OFF (part 2)

Read Part 1 HERE
Do we force them to go to school? But I don’t want to turn them off to learning. My three diplomas won’t go to eternity with me, but the relationship that has been, in part, cultivated through connection in a local body of believers will. More than once I have said, “You won’t get dessert if you don’t eat the ___________ on your plate.” That’s forcing, at least forcing them to make a decision on whether dessert is worth it or not.

I think it all goes back to the families’ culture in their home. At our home church is never discussed as an option. We go each week unless we are sick. Therefore our kids don’t view church as optional. They know that in our home this is one of the things we value and we do. Why? Because scripture tells us that connection and involvement in a local body of believers is expected.


I was “forced” to go to church my entire life. Were there times that I did not enjoy it? You bet. Do I look back as a mature adult now and hate my parents for “forcing” me? No way. I’m thankful that my parents instilled in me, through our families’ culture, the fact that church is important to spiritual growth.

OFF (part 1)

Grappling with the age old youth pastor discussion.

A light switch is either “on” or “off”.  If it is not in the “on” position then it is “off”.  If it is “off” I cannot force it to be “off” any more than it already is “off”.  “Off” is “off”.

I’m always curious as to this line of logic.  “If I take my teen to church whether they want to be there or not I’m forcing them and I don’t want to turn them off, so I let them stay home because they don’t want to be there.”  This, for 20 years now, has always seemed to me that a teen in this position is already “off” and by taking them to church you can’t turn them “off”, they have already made that decision themselves.

God will hold me, the parent, accountable for training up my child in the way they should go.  My children will be held accountable to God if they decide to walk away from their faith.  If at the age of 18, and they are no longer under my roof and responsibility, they decide to turn “off” or continue to be in the “off” state then God will hold them accountable.  But if they aren’t there they won’t hear something that may sink in and make a difference in their life in the here, and now and for eternity.

“Force”.  I hear this word used in this discussion as well.  It is almost as if a parent never forces their child to do anything.  Some don’t, I guess, those are often the children who fall under the “spoiled brat” category. 

Do we force them to go to school?  But I don’t want to turn them off to learning.  My three diplomas won’t go to eternity with me, but the relationship that has been, in part, cultivated through connection in a local body of believers will.

(More to come)

Last Night at Contagious

Last night was our last night at the beach for Contagious @ the beach until next summer.
We love meeting at the beach during the summer.  We scale down and bit and relax a little more.  The message is about 10 minutes long and then the students go their PODs for about 25 minutes or so.  The rest of the time is just hanging out on the beach and in the ocean.  Lots of fun and a good change of pace.

Last night we had a relay.  One of our illustrious leaders and a student put together a "Look like a tourist relay".  We divided into two teams and one at a time run down and grab a "tourist" item.  If it was a clothing item it had to be put on and worn.  If it was something you had to carry then you carried it.  Then you would run back to your team put it all on the next person and they had to run and get a new item and so on.  It was lots of fun.  Who knew socks were meant to be worn on your hands?

Ramon, our middle school leader, brought the message last night.  We have been studying the beatitudes and Ramon spoke about mercy, Matthew 5:7.  He did a great job then the students got with their leaders and discussed the discussion questions that went along with the message and then prayed together in their PODs.

This coming Sunday we take a break for Labor Day weekend,  then it's back to The Loft for the school year.  Starting off the school year with a 6 week series about relationships, we are excited about this series.

Lesson from Sickness

Joining with other youth groups
Last night our youth group hosted students from three other youth groups in our community for a time of worship and challenge for them to share their faith at school this year.  It was great getting together with the other groups.  Whoda thunk of bringing a Southern Baptist group together with 2 Methodist groups and a Presbyterian group?
We got along great cause we stuck to the focus of sharing salvation through faith in Jesus Christ at school.  (we also ate Nachos and whenever Christians get together eating seems to be a glue that helps bind us together)

Sometimes there’s a kink in the works
All weekend I was sick.  Let’s just say I lost 7lbs in 2.5 days!!  I only had 4 pieces of toast to eat over the weekend and drank no coffee, so I was really sick.  The challenge I faced was the fact that I had to do the talk and challenge the students and I did not much energy in me.  I also, cause I love to cook, thought I would cook the nacho meat Sunday afternoon.  That was last week when I wasn’t sick.

Fabulous team steps up to the plate
I had several offers from our YM Team and Parent Pod to help me out.  Even had one team member on standby to preach the message (I had sent him the notes just in case).
Two of the mommas and one team member and some students helped get the Nacho bar all set up including cooking the meat.  They also did all the serving of the Nachos.  I had other team members and students asking what they could do to help me. 


The combination
The combination of being sick and not really caring about the Nacho bar taught me a lesson.  I was able to focus on speaking and didn’t worry about the Nacho bar at all.  As a matter of fact I didn’t care how they set it up or what they did.  I just wanted to make it 20 minutes talking to the students and not have to run to the restroom.

The Lesson
Why do I use up time to prepare food, set things up, for events or even weekly youth gathering?  I thought I had been pretty good at delegating but this past weekend taught me that I have messed up as a leader.  People want to serve so I need to turn them loose and let them do it!  All these years I’ve been cooking taco meat, chili, sloppy joes, and the list goes on and on.  All these years I had my hands in the set up of how things would flow at the event.  Why didn’t I turn these things loose years ago to people who loved to do those things so I could focus on doing what I love doing?  I like to help and need to set the example in serving but I also need to do what I do best and let others do what they do best.  That’s how the Body of Christ functions, each part doing their part.   When the body of Christ functions as it should it is a beautiful thing, even when one part is a little under the weather. (did I mention I lost 7lbs in 2.5 days?)

Let people serve!  They love to do it!!  There is always more you can give away in ministry.

Last Night at Contagious

Yesterday the weather pushed us from meeting at the beach back to the church.  We are OK with that because we like our cozy and comfortable youth room, The Loft.

Hang Time consisted of a group sitting around on a sofa and chairs talking.
We had two different tables of card games going on.
One group hung out at the coffee bar eating snacks and making coffee.
I played foosball with some of the guys, won one and lost one.

We gathered together in the center of the room and talked about Matthew 5:6.  Do we have a desire to be in a relationship with God, one that grows?  We talked about our hunger in life and how we should hunger after knowing God better and better.  Everyone went to their PODz and followed up our message with some great discussion.

We are looking forward to this Sunday as we gather with a couple of other youth groups in The Loft to be challenged to reach our campuses this year with the love of Jesus Christ.

Playing Catch Up

What has been happening with the addyouthpastor?

Two weeks ago we took 18 students on a great trip to Camp Shenandoah Springs for our week of summer camp.  We staffed the camp and the program and relied on CSS for the facilities and the meals.  We had a great week unpacking together what it means to be a follower of Jesus. 
It was a fun week of building relationships and growing spiritually.  We had a blast tubing on the river, hiking to a waterfall, riding horses, archery, campfires and practicing our sasquatch calls (yes, we did get a response from a squatch).  The best part of our week was when one of our students gave her life to Jesus Christ by placing her faith in Him!!!!!!!
Camp Pictures and video to come!

Last week I took off the week for comp time.  After 8 straight days of work and most days averaging 17 hours a day I was wiped out.  I'm glad I get to do this.  Can you believe some churches don't give their youth pastors any time off after being gone from their families and working around 100 hours that week?  I spent the week last week with my family.  I gave each one of my three kids some alone time with me and we went out and did something they wanted to do followed by some fro yo at my favorite spot (and theirs) the Surfin' Spoon. 

I am super thankful and applaud the volunteers who went with me to camp and led small groups and helped with organizing, caring for students and ministering to them.  Most came home and didn't have the luxury of time off, they went right back to work.  They also used vacation time to be our staff at camp!  God has blessed our youth ministry with some awesome folks who love ministering to students.

Last night we had a great time hanging out at the beach for Contagious Youth and we took a look see at Matthew 6:5.  Many braved the cooler water temps (I hope it's warmer this coming Sunday).

Now today I caught up on 265 e-mails.  Read some reports, staff meeting minutes, elders meeting minutes so I could catch up on what's happening.

Now that I've caught up we are hitting the ground running.

 

This is an event we are hosting here in The Loft with several other youth groups coming together to challenge the students to reach their campus for Christ this coming school year.  I'm excited about this night!  We are also introducing The Life Book to them.

Gonna end the summer with some fun here

Planning a fun trip to sweat in the sweltering heat of Busch Gardens in Williamsburg, Va

So what have you been up to the past couple of weeks?

Last Night at Contagious at the Beach

Last night we kicked off Contagious at the Beach.  Each Sunday night we meet for about an hour of fun in the sun and sand.  Then we gather and have our Bible study and then break into our PODz for prayer and discussion.

It was HOT, real feel of around 101!  We drank lots of water and enjoyed the cool ocean then we were attacked by the sea lice!  Then the biting flies tore up our legs.  So a perfect evening at the beach.

Last night we had Forest Davis, a local 18 (almost 19) year old skater dude come and share his passion for Jesus Christ with the students.  Forest attended our youth group for a while in high school.  I had not seen Forest for a long time and then ran into him at a coffee shop several months ago.  Forest struck up a conversation with me and shared for several minutes about how he is passionately pursing his relationship with God.  It was exciting to hear!  I could tell God was up to something in Forest's life.  You can find Forest skating on Youtube.

Several months later I ran into Forest again in another coffee shop (I guess we both like coffee but I can't skate).  Forest began telling me more about his relationship with Christ.  We spent a good half hour of me listening to what God is doing in Forest's life.  Again I was even more excited because this relationship he was passionate about several months before had not waned and seemed to actually be growing even stronger.  I knew that it would be a benefit to our students to hear from a guy their age who is on fire for Jesus Christ.

Forest shared last night some great stuff about how God had worked in his life.  He shared that as a Christian he had a bad habit of using foul language.  God convicted him, "If you can filter your mouth around your parents why can't you filter it around your friends?"  Forest realized that his language was the result of some trashy music he was listening to.  The old garbage in garbage out. 
He came to realize that if he was going to go to church on Sunday but now live like a Christ follower the rest of the week he was "wasting his time". 

I can sum up what I got out of Forest's story this way:  Do you want to settle for being "good with God" or do you want to be great with God?  "God doesn't want fence riders".  Great message from Forest.  I'm excited about the impact Forest is having on young people in our community.

Great kick off to a summer at the beach. 

Loving Google Docs

I love Google Docs!  Recently I have been using this application to create documents for youth group.  Today I took our camp medical release and our "What to pack" list and transformed them into Google Docs.  Now parents and campers can simply click the link and then print off the document.

It works great for creating online registration forms and the data can transfer to excel.  Super handy tool!

This has been part of my process to scale back on the budget in the area of web sites and technology.  I've been looking for great tools to use that are free.

Have you discovered some great free or really cheap tools to use in youth ministry?

Summer/Fall Events

A snapshot of our summer/fall/winter events we have lined up

Spiritual Barriers

Read this today and thought it was good stuff:

Consider the various ministries in your church. Think about every ministry environment and every gathering or event. Do people come expecting to receive or to give? When people think of worship do they think of singing or being a living sacrifice? Do your ministries encourage people to both love God and love others? Do you love people enough to challenge them to move beyond consuming ministry to being the ministry?

Read more . . .

Where are We Going?

Next week we wrap up "Stories".  For the past several weeks our youth ministry team volunteers have been sharing their stories at Contagious Youth.  All the stories have been different; everyone had some sort of struggle in their life.  While all of the stories are different they had this in common, Jesus changes lives.  Our goal in doing "Stories" was that our students would hear that even though we are old we have had struggles and hopefully some of the students would connect with a story and see how God can impact their lives.  Every story can impact someone's life.  Who are you sharing your story with?

July 8th we move out of The Loft and onto the beach.  We will spend several weeks meeting together for Contagious on the beach.  This is one of our favorite times of the year.  It is a great change of pace and mixes it up a bit.  This summer we will be taking a look at Matthew 5 and specifically the Beatitudes.  Everyone wants to be happy and we are going to unpack what true happiness is all about.

Each week a short 5 to 10 minute devotional talk (cause it's hard to hold attention with the ocean in the background) and that will be followed by a small group time where students will be divided into small groups and spend some time discussing together the topic of the night.

In September we move back to The Loft.  We are going to spend 6 weeks talking about relationships.

Relationship with God - His desire is that we know him and follow Christ

Relationship with Family - Families come in all shapes and sizes but there is one thing we should have in common, respect for each member in the family.

Relationships with Friends - Friends will either make you or break you.  We will look at David and Jonathan and their incredible friendship.

Love Relationships - What is love?  Everyone wants to be loved.  Sometimes we confuse love with other things in relationships.

Relationships with Authority in our lives - We will always answer to someone.  Learn now how to have a healthy relationship with those in authority and reap the benefits as you grow older.

Relationship in the Church - no church is perfect and no one in the church is perfect.  Getting along with other believers.