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. 

Summer Experiment

So today we started something new.  Today we launched the Contagious Youth Growth and Leadership  experiment.  This summer we offered the students an opportunity for an online experience in a "class" type setting.  The goal is to help some students grow and hopefully glean some leaders out of this experience. 

The students will write a beginning paper, sort of a spiritual evaluation with where they are at now.  Then at the end of the summer they will write another evaluation paper and share where and how they grew in their faith.

Each week they will read a chapter in Doug Field's book, Refuel.  We will then answer some discussion questions during the week online.  We were looking for a cheap/free way to do this and so we formed a secret Facebook group where we can post discussion questions and have some interaction together.

We are looking forward to the summer and how this experiment will go.  Hopefully this is something that will grow each year.  At the end of the summer the students will get a certificate that is suitable for framing.

Modeling

Today I celebrate 23 years of marriage with my wife!  She is my biggest supporter and encourager and an example of a godly woman.  I'm soooooo glad I met her at college many years ago.  I stalked her and wooed her with my charms and manly ways (not to mention muscular build).  My plan at college was to find the most beautiful girl and take her on a date.  It worked!  We've been dating ever since.

As youth leaders we must protect our marriages and model to students what a healthy marriage looks like since probably half don't get to see this at home.

Youth Ministers:

• Take time together with your spouse. 
• Vacation (or in this economy "staycation) at least once a year.
• Balance your time at home.

Churches:

• Allow your youth pastor to be flexible with his time.  If he was out all night at ball games don't freak out if he's not at the office at 9AM.  
• Understand that if your youth minister's family and marriage isn't healthy then there is no way your youth minister can minister to your students.
• COMP TIME!  If your youth group is at camp for a week this means your youth pastor put in about 95 hours or more of work.  He has also taken a week away from his family.  Let him take some time off the next week, and not vacation time.
• In 20 years of youth ministry a youth pastor will be gone from home about 52 weeks time.  Be understanding of family time.  
• If it's not an emergency don't call on his day(s) off or in the evening, especially at supper time.
• Paid vacations and medical benefits.  Help remove the financial stress.

No Longer Shall it be Called . . .

No longer shall it be called "Youth Room".  Now it is "The Loft".  Student picked, students approved.
This is what is going on the wall really big.

Parent Resource

This looks like a good book to read for parents of teens.  I'll be ordering one to help with students now and to prepare myself for my kids hitting their teen years.

You can order a copy here at Homeword

Support

In talking with other youth ministers it is obvious that in churches with youth ministries there are some parents and some students who take their youth ministry for granted.  I would venture a guess and say we have this happening at our church also.  I talk with parents and church leaders from other churches that do not have youth ministries and hear them share how they wish they had something for their students.

What if your church’s youth ministry ceased?  What if your church decided to focus elsewhere in ministry and your parents and students were left with no youth ministry?  What would your response be?  Would you even notice?  Chances are if you are reading this you would be one of the ones who would notice.

Supporting your church’s youth ministry is vital to the future of your church’s youth ministry.  Support comes in many shapes and forms.  

Support look like this:

• Making sure your son or daughter is active and faithful in attendance to youth group and youth events.
• Understanding that youth group is church.
• Volunteering to help minister when help is needed, pitching in.
  
• Placing a priority on youth worship gatherings.
  
• Faithfully giving back to God in tithes and offerings.
  
• Inviting your friends and coworkers to bring their teens to youth.
  
• Recognizing the youth ministers who volunteer hours every week investing into your son or daughter.
• Spend time with your teen discipling them and discussing what they are learning at youth group and helping them apply what they are learning in life.
• Set the example for your teen to follow by living out your faith.

Are you supporting your church’s youth ministry?

Where Have You Been All My Life?

Stumbles across this site a couple of days ago.  Where have you been all my life?!
Great game ideas and better yet they are very inexpensive if not FREE!  Everyone loves some free stuffs.  Check it out!  Your students will thank you.