This picture is more than just a bunch of random post-its. Everyone of these post-it’s represent a person a soul that our students are praying for. I took this picture with my iPhone and it was only a portion of the whole wall that was covered with Names.
On Sunday evening all of Creekside gathered to pray for our church, to move us forward as a church, and our students prayed in our student room to pray for their friends and our ministry. So great to come home and see this. Big prayers
Great 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 Otherwise, we die and pass on a church system that is incredibly broken, disconnected and outdated.”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.
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.
Wow, we did it. We set a goal and we acheived it. Not really, but I’ve posted a ton. i started back in like 2004, and now here in 2008 we have broken the 600 barrier. Neat -o
Busy weekend ahead for me.
Today is beyond::afterhours which is going to rock. I have a good feeling about this one. Actually I’m always nervous before these things, but that’s just me. I’m never nervous before speaking or teaching, that’s where I feel at home. But putting on events like this really make me nervous.
Tomorrow I am facilitating a break-out session at Evoke 08. Talking about the search to belong and what students can do to help people feel like they belong. I’ll post my notes later.
Sunday is church and youth group so I will pretty much be working all day.
Wednesday is looking like heaven right now because that is when I have scheduled my comp day for all the insanity of this weekend. Super-Duper.
If you are reading this and you are a beyond-er then I hope to see you at seven call your peeps and bring them to ::afterhours.
I’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.
Great article from Tim at life in student ministryread it here.
Great article from Tim at life in student ministryread it here.
Here’s a great post from tim at life in student ministry.
Navigating the Church System (Leadership Tension)
Tim gives some great insights for youth leaders to apply. So Check this out. Go Now.
Well it’s been a while since I posted. Couple of factors went into that, 1)busy 2)sick. So that’s that.
But some pretty cool and exciting things have happened. our student ministry hosted an event called beyond::afterhours. And that went really well. We had 30 students show up and we had a great ole’ time. I’ve heard a lot of very positive feedback on the event itself, both from students and parents. So Rock On!
Probably the highlight from that evening was the chance that I had to talk to a student who had a lot of great questions about God, Jesus and the church. Any time I can have a real honest conversation with people about faith matters it’s a reminder for why I am in youth ministry. There is nothing greater than changing someone’s perceptions of Christians. 
)
So Friday night was great. But on Saturday I started feeling pretty crummy with a cold and I’m just now starting to feel better, dayquil helps. But Judah and I both have the same cold, so I’m hoping we can both kick it quickly.
Speaking of Judah he has learned the High Five-Pound It Combination. He automatically goes to the Pound it after any kind of high five motion, so be ready, don’t leave him hanging.
I’ve set up a place outside of my house where I can work. It’s at an undiclosed location, so don’t ask me where. But just having that place brings joy to my life, I feel like I have a little bit more seperation between my home and work which is really valuable for my sanity.
And last night I got an early Birthday, Valentine’s Day, Anniversary, LaborDay, present. Thanks to my parent’s contribution and kathy’s permission I was able to get an iPhone. And it’s pretty stinking awesome. I’m still learning how to make it the better tool for me to get stuff done, but I love the SMS conversation feature, visual voicemail, and mail and internet. The recent updates where you can customize your home page are great too. So I’m in geek heaven right now.
Something odd happened too recently. I denied my first comment. I believe in freedom of speech, but I also believe in courtesy. And I received a comment that was just mean for no reason. And I just couldn’t leave it be. It felt weird, but at the same time like it was the right thing for me to do. As the creator of this blog I feel like I should create a culture around it and part of that culture is respect for other people. Especially groups. So I hope I haven’t come across as disrespectful to anyone, but in the future I hope that we are all civil and respectful.
On the plus side, both Matt Casper and Jim Henderson have left comments on my book review for Jim and Casper go to Church. And that was cool. It’s always neat to have the author respond in some way to your thoughts.
So that’s a lot of stuff but I had to get it all out there. Have a great day
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