Mission Trip Video

The Mission Trip

We just returned from a great mission trip.  We took 9 students and 6 adults to the island of Eleuthera to work at Camp Bahamas.  Some think right way, “Oh, yeah.  The Bahamas.  Right.”  We discovered on our trip that 75% of children born in the Bahamas last year were born to single moms.  Over 60% of the nations population is under the age of 24.  This nation doesn’t stand a chance if the youth are not reached with the gospel.









Camp Bahamas is knocking it out of the park.  The only Christian camp, that I’m aware of, in an entire nation.  For 6 weeks in the summer they put on camp for children and youth.  Eighty kids a week show up to have fun, play sports and learn about the love of Jesus Christ.  During the year they host many retreats and events that are focused on life change through Jesus.

When you hear the history and vision of the camp from camp director, Richard Albury, you immediately know that Camp Bahamas is a “God thing”.  

Our group had the honor of serving Camp Bahamas for several days.  We flew in on a Saturday.  We arrived late in the afternoon and unloaded and got set in our cabins then spent some time relaxing and jumping in the ocean before dinner.



Sunday we attended worship at a Hatian church where the service was almost entirely in Creole.  What a great experience for our students!  The Hatians loved worshipping and being at church, you could see the joy of the Lord in them.  Two of our students shared their testimony and the pastor interpreted for them.  These two students moved way out of their comfort zone.

Monday we worked all day at the camp clearing brush and picking up trash and construction debris.



Tuesday through Thursday we worked at the camp in the mornings and then in the afternoons we went to a local park and played ball with the kids.  One day we bought them all ice cream.  Each day at the park one of our students shared a Bible story with the kids.  It was interesting that on the first day there was only one kid at the park when we arrived and it didn’t take long for word to spread through the settlement of Tarpum Bay that we were at the park.  Soon we had about 20 something kids there playing ball with us.  This was our students’ favorite part of the mission trip.  On the final day at the park I followed up the Bible story with the gospel.



Friday was our “free” day.  We helped clean up some cabins in the morning then went out to lunch and spend the afternoon swimming and went and checked out a banyan tree.

 Each morning we worked on our quiet time journal which was specifically designed for a mission trip.  You can find these resources at LeaderTreks.  Each evening after dinner we gathered together for a team meeting.  We reviewed our day and evaluated our team.



The purposes of this trip was to:
Expose students to a different culture
Move students out of their comfort zone

Allow students to experience a short term mission experience

Serve and minister to Camp Bahamas staff and future campers

Share the love of Christ with the kids of Eleuthera

What an awesome experience we had together and everyone on the trip is already talking of a return mission trip. 
  I'm not gonna lie, for an old guy the work wore me out and I had muscles aching, muscles I had forgotten about long ago.  As a youth pastor I was so encouraged by our students serving without complaining and doing what was asked of them.  They truly understood the reason why they were on the island.   Now we are talking of how we can apply what we learned in Eleuthera here in our own community. 

Last Night in The Loft

 Last night in The Loft:

5:50 Games - Boxes (great game and a student won the grand prize of dinner for himself and 3 friends, chauffered in the big blue van of happiness to a local mexican food restaurant)

6:00 - Song - Our God
6:05 - Prayer led by student, Offering
6:07 - Song - Whom Shall I Fear
6:11 - Video - To This Day

6:20 - Andy - Intro to the study
6:23 - PODz (small groups)

7:00 - Hang Time (quesadillas and floats)
8:00 - Goodnight

Last Sunday in The Loft

Well actually we were outside The Loft half the time.

Our line up was as follows:
5:45 - Music going; Check in station manned

5:50 - Game  - Blocks
(starting the ice breaker games a little earlier in hopes to get our few "late comers" to arrive early/on time)

6:00 - Song - We Believe

6:05 - Song - Whom Shall I fear


6:10 -  Message - Rescue series - Sacrifice: Why did Jesus have to die?

6:25 - Next Steps/Offering


6:30 -PODS (small groups)

7:00 - Hang Time

During Hang Time we went out to the fire pit and roasted hot dogs and had all the fixins to go with and sat/stood around the fire and chatted.  Also we made Smores, always a crowd favorite.  Some of the students played some soccer.  Good times were had by all.

 instagram promo pics

Social Media Promotion

 Do you use Instagram or social media to promote your youth ministry?

Lately I have been making two Instagram pics each week to promote our Sunday night youth group gathering.  I usually make one that focuses on the message and one that focuses on the food and fun.  I then post them a few times during the week to spread the word.  Hopefully students will catch on and "like" and "share" with others.  We also use a # that students can use during youth group to post pics.

 

 

Sunday Night in The Loft

Sunday night we had a great time in The Loft.

We were all pretty tired from the weekend.  Most of the youth group had attended The Call and many on our team had volunteered at The Call.  So we were tuckered out.  At least I was because I'm an old man.  Good turn out of students and some guests.

So it looked like this:
Game - Clumps (always a crowd favorite)
Song - Our God is Greater
Prayer and welcome by student
Song - Inside Out
Share time - students took turns sharing what they learned at The Call.
Offering -
Prayer Time - we sat in a big circle and students would share a prayer request and another students would pray for the request.  Working on getting students to not be afraid to pray out loud.

Followed by Hang Time - we had sloppy dogs and bacon cheese fries.

I give the night a 4 out of 5 popcorn boxes!

The Call 2015

This past weekend we hosted The Call 2015.  Students from several different youth groups and their leaders gathered at Nags Head Church for a weekend of intensive learning and worship.

During our main worship sessions we were led in worship in music by the MP13 Band.  The band did a great job of leading and the students jumped right in.  Loved it!

Our first night Dave Glander shared his story of how God changed his life.  A powerful example of life-change.

 

Day two:

Students were picked a track for the weekend, so the students were with the same leader, same topic, same group of students for the weekend in the tracks.

We had Shane McGann from LeaderTreks leading the 4 sessions of leadership.  Shane did a great job, our students shared with me about some of the things they learned and the initiatives they did together in that track.


 I shared a message during our second worship session.  The focus was on being a follower of Jesus and not simply settling for being a believer in Jesus Christ.

Todd Kemp, youth pastor of Bagley Swamp Wesleyan Church, led our track on evangelism.  Students were equipped to share their faith and were given the opportunity to practice sharing together.

Amy Denson, youth pastor at Duck United Methodist Church, led the discipleship track.  Student learned some great spiritual habits to instill in their lives to help them grow in their faith and be more deeply rooted.

Dave Glander led our apologetics track.  The students had a great time learning to defend their faith.  One student said to me, "Dave blew evolution out of the water."

 I met with the youth leaders.  We wrote several topics we wanted to discuss together on a giant post it note.  Then we chipped away at the topics.  I also shared about our team restructure and our focus on discipleship in 2015.

Ramon Sanchez wrapped up the weekend by challenging students to take what they learned this weekend and put it into action in their lives, not just store it up but to let it go.

 This was the smoothest flowing The Call we have ever hosted.  Our volunteers knocked it out of the park!  Everyone knew what they were supposed to do and they did it.  Very little, if any, stress on me leading the event.  The sign of having great support from wonderful volunteers and good planning.

Already looking forward to The Call 2016!

Sunday Night in The Loft

Baggage was our topic Sunday night.  We promoted the night as an outreach night with the specific goal of sharing the gospel.  We had a few visitors and we had some decisions made that night, one to follow Christ and several to give their "baggage" to God.

The line up:

Random Fact Countdown (DYM)
Game - Boxes (loads of fun)

Song - Chasing
Song - 10,000 Reasons
Prayer
Message - "How do you deal with baggage?"  Matthew 11:28-30.

• Come to Jesus
• Make the Exchange
• Team up with Jesus

We then showed a video by the Skit Guys about baggage.  Awesome video, really drove home the point, even heard back that some students were talking about the video on their ride home.

Gave students the opportunity to take some next steps:  (we use a communication card for this)
Trust Jesus as Savior (we had one make that step!!)
Give your baggage to God (several took this step!)
Invite ______________ to youth group next week (several wrote in friend's names!)

Closing Song/Offering - Inside Out

During Hang time we had waffles.  Waffled mac n cheese, waffle pizza, waffle cinnamon buns, waffle corn dogs, waffle quesadillas, waffle tater tots, waffles with chicken nuggets, regular waffles, Belgian waffles, lots of toppings, whip cream, fruit, etc.  The waffle night was a smashing success!

I have been making instagram photos (see above) each week and shooting them out there a few times per week, I usually make a couple different ones for each week, only takes about 5 minutes to do.  Great way to promote your students ministry happenings.

Waffle Pizza

Stop the Bottle Neck

Last fall I spent a few days alone thinking about our youth ministry and evaluating.  Discipleship came to the top of my list (see previous post).  Underneath discipleship came "Restructure".  Looking back I realized that what was holding us back from improving and moving forward was me.  So I started to think about how that could change.  It's terrible to be the youth pastor and to be the cause of the bottle neck.

Our old structure consisted of me as youth pastor, volunteers as POD leaders (small group leaders).  I did most of the planning, etc.  I realized that I need to do what I do best and then let others on the team rise to the surface and do what they do best.  So while most of our adult volunteers are still POD leaders they also fill other ministry roles within the youth ministry.

I sat down with a big sheet of blank paper and started a flow chart.  I thought of the different leaders we needed to do ministry more effective.  Lots of scribbling and marking out and drawing boxes and lines and I came up with this:

My focus as youth pastor will be with the Worship Coach/Minister in planning youth group worship and also investing into the student leaders and my adult leaders.  (I'm the only staff, everyone else on the team volunteers)

Worship Coach/Minister - will work with the students worship band in training and equipping them to lead us in worship in music.

Associate Youth Pastor - works with me on youth worship and overseeing our 5 "Coaches".

POD Coach - works with the POD leaders to make sure they have what they need and to encourage them.

Communications Coach - works with student leaders on our check in system; entering student data; assimilation process.

Hospitality Coach - organizes our food (super important!) and works with our volunteers in the kitchen as well as students involved in serving.

Discipleship Coach - will follow up and hold POD leaders and myself accountable for discipling students one on one.  Creating a spreadsheet and keeping it up to date so we can view our youth group's process "at a glance".

Tech Coach - oversees the students who operate the audio and video as well as our social media.

Our goal in this process is to involve students in every process, to train them up to lead the youth group.

We are only a couple weeks into the transition of structure and so far it seems to be working well.

Your youth ministry can do the same thing.  Your structure may look different because we aren't all the same in what we do and how we do it BUT you can sit down and think about all the positions it would take have a healthier and improving youth ministry.  Get alone with a big sheet of paper and start evaluating and dreaming.

Last Night in The Loft

We had an awesome time at youth group last night.
Our POD's and message all centered around God being all-present, all-knowing and all-powerful.  Good discussion happening in the POD's in this new curriculum.


Here is the line up from last night:
5:30 - Team meeting (We do this each week.  It's a 15 minute meeting)

5:45 - Music going; Balcony coverage (balcony coverage is an adult from the team outside of The Loft making sure students come straight to The Loft)

5:55 - Game - Prizes (started the game early before "start" time to pull students into the center of the room)  Game was a quick contest between two students.  The students had to run around the room and get a combination of a hoodie, sweater, jacket, etc. from others in the room, then the first one back to the front and to put all 4 on, one on top of the other, won.  The prize was a $10 iTunes card

5:57 - Start Countdown (we started a countdown with background music during the game time)

6:00 - First Song - I Am Free

6:05 - Student Prayer - (had a student open in prayer; lined this person up a head of time)

6:06 - PODS - small group discussion time (POD leaders get their discussion guides earlier in the week for prep time)

6:40 - Wrap up Pods

6:43 - The Loft - Message
 - Why is God Great?  How does He use His Greatness?
Used this video to open the message about the greatness of God  - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DaYx4XmWEoI

7:00 - Closing Song - Mighty to Save

Hang Time - first song, on Spotify, Sunday night playlist, 
Hallelujah, God is Near, Robbie Seay Band

 12 Foot Sub during Hang Time

I did my part to help eat the sub

So did these guys

Our 2015 Focus

Yes it's true!   Our youth ministry team of volunteers restructured last Saturday.  BUT we will save that for another post.

Our focus this year is success in discipleship.  Now I could have stood up before the youths and said, "Students for the next 52 weeks we are going to have a discipleship class that will meet at 4 on Sunday afternoons . . . . "  I may have started with 15 but would have ended with maybe two and we probably wouldn't have made it to all 52 weeks.

Soooo what do we do?  Easy peasy!  Don't remake the wheel.  Look for a system to use that can fit into our already established youth group gathering.  So for the year and a little more (cause we break to the beach in the summer) we will be working through LeaderTreks Deep Discipleship on Sunday nights at our youth group gathering.  I'm taking the small group lessons and editing them down to fit our time frame along with a message that ties in ans supports that small group time each week.  Deep Discipleship is a systematic way to work through discipling the students.

On top of that we discussed at our team retreat about discipling as many students one on one as we possibly can.  Now our volunteers are already busy humans so I didn't want to add another time during the week that they have to meet with the students outside of Sunday night.  Our students are busy humans as well.  So let's use our Hang Time as a time to disciple.  Not talking about pulling a students aside for 35 of 40 minutes to talk.  What we will do is take a students and just sit and chat with them for about 10 minutes or so at Hang Time for about ten weeks.  During this time we will find out where they are at in their faith walk and what they can do to help them move to the next level.  After the several weeks of brief meetings we will give the students who want to pursue discipleship even further on their own with a copy of "I am a Disciple" a 40 day journal.

Our team members will transfer their notes from Know Growth to a spread sheet we are creating so we can see where all our students are "at a glance".  As a youth pastor I'm really looking forward to this.











Our goal is for our team members to disciple as many as we possibly can in 2015.  We want to see students stick with their faith after high school.  We want to see students grow and reach other students.  We desire to make disciples not just believers.