Here’s the latest version of the High School Ministry teaching calendar - we’re kicking off the fall with a message to each of the classes (freshman-senior) and then we kick off the fall church-wide-campaign 40 Days of Love. Right after that series we’re going to try something new - a 4-week ”you own the weekend” series done by 4 local schools where they provide the band, games, speaker, testimony, videos and more. As we get closer I’ll unpack it more (and honestly, we’re just in the idea phase at the moment) but we want to creat an environment where we really reach deep within a few schools this season of HSM.
September Kickoff Weekend
40 Days of Love
40 Days of Love
40 Days of Love
October
40 Days of Love
40 Days of Love
40 Days of Love
You Own the Weekend
November
You Own the Weekend
You Own the Weekend
You Own the Weekend
Thankfulness 1-off (Thanksgiving)
Christmas Series [Jesus, Servant]
December Christmas Series [Jesus, Son of God]
Christmas Series [Jesus, Savior]
No services (Christmas)
No services (Combined with Wildside)
Rick Warren has Rick Warren syndrome. That’s not a joke. He has a brain disorder. “I was born with it,” he says. “I went to the Mayo Clinic, and the doctors said, ‘We have found a dozen or so other people with this. There’s no name, so maybe we’ll just call it the Warren syndrome.” He describes the ailment’s chemistry as an inability to process his body’s own adrenaline. Its symptoms are tremors, disorientation and pain, and, as he says, “it makes my brain move very fast.” I ask — since a colleague of his has asserted it — whether Warren also has attention deficit disorder. Warren laughs heartily. “Am I ADD? Yeah, I’m probably ADD too.”
At this point in time, a lot of people may wish they could scatter their attention the way Warren does. He is the author of one of the world’s best-selling books, The Purpose Driven Life, and the founding pastor of one of the country’s largest churches, the 23,000-member Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif. And on Aug. 16, he will play the role of national inquisitor in a “civil forum” featuring (consecutively, not in debate format) the two presumptive nominees for President, who will fly to Orange County, Calif., to be civilly grilled for an hour apiece.
A more cautious figure than Warren might have passed on the opportunity to become a political lightning rod. But he has spent the past few years positioning himself for just such a role as a suprapolitical, supracreedal arbiter of public virtues and religious responsibilities. Unlike some other conservative religious leaders during this long election season, he has remained conspicuously neutral on candidates. When he pushed to “unstick” an earlier stalled attempt to get John McCain and Barack Obama together, he did so by sending a personal “Let’s do it” e-mail to each of them. The payoff is the Aug. 16 event, a kind of coronation for the 54-year-old, jovially hyperactive preacher. “It’s remarkable. The candidates are according him tremendous status,” says William Martin, author of the definitive biography of Billy Graham, A Prophet with Honor. “I don’t see them doing it with an Episcopal bishop or a Cardinal — or another Evangelical.”
If you missed it or could use a solid training/refresher this week, head over to Simply Youth Ministry and grab a new freebie video of Doug Fields’ general session talk at the 2008 National Youth Ministry Conference. Good stuff - and free!
#2 - The “Can Do” Staff Member
The one thing that has to be addressed on a staff is competency level. Because, while you may have someone who loves what they do…they just might not be able to do it. (And…in my opinion, the church should hold a higher standard here than the business community; after all, there is a lot more at stake.)
Can the person doing the job do the job? OR…has their skill set and ability been maxed out? It’s a tough call…but one that must be made in order to protect the church and the staff member.
AND…let me say that the first option should always be to move the staff member to another job…because if they are a “Love To Do” staff member then they will thrive!
#3 - The “Should Do” Staff Member
This is the person on staff that gets to the office 3 minutes late and leaves 5 minutes early. They are gone a really long time for lunch…but no one ever really knows why. They spend a lot of time on their facebook pages (that are completely not ministry related) and often talk to their friends and waste time.
Sure, they get their job done–barely…but their hearts are not into it. They do what they “should do,” nothing more, nothing less!
AND they have to go! You can’t afford this kind of dead weight in your church! God’s kingdom is WAY too important to keep these kind of people around. They are not doing what they are doing because of passion but rather a paycheck. NOT GOOD!
Got some tickets today to the Angels game from one of our volunteers. Amazing seats! The Angels won running away with it. I grabbed another volunteer and the boys and had a blast!
Message Title: Confessions of an Ex-Homecoming Queen (featuring Allison Murray) Sermon in a Sentence: The pressures of life get in the way of students living the way God intended - authentic, real and genuine before Him.
Key Verse: The thief’s purpose is to steal and kill and destroy. My purpose is to give them a rich and satisfying life. John 10:10
Weekend Scale of Difficulty: 5 out of 10. The one-hit wonders with different speakers are hitting us in a nice groove this summer. Getting ready for a powerful fall and the new 40 Days of Love whole-church campaign.
Attendance: down 16% from last weekend, up 31% from the same weekend last year. Service Length: 75 minutes Understandable Message: A- Allison Murray, one of our 2-years interns, is finishing up her last weekend here on staff. She’s a great small group leader with a great story, so we took the chance this weekend to share her story with our students at our entry-level program. Because there were so many stories in her talk, the message was very understandable. We together agreed that she could have used more Scripture during the talk, but she did a great job keeping students connected with a great illustration and some interactive elements along the way.
Volunteer/Student Involvement: B/B+ Volunteers were actively involved at the tables and greeting students. Students led in the band, and handed out programs and pens as people entered. Students were on stage for the opening game and also one came up as an illustration during the message.
Element of Fun/Positive Environment: B+ “Church is boring” went right out the window when we opened up with Rock Band on the Wii at the beginning. After a silly countdown video called Nobody’s Perfect, we selected some students to come and perform a random track. It was so fun!
Music Playlist:. We Shine, Everlasting God, Inside Out, Mighty to Save
Favorite Moment: I have two favorite moments this week! There was great power in the standing ovation the students gave Allison this weekend, a response to her small group’s love for her and the impact she has made here for the past 2 years. I also enjoyed the song/arrangment of Inside Out this week, I think it just hit me where I needed it, a moving moment for sure. Solid weekend.
We ripped this from YouTube and put a countdown over it (using ProPresenter) as the opener to this weekend. Students loved it .. some even sang and danced along. Funny!
I posted about The Something Store a few weeks back - today my something arrived from somebody. Thanks to the person who sent it to the church in my name. Fun! If you’re curious, it was a pair of polarized fishing/sport glasses, as pictured above.
Tonight was the official end of the high chair era for the Griffin family. We all sat around the table for a big dinner, each in their own full-size chair. What a night! Now, if we could get out of diapers … 6 years with those things would make anyone want to leave them behind.
Lark News has a hilarious new parody article about a pastor using blogs/MySpace to gain a conviction advantage when he speaks. Super funny, here’s the first few paragraphs:
Last Sunday, pastor Irwin Alton, 62, preached against several specific sins during his sermon. Some people in the audience gasped with recognition.
“When he talked about skipping mid-week service to go to the lake, and buying a new boat when you haven’t tithed, I felt nailed to my pew,” said one man. “It was like the Holy Spirit was speaking right to me.”
But it wasn’t the Holy Spirit — it was the man’s own blog where he had posted photos of himself and his buddies on his new boat on a Wednesday evening.
Pastor Alton, who cultivates a reputation as a computer illiterate techno-phobe, is actually an avid reader of MySpace pages, blogs and personal websites of the people in his congregation. “I appear, shall we say, un-hip,” he says. “Therein lies my advantage.”
I’ve taken off the last 3 weekends from teaching after our Refinery Grand Opening and Save the Planet 3-week series. It has been such a good break! Here’s 5 reasons I think you should recruit some volunteers to teach for you all of the month of August.
it builds up your team - you might just have a great communicator in your volunteer pool and not even know it. Maybe there’s an adult with a great story that needs to be shared with your students. Maybe a few students just returned from a trip and they have a desire to share the impact the experience had on their lives. There might be an intern who could step up and develop that skill or giftedness. Either way, take a weekend off to develop someone else.
it helps students that learn from different teaching styles -you’ve found the groove in your personal teaching style - good for you! There’s only one problem: not everyone learns in the same way that you teach. Give your varied students some varied teaching styles and watch the unengaged light up like they never would when you’re up to bat. No offense, really.
it offers a difference voice and a different perspective - beyond teaching style, sometimes just a different voice causes people to wake up. And not only that, but a different perspective (older, younger, different race, gender, etc) can help shake things up as well.
it gives you a chance to take a break - why does the lead youth worker have to do all of the teaching? While it sometimes feels that the prerequisite for the youth pastor to be the primary communicator - primary doesn’t mean all of the time. Take a break for your own sanity and well-being. Another aside as I type this: it also gives you a chance to focus on the rest of the weekend program since you don’t have to spend as much time focusing on the talk.
it gives you time to gear up - you’ve got a big Fall planned, there’s the kickoff weekend to remember, too. And don’t forget about camp! Take some time and let others do some teaching up from so you can gear up to start out the new school year right.
Very excited about this - MoreThanDodgeball.com made it on AllTop! They just opened up a church channel this past week and I’m (undeservedly) right next to Perry Noble. Oh man! If you don’t AllTop, you’re missing out.
I was talking with one of the main construction gurus for the new student building at Saddleback Church. We were talking about the earthquake last week and he said how surreal it was for the remaining workers to be in the new building during the quake. People were scattering as they started to figure out what was going on - everyone headed straight for the exits in case it all came down. The construction manager, on the other hand, said he wasn’t worried in the least - he knew he was safe when everyone else was scattering, because he trusted the building because he knew the person that made it.
I thought the idea was powerful in another sense as well. When an earthquake rattles your world - remember that you know the Person who made the building and you can trust Him, too.
A friend recommended this book to me a month ago - I was finally able to finish it during my recent wedding trip to Colorado.
The book is good - I’ve read many of John Maxwell’s books and this one is familiar with just enough variation from the leadership guru’s typical wheelhouse. The author takes key characters from the Bible and creates one-one-one conversations between you and them so you experience wisdom from their lives and experiences first-hand. I enjoyed the concept for the book, and the principles genuinely agreed what I knew and expected from these familiar Bible characters and their stories. A good read - pretty short, especially if you skip the discussions like I did. B+
The OC Register tells you where to look for tickets (or at least information) at some point today. Many of you have emailed/Googled your way to the blog looking for details so there you go. That will be an exciting weekend!
I’m heading back to California this morning from a quick trip to Colorado Springs, Colorado where I was the officiating minister at a former student’s wedding. He’s all grown up now, found a great girl, and made the ultimate commitment in marriage last night. And it was so rewarding! Here’s some thoughts I journaled about last night after the reception was over about youth ministry and marriages:
The Reward of Performing Student Ministry Weddings gives you:
…a chance to continue relationships after high school - one of the greatest benefits in my mind is the chance to extend the relationship beyond the high school years. You could journey together with some for life, and performing a wedding all but cements that relationship. When the couple hit a hard time in marriage or are looking for marital advice, performing the ceremony continues to open up that door of relationship.
… a chance to reflect on life change - there’s something exciting about seeing a former high school student - now a full-fledged adult - make this type of commitment. The squirrely kid from youth group is now making a vow before God in marriage. At the reception I laughed at some memories and reveled in the life change and maturity - both physically and spiritually.
…a chance to renew your commitment to student ministry - while youth ministry has more than its share of ups and downs, there’s something powerful in the ceremony that refreshed my calling. Youth ministry works. The sacrifice, the passion, the failures, the success - all get balled up into an emotional night helping remind you it is all worth it.
I hope you soon get to share in the joys of doing a wedding for a student from your ministry!
This guy is such a stud - we’ve got a wall in The Refinery (Saddleback’s student/community building) dedicated to his achievements and his desire to share his faith in God. Repeat gold at the X-games!
Kyle Loza has a trick in his freestyle motocross arsenal called “Electric Death,” a maneuver that’s as menacing as it sounds: He performs a full gainer while holding one handle bar as the bike flies through the air, hopefully before gravity completes its task.
Loza calls it “an all-or-nothing trick,” meaning there isn’t much sense in practicing on dirt when one slip-up results in bodily harm.
There’s a ton of risk involved, and it seemed to have psyched Loza out in the hours before the Moto X best trick competition at X Games XIV. At the last minute, however, Loza had a change of heart.
The 22-year-old surprised everyone on Thursday evening at Staples Center by pulling out the trick he couldn’t stick during April’s Moto X World Championship at Qualcomm Stadium.
This time, Loza stuck the landing.
“I just thought to myself, ‘Don’t crash, don’t crash,’ ” Loza said. “Somehow I was able to stay on the bike. That was the scariest and raddest two minutes of my entire life.”
The maneuver was good enough for a score of 94.00 and X Games gold.
I like Jon Gordon’s books. His new title, The No Complaining Rule, is better than his earlier Energy Bus that I read earlier this year. The No Complaining Rule centers on one simple message - negativity and complaining is killing your office culture and destroying your productivity. In business fable form, Jon helps managers stop criticism in the workplace, manage your organizations messaging and use complaints as a gateway to helping your business.
In short, if you are a complainer on your youth ministry team or church staff - you’re driving away volunteers, and making sure that students won’t stick very long. Good learnings. A-
Message Title: Flooded (featuring Josh Pease) Sermon in a Sentence: We’re sunk when we try to live on our own power because God wants us to do our good works through him instead of for him.
Key Verse: Jesus looked at them intently and said, ‘Humanly speaking, it is impossible. But not with God. Everything is possible with God.’ Mark 10:27
Weekend Scale of Difficulty: 4 out of 10. Pretty simple weekend, very few elements. One glitch in starting a video, but it turned into a funny bit.
Attendance: up 4% from last weekend, up 76% from the same weekend last year Service Length: 70 minutes Understandable Message: A Josh Pease used a story about getting his car stuck on a flooded street to illustrate how silly it is when we try to get unstuck in life on our own power while completely ignoring God’s ability and willingness to help. This was a strong message that was easy to understand and apply. Josh’s use of the illustration had two key attributes: it was memorable, it was immediately applicable to the student’s lives.
Volunteer/Student Involvement: B/B Volunteers were actively involved at the tables and greeting students. Students led in the band, and handed out programs and pens as people entered. Still noticed that many student leaders had isolated themselves to the separate balcony. A few students, however, stepped up.
Element of Fun/Positive Environment: B The video of the cameras trying to keep up with Josh Pease at the beginning was very entertaining. It could probably be tied to the theme of the service, but I’m not sure that was the point. It seemed to be just an element of fun to reinforce the point that church doesn’t have to be boring; it can be fun.
Music Playlist: The Grateful, Salvation is Here, All I Need Is You Lord, Hosanna - Dominik dominated this weekend. He’s got great talent combined with a powerful passion for worship.
Favorite Moment: The most powerful moment of the night was near the end of Josh’s message. He finished telling the story of being stuck in the flood with his car. Nobody was around to help him. He didn’t want to turn to God for help because he was intentionally trying to keep God out of his life. The situation helped him realize that he can’t do everything on his own and that he needs God. The story of Josh reconnecting with God was powerful. The miraculous resolution to the crisis was even secondary to Josh’s telling how God had his attention and bonded with him in that moment.
Overall grade: B+
(this report was written by HSM volunteer Dennis Beckner)
More Than Dodgeball Joshua Griffin is the High School Pastor at Saddleback Church, dabbles in community for Simply Youth Ministry and loves other like-minded youth workers in the PDYM Community.
