Just to catch you up on the fall, here are some pics (featuring things like: First day of school, Puyallup Fair, Victoria with Elisabeth, late-season M’s, Halloween, YMV Lunches, Scout trip to Costa Rica, snow, Christmas tree and decorating, field trips and more)!
Grace,
Brian
It seems we’re either gearing up for something or winding down from that last something. In our families it’s stuff like the school year, the holidays, family vacation, or a sports season. In ministry it’s the program year, that camp, the mission trip, graduation and a few others! As soon as we get done winding down, we’re gearing up for the next, sometimes we never get to wind down! As I wind down from the fall tour of lunches and put the final touches on the writing projects I’m “gearing up” for some great stuff ahead…
For today’s Three-For-Thursday, I am going to share three things I am very excited about that we’re “Gearing Up” for at Youthmark!
If you haven’t seen this years stuff, you can click here for a preview. I am VERY excited about all the places we’re sending folk, but to be honest I’m even more thrilled to hear about the “at home” stuff that I continue to hear, read and see with groups that have gone with Youthmark in the past!
Please pray for even more groups to sign up with Youthmark for a mission trip or for our new “A La Carte” options that allow groups to still use our training materials that already know where they are going or already have a sending agency they are working with. Mission is not just there! Mission is not just here! It is ANYWHERE!
Grace,
Brian
My Student Ministry Stuff (SMS) blog post is normally a once-a-week post (typically at the beginning of the week), however, last week I was motivated by a post by one of my friends in Colorado. Jason Lamb is a former Youth Pastor who now works for a great ministry (Dare 2 Share) which is based just outside of Denver, Colorado. Jason blogged about the trend he sees in church-ministry. That trend being a marginalization or prioritization of teens in church. To summarize, he sees the grey-area shrinking (grey being a church that places some emphasis on teen, but not enough to call teens a priority and enough to clearly say that they aren’t ignoring teens).
My take on the subject is that emphasis and prioritization ebbs and flows in most churches. This peak and valley is often dictated by the leadership in the lives of the students. Whether lay-driven, paid staff driven or a combination, my own belief is that a church can/will see greater prioritization in the lives of the teens if/when the leadership to the teens become proactive in the prioritization. Of course, this isn’t fool-proof; some churches will still somehow kill student ministry and in other cases ministry to teens can flourish when it seems there is no plan at all.
I suggest you go back and read part 1 here, then part 2 here. As a background, you may also want to read Jason’s post here.
As a church (and the leadership) begin to prioritize a philosophy of ministry instead of a personality and all of the personalities begin to invest in the congregation (by inviting them to participate in/with the teens) a third component for long-term prioritization emerges:
Prioritize and Publicize Evangelism. My own belief is that is pretty much impossible to fall more in love with the Lord without falling more in love with the lost. In other words, as the youth ministry prioritizes reaching out to their community, clubs, campuses and even those whom don’t know Jesus within the four walls of the church the rest of the congregation will NEED to hear about that. I don’t think anything infuses new life into a church more than hearing about NEW LIFE. Everyone should be practicing peer-to-peer outreach. As your teens fall deeper in love with the lost and begin to risk in relationship by sharking the Gospel make sure your congregation hears about that… others will begin to follow. Not only will they see that teens are making a difference they will see that youth ministry is much more than an entertainment stock-pile place. They’ll see it as Students IN Ministry, not just a youth group. Suggest to the pastor that students have the opportunity to share a quick testimony about their witness, get a volunteer leader to write a quick story in the church newsletter and prioritize these great proclamations of new life at ALL of your events!
Call me biased, but I FIRMLY believe that evangelism is the key to discipleship. As we (children, students, parents, congregants, pastors, etc.) love, relationally pursue and passionately share (not scripted) Christ crucified we are drawn back to Discipleship/growth. in other words living “THE Cause” fulfilling “The Great Commission” or practicing “Mission51” is simply the foundation for the prioritization of not just teen ministry in a church, but ALL ministry in the church! Your gift/strength/passion area may be more oriented to growth/encouragement in the lives of believers, but that cannot be done without the unchurched/unbelieving in mind. A natural bi-product of maturing in Christ is new life in Christ!
I am thrilled to lead a ministry (Youthmark) that emphasized this evangelism/discipleship model. We simply want to partner with the Church build upon the foundation that the Lord promised to be THE ROCK! We see it year in and year out, sending and host communities both growing their love for the lost and Mission51 enhanced both places! Praise God!
I believe that marginalization of teens may happen at churches, but I believe this can/should be prevented if we prioritize reaching out, become more committed to congregational exposure and relationship and build a philosophy that will withstand any one leader! Let’s prioritize!
Grace,
Brian
Most, if not all of you, have seen this. But, just because there is the off-chance that you haven’t, I thought I’d post it. It’s the video (if you can call it that) from one of my favorite bands, the David Crowder Band.
Plain in simple, they are one of the most creative bands I know; and this still-shot video is being proclaimed as one of the most creative music videos ever made.
Now that you’ve watched it, link here to David’s blog and read a little about how it was made as well.
Celebrating creativity today!
Grace,
Brian
By way of quick review, a recent post by one of my Dare 2 Share friends, Jason (click here for his post) led me to this three-part series I’m doing on the potential ways to help churches, specifically, help Student Ministries, not become marginalized and stay a priority for the congregation.
Part one, posted Tuesday (click here to read that post), made the point that a church leadership and the youth ministry team need to Prioritize Philosophy over Personality. Quick translation: create and maintain a philosophy of student ministry that has a foundation and function that will outlast any one personality. I might add, any good Youth Pastor should want this to be the case!
After prioritizing the philosophy, we move on to the second way to avoid the youth ministry becoming marginalized.
Prioritize Congregational In-Reach: A simple principle that is oft-ignored in churches is the visibility of the youth ministry. If the congregation doesn’t hear about the youth or see the youth they don’t have the opportunity to prioritize the youth. You’ve heard it “how come we don’t see the youth at our services?” To be honest this just evokes way too much emotion for many youth-ministry leaders… instead of opening your can of something-or-other and going off about the worship, sermons or liturgy not-being relevant to teens, I suggest the answer is found by simply inviting the congregation to the youth! What would it look like to make the congregation a priority in youth ministry? Create opportunities for the congregation at-large to be involved with you. Here are a couple ideas to start with…
I can only imagine how many more ideas we could come up with that could lead to a better known-congregation. The end-result is that as teens gain relationship with those outside “Youth”, they will want to go to church for those relationships regardless of worship style, sermon length or quality of communion grape-juice.
On Monday I’ll conclude the three-part “Marginalization” SMS series with one last suggestion:
Prioritize and Publicize Evangelism.
Have a great weekend!
Grace,
Brian
This week I have a number of things I am trying to balance… in other words, there are a few too many plates spinning. So, today’s “3-For” is a really quick one.
So, to those who are regular bloggers, overwhelmed youth workers or just in general “really busy right now,” here are three things you ought to do.
1. Don’t Blog (or if you have a regularly scheduled blog, make it short and perhaps make it a post about prioritizing the things you ought to be doing instead of blogging).
2. Get Your Other Work Done Before Blogging or Reading Blogs. Duh, obvious. So obvious that maybe I shouldn’t have taken the time away from my busy schedule to post this point.
3. Don’t Come Up With a Third Point if you’re list requires three things. Sitting there trying to come up with a third point means you’re really not following the first two all that well, so you may as well not wrack your brain trying to come up with one!
Grace,
Brian
My friend Jason Lamb recently posted about a trend he sees in the marginalization or prioritization of Youth Ministry in churches (click here for his post). He believes that the grey area between marginalization and making Student Ministry a priority in a church is getting slim–churches are choosing to make (and invest in order to make) teens a larger priority or they are intentionally doing the opposite.
His post caused me to take a look at the churches around my region and the regions I visit as part of Youthmark. Jason sees this as a growing trend, however I don’t think it is a new or growing phenomenon, I believe we will continue to see marginalization, grey and prioritization–but I believe the players are consistently switching positions. A church that today is prioritizing, may be a marginalizing church tomorrow. The church of Youth-Marginalization that had a key volunteer begin to act upon her heart for teens all of a sudden can become the church of Teen-Priority. Much of it depends on the hired help (or assigned leader). Unfortunately the Youth Leader (or leadership) is often seen as the glorified babysitter, the “activity director” or fun-guy (read: fungi) who’ll entertain the teen-flock for a couple years. I know this is not true in every church and I hope it can become not true at ANY church.
Today’s SMS is the first of a three-part series on this subject. I hope the series will address a couple key questions every church (regardless of their current marginalization/grey/prioritization status) should be answering…How can our church be one that is prioritizing the teens? How can our congregation be one that avoids the marginalization of students?
Please understand that even a series of blog-posts on this subject cannot answer questions this large, I am choosing to write with the assumption that many of my readers are either leading or part of the leadership to youth in your current church. I certainly don’t assume that because a church has a youth group that it is a church that prioritizes ministry to teens. This series of posts will come from the perspective of what the youth leader and/or youth leadership team can do to help teen ministry continue to be or become a priority.
Prioritize a Philosophy over a Personality. The Youth Pastor’s personality should not shape the youth ministry, it should season the existing philosophy. Let me start with a note to the strong-personality Youth Pastor: help create something that is much bigger than you! I see it way too often, a church will hire a Youth Pastor because he/she is great with teens–this is a GREAT thing, however, that person comes in and creates a philosophy of ministry for the youth ministry. Everything from terminology to methodology and sometimes overflowing to theology is dictated by the Youth Pastor. A long-term approach to church-youth ministry should be built by the leadership of the church, not the youth leader (the current Youth Leader/Pastor can/should be part of that process, but not necessarily be the leader of that process). Churches can begin to prioritize a simple youth ministry philosophy that is literally Youth Pastor-proof. Allow the Youth Pastor’s personality to season the philosophy by his/her personality, but the structure should prioritize team, not just the leader. A team of volunteers will bring long-term sustainability and prioritization of students that will not be dependent upon the often-revolving Youth Pastorate door.
I’m excited about this three part series and had a REALLY hard time separating this into a three part series so instead of keeping with my usual Monday or Tuesday SMS, I’ll do an extra one on Friday to keep this subject on the burner. Here’s the preview:
Friday: Prioritize Congregational In-Reach–bring the congregation to the youth first.
Monday: Prioritize and Publicize Evangelism–everyone has a story, they must be told!
Blessings on you and your ministry, may we glorify Christ as we seek to prioritize the things in His ministry!
Grace,
Brian
Yes. He is Will.
I think he’s cool; so I posted about him.
Grace,
Brian
If I have guessed correctly there may be a few of you who have gone out shopping today? Just a hunch…
I came across a great video of something that took place just a couple weeks ago at a shopping mall. If you’ve got 4-5 minutes it’s totally worth watching. If you’ve never seen or heard of a flash mob, I’ll give you the quick wikipedia definition:
A flash mob (or flashmob) is a large group of people who assemble suddenly in a public place, perform an unusual and pointless act for a brief time, then disperse. The term flash mob is generally applied only to gatherings organized via telecommunications, social media, or viral emails.The term is generally not applied to events organized by public relationsfirms, protests, and publicity stunts.
The following video is pretty powerful… there is such power in music and even more power in the name of Jesus. This flash mob sings the Hallelujah Chorus in the middle of a food court. I love watching the people react. Several are drawn to tears and I believe a few non flash mob folk begin singing as well.
Talk about an entry point afterward… people asking you why you just did that… What a great opportunity to proclaim the story of the One you were just singing about!
Hallelujah to that!
Grace,
Brian
Ahhh the Holidays have officially arrived. The Christmas music can now be cued up (though many have cheated for the last month); I can finally start feeling okay about the Red Starbuck’s cups and we can bust out the boxes of decorations that will add to the mood of the house for the next month.
Yes, I’m one of THOSE guys who doesn’t believe the proverbial “Holidays” should start until Thanksgiving. A tradition worth holding.
Another tradition worth holding is my annual Thanksgiving Poll question. I am a bit sadistic, I like coming up with really, really hard “would you rather” questions. So, with that in mind, please participate in and enjoy my Thanksgiving Day Poll Question!
I’ll try to post my “Three For Thursday” later this evening… Happy Thanksgiving!
Grace,
Brian
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