weekly small groups, the jr. highers discuss their journal work and learn more about the next major event or theological issue in the Bible.

I am honestly quite impressed with how thorough the material is, how practical it is for a jr. higher’s every day life, and how well the leader’s guides are put together. The best part is that by the time every jr. higher moves into high school, they have a solid grasp on the message of the entire Bible as a whole. What a great foundation for high school!

My personal ties to any one denomination are very weak, but I’d still recommend this material for any church’s jr. high ministry.

SUMMARY: An excellent overview of the entire Bible in 2 years that encourages jr. highers to reflect on it’s practical implications in their personal life on a daily basis while having accountability and relationships in a small group. Geared best for jr. high students.

Girls and Guys Curriculum Pack

Published by Youth Specialties. Guys Website. Price: $11.24 | Girls website. Price: $10.94

This curriculum pack is actually two books for small groups that are gender specific.

• Guys: 10 Fearless Faith-Focused Sessions on Issues That Matter to Guys
• Girls: 10 Gutsy, God-Centered Sessions on Issues that Matter to Girls

My wife and I have found them to be well balanced in addressing critical issues of manhood and womanhood. Each of the 10 lessons includes several different options so you can tailor the lesson according to your needs and time restraints. The activities are fun, break the ice, and illustrate the issues very well. Interactive handouts are included to ensure that the teens are tracking with you through the whole lesson. Unfortunately, it also serves up too much text to just read to the kids, so you’ll need to feel comfortable enough with the content so you can share it in your own words.

SUMMARY: Great books for addressing gender specific issues with teenagers. I gave it 4 stars instead of 5 because I’d like to see them probe a bit deeper, but if you have comfortable relationships already built with the kids, I’m sure you may end up asking those hard questions anyway. Geared best for jr. high and high school students.

Design for Discipleship

Published by The Navigators. Website. Price: $6.99 each

Design for Discipleship is the series I use for one-on-one discipleship with new believers. It consists of a 6 workbooks that walk a new believer through the core foundations of Christianity. Although a leaders guide is available, I don’t use it. I just complete the workbook assignments on the same schedule as the guy I’m discipling and meet with him once a week to discuss our answers together. It lends itself well to very meaningful discussions and questions.

The workbooks include passages to read, a bit of explanation, and many questions to answer about the scripture text that was read. What I like best is that the questions are not asking you to list the obvious — they require some engagement with the passage, thinking, and processing through observation, it’s meaning (interpretation), and application, which is great because that leads to self-discovery, the most significant way to learn and take ownership of something.

SUMMARY: I gave it 4 stars instead of 5 because I would prefer that there was a bit more teaching in the workbooks to balance all of the questions. Otherwise, it’s great for one-on-one discipleship. Geared best for jr. high and high school students.

TeenLifeMinistries.com

Published online at TeenLifeMinistries.com. Price: $9.95/month for unlimited access.

TeenLifeMinistries.com isn’t a curriculum as much as it is a youth ministry resource site that includes almost 15 years worth of Bible lessons (with accompanying PowerPoint presentations) for youth groups. If there’s a topic or passage you want to talk about, I can almost guarantee that TeenLifeMinistries.com has something for you. The lessons are easy to use, simple to modify, and include all the handouts you could ever want. If you want to use the lesson as a small group discussion, there’s a sheet for that. Or, if you’re an up-front-and-preach kinda person, there’s an outline version for “preaching,” too. Of course, you could easily combine the two options together in a sort of “I preach, then we discuss” fashion, too.

The weakness of TeenLifeMinistries is that the lessons all start to feel a bit similar pretty quickly. After a couple months of the outlines, format, and questions, my teens were saying, “I can tell exactly where this is heading” and would somewhat check out mentally due to the repetitious nature of the structure. Fortunately, it’s a subscription-based site so you can cancel whenever you want.

SUMMARY: TeenLifeMinistry.com’s real value is in having a goldmine of very flexible resources and ideas to kick-start your own lesson planning. As stated earlier, you should never use anyone’s lesson “as is,” but be especially intentional about not doing that here.

You’re Next

Published by Dare 2 Share Ministries. Website. Price: $29 for leader’s guide

This is Dare 2 Share’s response for the “go deep” part of their Deep & Wide ministry strategy. Greg Stier goes through the 30 Core Truths (found in the Deep & Wide thesis downloadable from here) and shares youth group lessons that are intended to take kids deep into God’s Word in a systematic approach to theology. While the concept is great, especially because the lessons are highly practical and heavy on application to real life, it really doesn’t go as deep as I think it has the potential to go. I found myself using it for ideas on how to introduce one of the 30 Core Truths, but took most of my “depth” from one of my systematic theology books and integrated that into my lessons instead.

I gave it 3 stars because, even though much of the content is based on stories from Greg’s life, if you substitute his stories with ones from your own life and mix in some deeper theology from another source, it has the potential to be pretty powerful. I know that sounds like I’m saying you basically need to re-write Greg’s lessons, but it’s not quite like that. He lays a solid framework for which to work when taking kids deep into God’s Word.

SUMMARY: This “go deep” tool doesn’t go as deep as the Go Wide Kit goes wide, but it still provides a decent framework for addressing the 30 Core Truths with the youth group. Geared best for high school students.

Soul Fuel

Published by Dare 2 Share Ministries. Website. Price: FREE!

You sure can’t beat the price of this weekly curriculum from Dare 2 Share Ministries — FREE! Every week it shows up in your email Inbox and includes a devotional sheet for teens, a youth group lesson plan, and a parent sheet. They each loosely address one of the 30 Core Truths in some way.

Although each lesson follows an outline, most of the content is written as a transcript. I know some people prefer reading something word for word, but it doesn’t seem to work too well in this context because the lessons are intended primarily for small groups, not preaching from a pulpit. It just doesn’t feel right to discuss some questions as a group and then make students sit and listen to you read the next paragraph to them, ya know? If you can memorize it, that’s great, but I mostly just shared it in normal conversational English using my own words to keep the dialog going.

The length of the material is also fairly short — probably enough for a 15-20 minute discussion. Most of my teaching in my youth group goes for 30-60 minutes, so this is a bit short for us.

SUMMARY: Soul Fuel gets 3 stars mostly because it’s free and consistent every week. It’s probably better suited for quick devotionals with kids than it is for youth group meetings.

Talking the Walk: 31 sessions for new small groups

Published by Youth Specialties. Website. Price: $13.59

This book is probably one of the best books I’ve seen for solidifying a new small group of teenagers together. It’s cram-packed with ideas and activities that will grow new friendships, build trust, and create an environment that feels safe for everyone. If you have a new group of teens in a small group who don’t know each other very well, this book is perfect for you.

However, I find it odd that it seriously lacks a spiritual influence. There are scripture passages in each lesson, but both myself and my leaders had difficulty figuring out how it connected with the rest of the lesson, as weak as the lessons already were. The focus of this book is definitely on building community in your new small group, not really on Bible study.

SUMMARY: If this book had stronger Biblical content, it would be an excellent resource for new small groups of teens who don’t know each other very well, but without it, the group-building games and activities need to be combined with an actual Bible study from elsewhere.

Jr. High Grapple

Published by Group Publishing. Website. Price: $89.99 for 16 lessons.

Grapple is one of the few curriculums I’ve ditched mid-way through. In fact, I only used it for about 4 weeks before I stopped wasting my jr. higher’s time with it. The format is to introduce a topic to your teens, watch a short video that illustrates it, and then continue with the discussion. Sounds good in theory, but videos were very weak in both content and production value. For example, the video that introduces the topic of salvation was based on a visit to a pet shelter where animals were asked if all dogs go to heaven, and it looks like it was produced in iMovie.

Furthermore, my adult leaders found the discussion sheets to be very difficult to understand and follow, partly because the sheets tried to communicate too many points in one lesson or that the points didn’t seem to connect very well with the main idea of the lesson. Anyone who works with jr. high knows that they need only one solid point driven home in a variety of ways, not multiple points that are weakly connected to the main idea.

However, the one thing that Grapple offers that I absolutely love are the parent sheets included with each lesson. These sheets are designed to send home with parents after the jr. high meeting to inform them on what was discussed. The parent sheets include a couple discussion starters for parents to use with their kids and take the topic deeper at home, which is a great way to help families have spiritual conversations at home.

The other thing I really appreciated about Grapple was that all of their lessons, parent sheets, videos, and discussion sheets were available for download from their site, which meant that I could easily embed the video illustrations in PowerPoint presentations, email discussion sheets to adult leaders in advance, and make parent sheets available for download on our website.

SUMMARY: I would’ve given it 0 stars, but it’s availability in digital format and parent sheets are definitely worth at least 1 star. Best geared for jr. high students.

Add your own review

If you’ve used a curriculum you’d like to recommend or would like to warn people to way away from, please write about it in the comments below. I just ask that you only review it if you’ve actually tried using it in a youth ministry context.

Thanks for helping youth workers around the world make an informed decision about the material they use at youth group!

NOTE: Reviews and links from publishers and advertisers will be deleted.

P.S. If you play on Xbox Live, let me know and let’s exchange gamer tags!

What is Mozy.com?
Mozy.com is an award winning backup service that offers 2GB of FREE online storage for all my important computer documents, emails, photos, music, address books, and more. It’s safe, secure and best of all, it’s so automated and easy to use that I often forget it’s even there. I’ve suffered from several computer crashes and hard drive failures in the past and I hate the process afterwards of trying to gather and re-enter contact info again, remembering details contained in certain documents that I’ll never see again and kissing all my hard work goodbye. But I also hate dealing with many of the other backup solutions out there that I’ve tried. They either don’t work, contain errors in the backups, require an external hard drive, or are difficult to set up.

Configuring backups is easy
Mozy’s service couldn’t be easier to configure! I can tell the Mozy software to backup certain types of files, specify certain files and folders to backup, or a combination of both, as you can see by clicking on the screenshots of my configuration below.

Restoring files is even easier
Restoring either individual files or my all computer’s data is just as simple. There’s a couple different options:

Option #1: The first restore option is to simply right-click on the file or folder that you want to restore and select “Restore Previous Version.” You can then select the version to restore, from the most recent version up to 30 days back.

Option #2: The second restore option is to restore via the Mozy Virtual Drive. You can find this when you open up “My Computer” on your machine and select the Mozy icon from the “other” category.

Option #3: The third restore option is to restore via the web. Go to the Restore page, login and select the computer and time/date you want to restore data from. Select all the data you want to restore.

Here’s a screenshot of the web’s restore interface and the software’s restore interface. Click the image to view it full size.

You can then choose whether or not you want to restore via download or, for a fee, have a DVD shipped to you. Make your selection, and the restoration process will begin.

How to get more storage space
Of course, 2GB of free online storage is not a whole lot of space when you have multiple hard drives filled with data, but at least it’s sufficient for backing up critical documents and files you can’t replace. If you need more space, you can get it for free by asking others to sign up for the service under your referral link (found under your account’s referrals page on Mozy’s site) as I’m doing here or you can purchase the unlimited plan for $4.95/month.

Conclusion
There’s a lot of backup solutions out there, but Mozy is the only one I’ve found that’s actually easy to use, works perfectly, and doesn’t pester me with errors. Plus, it’s completely free. I put too much hard work and time into the content I generate for my church and youth ministry to kiss it all goodbye due to a hard drive failure, system corruption or even having my MacBook Pro stolen.

Since then I’ve since found another site that does the same thing, but with less problems: vconvert.net. Not only does vconvert.net have more video formats to choose from, it also downloads your YouTube video selection much quicker and does nothing to add a pesky logo to your clip.

There’s so many great video clips on YouTube that serve as great teaching aids and vconvert.net helps me save those clips to my computer in a format I can use for embedding into slideshow presentations and even burning to DVD.

• Complete: A ready-to-print, monthly newsletter
• Flexible: Customize 2 articles, calendar and more
• Relevant: Biblical-based content, 7-12th grade topics
• Affordable: $99 per year (that’s only $8.25 a month)

Each month covers a different topic. Some recent topics are:

• Teaching your teens to manage their time
• Encouraging your teen’s talents
• The disconnect of integrity
• Helping your teens find THE answer
• Joining the fight against poverty
• Teaching teens that words matter

To take a tour and find out more information, go to TheParentLink.com.

Private Messaging
Last week I blogged about how email is old-school and teens no longer use it as a primary means of communication for various reasons. However, private messaging on social networking sites is definitely one of the top ways they talk online now, so I use it as a replacement for email. If I need to send a message to a student, I send it on Facebook instead of email.

Youth Group “group”
With our youth group Facebook group, all the students can share pictures, videos, cool links and exchange comments throughout the week. It’s an easy central hub of communication throughout the week. I use our Facebook group mostly for sending mass private messages to everyone in the group about upcoming news and announcements they should be aware of.

Event RSVP
Through our Facebook group, I sometimes create events and send invitations all the youth group kids to RSVP as “attending,” “not attending” or “maybe attending.” Even though we have sign-ups on our website, too, when people join an event in Facebook, it shows up in all their friends’ news feed and gives the event some free publicity to other students who otherwise might not know about it. Of course, they can easily check out more details of the event and sign-up to attend, too, if they’d like.

News application
Creating a Facebook application that streams your latest youth group news straight to student’s profiles is a bit nerdier, but I tried to make the process as simple and easy-to-understand in this tutorial. Basically, it’s nothing more than an RSS reader for you youth group news inside of Facebook for students. This puts announcements right where they’ll see it and where their friends will see it, too.

See what kids are up to during the week
Although all these other things are nice and all, the main thing I use Facebook for is to keep up with kids lives through the week. I love seeing what they’re up to, what they’re thinking, how they respond to different things their friends post, the kinds of content they post themselves, and all the joking around that takes place. It’s fun.

Why you should use this for your youth group
I also copied the app and made another one to stream my youth group news, updates and announcements straight to my students’ profiles. There’s several advantages to using a tool like this:

• My students have direct access to youth group news right within Facebook.
• All their friends will also see the youth group news, a great outreach tool.
• Every update title automatically links back to our youth group site for more info.
• Students can invite their friends to add the application to their profiles, too, thus spreading the news even further.
• It’s one of the most ideal ways to communicate with students on their turf.
• The app only shows headlines and a summary of the content so it doesn’t overcrowd profile pages.

Two ways to get this Facebook app for yourself or your ministry
This is such a great communication tool that I want to show you all how you can have one, too. There’s two ways to do this:

1. Let me build and host it for you. I realize a lot of people feel lost when it comes to this kinda stuff, but still could greatly benefit from having the tool. So, I’m willing to create the app for you, host it, maintain it and everything! Just click here to find out more details.

2. Follow my instructions below and create one yourself.

Create one yourself
All the credit for these instructions goes to Falko Timme who wrote up a fantastic tutorial on how to set up a Facebook RSS feed for your blog. If you’re a little geeky and want to know how the app works and understand every step involved, his tutorial is very complete. It’s what I used to create my original Facebook application. My tutorial here is not an attempt to steal Falko’s thunder in any way, but to simplify the process for people who don’t administer their own servers or understand a Linux command line. My package below is also customized to offer some minor improvements to how the application handles RSS feeds.

Let’s get started.
In order for this to work, you must have access to a web host that uses PHP5. If you’re in the market for a good web host, I recommend Buyhttp.com. I use them for my youth group website and their service and support is fantastic. They don’t promise terabytes of space for a few bucks like other hosts because they don’t oversell their servers and they don’t offer cheap service like that. Instead of trying to make as much cash as possible, they focus on offering a high quality service that performs well. They offer hosting plans with PHP5, just make sure you ask for it when you sign up.

You must also have access to your hosting account’s cPanel to set up a cron job at the end of this tutorial.

The following screenshots are obviously from my own Facebook app and are only used as an example. Replace my data with your own.

Step 1
If you haven’t already registered at Facebook.com, you’ll obviously need to do so.

Step 2
Add the Developer Application to your profile, as described here.

Step 3
Once the Developer Application is added to your profile, visit it by clicking on “Developer” in the left side-bar. When the developer page opens, click on “Setup New Application” in the upper right-hand corner of the screen.

Step 4
A. Give your application a name. I’ve found that the shorter the name, the better. It’ll fit in your sidebar a lot nicer if it’s short. Unfortunately, mine isn’t. Also check the box under the name field saying you agree to the terms of the Facebook Platform.

B. Enter a valid email address where other developers and Facebook administrators can contact you concerning your application.

C. Enter the path to the folder on your web host that will contain your application files. You’ll get the files a bit later. For now, just make sure the folder exists on your host. IMPORTANT: The URL must end with a trailing slash (/).

D. The canvas page is the Facebook address for your application. This is where people will go to add your application to their profile and view your youth group/blog updates, so make it something easy to remember.

E. Make sure “Use FBLM” is selected.

F. Make sure “Website” is selected.

G. Make sure “Yes” is selected.

H. You can do this at a later time if you want. Just upload a 16×16 icon for your app that will display in the left side-bar for your application.

I. Fill in whatever you have from step D above.

J. Enter a brief description of your Facebook application.

K. This is the default text that will display on people’s profiles if something goes wrong with the application.

L. Make sure “Wide” is selected.

M. Again, enter your canvas page URL from step D above.

N. Click “Save.”

Step 5
Now you’ll see your API Key and your Secret for your application. Copy these down somewhere. You’ll need them later.

Step 6
Download this package and unzip it somewhere on your computer:

RSS Facebook Application Files

Step 7
Open the following files with a text editor, like Notepad for Windows or Taco HTML Edit for Mac. Do NOT use a word processor or anything that might format the text. Only replace the text I call for. Leave the apostrophes (‘), quotes (“), slashes (/) semi-colons (;) and commas (,) intact. Also make sure there are no extra spaces before or after the text you replace.

A. Open conf.php

1. Replace API_KEY_HERE with your API Key.
2. Replace SECRET_HERE with your Secret.
3. Replace CALLBACK_URL_HERE with your callback URL from your Developer App settings. (Example, http://www.yourdomain.com/facebook/)
4. Replace URL_TO_THE_RSS.PHP_FILE with the URL to where the rss.php file is on your host. (Example, http://www.yourdomain.com/facebook/rss.php)
5. Replace YOUR_SITE_RSS_FEED_ADDRESS_HERE with you actual RSS feed. (Example, http://feeds.feedburner.com/timschmoyer)
6. (Don’t change INFINITE_SESSION_KEY_HERE yet. We’ll change that later.)
7. Save and close the file.

B. Open index.php

1. Find YOUR_CANVAS_PAGE_URL_HERE on line 7 and replace it with your canvas page URL. Again, make sure you do NOT have two slashes in a row (//) before the “invite.php” part.
2. Save and close the file.

C. Open invite.php

1. Find YOTHGROUP_NAME on line 12 and replace it with the name of your youth group. (Example, “Power Surge Ministries”)
2. Find CANVAS_URL_HERE on line 12 and replace it with your canvas URL. Be sure to leave the trailing backslash in place. (Example, “http://apps.facebook.com/timschmoyer”)
3. Find SHORT_APP_NAME on line 12 and replace it with a short name for your app. About 15 characters or less should be fine.
4. Find NAME_OF_YOUR_APP on line 13 and replace it with the name of your Facebook application.
5. Save and close the file.

D. Open rss.php

1. Find NUMBER_OF_POSTS_TO_SHOW on line 9 and replace it with the number of latest posts you want the app to display. I don’t recommend making this number any higher than 3. (Example, 2)
2. Find APPLICATION_NAME on line 12 and replace it with the name of your Facebook application.
3. Save and close the file.

Step 8
Now that all the files are updated and saved, upload the entire package to the callback folder on your web host so they’re accessible from your callback URL. (Example, upload everything to http://www.yourdomain.com/facebook/)

Step 9
With your FTP client, change the permissions of the folder magpie_cache to 777.

Step 10.
In your browser, type in your canvas page URL (http://apps.facebook.com/mygreatapp) and hit enter. You should be taken to a page that looks like this:

Click the big blue login button.

Step 11
Your next screen will look like this:

Make sure every box is selected and click the big blue add button.

Step 12
You will be redirected to your app’s page where your latest posts are displayed like this:

Check your profile page, too. You should see the latest posts displayed there, as well. Congratulations! You’re almost finished. Now all we have to do is set it up to automatically update with new content from your RSS feed.

Step 13
Log out of Facebook and clear out your browser’s cache, cookies, files, everything. This is absolutely necessary for the next step to work properly and to avoid headaches in the future, so do it right the first time. Trust me, I learned the hard way. If you don’t want to clear your browser’s files and cookies, use a different browser instead and make sure everything is cleaned out before going on to the next step. As far as your browser should know, it’s never been to Facebook.com or your website before.

Step 14
With the browser’s cache, cookies, temporary files and history cleared, type the address to the file get_infinite_key.php on your web host. (Example, http://www.yourdomain.com/facebook/get_infinite_key.php)

Step 15
When the Facebook login screen appears, enter your email address and password and make sure you check the box for, “Save my login info to avoid logging in to Facebook again to use this application.” Click the “Login” button to continue.

Step 16
A screen will appear that displays your “infinite key.” Copy this.

Step 17
Open conf.php, find INFINITE_SESSION_KEY_HERE on line 4 and replace it with your infinite key from step 16. Save the file, close it and upload it to your web host. Make sure it overwrites the existing file.

Step 18
Login to your hosting account’s cPanel and click on “Cron jobs.”

Step 19
On the next screen, click Advanced (Unix Style), and configure one of the lines to look like this:

In the first box (with “Minute” above it), type */30. In the Hour, Day, Month, Weekday boxes, type only an asterik (*). In the “Command” box, enter the absolute path to the cronjob.php file in your facebook application folder. If you do not know the absolute path to your hosting account, search your host’s knowledgebase or contact support and they’ll be happy to give it to you. (Example, /home/account_name/public_html/facebook/cronjob.php) Then click, “Commit Changes.” The cronjob.php file will now automatically check for new posts and refresh the Facebook app with the latest content every 30 minutes.

Step 20
Your Facebook application is now complete! Play around with it a little. Click the “Invite” tab at the top of your canvas page to invite people to add your application to their profiles. Facebook prevents applications from taxing their system too much by limiting the viral spread of applications. They do this by restricting app invitations to only 20 per person per day. So, you can use the invite tab to sent invites to 20 people today and then tomorrow send invites to 20 more people to join. Or, you can send everyone a link to your canvas page so they can add the app directly. There’s no restriction on how many people can add an application directly from your canvas page.

Step 21
Once you have at least 5 readers, your application is eligible for submission to the searchable Facebook application directory. To do this, click on “Developer” in your left side-bar and the click on the little link, “See My Apps” located in the “My Applications” box on the top right of the screen. Click “Submit Application” and fill out the requested info. In the description, be sure include a couple keywords people might use when searching for your app in the application directory. When finished, click the blue “Save” button and wait a day or two for your app to be reviewed.

That’s it! I hope this is not too overwhelming and trust it will help promote effective communication with the students in your ministry.

Again, if these instructions feel like they’re way over your head, feel free to let me build and host this application for you.

Troubleshooting

• Make sure you’re using a valid RSS feed. I ran into problems with one app because the feed wasn’t using the normal “Title” and “Description” meta tags. Odd, but apparently possible.
• If the application isn’t updating your profile page automatically with new content after 30 minutes, manually run your cronjob.php file from a browser (example, http://www.yourdomain.com/facebook/cronjob.php). If you get a bunch of gibberish text, go back and repeat steps 13-17 again. If you get a plain white screen and find that your Facebook app is now updated correctly, re-check your Cron Job settings in your cPanel (steps 18-19).
• If you get this error: Parse error: syntax error, unexpected '{' in /home/rest_of_path/appinclude.php on line 10 find the solution in this comment below.

130 Tips und Ideen fur Jugendarbeit

Anyone want to translate it into Spanish?

Of course, the English version of the ebook is still available, too. If you haven’t read it yet, it’s a free download and packed with 130 tips and ideas for youth ministry. Get it in English here.

Teens face difficult, painful stuff in life — and they shouldn’t struggle alone. But what do you say? How do you help? What if you make things worse? This rapid-response handbook gives you and your youth group the confidence to share God’s love and comfort with hurting friends. You will be prepared to respond with 12 chapters focused on twelve emergencies that the teens you care for may encounter.

Topics include:

• Grief
• Depression
• Suicide
• Addictions
• Divorce
• Abuse
• Crisis Pregnancy
• Academic Problems
• Family Conflict
• Stress and Anxiety
• Destructive Behavior
• Gender Identity and Sexual Choices

Each chapter includes:

• Real Life Narrative – Learn from someone who has been there
• Care and Counseling Tips – Practical ideas to personally reach out in love
• Tips for your entire youth group – Great ways your group can offer support
• What to say and what not to say – Positive encouragement to help the hurting and advice on what not to say
• You’ll also find Scripture connections, guidelines for referring your friend to a professional counselor, additional resources, and ways your group can stand by your friend in need.

Download, “Emergency Response Handbook for Youth Ministry” *

*download available for one week only

“How can someone who seems to have it all be such a troubled person?” (News reporter)

“We succeed to the very best we can be and there’s still an emptiness within us…and we don’t know how to appropriately fill that… If we don’t get the help we need, the only answer is to end it.” (Interviewee)

“He’s a celebrity, he dates beautiful women, he’s got tons of money, a guy who really seems, on the outside anyway, to really have it all. Does this just point out that living the Hollywood dream really isn’t all it’s cracked up to be?” (News reporter)

“No matter what it seems like on the outside, living to get that ‘next fix’ is the only thing you live for. It’s hell! It’s a living hell!” (Interviewee)

I edited the YouTube clip a little to make it shorter and used it as a part of my lesson today about how only a relationship with God can satisfy. It also works well with Dare2Share’s latest youth leader lesson, Owen Wilson’s Meltdown (free, but site registration is required). Download the clip here if you wanna use it sometime:

Owen Wilson suicide news report (3 min, 16 sec; Divx format; 27.6MB)

Ever since I got my beloved MacBook Pro I’ve been using Mozy to safely backup all my data online. The client sits in my taskbar and automatically backs up all my data online. A free account gives me 2GB of storage space, which is plenty since I don’t bother to backup my iTunes library, pictures or videos (I still have all the music CDs, the pictures are also stored on my desktop at home and videos I manually dump on our church’s backup server). There are three things I love about Mozy:

1. It doesn’t bug me. I seriously forgot it was there until I read Chris’ blog. It just works on its own.
2. It’s easy to set up and use. I just choose what I want it to backup (like iCal, Mail, system preferences, documents, even specific file types or folders) and click OK.
3. It uses almost no system resources. It has never affected CPU usage or memory, the exact opposite from other backup solutions I’ve tried.

Backups are something you don’t usually think of until it’s too late, which is why I love Mozy. I thought of it once long enough to setup Mozy and haven’t thought of it since then. I just love the security of knowing every time I check on it I see something like, “Last backup: 1 hour ago.”

Admittedly, I’ve only used the Mac beta version, so I can’t speak for the Windows version, but if the Mac beta works this well, I can only assume that the Windows version, which is not in beta, works just as well. The biggest downside to the Windows version is, well, that it’s running on Windoze.

Check out Mozy.

[tags]Mozy[/tags]

Free Youth Ministry Materials

• A Lost Lesson (Steve is offering a message and PowerPoint download for free.)
• Matthew Chapter 1:1-17 (CSI Jerusalem) (Another free talk outline from Steve. What a great guy, huh?)
• Communist Church (And again from Steve, he describes how to play one of his favorite youth group games.)
• Stranger Than Fiction — film clip ideas (Nigel gives several great ideas of how to teach spiritual truths from this movie.)
• Evolution and the Simpsons (Nigel posted a Simpsons clip that could be used as an intro to a discussion on evolution.)

Good Reading

• Top Ten Things to get you Fired in Youth Ministry (I’m not sure any one of these things alone would get you fired necessarily, but it’s still good reminders of what not to do.)
• 5 ways to survive summer (I’ve done all of them so far except the last one — I can’t believe I only have 6 weeks left until we launch the Fall ministry! There’s so much prep that needs to be done before then.)
• Five steps toward better student leadership (Good list. Applies to the whole youth group, not just student leaders.)
• A new take on contact ministry (A good reminder from Mark that it’s important to build adult relationships outside of youth group.)
• How to get people to talk about your ministry (Mike summarizes someone else’s list and focuses it on youth ministry.)
• Ten axioms of youth ministry and Ten more axioms of youth ministry and Still 10 more (Not necessarily in any kind of order, just 30 short points about youth ministry.)

Devotionals for Church Leaders

• Capturing a teachable heart (A devotional by Ron Klabunde.)
• Stepping into greatness (A devotional by Ron Klabunde.)

Txt Signal lets me have multiple groups of cell phone contacts. So, I have one group for Jr. High, one for Sr. High and another for cancellation notices for a weekly event we’re doing this summer. The best part is that I don’t have to manually enter all the kids cell phone numbers and accidentally risk accumulating text charges for those who don’t have text messaging plans. The service provides me a link I can easily post on our youth group’s website or send out via email for people to click and sign themselves up. Plus, they can also easily unsubscribe from the service later if they want, so there’s little maintenance on my part.

The downside to the service is that I can’t personalize the callback number as my own cell number. Messages come from [pickaname]@txtsig.us, which cannot be replied to by recipients.

Service plans start $7/month, but I’m using the $14/month plan with 100 contacts and 60 group messages. That’s 6,000 text messages for $14 as opposed to 116 messages for the same price if I used Skype’s SMS service.

Of course, if you have a smaller group you can follow Matt’s instructions for sending mass text messages for free, but it requires a lot more footwork and I’ve found it isn’t as clean or reliable.

Thanks, Chris, for pointing me to this resource. It’s gonna be a life saver!

[UPDATE: Matt, from TxtSignal, informed me of a promo code they have for ministries or any organization that works toward ministry efforts. The promo code is good for a minimum of 10% off and even slightly more depending on the plan (for example, the $14/month plan becomes $12/month, or, 14% off). When signing up for service, use this promotional code: -----]

[UPDATE: The promo code is no longer available, but if you set up an account, email support@txtsignal.com and they'll setup a 10% discount for ministries.]

Thanks for sharing, Dennis!

SMALL GROUP DISCUSSION SHEET

NEWS INTRO AND TRIBUTE VIDEO

TIPS FOR THE DISCUSSION LEADER

Listen more than you talk: The most beautiful thing you can do for a grieving teenager is to be a good listener. They may need to share the same stories over and over again. Provide a safe place for them to do that. Effective listening requires that helpful advice remains unspoken until the student wants input and is ready for advice. Preaching about God’s sovereignty or reminding teenagers that “things happen for the best” is not recommended and may perceived as insensitive.

Don’t place judgment on the students’ feelings: Some will be very angry, some will be depressed and others may be seemingly indifferent. Don’t offer counseling or make judgments on their emotions – just listen to them and encourage them to speak their heart. The purpose here is not to fix or correct their feelings, it’s just to listen. Their emotions are not wrong, they just are.

Don’t be afraid of silence: Don’t feel a need to fill in moments of silence with your own interpretations or as a queue to quickly move on to the next question. This is often the time when students are processing their thoughts or trying to figure out how to verbalize their emotions. Give them time to think and break the silence when they’re ready to do so. Only move on to the next question when you feel the current one has been exhausted.

[tags]Virginia Tech, small groups[/tags]

(ht to Ben)

2. YMExchange.com: Youth Ministry Exchange is a great site by Adam McLane that provides helpful articles and a very active forum for youth workers. Need to vent about an issue in ministry? Have a question that needs input? Want advice from some youth ministry veterans? The users there provide the help you’re looking for. Site registration is free, but it’ll cost you $5/year to gain complete access to the site.

3. TheParentLink.com: I’ve been using these guys for a couple years now for my parent ministry newsletter. Every month they provide an customizable newsletter full of great content and resources for parents. Add your calendar items, a couple personal articles if you wish, and save it as PDF or HTML. An annual subscription costs $99.

4. Facebook.com: I use Facebook all the time to keep up with students in my youth group. In fact, it’s quickly becoming our primary means of communication outside church. Create a Facebook group for your youth group and easily create events, photos and discussions for your kids.

5. YouTube.com: Definitely not a youth ministry site, but it is such an valuable tool to me as a youth leader. I use it all the time to find lesson illustrations or funny icebreaker videos to play while kids hang out. Just yesterday in Sunday school the Sr. High discussed the occult. So I went to YouTube and found a goldmine of video clips of a Christian evangelist and the founder of the Church of Satan discussing their beliefs. I put all the clips together back-to-back on DVD and we discussed each one.

Honorable Mention:

CovenantEyes.com: Internet accountability. Everyone in ministry needs it. Even if porn isn’t a personal struggle, it clears all doubt in case the question is ever raised. Be proactive in protecting your reputation.

ChristianAnswers.net: Not really a youth ministry website per se, but it certainly contains a lot of helpful information on almost every topic imaginable, all from a Christian perspective. I often refer students to the site and even use it myself from time to time to find “Christian answers.”

TeenLifeMinistries.com: I used to subscribe to their site ($25 initial cost, $9.95/month thereafter), but canceled because I prefer to write my own lessons. For those who prefer to buy curriculum, though, this is a good place to check out. You get a new lesson every Monday with a corresponding PowerPoint presentation and access to a huge archive of resources. The curriculum is pretty general, though, so be prepared to spend some time tailoring the lessons to the specific needs of your students.

Got any others to recommend?

[youtube]A6rDteQIrKE[/youtube]

[youtube]l3WO4ITpWlA&eurl[/youtube]

ht to Josh Griffin

VIDEO REMOVED BY USER ON YOUTUBE

I’ll never forget one conversation I had many years ago with a [tag]junior high[/tag] student who was active in another youth ministry. He struggled with his sexual identity, not sure if he was more attracted to girls or guys and was toying with the idea of adopting homosexuality as a potential lifestyle. After listening to his stories I asked, “Have you talked with your [tag]youth pastor[/tag] about this?” He immediately responded, “Oh no, I can’t tell him about this. I was going to say something to him last year, but then I overheard him make fun of a gay guy.”

Mental note self: NEVER make fun of issues like homosexuality and [tag]abortion[/tag]. It’s inappropriate and there’s no telling how careless “humor” can terminate someone from ever seeking Godly help.

Topics include forming your identity in youth ministry, understanding youth culture, developing a vision statement, building a ministry team, relational youth ministry skills, administration and more.

It’s all right here.

(ht to SamR)

Dennis is generously making his e-book available online for FREE under the Creative Commons License, so download it and check it out.

PASSION

• What excites you? What do you get excited about?
• What drives you?

PERSONALITY

• What are you good at? What are your strengths?
• What are you bad at? What are your weaknesses?
• What ticks you off? What are your pet peeves?
• Who in the ministry do you look up to and respect?
• What kind of ministry are you attracted to?
• How has the way God wired you prepared you for ministry?

SPIRITUALLY

• What is God doing in your life spiritually?
• What are your spiritual gifts?

VISION

• Where is God leading you spiritually?
• What do you foresee in future ministry?

EXPERIENCES

• Are you plugged into ministry right now?
• What past experiences do you have in ministry?
• What do others say that have seen you work in ministry?

PHILOSOPHY

• What do you see ministry as?
• Define ministry.
• Describe ministry.
• Do you see ministry as a lifestyle or a job? Why?
• All believers are called to ministry, but few are called to full-time ministry. Why you?

CALLING TO MINISTRY BASED ON THE PARABLE OF THE TALENTS

• Faithful — Can you do it every day with passion?
• Fruitful — Are there positive outcomes? (Is God blessing it?)
• Fulfilled — Do you enjoy it?
• If one of these are not present, then you’re in the wrong ministry. Two of the servants were FFF, but one wasn’t and buried his treasure.

With this in mind, I often hear people say, “A good Christian needs to do X-Y-Z in their relationship with God in order for it to be successful.” Suggestions for X-Y-Z usually include a set amount of time spent reading scripture and praying on a daily basis. To me, though, this seems to assume that the given formula creates intimacy for anyone wanting to know God. I’ve tried the formula and for me personally it only seems to lead to a spiritual rut rather than a living vital relationship with my Savior.

To say that I need to read my Bible and pray for X amount of minutes every day seems to be like saying I need to meet with the same friend on the same bench at the same mall every day for the same amount of time. I listen to my friend talk and when He is finished, He listens to me talk. When I’m done talking, we leave our bench and wait to come back to it the next day. Any dating relationship based on this “formula” would get old pretty quickly.

For me, my relationship with God is much more fluid. I don’t hold myself to a strict schedule of something I do, rather it’s about something I am. My heart naturally draws me to spending time with Him in different ways. One day I may feel like playing my guitar and spending time in worship, other days all I do is pray. Sometimes I’ll read just a few verses, other days I’ll read a whole book and highlight everything that jumps out at me. Then next day I may only re-read those highlighted parts. Because I actually desire to spend time with God it’s something I naturally want to make time to do without making it a forced habit.

I know people say, “Well, I’m too busy so if I don’t schedule it, it won’t get done.” In that case, scheduling is a great way to get started as long as the focus remains on the relationship with God rather a task on the to-do list. Several years ago a college professor of mine said that no matter how busy people are, if they have to go to the bathroom they’ll make time, even if it’s the busiest part of their day. In other words, no matter how busy we are, we all have time to spend with God even if it’s only a couple minutes. Maybe it’s more an issue of prioritizing instead of time? (Man, spend time with God in the bathroom if that’s the only time you have!)

George McDonald said, “Nothing is so deadening to the divine as a habitual dealing with the outsides of holy things.” Attending church, praying and reading scripture are all good things, but perhaps we need to rethink why we do them. Maybe we need to examine our motivations to see if we’ve lost sight of the true goal of these activities.

What’s difficult for me to understand are teachers in churches today that know little of a relationship with God. For me, everything I do and teach in ministry comes from my personal time with Him. Otherwise my teaching comes from a curriculum book instead of my heart. I then find myself teaching facts and head-knowledge rather than a relationship when it’s ultimately the relationship that students need. My ministry therefore depends on my relationship with God. It’s hard for me to be genuinely passionate about something I don’t practice myself.

Back in Bible college a visiting missionary held a workshop called, Spiritual Dryness. I attended and it pretty much changed the direction of my struggling walk with the Lord. He released me from the X-Y-Z mentality and encouraged those in attendance to be creative with the time we spend with God. He told us that time spent with the Lord doesn’t have to look the same way for everyone. We’re all created uniquely with different approaches to relationships. Reading the Bible and prayer are both vital, but if one person chooses to write letters or poems to God instead of closing theirs eyes and bowing their heads, that’s completely legitimate.

He included a handout that I often review and now use with students called, Ten Questions to ask when your spiritual life is dull and dry. I’ve included that handout below for anyone who might be interested. The second document, Quiet Time: How it works, is a sheet I sometimes use with students who express a desire to spend time with God but don’t know where to start. It gives them a starting point as long as they remember that this is about developing a relationship, not going through a form every day.

I always encourage students to be creative and try new things in their relationship with God. When they take the challenge seriously I am almost always blown away with the ideas these kids come up with for spending time with the Lord. The best part, however, is that this usually causes them to take ownership of the relationship. It’s so very awesome to watch!

Ten questions to ask when your spiritual life is dull and dry
Quiet Time: How it works

Despite the controversy surrounding MySecret.tv, it’s a good resource of stories to share with teens about the impact of different sins.

The site currently has six English Bible translations (including The Message) and many dictionaries, encyclopedias and commentaries, though only half of the resources are currently free. The others are made available to your account at reasonable prices.

Unfortunately, eBible is still in beta and not open to public registration at this time. However, current users may invite three friends to join the eBible network and, thanks to Mike Jones, I got one! So now I’m passing along my three invitations to the first three who comment here requesting one. Also be sure to check Mike’s pbwiki eBible page for additional invites. Either way, visit eBible.com and look for it to go public in a couple weeks.

Bill Scott, a friend of mine, life-long radio veteran and president of Zjam Youth Ministries and Teenhopeline.com, is helping with some of the initial production. He also wants to include the podcast on Zjam’s new huge website that will release in about a month. So it looks like the Lord has some plans for this podcast that extend beyond the scope of my blog. I’m excited and looking forward to what He wants to do.

http://www.studygs.net/listening.htm

Principles for Confrontation
No one enjoys confrontation. This document contains some Biblical principles I researched for making it as loving and effective as possible.

Steps for a successful beginning in youth ministry
Used with permission from the author, Ann Pursche. She’s written an excellent document for those who are new to youth ministry and are just starting out in a church ministry position. Her tips are helpful reminders for veteran youth workers, as well.

Split youth up in teams and have them write a song or rap to the instrumental track. Give them at least 15 minutes, then have each team perfom in front of the audience. Award a prize for 1st, 2nd and 3rd places.

We had a blast as the groups took on different personalities and rapped about everything from Sunday school to chap stick (the chap stick rap is now posted on the wall in my office).

For the rap music bed, I took the intro from an old Tonex song called Out of the Box and just looped it. If you’re interested in playing this with your group sometime, I’ve made the track available for download. I know it’s not a “real” hip-hop” beat, but it works. It will also be on my free resources page for future reference. Enjoy and have fun!

Download the skit: The Skit Guys – The Chair (Length: 16:07 minutes)

Keep pluggin’ away in youth ministry!

I wrote last month how I think it’s necessary to plan to the Da Vinci Code movie coming out in May. The lesson series I’m working on will be made available on my resources page as soon as the series is finished.

Also coming within the next week or two are many small group lessons my Pastor’s written for a book called, Issues and Answers that relate to topics most teenagers are facing today.

Thanks to all the youth workers who aid in youth ministries everywhere by creating an online community that pools its resources together for the purpose of effectively reaching teenagers!

I told the kids last week we’d do Tie-Dye Wars tomorrow at youth group. Basically everyone gets a white shirt and a water gun filled with dye. At my whistle all the kids run crazy squirting each other’s shirts with dye. When it’s over, we hang the shirts up on the fence to dry, go to small groups, and then pick ‘em on the way out. Sounds like a simple, fun, chaotic game, right? The problem is that I can’t decide if we should use tie dye or food coloring. Tie dye will permanently stain the shirt, but it also instantly stains skin, including people’s faces! I bought masks for everyone and thought we’d cover the kid’s arms with trash bags, but that still leaves the neck and hair open. We could use shower caps for the hair and plastic wrap around the neck, but now the game is getting a little too expensive and complicated. Food coloring is another option because it won’t stain the skin as badly, but it’ll also wash out of a shirt. So now I’m stuck: do I just bundle everyone up in plastic and play the game anyway or do I scrap it and face a group of disappointed kids tomorrow? If I scrap it, what do I do with the 20 shirts and masks I just bought? We could make youth group shirts somehow, I guess, but I don’t have time before tomorrow to figure out what to do with our logo and everything… What to do…

Well, writing it out didn’t help me come up with a solution. Guess I’ll have to sleep on it and see if an ingenious idea comes to me.