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Youth Integration is Key
24 AprGreat post from Tim Schmoyer today. Read the Whole thing.
“. . . our fundamental approach to giving students ownership must change nevertheless. Otherwise, we die and pass on a church system that is incredibly broken, disconnected and outdated.”
I love youth worship, I love youth group, but in the end, I think we too often create a youth ghetto. I’ve had many parents ask me to start a middle school program for their students on Sunday morning. We have 1 service. To do that I would just be isolating students again. And I don’t think that’s the best answer.
We need to integrate our students into the church system as a whole, or we will just continue to see people spin out after high school. So how do we connect students in the life of the church?
Here are some ideas.
- Stop isolating them
- Stop calling the the church of tomorrow
- Get students involved in sunday morning ministries like ushering, greeting, worship team. (I need to do this)
- Talk to students on sunday mornings – address their issues, their concerns, speak in their language.
- If the church’s progression is to community groups, what if students were allowed to lead community groups?
There are more but this is just a start.
Our church went through this thing called CoHorts, lots of brilliant stuff that we picked up from there. But something that kind of stuck in my craw was that Adults, Youth and Kids all had to have their own model operating independently of each other. So Kids and Students need their own worship, outreach, community, ministry, serving, and spiritual growth programs. So instead of our church doing 6 things, we are actually doing 18. That seems a bit excessive.
At what point do we stop and say, that’s too much? Reading Simple Church, I began to wonder, why can our model’s overlap? Why can’t we share the big things as a church, like outreach and worship? Why do we need a Youth Worship Band, when in reality we have a system that is working every Sunday morning, and we can integrate students into that system. Why do we need to have a youth serving program, wouldn’t it be better to have students and parents serving side by side?
These are some thoughts and I would love to hear your thoughts. These are just my thoughts. Perhaps I’m way out in left field on this one. But maybe I’m not.
SnoBlast 08 Video
22 AprSo it took me awhile to get this edited and then I forgot to post it. But here it is.
Monday Morning Memo-Random
7 AprWell it’s Monday, my weekend was very busy, and today so far has been nice and not stressful.
Let’s re-cap, our beyond::afterhours event went well. It was spring break for some of our students so they didn’t have the same level of contact with their friends, so we didn’t have as many students come out, but we still had loads of fun. We had a bunch of group contests, and a sweet relay race. A couple of first time students were there also so that was really cool.
We finished our organized games and then we had a half hour of free time for students to hang out, play some X-BOX, board games, eat food, whatever. What I didn’t think would be such a huge hit was FourSquare, we had a line of people rockin’ the foursquare until after nine o’clock so that was really fun.
Then on Saturday I lead a break-out session at Evoke 08. I talked about Belonging and how everyone is looking for belonging. I was really surprised by how full the seesion was. I printed 40 handouts and only got a few back, and I know some people didn’t get a handout because they came in late. So that was really neat. Here is my outline.
Sunday was busy as usual, we had the most people at my house yet since we’ve moved back to my house. And it was a good time. So super busy weekend, but it was a lot of fun.
And by the way, WordPress, if you are reading this, I love the new dashboard. It’s very nice. IF you don’t use wordpress you should, it’s awesome. I know you blogger people like your analytics, and adwords, and whatever, but wordpress is just so fun to use.
Have a great day, I might post something later about what else made yesterday so phenomenal. Let’s just say my geek-o-meter was through the roof.
Interesting new blog
12 MarI’ve come across an interesting new voice in the youth ministry blog-i-verse.
This guy was a youth pastor, and now that he’s not he’s asking a lot of questions about youth ministry effectiveness, essentials, etc.
Pretty interesting. Somethings I agree with, others I don’t. But he raises a lot of good questions. Check it out.
This Should Break Your Heart
11 MarFound this Article at churchrelevance.com
That is not acceptable. That is heart breaking. And as a church, as a pastor, as a Christian we need to do something about it. There is a love vacuum in our culture and we need to Fill that vacuum with Jesus.
afterhours is tonight
8 Marso the first friday of every month we are doing an event. I’ve promo’ed, I’ve called, I’ve emailed, I’ve texted, I’ve myspaced, basically I’ve cast the seed out there, now I just gotta pray that God would bring the increase. Please Jesus!
Where to begin
25 FebLast week was a bit of a whirlwind so I haven’t really had a chance to decompress, and process all that went on at winter camp. But I will say this, Best Sno-Blast ever. This may have been my favorite winter camp that I have ever been too.
If you are looking for a camp that will stretch you and your students and re-introduce you to Jesus, call up steve hayes (myspace.com/limegreennerd) We talked about hearing from God, and the fact that God wants to talk to us, we just don’t trust that voice, or ignore it all together. And we didn’t have an emotionally driven altar time to try to get students to hear God. Instead we quited our hearts and waited for God to speak. It was incredible.
I was amazed at the depth that we went into, and it seemed like our students were getting it. But more important really was our leaders that were there were getting it and we are now charge to take it back to our students and develop this trust in the voice of God that we can develop.
I was particularly amazed by our students who felt that they heard from God, what the felt God was saying, and their boldness too share it. So cool. God is so great.
Today I am going to be in a coaching session, pretty much all day and I am excited to start this new journey. fantastic.
What do you want to do with your life
12 Febthis is from the recent issue of trends and tudes.
- 54 percent of 8-12 year olds and and 66 percent of 13-21 year olds want to “Travel the world.”
- 46 percent of 8-12 year olds and 59 percent of 13-21 year olds want to “Speak another language”
- 40 percent of 8-12 year olds and 36 percent of 13-21 year olds want to “Invent something”
- 40 percent of 8-12 year olds and 42 percent of 13-21 year olds want to “See a rainforest”
- 28 percent of 8-12 year olds and 26 percent of 13-21 year olds want to “Fly a plane”
- 26 percent of 8-12 year olds and 20 percent of 13-21 year olds want to “Be in the Guiness Book of World Records”
- 24 percent of 8-12 year olds and 21 percent of 13-21 year olds want to “Go to Mars”
- 18 percent of 8-12 year olds and 30 percent of 13-21 year olds want to try “Bungee jumping”
- 16 percent of 8-12 year olds and 31 percent of 13-21 year olds want to “Sky dive”
- 20 percent of 8-12 year olds and 28 percent of 13-21 year olds want to go “Whitewater rafting”
- 16 percent of 8-12 year olds and 23 percent of 13-21 year olds want to “Climb a Mountain”
- 15 percent of 8-12 year olds and 42 percent of 13-21 year olds want to “Live in another country.”
- 11 percent of 8-12 year olds and 12 percent of 13-21 year olds want to “Bike across country”
- 11 percent of 8-12 year olds and 20 percent of 13-21 year olds want to “Backpack across country”
- 9 percent of 8-12 year olds and 19 percent of 13-21 year olds want to “Run a marathon”
- 6 percent of 8-12 year olds and 10 percent of 13-21 year olds want to “Finish a triathlon”
parents are still the #1 influence
7 FebGreat article from Tim at life in student ministryread it here.
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