What are we teaching?!

What are we teaching our children, our students, about Christmas?   Yes giving and getting gifts is fun but could there be more to it?  Could we be feeding our kids the consumer mentality and creating giant consumers who go through life saying, "Give me.  Give me.  Give me."?  I personally know of parents who will go in debt at Christmas to buy their kids the latest and greatest.  What about teaching our children how to be content with what we have?  To be content with what God has blessed us with.  What about teaching our children that it's not wise to go into debt to buy the Wii, XBox, iPod Touch, 60 inch plasma?  Do you not find great joy in life when you give in such a way that you actually help someone meet a need?

The Advent Conspiracy has recently been brought to my attention.   The more I think about it and the more I look into the more I'm getting sold on the idea that we have it all wrong.  What a great way to teach our children to be compassionate human beings.  

Happy Birthday To Our Twins!

Today the twins are 11 months old!  Happy Birthday "Fred and Wilma".  Eleven months ago today God blessed our family with the addition of these two little bundles of joy.

Last Night At Contagious

Last night we punched through a plateau.  We seem to have been stuck around a certain number at Contagious.  Hopefully we will be able to keep up the momentum through the Christmas holiday and see the group continue to grow as students are reaching out to their friends.

Some of the youth ministry team and students have been playing some sort of whacked out ping pong game and the popularity of this game is growing each week.  Last night it was very entertaining to watch.    Other students played games and hung out during Hang Time.  

Our lesson was centered on the fact that Christ's arrival to earth was all part of God's plan from before time began.  We took a look at Isaiah 7:14-16.  Students wrote the initials of a friend who doesn't know God, or will not experience real joy this Christmas, on a ribbon to hang in their room to remind them to pray for this person during the Christmas season.

In January we are planning a new series about the life God intends for us as believers.  It's a 3 week series and we are going to end with the last night as an outreach night where students will be encouraged to bring their friends who don't attend church or a youth group.  On that night we will share the good news of Jesus Christ and God's love very plainly and simply giving students the opportunity to respond to God's invitation to know Him.

The Call To Lead

Early Bird Special!  Register by December 1 and receive $15 off the regular registration fee of $40.
Not So Early Bird Special - $35 per person if you register between December 2nd and January 2nd.
Procrastinator's Special - $40 after January 2nd.

This year The Call has been remodeled and is focusing on students who are leaders or have the potential to be leaders in the youth group.  The Call is not for entire youth groups and is not an outreach event.  So only plan on bringing your handful or so of student leaders.   

If someone told me I had only $40 to invest into our youth ministry what would I do with that $40?

Would I buy $40 in tracts?  No.
Would I buy a couple of youth ministry books?  No
Would I have lunch with a team member?  Tempting, but no.

I would invest that $40 into a student in the youth group who is showing leadership potential.  
This would be the biggest pay off from the investment.  This student would be sharpened as a leader and
then in turn invest back into the youth ministry through serving, outreach, setting the example, leading peers.  

Are you raising up leaders in your church’s youth group?  Are you equipping them, teaching them, training them to use their influence with their peers?  The result of doing so is growth, personal growth for the student, growth in the youth group, growth from outreach.

Every youth group has at least one student with the potential to be a leader or a student who is already leading but could use some equipping to lead even better.
I would encourage you to take advantage of the savings and register at least two or three today.

Some ideas on covering the cost for these leaders:

• They pay themselves (not the best but a possibility)
• Recruit adult Sunday School Classes to sponsor students.  Sell the idea that investing in leaders will have the biggest return in the youth ministry and church.
• Chili Dinner
• Love Offering
• Approach some of the “movers and shakers” in your church and ask them to personally invest into the church’s youth ministry by investing into a student’s life.
  

Register at www.thecallobx.com

Registration covers:
Friday night supper
Saturday lunch

and a copy of: Help!  I'm a Student Leader - Doug Fields

For more details and info check out www.thecallobx.com or call Andy at 252-441-7548 

Last Night at Contagious

Great turn out of students last night!  

We had CHIP EXTRAVAGANZA!  I had boxes of chips I needed to get rid of so we put out 300 bags of chips and about 200 were consumed!!  Crazy!

The students enjoyed their time hanging out together with their leaders during Hang Time.  Some great ping pong games were played, students were out on the lot throwing the football, many just sitting around talking.  I look forward to the day that our youth room is complete so we can all hang in the same room during Hang Time.

Our lesson was compliments of Student Life.  We took a look in Genesis 1 at how God has provided for us.  He's given us this amazing planet to sustain our life.  He also gave us life and eternal life.  For what he has given us we should live a life of thankfulness and praise to him.

Cool thing about this lesson is that on the other side of the wall the Parent Pod were doing the exact same lesson together.  Hopefully this will spark some discussion time about thankfulness at home this week.

December will be a fun month for Contagious Youth.  This Sunday we have a Christmas Bible study.  The 13th is our annual Contagious Christmas Party, students will bring a cheap wrapped gift and their favorite Christmas party food.  The 20th is our annual Christmas Bowl (bowling, our biggest attended event last year).  The 27th is Holiday @ the Hut, students meet with me and some of their leaders at Pizza Hut for supper together.  All that followed by Winterfest.  

Last Night at Contagious

Last night our students delivered food boxes to 8 families who are in need.  These families received everything they need to cook a fantastic Thanksgiving dinner.  Students brought in the potatoes, corn, green beans, stuffing, gravy, cranberry sauce.  Folks in the church donated the turkeys.  We delivered meals to one homeless family living in a hotel, several single moms, families with just a couple of family members all the way to families with 7 to 9 to feed.

After loading the boxes the students signed cards for the families and then spent time praying for the family before they left to deliver the box.  NHC also included some Food Lion gift cards in each box.

Students then returned to the building and talked about their mission outreach experience.  Then we had Hang Time together.  It was a great night teaching missions with a hands on experience.

Tomorrow I'll deliver two more meal boxes due to some confusion.  This was our first year to do this so we have learned a few things to make next year's Operation Turkey a smoother one.

Some things we picked up from last night's event:

• Have a form for folks to submit families and then have one person responsible for processing those forms and organizing the info.
• Have another person to call and let the family know that they will be receiving the groceries and ask for permission to drop the box by their home.
• Assign two families per POD
• Have directions for the drivers printed up on the back of the families info card.

Teaching Missions

We listen to the pastor say the word "missions" and we hear "grass hut, jungle, wicked snakes".

As parents part of our responsibility in discipling our kid is to teach them what missions really is all about.  As youth pastors we need to give students and parents the opportunity to experience missions first hand (together when possible).  There is no better teacher than experience.  

After we had a week long local missions project last summer I received an e-mail from a student who chose not to participate.  The student asked this question, "When are we going to go on a mission trip?"  Evidence that this student and many others aren't quite ready for a "missions trip" because they don't see reaching those around them as missions or as important.  Why?  Because they haven't learned.  Either the youth ministry isn't doing a good enough job communicating missions or parents aren't teaching their kids about missions or students are hearing but not listening.

I'm stoked about Sunday's Contagious.  Students have gathered all the food needed to deliver complete Turkey dinners to families who are in need.  Each POD is going to go with their leader, and a few spare parents, to a family's home and deliver the box.  Simply to say, "Happy Thanksgiving.  NHC youth cares about you and God loves you."

After delivery we will gather back at the building and the PODs will discuss their missions experience together.  Should be a great youth group gathering.