Life in Student Ministry

The struggle of being a “professional Christian”

tim@studentministry.org (Tim Schmoyer) — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 06:06:50 +0000

In last Monday’s LIVE YM Talk we talked about the struggle of growing spiritually in the midst of ministry. As people who are paid to be spiritual role models for students, we often feel expected to be in a constant state of passionate spiritual growth, but we all know that’s not true. Our graph of spiritual growth over time is a jagged arrow that goes up and down just like it does for anyone else.

Unfortunately, the unwritten expectation to be a “professional Christian” causes us to start faking it, pretending to be something in the church that we’re really not. Worse yet, when teens are transparent with us about their struggle to grow, we totally identify with them but our advice defaults to things that essentially boil down to, “Try harder,” even though trying harder hasn’t worked for us. “Spend more time reading your Bible. Pray more. Go to church more. Do more with the youth group. More, more, more.”

I shared a lot more about this back in my 2006 post titled, “Knowing God: Relationship, not ritual,” and encourage you to go check that out, especially the, “Ten questions to ask when your spiritual life is dull and dry,” PDF at the end.

In the beginning of last Monday’s LIVE YM Talk show I shared Mike’s story, which is exactly where many of us are coming from. He asks the question:

“How am I supposed to stand there [at youth group] and talk about following The Way and being a disciple when I’m struggling with the same thing?”

I encourage you to go and listen to it or download it in iTunes for free to hear the rest Mike’s story and our discussion that followed.

Tomorrow I’ll share 5 things that have been critical in my own spiritual growth lately.

QUESTION: Do you feel the expectation to be a “professional Christian?” If so, how do you respond to that pressure? How transparent should we be about our own spiritual growth struggles with the teens in our ministries? Share with the rest of us in the comments below this post.

You might be a youth worker if… [video]

tim@studentministry.org (Tim Schmoyer) — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 04:31:38 +0000

A couple years ago many of us put together a list of, “You might be a youth worker if…” ideas based on Jeff Foxworthy’s, “You might be a redneck.” There’s well over 300 ideas submitted for the youth worker version and this weekend I created a video to remind us of some of them.

Here’s 10 of my favorite, “You might be a youth worker if…” ideas:

Don’t End the Daddy Date [Time Out]

tim@studentministry.org (Tim Schmoyer) — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 14:00:26 +0000

Time Out: Weekly quiet times for the youth worker’s soul.
(by Benjer McVeigh)

“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” –Jesus in John 16:33, NIV

A couple of Saturdays ago our two-year-old daughter and I had a “Daddy Date” at our local McDonald’s. Bethany and I shared some hash browns, and after a quick few sips of milk, she was off to play in the indoor playground. Normally, Bethany happily spends most of her time playing, only taking breaks to come get some more hash browns and milk from her daddy. On this day, however, there was a pair of rambunctious boys in the play place. These older boys weren’t being mean; they were just being…boys. They were having a great time barking and pretending to be dogs. By most accounts, it was a couple of brothers having a fun time. To my two-year-old Bethany, however, it was a slightly scary experience. After a couple of tries trying to ignore the loud noises, she came up to me and said, “I don’t want a Daddy Date anymore.”

Her sad face broke my heart. I told her that just because she wasn’t having a good time at McDonald’s, that didn’t mean our Daddy Date had to end. We decided that our next stop would be to a park we call the Duck Pond, and we had a wonderful time for the rest of the morning.

When Bethany found that her surroundings were getting a bit unpleasant, she asked for our Daddy Date to be over. We do the same thing sometimes when life gets tough: we automatically associate our difficult circumstances with God, and so we think the solution is to get rid of both all together. But just as Bethany’s daddy was sad to hear she was scared, God cares for us when we hurt.

Of course, at some point the analogy breaks down (and not just because I’m not God). After all, we can’t just tell God that we don’t want a Daddy Date anymore and have him instantaneously sweep us off to a better place. It’s not that God can’t do this, or that he doesn’t care that we’re hurting. We’re not given all the reasons why God allows pain in our lives, but Jesus does make it clear that difficulty is an expected part of a disciple’s life: “In this world, you will have trouble” (John 16:33 NIV).

So what happens when that trouble comes? Those of us who minister to youth in some way often are at a loss of what to feel. We are often tempted to believe that because we are in a position of leadership within the church—whether as a paid staff member or a volunteer youth worker—we shouldn’t ever feel as though we don’t have all the answers when it comes to our relationship with God, or that we ever feel so lost or hurt that we wonder where God is. The truth is that all followers of Jesus feel this way at one point in time or another, and we shouldn’t expect to be immune. And when our world seems dark, our time is better spent holding on to Truth revealed in God’s Word—such as that God’s love is everlasting or that Jesus has overcome this harsh world—than trying to pretend like we have it all together.

Stuart McAllister, a lively Scottish apologist, once put it this way when preaching at our church: “Life is hard. God is good. Don’t get the two confused.” We can be honest about how difficult life is. After all, Jesus said it would be. But we can also hold on to the love and goodness of our God.

Encouraging words:
John 16:33
Romans 8:18-39

A prayer of lament and hope:
Psalm 22

Questions for Reflection:

When have you experienced “trouble” in your life?

Has there been a time when you wondered if God was there, or if he really cares for you?

Have you ever tried to pretend like everything was okay when everything was going wrong?

What has brought you the most hope during difficult times?

_______________________________________________________________________________________________
Benjer McVeigh is a youth pastor in Ogden, UT, where he works with students in grades 9-12 and their families at Washington Heights Church. You can read more from Benjer at www.benjermcveigh.com

Growing spiritually in the midst of ministry [podcast]

tim@studentministry.org (Tim Schmoyer) — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 20:20:07 +0000

A very real issue for those of us who serve in youth ministry is attending to our own souls. While we may feel expected to always be spiritually growing and on some sort of never-ending spiritual high in front of the people we serve, we all know that on the inside that’s not always the reality.

In last Monday’s LIVE YM Talk we discussed some of these issues.

The expectation to be a spiritually thriving all the time.
Can we ask kids to do something spiritually we’re not doing ourselves?
Are we paid to be “professional Christians?”
Can we combine personal time with the Lord with lesson prep?
How can we grow closer to the Lord through ministry life?
And a lot more.

Panelists in this episode:

You can listen to the discussion below or grab it in iTunes.

Play this episode

Subscribe to LIVE YM Talk in iTunes

Join our next LIVE Youth Ministry Conversation!

Freebie Friday 192: Packet of 20 free youth ministry resources

tim@studentministry.org (Tim Schmoyer) — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 15:53:08 +0000

My friend, Paul Turner, celebrated his 2,000th tweet not too long ago. I didn’t know we were supposed to celebrate Twitter milestones, but I’m glad Paul did because he put together a packet of 20 free youth ministry resources to celebrate.

His packet includes:

Six coupons to get in touch with your kids
Anatomy of a failed event: tool for evaluating your events
Fusion Connect Sheet: youth group connect sheet
Fusion Planning Sheet: tool for planning event
Fusion Discipline Form: tool for any camp or retreat
Blog Post and Tool: 7 tips to launching student-led ministry
March Man-Ness Illustration
Pirates vs Ninjas Event Message: Tear down those walls
Team Fusion leadership Teaching and Hand Out
License to learn
How to get the word out: a tool to promote your event
Sound booth check list
Message check list
Sunday school job description

I’m coming up on almost 9,000 tweets. Do I need to do something for the 10,000th? Post your ideas in the comments below. :)

Download Paul’s 20 free youth ministry resources packet

Summer movie night idea for youth groups [video]

tim@studentministry.org (Tim Schmoyer) — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 03:18:44 +0000

If you’re looking for a cheap and fun idea for your youth group during the summer, try doing an outdoor movie night. Hang a sheet on the outside of your house, bring in a sound system and video projector from church and wa-la! This video is how it works for us.

Important legal info for Movie Night
I mention this in the video, but I got it wrong. The license your church needs is called CVLI. You’ll need to keep a log of what movies you show and how many watched for reporting purposes. The license also does not cover charging an admission fee for video showings or where specific titles have been advertised or publicized ahead of time. However, it does cover manufactured DVD’s and video cassettes purchased, rented or borrowed. Check out more details at cvli.com. (Thanks to Darren Sutton on Facebook for the license info!)

VIDEO: Here’s how it worked for us last week

Handling conflict and confrontation in ministry [podcast]

tim@studentministry.org (Tim Schmoyer) — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 21:12:09 +0000

Last Monday we had a pretty frank discussion about conflict in the church. As long as we’re working with people, conflict is bound to come up and how you deal with it can make or break your ministry. Since conflict often requires confrontation, we discussed that a bit, too. It’s never easy nor fun, but is often necessary and can have a long-lasting positive effect when done well.

Some of the things we talked about:

Adjusting your attitude before confronting
The difference between addressing sin issues and disagreement issues
How to respond appropriately to criticism
When to vent to others and who to go to
Principles for confrontation

The two articles that came up in our discussion:

You can listen to the discussion below or grab it in iTunes.

Play this episode

Subscribe to LIVE YM Talk in iTunes

Join our next LIVE Youth Ministry Conversation!

Freebie Friday 191: Free ebook about student leadership

tim@studentministry.org (Tim Schmoyer) — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 00:35:38 +0000

I’ve been contemplating a video-blog post or a good old fashioned written post about some of the dynamics of student leadership in my youth ministry over the past couple years. It’s been quite interesting to me and is shaping into a group of students unlike I would’ve ever pictured student leadership before.

So when I got an email from LeaderTreks telling me about their new, free ebook on student leadership, I was intrigued.

It’s only 11 pages of actual content, but it’s still a good read. I’ll withhold my evaluation for a later time.

NOTE: You’ll have to part with your email address to download the ebook.

Download the free student leadership ebook

Why it’s important to connect with local youth pastors

tim@studentministry.org (Tim Schmoyer) — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 05:28:19 +0000

Back in January when published the results of the blog survey you all took for me (part 1 here and part 2 here), I was surprised how many of you wrote a comment about how you’d love to connect with other readers of Life In Student Ministry beyond what MinistryQuestions.com or LIVE YM Talk can provide. You guys wanted more personal networking with each other.

I’ve been thinking about this for several months and I’m gonna go with my initial reaction to this request, and that’s to continue to direct you all to the National Network of Youth Ministries.

For years they’ve been helping youth workers connect with other youth workers locally in their area for meetings, resourcing, encouragement, partnerships, training and more. Through their website you can find local youth worker meetings or find another person or two who’s interested in starting one.

Go to YouthWorkers.net and click on the Networks tab at the top to get started.

Why I meet with other local youth pastors

Yesterday at my local youth pastor meeting I asked two of the guys why it’s important for them to attend our group each week. Check out this video to hear what they said. I shared some of why it’s important for me to get together with other local youth pastors, too.

Here’s an older blog post I wrote almost a year ago about what I like about my local youth pastor network.

Interview with a Director and the CEO of NNYM

I had the privlege of talking more about the National Network of Youth Ministries with Len Evans (NNYM director for Texas and New Mexico) and the NNYM’s CEO, T.Ray Grandstaff. We talked about:

What the National Network of Youth Ministries is
What they’re trying to accomplish for both youth workers and teens
What a youth worker meeting should look like
How to find a network in your area
How to start one if none exists near you
Tools on their website to help you connect
And a lot more.

Our discussion is about 25 minutes long.

You can listen to it below or grab it in iTunes.

Listen to the NNYM interview

Download the interview in iTunes

God doesn’t need me, I need Him [Time Out]

tim@studentministry.org (Tim Schmoyer) — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 04:38:27 +0000

Time Out: Weekly quiet times for the youth worker’s soul.
(by Jerry Schmoyer)

As I approach retirement age and look back on a lifetime of ministry I realize there are some important principles I have learned. I’d like to share some of these with you. I’m sure God is teaching you these same truths, but perhaps explaining them from my perspective can benefit you.

As I’ve listed and outlined these lessons over the past several weeks one clearly stands out in first place: God doesn’t need me but I need Him. While that may seem obvious, and while it’s something we have always known in our heads, it seems to take awhile for us to really plunge the depths of this truth.

When I started in ministry I was very excited at the opportunity to use my gifts and talents for God. There was so much I wanted to accomplish. I was “expecting great things from God and doing great things for God.” I knew I needed His help to carry out these desires but I had no doubt with God’s assistance they would happen.

The older I get, though, the more clearly I see that I have nothing to offer. It’s not a teamwork operation, it’s all His grace and mercy. I feel like a little boy thinking he can hit a baseball a mile when it is really his father standing behind him, wrapping his arms around his son and holding the bat with him that is making contact with the ball. Without my heavenly Father’s arms wrapped around me I’d miss it by a mile every time. Every once in awhile, when I insist on doing things my way, God lets me see how unable I am to produce what I desire.

Truly it’s not about me, it’s all about Him! As I slowly but surely mature spiritually I find God keeps getting bigger and bigger. I, by comparison, keep getting smaller and smaller. And that’s not a bad feeling! There’s something freeing about “letting go and letting God.” While I’ve chased quantity in ministry, God is more interested in quality. When I think I have nothing to offer but a bad example He does something to encourage me to keep on going.

There’s a real peace that comes with letting God be God, with recognizing He doesn’t need me to run His Kingdom down here, to humbly come to the conclusion that I can’t do ANYthing without Him. When that becomes more than words but takes on reality in my life then I start listening to Him more. I spend less time asking Him to help me with what I am doing and more asking Him what He wants me to do. I see some of my biggest plans lying in ruins by the wayside, but I find He has used me to touch lives at times and in ways I didn’t expect. I’m learning that people come before program. I’m here to serve my people, they aren’t here to serve my program. I’ve got more peace and more patience because I know that if I am in His will then He will bring whatever results He wants whenever He wants them. God doesn’t measure success by numbers (people, dollars, books published, etc.) but by faithfulness. So I spend more and more time making sure I am doing what He wants and less and less trying to get Him to prop up and bless my plans.

I’m sure you are already learning this and can add to what I’ve said. It’s important to keep it foremost in your mind, though – God doesn’t need any of us but each one of us totally needs Him!

Scripture
Galatians 2:20, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”

Romans 12:1-2, “Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God — this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is — his good, pleasing and perfect will.”

Reflect

If God withheld His grace and help from your ministry, what would it be like? What could you accomplish for Him on your own, without His help? How often do you try to do this?
How natural is it for you to give credit to God for EVERYthing that happens?

———————————————————————-

Jerry Schmoyer has been a minister in Pennsylvania for over 25 years and has worked with teenagers for 14 years, ever since I became one myself. He authors the weekly Time Out series here at Life in Student Ministry in hopes to spiritually refresh your soul as you continually pour so much of yourself into students. God bless!

Answering recent questions from MinistryQuestions.com #6 [podcast]

tim@studentministry.org (Tim Schmoyer) — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 18:41:39 +0000

Every month we do a LIVE YM Talk show of recent questions that have been posted to MinistryQuestions.com by ministry workers all over the country. Together we discuss the questions, the issues involved, and give the best feedback we can. If you have questions, need advice, would like a recommendation or anything else for something in your ministry, check out MinistryQuestions.com and ask!

Below are the questions we addressed on this week’s LIVE YM Talk show:

You can listen to the discussion below or grab it in iTunes.

Play this episode

Subscribe to LIVE YM Talk in iTunes

Join our next LIVE Youth Ministry Conversation!

Helping parents get involved in their teens’ lives [podcast]

tim@studentministry.org (Tim Schmoyer) — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 18:31:12 +0000

In this show we talked about a typical home-life for teens and discussed many ideas about how our youth ministries can help parents get involved with what’s going on in their teens’ lives.

We shared ideas that have worked for our groups in the past, ideas that aren’t working anymore, and new ones we’d recommend trying and not trying. It’s the kind of episode where you’ll want to have a pen and paper handy to jot down the ideas that come to your mind while we talk.

We hope it blesses you, your ministry and the families you serve!

You can listen to the discussion below or grab it in iTunes.

Play this episode

Subscribe to LIVE YM Talk in iTunes

Join our next LIVE Youth Ministry Conversation!

Freebie Friday 190: Lesson series based on the movie Flipped

tim@studentministry.org (Tim Schmoyer) — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 18:24:03 +0000

My friend, Jeremy Zach, wrote a 5-week youth group lesson series based on the movie ,Flipped, that deals with relationships, friendships, character, and more. The five weeks are titled:

True Friendships
Regret: Dream and act now!
The art of happiness: lose yourself
Passing judgement: a mistake
Character: spotting it out

Each lesson is fairly brief and won’t take long to teach through, but there are some good discussion questions at the end to use with a small group of kids. It also includes video clips of the movie you can download and use with each lesson.

NOTE: You’ll have to part with some personal information in order to download the lesson outlines and video clips. Subscribing to their newsletter appeared to be optional, however.

Lesson series based on the movie “Flipped”

Fuel Ignited DVD curriculum giveaway!

Only a week left to win one of my brand-new two copies of Lifeway’s Fuel Ignited DVD curriculum sets! All you have to do to enter the drawing is comment on this video or subscribe to my YouTube channel. Watch my video on YouTube for details.

What you need outside your church [video]

tim@studentministry.org (Tim Schmoyer) — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 03:36:36 +0000

I’ve kinda always known this was true, but lately I’m really seeing the value of the lesson I’m learning in ministry right now.

Following the Leader [Time Out]

tim@studentministry.org (Tim Schmoyer) — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 14:15:23 +0000

Time Out: Weekly quiet times for the youth worker’s soul.
(by Benjer McVeigh)

For we walk by faith, not by sight. – 2 Corinthians 5:7, ESV

Last week we took our students on a backpacking trip to Colorado. Our group was broken up into four smaller groups, and the morning after our group arrived at the base camp, each group headed off to spend five days in Colorado’s beautiful Rocky Mountains. Each group consisted of roughly fourteen or so people, including at least two adult leaders from our church and two guides provided by our outfitter. I was in a group with our high school boys.

It was fun—although a bit unnerving—for me to be under the leadership of our guides. We weren’t allowed to pack any electronics (although some students tried), and before we headed out on the trail, the guides took away our watches so that we would not know what time it was. They said that they would let us know when we needed to get up and go to bed, and that we’d eat when it was time to stop and eat. We just needed to follow their lead and not be worried about what would be happening next and how long it was until we would stop and camp.

It didn’t take me long to realize that following our guides was a great parable for following God. Our guides not only knew the way; they knew what we needed to do to have the best trip possible. For instance, we would often pack up camp in the early morning and start hiking while it was still quite chilly out. Our conventional wisdom said, “It’s cold, put on pants and a coat.” However, our guides assured us that we would be quite warm in only shorts and a t-shirt once we started walking, so it was best not to put on extra layers. Sure enough, five minutes into the hike, some of us asked to stop so that we could remove the extra layers that we wouldn’t have put on in the first place if we had just trusted our guides.

That’s the way my walk with God is often played out: God tells me what I need to do in a certain part of the Journey, but I think I know better and make a different choice. Only later do I understand that if I had followed God’s lead in the first place, things would have worked out for the better.

This doesn’t mean that we’re guaranteed that things will always be pleasant. During the trip, we spent some time hiking in a downpour, and that wasn’t much fun at all. Then on our third day, our guides pushed us on during a really difficult hike over a pass, because to stop and rest would have meant an increased risk of being caught in a dangerous lightning storm later in the day.

In my walk with God, I need to learn to follow him just as I learned to follow our guides. When I choose my own so-called wisdom over God’s lead, it just results in unnecessary pit stops, detours, heartache, and pain later. The Israelites experienced this when they were exiled in Babylon for not being obedient to God and following his lead alone. But when I do follow God’s lead—even when I don’t think his direction makes sense—I am in good hands. Again, this doesn’t mean that I won’t experience any discomfort. It just means that I recognize that God is faithful and wise and that his way is best. This is especially difficult to remember in youth ministry, where what seems like the best way forward to our human wisdom is not the same direction in which God is leading. But God knows best. He sees what lies ahead, and he knows how to get us through safely.

Read Jeremiah 29:10-14
Because they didn’t follow God and trust his ways, the Israelites experienced a detour when they were exiled in Babylon.
What detours have you taken in life as a result of not trusting God?
When is it most difficult to trust God’s plan rather than your own human wisdom?
In what specific—and maybe difficult—issue in your life this week do you need to trust God’s leading rather than your own human wisdom?

Note: Our trip was conducted through Noah’s Ark in Buena Vista, CO. There are some good Christian rafting and backpacking outfitters out there, and I consider these guys to be the cream of the crop, especially if you’re coming from out of state.

_______________________________________________________________________________________
Benjer McVeigh is a youth pastor in Ogden, UT, where he works with students in grades 9-12 and their families at Washington Heights Church. You can read more from Benjer at www.benjermcveigh.com

Freebie Friday 190: Resources from Church On The Move

tim@studentministry.org (Tim Schmoyer) — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 12:00:25 +0000

Church On The Move in Tulsa, Oklahoma, creates a lot of resources for their own church and then puts them online for other churches, like yours, to freely use. While I haven’t used any of the student ministry lesson series myself, they definitely look like something you’ll want to check out.

Their church resource site includes:

Message series for adults, kids, and students
Artwork
Videos
Dramas
Background music CDs
Motion backgrounds
Pre-service PowerPoint slides
and more…

Free resources from Church On The Move

ht ChurchRelevance.com

Who leads the church: staff or congregation? [video]

tim@studentministry.org (Tim Schmoyer) — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 04:08:41 +0000

Last weekend I was listening to one of Perry Noble‘s messages from NewSpring Church, a pastor I greatly respect and admire who has influenced my ministry in many ways. He was answering questions from the audience and one question pertained to church structure and leadership. I thought Perry’s answer was intriguing and I’ve been thinking about it ever since: Do we leave the church to be ran by the “professionals” who have been trained for ministry or do we let the congregation, parents, church board, and whoever else tell the staff members how to run the church?

I shot a little video recording some of my thoughts and I included the video of Perry answering the question. Watch it here:

It’s an interesting paradox because Perry makes a convincing case for a staff-led church, but I’m not sure his analogies carry over to a ministry context quite as well as he describes. We’re not flying a plane nor running a bank — we’re a community of believers serving the Lord’s church. However, as a church leader, I totally vibe with his statement, “There is no evidence in the scriptures that a church should be ran by people who don’t actually do the work.” I’m sure any youth worker can shout an “amen” to that!

I wonder how much of this goes back to an ecclesiology that almost models something closer to a YMCA where the board tells the directors what to do instead of a church that’s more accurately a community of believers serving side-by-side. In other words, I think Mark Riddle has it right in his book, “Inside the Mind of Youth Pastors,” when he says the role of church staff is to train and encourage the body to do the work of the ministry, not to actually do it for them.

What do you think? I welcome your thoughts in the comments below. Should a church be staff-led? Congregation-led? A mix of both? Neither? I’m not making any accusations nor judgments about anyone nor any churches — I’m just thinking out loud about how we do what God’s called us to do so that He is ultimately glorified. Let’s make sure the discussion below does only that.

Why YouTube has replaced TV for me (and many teens)

tim@studentministry.org (Tim Schmoyer) — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 04:25:59 +0000

YouTube vs. Television

In November of 2009 YouTube surpassed Yahoo to take the #2 place of total search queries in the U.S., right next to it’s #1 owner, Google. It’s no wonder because YouTube can show you a lot of things that Google can’t. In fact, many years ago I learned to tie a tie by watching a “how to” on YouTube. I also learned to levitate like Criss Angel (before the video was removed) and I have developed my skills on several software programs by watching tutorials on YouTube.

But unlike Google, YouTube has a community of users who “follow” each other’s content, similar to Twitter or Facebook Pages. Since Dana and I canceled our TV service a while back to save money, YouTube has surprisingly replaced that medium for me. I don’t get all the same content on there as I would on Dish Network (most of which can be found on Hulu.com anyway), but now I actually prefer YouTube over TV because I can interact with the people I’m watching. It’s like watching your friends (or people who become your friends) on television.

Most of the time these are people who regularly update their YouTube channels, as I’m trying to do more and more often with mine. My favorite channels are the people who post a variety of videos, often including ones about their life, their thoughts, their careers, their families, their challenges and things that make them laugh. Because that’s what I value, I’ve found I tend to post similar videos to my channel… and the interaction begins.

Subscribing to YouTube channels

If you’re only used to YouTube being a place where you make an occasional search query or see the latest viral video, you’re missing the real gem of community behind this social network. And if you’re thinking, “Oh man, I don’t have time for yet another social network,” relax — it’s nothing like Facebook or Twitter.

Create a YouTube account if you don’t already have one. If you have a Google/Gmail account, you’re already set.
Spice up your account a bit with some information and a profile image. Maybe even upload a quick one or two minute video introducing yourself. (A webcam is perfect for this. It doesn’t have to be fancy.)
As you find users on YouTube who’s videos and personalities you enjoy, click the yellow “Subscribe” button above their video or at the top of their profile/channel page. You can watch the latest videos of people you subscribe to on your subscriptions page. You can also customize YouTube’s home page with modules to display your subscribed videos, too.
Interact with videos by using the thumbs-up/thumbs-down rating system and leave comments. While it’s not required, it helps the video owner know what you, the audience, likes and doesn’t like and what you’re thinking as you watch the video. This leads to better videos in the future and helps YouTube know what’s good and what’s not.

Right now there’s a giveaway happening on my YouTube channel for new subscribers and comments! Check it out!

YouTube channels to check out

Of course, first you want to subscribe to my channel. ;) Then here are some other channels you can look at pertaining to youth ministry. Note that some of these links are of Christians and some are not.

Internet Killed Television – Charles Trippy has been vlogging his daily life for a while now, becoming one of the most popular personalities on YouTube. With a likable personality, teens connect to his life and love interacting with his internet reality show.
David Crowder Band – I love the creativity these guys have in front of the camera. It’s not just band performances — it’s behind the scenes, it’s short skits, and it’s always goofy.
Fail Blog – Short little clips of people doing ridiculous things that end in a major FAIL. Good for laughs!
FlowerDust – I’ve been following Anne Jackson since visiting Haiti with her in February. She doesn’t update YouTube nearly enough, but when she does it’s refreshing to see her authenticity and realness about life and ministry.
JazTrumpett – Claire is a high school student in my youth group and I love seeing her fun videos and how she expresses herself in video.
HailsForever – Hailey is a girl who occasionally visits my youth group with a couple friends. She’s very creative and put a lot of time into her two videos. I’m looking forward to more from her.
LifeChurch.tv – This is what you’d expect from LifeChurch.tv — high quality videos of sermon illustrations, promos and message clips.
Adam McLane – You guys know him from Youth Specialties and his uber online presence. This is his personal YouTube channel, mostly stuff from his iPhone.
Mars Hill Church – Great message clips from sermons by Mark Driscoll.
Nalts – Kevin Nalty is who’s responsible for tipping me off to the YouTube community and has been my inspiration for contributing to it, although, honestly I originally started watching his videos because I enjoyed seeing his video shows around my hometown in Pennsylvania. He also has a daily vlog channel here.
NewSpring Church – They unfortunately haven’t updated their channel for about 2 months, but when they were updating it, it was again of message clips from Perry Noble, sermon intros, and stuff like that.
Ruthie Babes – She’s a youth worker in Northern Ireland who gets the YouTube community and contributes to it. She’s got a fun personality to watch and the Irish accent is easy to listen to.
Shane Dawson – This guy probably has one of the top followings on YouTube. He does regular skits that are very creative and usually include just himself. (Be forewarned of foul language and inappropriate content.)
ShayTards – Like Charles Trippy, Carl daily vlogs his family’s life and has earned quite a following at it. His personality is engaging and his kids are cute, so it’s easy to watch.
SuperMac18 – Another popular YouTuber, especially with teens. If you watch any of his videos you’ll see why. He used to post a video almost every day, but his channel has been mostly inactive recently for some reason. How’d you do youth ministry with this kid in your group?! lol
tfneditor – You guys know him as Joshua Griffin, the high school pastor at Saddleback Church.
What The Buck Show – Personally, this isn’t a channel that I watch, but it’s one of the most popular channels on YouTube. Buck covers celebrity gossip and has grown to have appearances on network television.
YouthSpecialties – Promos, interviews, and announcements from Youth Specialties.

There are obviously hundreds of thousands of channels on YouTube, but this should be enough to get you started.

Calling all youth workers!

YouTube seriously needs more active youth ministry channels, so if you’re a youth pastor vlogging your life in ministry or just sharing thoughts and ideas, post your channel in the comments below. (Tip: Don’t just record a video in a monotone voice telling me about what you did all day — actually show me. Take me on the journey with you.)

What channels do you recommend?

It’s Not My Responsibility to Reach Out [Time Out]

tim@studentministry.org (Tim Schmoyer) — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 14:00:27 +0000

Time Out: Weekly quiet times for the youth worker’s soul.
(by Adam Wormann)

Disclaimer: Don’t worry, this isn’t about politics. Just bear with me.

I have a friend that is very interested in politics. So, things come up from time to time of a political nature in conversations. In a post on facebook, he was critical of the government’s involvement with social welfare programs. I told him that honestly, I blame the church for some of that, maybe even a lot. Somewhere along the line the church backed away somewhat from caring for the sick, feeding the poor, and taking care of those who are down in our communities. With the hole the church left, the government came in to fill. I said that if we’re going to complain about it, the church should be a part of the solution.

Another friend chimed in to say that it was a good point. Then he asked “Hey Adam, what are you doing individually to be a part of the solution.”

Good question.

I told him about some of the things that my wife and I do to be a part of the solution, but appreciate the point he made. Very often we talk about what the church needs to do, or what “people” need to do…we just don’t do it ourselves. That was a good gut check for me. It’s easy to get lazy about things.

Yesterday, we talked at church about Jesus spending time with “tax collectors and sinners.” We were looking specifically at Luke 15, and mentioned Luke 5 also. I’m not going to reprint them here, but would encourage you to go read them right now, and then come back here to the blog.

What you see in those chapters is Jesus personally going to spend time with the people He says He came to seek and save. Those that were ignored. Those that were distant from God. He came to reconcile people. Then, in Luke 15, he gave a pretty strong chastisement to the religious elite for their attitude, indicating that they ought to be rejoicing in the reconciliation of God and sinners, and even doing it themselves.

It’s easy for us to say that it’s the job of the church to reach out. That’s a part of most of our church’s mission statements. But, what are we doing on an individual level? When was the last time that we had people over for dinner from outside the church and got to know them better than a surface level. Have we ever really tried to share anything about faith with people, or do we shy away. These are the questions that I was forced to wrestle with.

It’s easy to make it about someone else. It’s much more difficult to make it about ourselves.

So, what are you doing, individually, to reach out to those separated from God?

_____________________________________________________________________________________
Adam Wormann is a Youth Pastor in Old Bridge, NJ where he’s been serving for the past 8 years. He is also one of the mentors at Life in Student Ministry and the editor of the “Time Out” series. You can stalk him on Twitter and Facebook.

How is Facebook changing teens’ relationships and faith? [podcast]

tim@studentministry.org (Tim Schmoyer) — Sat, 07 Aug 2010 02:25:29 +0000

As Facebook crosses the 500 millionth active user, it’s apparent that this social networking site is very influential in how we communicate, share and define friendships. Especially for teenagers, how is Facebook influencing their view friendships, relationships and their faith?

In this discussion, none of us are experts who have completed extensive research — we’re just adults who have worked with teens for a long time and are sharing our observations.

Some of the things we talked about:

The re-definition of friendships
Face-to-face vs online communication
The expectation teens have for communication and how that influences prayer
How their definition of relationships affects how they view a relationship with God
And a lot more…

You can listen to the discussion below or grab it in iTunes.

Play this episode

Subscribe to LIVE YM Talk in iTunes

Join our next LIVE Youth Ministry Conversation!

Freebie Friday 189: How to debrief your missions team

tim@studentministry.org (Tim Schmoyer) — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 03:57:55 +0000

Seth Barnes, the founder of Adventures In Missions, has a resource on his blog for helping you debrief with your team after a missions trip this summer.

This 10-part series offers a lot of help for making sure you maximize the impact of your debriefing sessions with teenagers during and after your missions trip this summer.

In addition to these resources, this video from Mark Driscoll came across my YouTube subscriptions this week. If you have kids who are dying to return to the “Mecca” of their spiritual high thinking that “that’s where God is,” maybe this would be a good video to show and discuss.

Addicted to “camp high”

Why the “teaching method” of discipleship is boring to teens

tim@studentministry.org (Tim Schmoyer) — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 22:35:03 +0000

Adam McLane was in Haiti last week and shared some great thoughts via video about discipleship, spiritual growth and youth ministry. I love what he says because it’s exactly the same thing I’ve been wrestling with lately, especially after my last two trips to Haiti — he just articulates it so much better than I have.

Adam says it’s less about giving teenagers lots of information about God in a sterile church environment (not that there isn’t a place for that, because there is), but maybe it’s more about pushing them into situations that stretch their faith and make them seek God. That’s exactly how I got started in youth ministry, so I tend to agree with him. It’s also why I designated over half of my annual budget to taking multiple trips to Haiti each year.

Check out what he says over on his blog and contribute to the discussion in the comments below his post.

Guidelines for youth pastors texting students

tim@studentministry.org (Tim Schmoyer) — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 03:10:14 +0000

Several weeks ago a youth worker sent me a link to this article, “What Should Your Ministry Know about Youth Texting Exposures?” He asked for my opinion of it and if I have anything in place regarding leader-to-student texting. It seemed to make sense to him to have something in place, but he wasn’t sure if the approach in this article was overboard or not.

As a general rule of thumb, I don’t let my ministry be crippled by the fear of what could happen. I take prudent precautions, of course, but there’s a limit where you’ll soon have no contact with kids at all and they start to feel like you’re afraid of them.

I text my kids. I usually only text girls to ask a quick question, but I don’t have on-going discussions with them even they initiate the text conversation. I’ll gladly reply and answer questions, but I don’t prolong the smalltalk (and infrequent), “So how was your day?” texts from girls. I’d rather see that conversation take place with a female youth leader.

As far as guys are concerned, I’ve never had a need to place guidelines on those conversations yet. I’m sure there are some teenage guys out there that would require a youth leader to lay down some restrictions, though.

My advice: Do what you feel is right for your ministry rather than crippling your ministry with the fear of what could happen, but be prudent and wise at the same time.

If your ministry requires some accountability in your texting with students, consider using TxtSignal.com. I’ve used them for years and absolutely love their service! One of their features, called Message Stream, allows you to send individual text messages to people. When your recipient responds, it goes through TxtSignal’s service and is then (optionally) forwarded to your phone. When you reply, it again goes through TxtSignal and is then delivered to the recipient’s phone. If you take advantage of this feature, it allows TxtSignal to keep a record of your conversation with these specific people. If there’s ever a question about your texting with a student in the future, you can go back and check the original transcripts.

Question: What guidelines, if any, do you have for texting students? Share with all of us how your ministry handles this in the comments below.

God, Please Make Taco Bell Healthy [Time Out]

tim@studentministry.org (Tim Schmoyer) — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 13:00:51 +0000

Time Out: Weekly quiet times for the youth worker’s soul.
(by Adam Wormann)

Recently I took a student to Taco Bell, or as I like to call it, Heaven on Earth. I love it, but I actually got depressed when I realized I was mayor of Taco Bell on Foursquare. That’s not an accomplishment. It’s great, but man, those burritos hit hard.

So, we were going to pray before we ate. Have you ever felt awkward praying before a meal at Taco Bell, or any other restaurant? Maybe you pull the “everyone pray quietly to yourselves so nobody really notices” routine, or the “let’s pray really loud so everyone knows we’re Christians and honoring God” bit. It does always feel a little awkward praying in a public place like that, especially in NJ where the spiritual climate is fairly dead. I decided to not concentrate on the atmosphere so much, but on the words instead. That’s when it hit me…

“…and bless this food to our bodies.”

Really? I know God is a god of great miracles, but making Taco Bell healthy? That may be more amazing than the resurrection. Not quite, but close. I don’t care how much you pray, my bet is that because of your prayer or my prayer, God is not going to superintend and make that stuff “nourishing.” I think we pray more out of habit and rote memory than we do heart. My wife caught me doing this a couple of times and it really nailed me. We’re praying together and I say something, and she asks “what do you mean by that.” I realized I just rambled, not even sure what I was praying about.

“And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask Him…” –Matthew 6:7-8

Usually, when we talk about this verse, we think of things like the Lord’s Prayer (which, oddly enough, comes right after this passage). Reciting a prayer like the Lord’s Prayer isn’t empty and meaningless, unless we let it become that way, which often happens. If our heart is there and we reflect on what we’re praying, the meaning can be quite significant. While we often criticize things like the empty repetition of prayer, we’re so often blind to the fact that we do it ourselves. I know I’m guilty of this all the time.

Think about when you pray. When you pray before meals, do you say the same thing all the time? Why do you pray before meals? Where is this in scripture? It’s not bad, but it’s worth thinking about the way in which we pray, especially when it’s routine. Don’t let your relationship with God simply be something that you do. It’s not helping you, it’s not helping Him.

There’s no reflection questions this week. We probably don’t need them. The time would probably best be spent in some time of prayer and reflection, where we really think about what it is we’re conversing with God about.

Vlog: Puke at Mall of America [video]

tim@studentministry.org (Tim Schmoyer) — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 03:30:53 +0000

My last video blog was a fairly busy day of “life in student ministry,” but Friday’s vlog was my day off and thus a more recreational. My wife and I hung out at the Mall of America in Minneapolis for the day while waiting for my mother-in-law’s flight to arrive with our little girl.

In this video:

Random girls with Group’s “High Seas” VBS shirts
A lady pukes
How to get a free iPad (seriously!)
Hot sauce substitutes salsa
Mark Matlock’s favorite ice cream place

If you like this video…

Please give it a thumbs-up on YouTube and subscribe to my YouTube videos for other youth ministry videos.

Freebie Friday 188: Interactive plan for discussing purity and abortion

tim@studentministry.org (Tim Schmoyer) — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 06:32:42 +0000

Brett Hetherington continues to create and donate high quality lesson materials for Freebie Fridays here at LISM and today is no exception. Besides serving as one of the Youth Ministry Mentors, he’s contributed eight other youth teaching series’ and resources. Visit his site and let him know how much you appreciate his generosity in equipping your ministry with great resources time and time again!

Here’s what Brett says about this week’s Freebie Friday:

Our group gave me a list of topics they wanted to cover this summer. Among those topics were both teenage pregnancy and abortion. This did not surprise me since our area is ridiculously high in teen pregnancies, so I tied them into one evening (since often one will lead to the other). The evening is an experience-driven lesson time, with students walking and journaling through two rooms, one about teen pregnancy, the other about abortion. Each room has leading questions, passages of Scripture and images of that room’s focus hanging on the walls. Students walk through each room, answering questions, meditating on Scripture, and thinking about that subject, then we gather together in another room to debrief. Students are invited to share their thoughts and their experience with the group, and the facilitator for the evening closes out by pointing back to what Scripture has to say about both topics, namely the need to remain sexually pure and our task to preserve human life.

There is a lot of room in this evening for the Spirit to move, and a lot of flexibility to tailor that final closing talk around the facilitator’s own theological foundation. Our group’s discussion time actually veered into areas of where sin starts (the mind and heart, not the hands), whether or not kissing is a sin, fleeing temptation vs. resisting temptation, and some very personal debates over whether or not there is ever a legitimate reason to abort a baby. Your group’s experience will depend on your facilitator. The teaching notes I include are sparse, so make sure you take time to familiarize yourself with the evening’s Scriptures, and study them for yourself.

Video of Brett sharing about this interactive lesson

Brett shares more about this lesson plan in his video here.

Included in this series you will find:

WORD and PDF copies of my teaching notes
WORD and PDF copies of the participant journal
Publisher and JPEG files of leading questions to hang on the wall
Publisher and JPEG files of Scriptures to hang on the wall
JPEG files of the images I used in each room (these were obtained in a Google search. Feel free to find your own images if you so desire)

Download “FETAL” lesson plan

Segregation at youth group? [video]

tim@studentministry.org (Tim Schmoyer) — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 04:25:48 +0000

When I heard this story about the church in Mexico where we’ve been serving all week, everyone sat and shook their heads about how sad it is that believers would have such division solely because of economic status, but what about division that’s caused by maturity levels instead? Is that just as bad? When we do youth ministry and separate the jr. and sr. high, are we segregating the body of Christ in any way? Does that divide the body of Christ in an unhealthy way?

If you like this video, please give it a thumbs-up on YouTube and subscribe to my YouTube videos for other youth ministry videos.

Getting Rid of the Junk [Time Out]

tim@studentministry.org (Tim Schmoyer) — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 14:00:04 +0000

Time Out: Weekly quiet times for the youth worker’s soul.
(by Benjer McVeigh)

“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.” -Jesus

Recently I spent a little time on two tasks to tidy up my office, both in the physical and the electronic sense. Tidying up in the electronic sense was basically deleting obsolete emails (Celebration: I went from 4,183 emails to 63!). Tidying up in the physical sense included getting rid of all the stuff I collect on my desk. Usually, this “stuff” comes in the form of various kinds of papers: staff meeting agendas, curriculum samples, vacation request paperwork, and lots and lots of sticky notes and scraps of paper.

I got rid of a lot of clutter. I didn’t set out to tidy up my desk just to make it look cleaner—my office doesn’t look a whole lot better than before! I needed to tidy up because I had accumulated so many unnecessary things. It became distracting, and it kept me from finding the stuff that’s actually important when I needed to. It’s not that those papers didn’t serve their purpose at one time; it’s just that their continued presence kept me from being efficient during my office time. Sure, I still have piles all over the place (yep, I’m a piler), but now that I’ve limited those piles to important things that I actually need to have at hand, it’s easier for me to work on the stuff I’m supposed to be working on.

This happens in my walk with Jesus, too. I have a lot of clutter in my mind and my heart. Jesus says in Matthew 5:8, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.” When something is pure, it means that it has only what it’s supposed to have, and that is usually only one thing. If we say water is pure, it means that it’s just…water; no other “stuff” is in it. The same is true of gold, silver, and other precious metals. So to be pure in heart is for our heart to have but one desire: to follow God in everything we do.

Just like my desk was not pure, my heart and my desires are not pure. Sure, there are the obvious contaminants: some greed, a lot of self-centeredness, and a good measure of envy. But there are some things that don’t look bad on the surface, but they do clutter up the heart, just like the Post-it note with the phone message I took four months ago was cluttering up my desk. A lot of it can be related to my calling as a youth pastor, such as a touch of workaholicism, which can be evidenced by thinking more about how I can relate a passage of Scripture to students than how to apply it to my own life, even in my personal devotional study. Or perhaps I spend too much of my free time on good stuff that has its purpose (catching up on my YM magazines, texting students, checking in on websites I like, and yes, blogging), but the importance I place on it clutters up my heart and my desire to follow God. If we are to be pure in heart, we need to ask God to show us what’s clutter and what’s not, and to refine us along the way (Psalm 66:10).

Questions for Reflection:

What “stuff” clutters up my heart that keeps me from a single-minded and single-hearted pursuit of God?

God sometimes uses the tough stuff in life to purify our hearts (Isaiah 48:10). In what ways is a difficult—or even tragic—situation teaching you what’s clutter in your heart and life and what’s not?

What is one thing you can do this week to de-clutter your heart?

_________________________________________________________________________
Benjer McVeigh is a youth pastor in Ogden, UT, where he works with students in grades 9-12 and their families at Washington Heights Church. You can read more from Benjer at www.benjermcveigh.com

What works best in training your volunteers? [podcast]

tim@studentministry.org (Tim Schmoyer) — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 09:00:02 +0000

This question is something I struggle with in my own ministry. How do you get a team of youth leaders all together at the same time for the purpose of training, encouragement, support, and unity?

Since the panelists had last minute responsibilities that come up and were unable to make the show, I basically shared the story of what’s going on in our ministry and asked that you would listen and leave your feedback in the comments below. I also answered some questions from people in the live chat room about working with volunteers.

Here’s some of the questions I asked and discussed from my ministry’s context:

What different ways have you tried in the past of getting everyone together for training? What’s worked the best and why?
What do you do with their valuable time in those meetings?
What do you do with the volunteer who rarely shows up for trainings?
How do you prioritize what they need to be trained about first?
What training material you use?
Why investing the budget into volunteers for training is the best use of your budget.

This has been a struggle for me the past couple years here at my church, so I’m hoping you guys can help me out! I’ll share part of my story on the call.

You can listen to the discussion below or grab it in iTunes.

Play this episode

Subscribe to LIVE YM Talk in iTunes

Join our next LIVE Youth Ministry Conversation!

Freebie Friday 187: 56 free worship backgrounds for PowerPoint or MediaShout

tim@studentministry.org (Tim Schmoyer) — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 09:00:22 +0000

The worship director at my father-in-law’s, Russel Martin, church offered a download of 56 free worship PowerPoint backgrounds from his Flickr account.

If you’re looking for some fresh new backgrounds to use with MediaShout worship or PowerPoint, check out his post below.

56 free worship backgrounds

My random day of life in student ministry [video]

tim@studentministry.org (Tim Schmoyer) — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 22:30:34 +0000

I’ve been wanting to do a daily vlog (video blog) for 30 consecutive days for a while now just to have fun and experiment with it, but due to travel and time priorities, I haven’t been able to pull it off. Rather than put it off any longer, I decided just to go for it and do them on random days instead of 30 days in a row.

Here’s my vlog from last Thursday. If you get the question, “So what does a youth pastor do all day?” maybe this can help.

If you like this video, please give it a thumbs-up on YouTube and subscribe to my YouTube videos for other youth ministry videos.

Other youth pastor vlogs from Thursday

When I originally tweeted the idea of doing a vlog last Thursday, a couple other youth workers jumped in and said they would do it too! Although several vlogged their day on Thursday, only three of them were able to get their videos online in time for this post. Here they are:

Travis Deans: his blog | his vlog on YouTube

Jillianne Davis: her blog | her vlog on YouTube

Andy Disher: his blog | his vlog on Vimeo

Follow me on Twitter and click “like” on the Facebook page if you want to know when the next day of random “life in student ministry” vlogging takes place.

Stop Having Small Groups [Time Out]

tim@studentministry.org (Tim Schmoyer) — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 14:00:44 +0000

Time Out: Weekly quiet times for the youth worker’s soul.
(by Adam Wormann)

Word on the street is that most pastors have a lot of relationships. Guys and Gals in youth work are constantly encouraged to connect relationally to students. Small groups were all the rage a few years back (and often still are), though now we like to talk all about community. Still, pretty much trying to communicate the same thing, just using different language. For all the focus on relationships, we still have quite a bit of lonely people. It looks like relationships are becoming the wrong thing.

Look at Acts chapter 2:42-47 (ESV)
And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. And all who believed were together and had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need. And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.

People were connecting relationally. This has become a model for how we do ministry. Hey, it’s good, it works, it’s how the early church modeled it, it’s Scriptural…nothing wrong here. Until we (and I think I really mean “I”) get a hold of it. Then it becomes a program. It’s a mean to an end. We participate in, lead, and enable small groups. Yet, we never really connect. It’s probably because we view it more like “ministry” as in “accomplishing the church’s work” instead of “ministry” as in “sharing your life in the context of Gospel living.” To me, it’s become more apparent why so many pastors and church leaders are often so lonely.

Think about your small groups, your friendships…where you spend most of your time. Do you ever have time and people where you have mutual benefit and share life together, where it’s not a church program? Where we break bread in one another’s home, have all things in common, look out for one another, take care of one another, and truly connect? Or is it a “small group” that’s another tool?

Maybe what we need to do is just stop having a “small group meeting.” Give it up. Instead, just love one another and connect. No agenda, just to pursue relationships like Christ intended. Stop making things always about “ministry” in the professional/volunteer sense and more about feeding the souls of others and your own as you share life together.

Ask yourself:

Who are the people I’m really closest to? Do I have a friendship or ministry relationship with them?

What am I doing that allows me to authentically connect with other people?

Who do I need to connect with soon?

____________________________________________________________________________________
Adam Wormann is a Youth Pastor in Old Bridge, NJ where he’s been serving for the past 8 years. He is also one of the mentors at Life in Student Ministry and the editor of the “Time Out” series. You can stalk him on Twitter and Facebook.

Freebie Friday 186: Camp follow-up form

tim@studentministry.org (Tim Schmoyer) — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 17:24:07 +0000

One of the questions asked in last Monday’s LIVE YM Talk show was about how we can best do camp follow-up this summer. EJ Swanson, who works at Lake Anne Camp, shared with us their process for follow-up, which includes the camp counselor filling out a form with the camper with the intention of passing it along to the camper’s youth pastor. Listen to that discussion here (it starts around 43 minutes, 44 seconds).

EJ sent me a copy of their camp follow-up form for all of you to use freely with your own ministries. It’s officially called their “2010 Spiritual Growth Record.”

Download the Camp Follow-up Form

Answering recent questions from MinistryQuestions.com #5 [podcast]

tim@studentministry.org (Tim Schmoyer) — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 17:22:27 +0000

This week we discussed several of the recent questions that you all posted at MinistryQuestions.com. There’s a lot of great answers from the MQ community on the site itself, but we wanted to discuss some of them out loud, too.

Questions we discussed

This weeks panelists

EJ Swanson (camp speaker)
Justin Van Rheenen (camp intern)
Tom Roepke (youth worker)
Paul Turner (youth worker)
Jillianne Davis (youth worker)
Tony Myles (lead pastor)
Tim Schmoyer (host, youth worker)

You can listen to the discussion below or grab it in iTunes.

Play this episode

Subscribe to LIVE YM Talk in iTunes

Join our next LIVE Youth Ministry Conversation!

Evaluating your youth ministry’s health

tim@studentministry.org (Tim Schmoyer) — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 04:57:18 +0000

Last week I did a video Skype call for a camp as part of their daily training seminars offered for the youth pastors there. I was asked to talk about evaluating the health of a youth ministry, but we spent most of the time talking about what a healthy youth ministry is and then discussed how to evaluate it at the end, because obviously you can’t evaluate something if you don’t know what it is first.

I shared:

One precursor to a discussion about healthy ministry
Two indications of a healthy ministry from scripture
Practical examples of how that plays out in my youth group
How to evaluate the process of spiritual growth and health in your ministry

Unfortunately, there was a bit of a delay on the call due to a poor Internet connection on their end, but it’s still worth listening to. It’s about 41 minutes long.

You can listen to the whole conversation in iTunes or using the link below.

Play the conversation

Free download in iTunes

Can a youth worker effectively serve teens in a multi-role position? [podcast]

tim@studentministry.org (Tim Schmoyer) — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 14:12:55 +0000

There are many youth workers who do not serve full-time for only youth ministry. Some are the “Minister of Music, Youth, Children and College.” How does this impact the youth ministry of the church? How does this impact the minister serving in that role?

Some questions we discussed in this show

What does it take to be a youth leader with multiple roles in the church?
How do you balance everything?
5 essentials for any multi-role youth pastor
Giftedness of a multi-role church leader

Panel members from this show

Patti Gibbons (youth worker, author)
John Potts (Minister of Music, Youth, and Children)
Nick Church (Youth pastor, school teacher, coach)
Tim Schmoyer (youth pastor, blogger here at LISM)

You can listen to the discussion below or grab it in iTunes.

Play this episode

Subscribe to LIVE YM Conversations in iTunes

Join our next LIVE Youth Ministry Conversation!

Lessons learned from punks taking my money [Time Out]

tim@studentministry.org (Tim Schmoyer) — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 14:00:02 +0000

Time Out: Weekly quiet times for the youth worker’s soul.
(by Adam Wormann)

I was in Wal-Mart a few years back getting ready to check out. I saw money on the floor and picked it up. Apparently there was a $50 bill that someone just happened to drop, and I just happened to come across. I wanted to say that God just wanted to bless me, but I decided to ask the guy in front of me to count his change. It was all there, he didn’t drop anything. I asked for a manager, who wound up being a 20-year old girl. I wanted to do the right thing, and told her that I found money on the ground, and asked what kind of policy there was about something like this. “Do I just hang on to it unless someone claims it? Do you hang on to it for a week, and if nobody claims it, it’s mine?” Really, I’m the good guy here doing the right thing, the least you can do is let me have the money if it’s not someone else’s. Apparently, I was wrong. It goes into what I immediately called the “young girl iPod fund.” She said they have to keep it, and that’s pretty much it. I accepted the fact that I just contributed to this girl’s lunch, and went home pretty frustrated.

A week later, I decided to use this as an illustration for my junior high students, trying to teach them that you do the right thing, even when there’s no reward, and costs you either what you have or would have. It’s part of having integrity. It’s part of doing what is right. Apparently, a junior high girl decided to dig a little bit:

“You just gave her $50?’

“Yes”

“You gave it to her?”

“Yes”

“You just found it by the register and…”

“Yes, I know. I gave her the money. I could have kept it. I didn’t. That’s my point…”

“Adam, my mom dropped $50 of my sister’s money when we were in Wal-Mart. We went back and they said some guy actually returned it and gave it to us.”

“Wait, what?!”

So apparently, doing the right thing helped someone. And coincidentally, it was someone I know. Someone from my church. Then another kid really nailed me.

“Adam, because you just assumed that girl kept the money, doesn’t that mean that you judged her unfairly.”

“Crud.”

Oh yeah, as it turns out, the girl didn’t take my money. I was wrong. She did the right thing, and probably had a better attitude than me. I learn a lot from students sometimes. One thing that I really learned pretty well that day is that people are always watching. Paul writes:

“Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching. Persist in this, for by so doing you will save both yourself and your hearers.” -1 Tim 4:16

We’re told to keep a close eye on what we do and what we teach. Watch out for who you are. Even our attitudes are noticed, and that’s probably what gets us more than anything else. It’s much easier to control actions. Attitudes are subtle and they’re noticed. Our students see them, our families see them, unchurched people see them…so what are they? Ask yourself what’s going on in your heart, especially in attitudes towards others.

Spend some time in prayer and reflection. Ask yourself:

What attitudes are coming out of me?

Am I really paying attention to what I’m teaching? What are my subtle messages?

When I have an attitude, who is it normally directed towards?

How can I change the way I look at other people?

______________________________________________________________________
Adam Wormann is a Youth Pastor in Old Bridge, NJ where he’s been serving for the past 8 years. He is also one of the mentors at Life in Student Ministry and the editor of the “Time Out” series. You can stalk him on Twitter and Facebook.

Freebie Friday 185: Customizable Twitter background for your youth group page

tim@studentministry.org (Tim Schmoyer) — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 05:22:18 +0000

Today’s Freebie Friday is contributed by Luke Frederick of Sheepish Design. He didn’t really want to promote his design services too much, but this is such a cool freebie and he’s such a great designer that I’m pushing his service for him instead. (Surprise, Luke!) Seriously, he can design almost anything for you and your ministry — from websites to Facebook landing pages to logos to Twitter backgrounds. He does high quality work. And when I asked him about his pricing yesterday while we were hanging out at a camp, he surprisingly gave very competitive quotes considering the quality of his work (like, half the cost of what I expected!). Check out his site! And follow Sheepish Design on Twitter.

Here’s what Luke Frederick has to say about this week’s freebie download:

Have you ever wanted a custom Twitter background for your youth group but don’t know how to make one? Well here is a free customizable Twitter background and tutorial to walk you through the customization process. I hope this makes your student ministry look hot! If you have any questions that are not answered in the tutorial please leave a comment and I will try to answer it.

Here is a preview of what it looks like:

You can customize…

the logo
the group name
both polaroid images

Video tutorial

Luke created this video to give you step-by-step about how to modify and customize this Twitter background using PhotoShop. It also shows you how to add the background to your Twitter page and gives you the color settings to use on Twitter to make the background look like it fades to black.

NOTE: If you don’t have a copy of PhotoShop, you can download a 30-day free trial from Adobe’s website.

Download the Youth Group Twitter Background Template

Visit SheepishDesign.org to see Luke’s design ninjaness!

Also check out a free Twitter-themed newsletter template for your youth group.

Blogs I read that you might not know about

tim@studentministry.org (Tim Schmoyer) — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 17:27:41 +0000

I subscribe to about 130 blogs and websites in my RSS reader, which I know isn’t a whole lot compared to some of you — I like to keep my reading/skimming time focused.

There’s a couple sites I subscribe to that I really enjoy and read almost everything they write. Some of them are pretty well known, so I won’t bother to list those for you, but there are some lesser-known, even undiscovered, blogs out there that are real gems. Here’s a few of them that I read.

1. iblogo: imago’s blog about culture, learning and faith

I love how these guys combine issues related to technology, learning styles, creativity and communication. They ask really good questions about what we’re doing in the church, why we’re doing it, and if it’s really the best way we can do it.

2. Shrink The Church

I don’t remember how I found these guys (probably Twitter), but I do remember that the first post I read by them was “10 Reasons to Under-Program Your Church.” I liked it enough to tweet it, browse through some other posts on their site, and then subscribe to their RSS feed. They talk about how the church needs to become smaller in how personable it is, how it uses resources, communication, technology and more. Good stuff. And having a web design that’s pretty clean is definitely a plus, too.

3. Radical Living in a Comfortable World

While I first learned about Seth Barnes and his blog many years ago when he published a response to a post I had written here at LISM, I didn’t start following his blog closely until after we traveled to Haiti together last February. After that experience with him, the things he writes about faith, missions, and life are often challenging for me. It’s too easy for me to slip back into my comfort zone of American Churchianity and Seth keeps reminding me that God wants and expects more from me than that. Thanks, Seth!

4. Fuller Youth Institute Blog

What I like best about the articles here are that they’re usually short and concise. Most of their posts take me about a minute, maximum of two, to read, kinda like Seth Godin-style. Sometimes they simply ask questions, other times they write about family life, other times its good reminders about things I too easily loose sight of in ministry.

5. Orange Parents

A youth pastor here in Minnesota actually turned me on to this blog (thanks, Matt!). This blog is exactly where I’m at in life: a parent, a youth worker, and a guy who’s trying to explore ways to combine youth ministry and family ministry by helping parents be the spiritually influential leaders God calls them to be. Their posts relate to me on all of those levels. Sometimes it helps me be a better parent for my daughter and son on-the-way, other times it helps me think through how to work with parents in youth ministry, and most times it’s both.

6. Type (B)eing Leadership

If you’ve listened to LIVE YM Talk recently you’ve heard this guy and know that he’s a fountain of wisdom and knowledge. He posts a lot of good practical insights and challenges about being a leader in the church. I learn a lot from this guy.

Subscribe to Life In Student Ministry

If you’re not a subscriber to this blog, Life In Student Ministry, grab our RSS feed or sign-up to get updates via email. You can also subscribe to LIVE YM Talk and our videos in iTunes.

Got any other blogs you read to recommend (besides your own)?

The power of identity and focus in ministry

tim@studentministry.org (Tim Schmoyer) — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 04:53:10 +0000

Last week while driving home from vacation my family and I stopped for lunch. I tried using the spork they gave me to eat some yogurt my wife packed in our cooler, but that didn’t really work. Then I tried using it to stab some cut peaches, which was even more frustrating because the tiny little prongs hardly penetrated the peach far enough to hold on to it.

Then I had this thought:

My spork is a lot like ministry. If you try to be too many things, you end up doing them all poorly.

Know what your ministry is about, focus on that, do it well, and refuse to be distracted by trying to do too many other things. That’s when your ministry will become diluted and mediocre.

Remember the power of focus and identity.

[originally posted at timschmoyer.me]

The window when ministry really happens [Time Out]

tim@studentministry.org (Tim Schmoyer) — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 15:00:29 +0000

Time Out: Weekly quiet times for the youth worker’s soul.
(by Tony Myles)

Have you ever noticed how the “non-behavior behavior” of your students and adult leaders affects your ministry? Every volunteer and teenager has a sort of unconscious groove that when put together with everyone else can tell you a few things about the maturity, comfort level, interests, and distractions of your group.

This doesn’t mean you can make a generalization from afar but should consider what is happening in your midst so you better know your in-road to better engage the young people. Think about what everyone does the moment you conclude your youth night:

* A boy who stands up and quickly after the program, sits on the back of the chair in front of him, and surveys the room for cute girls.
* A small group leader who is making connections with the new kids, being sure they felt welcomed.
* A girl who gets her friend to go with her to talk with a guy she likes.
* A kid on the theological fence asking you what you meant by that one thing you said about that one thing.
* The teenagers dressed in black who slip into a room they shouldn’t be in by themselves.
* The athletic looking guys who are still talking about the crazy competition that involved trash cans over their heads.
* The plans a group of influential girls are making to get everyone to go out for ice cream.
* The young person who doesn’t want to be there in the first place and bolts out the door as soon as possible.
* Two students sitting down together talking, because the one who gave the other a ride asked, “So what did you think?”

In every one of these scenarios, there’s an opportunity to see what is happening based on what has happened… and join into it. Even someone who has flipped open their phone to start texting can become someone you intersect with in order that more conversation and life change can continue. “Alright, who is the most important person on the other end of your phone right now? How come? etc”

Colossians 4:5 Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity.

This requires you and the other youth workers you serve with to be intentional about maximizing this window, though. And all of that tracks back to your connection with God in those moments. Ministry does often happen in what we plan, but a significant portion occurs “before” and “after.” Pray and ask God to lead help you best evaluate what is happening in between the lines.

Here’s some questions for you to think about and reflect on…
* What does this verse mean to you in light of these thoughts?
* How can you help the other leaders around you to not go on auto-pilot but intentionally engage students at “up” and “down” moments in ministry?
____________________________________________________________
Tony Myles is a 16-year youth ministry veteran who now serves as lead pastor of Connection Church in Medina, Ohio. His love for the Church and its future has spilled out into writing, coaching, and conference speaking. He’s written the book Miracles of Jesus and helped produce Christian Endeavor’s Pray21 campaign. And he really, really likes smoothies.

The hurdle of faith after high school [podcast]

tim@studentministry.org (Tim Schmoyer) — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 05:56:16 +0000

I’m still on vacation, so Tony Myles graciously stepped in again to host the show.

This discussion covers the hurdle of what typically happens “after high school” in the lives of students. Namely, the erosion of their faith during the college years.

Some key thoughts from the show

Churches face a temptation to “throw a college” ministry at emerging adults. Perhaps because it’s easier to push large group environments that feel like candy versus mentoring that isn’t quite as glamorous and marketable.
Emerging adults are finding community elsewhere – in drinking a beer or a fraternity/sorority. We need to ask “Why?” Is it because these environments are more appealing to “let them be where they are today?”
Our trend as a church is to draw people to a maturity level they aren’t at. Do emerging adults struggle with this?
We need to destroy the idea of a finish line that ends at high school and move it at least four years further. Even then, it’s not a true finish line but more of a point where we have helped shape an understand of what self-feeding Christianity looks like and how they can contribute into the state of the church (and it’s plans for ministry).
Success is perhaps best defined in terms of identity – a young person finishing high school or college and knowing with conviction how they are a son or daughter of God.
Some of the greatest stories of us doing this well almost always involve a person or two who checked in on emerging adults semi-regularly to remind them who they were and wanted to become.
We need to see church as a family and not as a program.
One idea: Start to paint a picture of this early on during elementary years – what it looks like to become an adult who is walking with Christ in a healthy way and turning around to invest into the next generation; utilizing “identity based” curriculum during the last two years of high school; helping the church know “who” has graduated and what is next for them so that they don’t become a statistic; and so on.

Panel members for this show:

Abbie Smith (co-author of “The Slow Fade: Why You Matter in the Story of Twentysomethings“)
Brian Scramlin (Youth Pastor)
Dave Turner (Youth Pastor)
Tom Roepke (Youth Pastor)
Lars Rood (Youth Pastor)
Brandon Benfield (College Ministry Director)
Tony Myles (Lead pastor, Coach to Youth Pastors)

You can listen to the whole conversation below or grab it in iTunes.

Play this episode

Subscribe to LIVE YM Conversations in iTunes

Join our next LIVE Youth Ministry Conversation!

Freebie Friday 184: Social media slides of pre-church graphics

tim@studentministry.org (Tim Schmoyer) — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 13:02:00 +0000

Today’s Freebie Friday is contributed by Shift Creative:

Shift Creative and City Church Savannah are excited to offer these free graphics to you! We specialize in logo design, graphic design, video production, web design, audio/video/lighting system installations/upgrades, and anything else media related a church might need. Shift Creative is based in Savannah, GA and is helping to fund a church plant called City Church Savannah. The entire staff of City Church pulls no salary from the church, we all work full time for Shift doing media designs and working at sound/video/lighting installs.

If you need new media equipment (sound, video, lighting), a new logo, a new website, or anything else for your media needs let us know. You can email us at brian@shiftcreative.org. Or check us out on Facebook or on Twitter. We’d love to stay in touch with you!

This download includes 3 slides you can show before your church service begins.

A blank Twitter slide to promote your church or youth group’s twitter account
A “silence your cell phones” slide
A blank Facebook slide to promote your church or youth group’s Facebook page

Download the Pre-Service Social Media Graphics

5 misconceptions about large youth groups

tim@studentministry.org (Tim Schmoyer) — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 14:00:23 +0000

When I worked in a small church setting, I’ll admit that I held several beliefs about large church youth groups that were solely based on an outside perception. But now that I work in a church that some people would consider “large,” I see that none of them were true.

1. Worship is more energetic in a large group. This depends on what you mean by “energetic.” If by energetic you mean lots of lights and loud sound systems, then yes, larger churches are more likely to be able to pull that off, but we all know that energetic worship has nothing to do with genuine and authentic worship, which usually has nothing to do with energy.

2. They can do events that are more attractive to teens and outsiders. Not true. Some teens and outsiders are attracted to smaller intimate groups for a whole variety of reasons: they feel like someone knows them, that they’ll be missed if they don’t show up the next week, or that there’s more authenticity than show.

3. Their large budget lets them do a lot more events and programs. As someone who works with a “large” budget, I can guarantee you that having a large budget doesn’t necessarily mean that it goes any further on a large group than a small budget goes on a small group.

4. They have more leaders to recruit from. Just as the budget ratio between students and dollars is often similar for both large and small ministries, so it is for adult leaders. There may be a larger pool of leaders to recruit from, but there’s also a lot more leaders needed to serve. The struggle is often the same either way.

5. Bigger ministry somehow equals better ministry. Quantity over quality does not apply to bigger youth groups any more than quality over quantity applies to smaller youth groups. The effectiveness of a youth group has nothing to do with it’s size nor how “busy” it is with activities and events.

Do we really need more youth ministry resources?

tim@studentministry.org (Tim Schmoyer) — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 13:54:22 +0000

Almost every other week I get an email from someone who wants to show me their new youth ministry resource website. Two weeks ago I got an email that prompted me to ask this on Twitter and Facebook:

There’s a lot of people starting youth ministry resource websites, but is that what we still need? Are we really THAT under-resourced?

I had some good dialog both publicly and privately about that statement. My sentiments are that there are already several people and organizations who are doing a great job with resourcing while there are other needs youth workers have that are remaining largely unaddressed. Why don’t the new start-ups try to serve us in ways that no one else is doing rather than jumping into a market that’s already populated with very high-quality resource products and services? Like, what about soul care for youth workers, emotional support, and help with vision casting?

But I guess it probably depends on where you assume the needs are and how well that need can be monetized (which is important for sustainability and scaling). There have been several surveys conducted about “what are the greatest needs of youth leaders,” most of them pretty informal, and they all come back with different answers. Without naming the studies, one said the greatest need was that youth workers feel unsupported by their churches and sr pastors. Another study said they don’t know how to effectively lead others. And yet another said they are under-equipped.

I want to hear from you:

What do you feel a youth worker’s greatest needs are?
Do you feel that youth workers are under-resourced? (And don’t say “yes” just because you like having more stuff.)

Please leave your thoughts in the comments below and help me think through this. Thanks!

Best advice and worst advice in youth ministry [podcast]

tim@studentministry.org (Tim Schmoyer) — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 14:02:14 +0000

This was the first LIVE YM Talk where I was not present. I was on vacation in Texas, so Tony Myles graciously stepped up and hosted the show instead. It’s really fun to listen to someone else facilitate the discussion besides me!

The show covered everything from advice we’ve followed in ministry and personal life to the really bad advice we’ve often heard. They also touched on what it means to have a Sabbath in a way that makes sense to your life, dynamics of staff relationships, how we talk about other people, whether it’s more important to be professional or relational, and parenting when you’re in ministry.

Panel members for this show:

Dave (Calvary Chapel Florida)
Todd Perkins (Youth Pastor at Discovery Church in Orlando)
Jillianne Davis (Christian Ed & Youth Ministry)
Brandon Benfield (New to ministry with college students)
Tony Myles (Lead pastor, Coach to Youth Pastors)

You can listen to the whole conversation below or grab it in iTunes.

Play this episode

Subscribe to LIVE YM Conversations in iTunes

Join our next LIVE Youth Ministry Conversation!

Freebie Friday 183: “Minute To Win It” activity guide

tim@studentministry.org (Tim Schmoyer) — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 05:54:24 +0000

I know I just posted a couple weeks ago about NBC’s “Minute To Win It” game show and some of the ideas you could take and use as youth group games, but this week’s resource is a bit different.

Instead of just browsing through NCB’s website for games, this official downloadable “Minute To Win It” activity guide includes a lot of great features that makes it perfect for youth group, camps, and retreats.

It includes a list of supplies you’ll need for each challenge, the current record to beat, ideas for game variations, diagrams, and more.

You won’t be looking for game ideas for a long time after downloading this. Good stuff. Thanks, NBC!

Download “Minute To Win It” activity guide

A process for helping teens understand their call to serve

tim@studentministry.org (Tim Schmoyer) — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 19:36:47 +0000

Brandon Matthews shares with us his youth group’s process for getting teenagers to take ownership and serve in their youth ministry.

Share your tip or advice: We’d love to hear your youth ministry advice and tips! Record your video, upload it to YouTube, and post a link to it in the comments below. Guidelines here.

5 advantages of a large youth group

tim@studentministry.org (Tim Schmoyer) — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 14:33:16 +0000

Whether you’re in a small church, a mid-size church, or a large church, there are unique challenges and opportunities in each.

Just as there are several advantages of having a small youth group, large groups have some advantages, also.

If you’re in a large youth group, learn to capitalize on these advantages.

1. More resources at your disposal. That often includes man-power, facility use, budget, and more.

2. Diverse giftedness. The group is more likely to have many different spiritual gifts, talents and abilities represented that can be utilized in the ministry to bring honor to God and to edify the body.

3. Buzz spreads about your ministry. With more people comes more mouths talking about it, which means more people hear about your ministry and what’s going on. Give them something positive to share because that also means that negative buzz spreads just as quickly.

4. Multiple staff members for quick advice. At least this is true for me. I love working in an office surrounded by multiple pastors, administrative assistants and staff members because I have instant access to have questions answered and get quick input on ideas and thoughts.

5. Large gatherings of people tend to generate excitement. There’s a feeling of anticipation among participants. People gather because they share something in common, whether it be at a basketball game, the school play or at church. People enjoy having a shared experience together with other people, even people they don’t know.

Question: What other advantages does a large youth group have? The comments below are open for discussion.

Working to Hurt Your Kids [Time Out]

tim@studentministry.org (Tim Schmoyer) — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 15:06:53 +0000

Time Out: Weekly quiet times for the youth worker’s soul.
(by Kevin Twolmby)

(In honor of Father’s Day, this week’s post is a special one geared towards an issue and passage typically dealing with dads. Don’t worry, mom’s can apply it too!)

1 Kings 16:34 – In Ahab’s time, Hiel of Bethel rebuilt Jericho. He laid its foundations at the cost of his firstborn son Abiram, and he set up its gates at the cost of his youngest son Segub.

When we strive to do things that we are not called to do or push too fast to make them happen people around us suffer. Here we see a classic example of a workaholic father whose two sons deal with the consequences. Hiel set about rebuilding Jericho and missed out on the opportunity to be a father to his sons.

I can only imagine that his sons then went on to be rebellious and disrespectful. Without a father to teach them they probably chased after anyone who would show interest in them. Having seen this happen a few times my heart grieves for the sons as well as for the father. They each had desires and dreams that were not attained.

As a father of three I always want to remain balanced in my obligations and responsibilities. I never want to ignore the needs of my kids to further my positions or roles. I am mindful that my priorities fall in line from God to family to career and as long as I keep first things first I should remain in a healthy place that will flow into all other relationships I have.

Questions to ask yourself (and really work through these, maybe write out your answers…)

What are the things that are out of line with your priorities?

What conversations do you need to have to recalibrate those priorities?

Who do you have in your life that can pick up on the misdirections that you are taking and speak up about them?

_______________________________________________

Kevin Twombly has been the Generations Pastor at Grace Capital Church in Pembroke, NH for the last 10 years. During this time the youth group has grown from 1 student (church plant) to a thriving group of over 150 students that meet weekly for a large group and small group setting. Kevin is a very relational leader who desires to equip others in Youth Ministry in order to continue to expand the Kingdom of God.

Camp vs Missions Trip vs Conference vs Retreat [podcast]

tim@studentministry.org (Tim Schmoyer) — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 18:26:29 +0000

This was one of those discussions that left me feeling frustrated by not having answers, but relieved that the issues aren’t quite as clear as they may seem at first. It definitely prompted a lot of good questions, value systems, and perspectives that I’ve been thinking through all week long.

This is definitely a must-hear discussion for all youth workers.

If you could only take your group on one trip this summer, would it be to camp with other youth groups, a missions trip, a big student conference, or a small retreat with only your group? And why would you do that? Is one have more value than another? Is one more biblical than another?

Panel members for this show:

E.J. Swason (camp/conference guy)
Jeff Goins (missions trip guy)
Tony Myles (sr. pastor)
Mark Riddle (church/youth ministry consultant)
Tom Roepke (veteran youth pastor)

Some of the things we talked about:

Does one event have more value than another?
Is missions more biblical than the others?
How do you decide which is right for your group?
Do all of these events feed consumerism?
Which leads to the most life-change?
And a lot more…

NOTE: The audio quality is poor at first, but it gets better after about 2 minutes.

You can listen to the whole conversation below or grab it in iTunes.

Play this episode

Subscribe to LIVE YM Conversations in iTunes

Join our next LIVE Youth Ministry Conversation!

Freebie Friday 182: 5-week “back to school” Bible lesson series

tim@studentministry.org (Tim Schmoyer) — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 16:07:43 +0000

I know it’s may be a bit early to share this, but some of you plan super-far ahead, so I thought I’d drop this for ya anyway.

This is a 5-day lesson series I originally wrote back in 2001 for an online teen Bible study I used to coordinate for a national youth ministry. Then I re-worked it to be a 5-week lesson series for a youth group I lead.

As you can see from the notes when you download it, the version that I’m now making available is a bit awkward to use since it’s a cross between a written Bible study and notes used for presentation, but you’ll need to fix it up to work better for your youth group’s setting anyway.

The lesson series is meant to be taught when kids go back to school at the end of the summer to help them think through starting well. It covers 4 main areas of their school life:

Week 1: Introduction
Week 2: Social life
Week 3: Mental life
Week 4: Physical life
Week 5: Spiritual life

Download “A New School Year” lesson series

5 advantages of a small youth group

tim@studentministry.org (Tim Schmoyer) — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 14:07:32 +0000

Why is it that the big churches try so hard to be like the small churches, while the small churches try to hard to be like the big churches? The large churches start small groups and try to be communal; the small churches try to have big programs and lots of flash.

It’s like they’re all teenage girls or something! The girls with straight hair spend hours curling it, and the girls with curly hair spend hours straightening it. If only they could all swap scalps, maybe then they’d be content what what they have.

Whether you’re in a small church, a mid-size church, or a large church, there are unique challenges and opportunities in each. The grass is not always greener on the other side no matter where you are.

If you’re in a small youth group, rather than trying to become like a large youth group, here are 5 advantages you have. Learn to capitalize on these.

1. A sense of community. Everyone knows each other’s names, each other’s families, parents, interests, personalities, etc. When someone is missing from a youth group meeting, others notice and can follow-up without having to check an impersonal attendance sheet.

2. Easier to focus. You can’t do everything and you know it. A smaller group often makes it easier to focus on doing one or two things really well and allowing the lesser important things to fall away.

3. Welcoming to outsiders. It’s easier to notice when a visitor shows up at a youth group meeting. That newcomer can quickly feel accepted and loved by the entire group.

4. Easy to stay in touch. You can say, “Good morning!” to every kid in your youth group just by sending a single text message with multiple recipients.

5. Be in-tune with their lives. You can know the needs, struggles, hopes, dreams and failures of every kid. This allows you to be very specific in what you teach and how you teach it at youth group meetings.

Question: What other advantages does a small youth group have? Share your thoughts in the comments section below this post.

Read: “5 advantages of a large youth group“

What gets teenagers into the doors of your ministry?

tim@studentministry.org (Tim Schmoyer) — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 04:47:46 +0000

A couple weeks I posted an idea for a group project: share your youth ministry tips and advice on video.

Mike Kennedy, a youth pastor in Georgia, stepped up to the challenge and recorded a great video about how we sometimes try to attract kids to our ministry. It’s under 2 minutes long, so check it out:

It’s not too late for you submit your youth ministry tip or advice via video. Record it, upload it to YouTube, and post a link to it in the comments below.

When microwave burritos take too long to cook [Time Out]

tim@studentministry.org (Tim Schmoyer) — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 15:32:51 +0000

Time Out: Weekly quiet times for the youth worker’s soul.
(by Adam Wormann)

I’m really not a patient person. People say that I am, and I may be in some ways, but I don’t feel like it. When I’m in traffic, I feel myself getting anxious and angry at other drivers (and in NJ, this happens a lot!). I get impatient waiting for the microwave when it takes 60 seconds to make a burrito. You’d think that someone can wait a minute or less for their lunch, but not me. It’s not that I’m too important or my time is too valuable. I just don’t like waiting. When things don’t happen quickly, I get frustrated.

This happens in ministry as well. Everyone tends to have ideas. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t. The hard part is waiting for an idea to go through, whether it’s from a youth pastor waiting for a board to evaluate and go through “trial periods” or a volunteer who has great ideas but gets hesitation from a youth pastor. We get frustrated. Then what happens?

You also, be patient. Establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand. Do not grumble against one another, brothers, so that you may not be judged; behold, the Judge is standing at the door. As an example of suffering and patience, brothers, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord.
James 5:8-10 (ESV)

Take the time to actually look up that passage and read the surrounding verses as well. James is talking to people who were oppressed and being taken advantage of. James encourages them to be patient. Not only do we get impatient when we don’t see what we want to happen, but when there seems to be injustice. When you have a strong sense of justice, this becomes even harder. We want to see the results now, but they’re not there. James tells us we need to be patient in any context, in light of Christ’s return. Keep things in perspective. When we don’t, the next part comes in: grumbling.

When we get impatient, we grumble. Think about it, the last time someone didn’t agree with you, or things were taking a long time, how did you react? For me, it’s grumbling. I see it take place, and I complain to my wife, then to a friend. Think about your conversations, are they complaining, or productive. When there’s complaining, James encourages us to do a heart check. Where’s our focus? James points to the prophets. We love the prophets now, but in their time they were usually poorly received. There was no quick reward for what they did. Their ministries were met with opposition. There was no choice but to get angry, or to be patient. They were patient though, and rewarded by God for what they did. We need to take the same perspective.

So, ask yourself:

How do I really act when things don’t go my way, or they take a long time? (Really, not how I want to believe I act)

Am I someone who vents, complains, or finds solutions and waits patiently?

What specifically do you need to hand over to God that you’re hanging on to control of?

…and have someone who you can confide in tell you honestly, are your conversations productive, or do they foster a negative spirit.

————————————————————-
Adam Wormann is a Youth Pastor in Old Bridge, NJ where he’s been serving for the past 8 years. He is also one of the mentors at Life in Student Ministry and the editor of the “Time Out” series. You can stalk him on Twitter and Facebook.

New LIVE YM Talk format, Facebook privacy, and more [podcast]

tim@studentministry.org (Tim Schmoyer) — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 04:00:56 +0000

For the duration of the summer, we’re going to return to our roots and take a different format with LIVE YM Talk. Instead of having focusing on one “expert” in a more-or-less interview style, we’re going to have a panel of guests with different perspectives, experiences, and input on different topics and issues related to youth ministry. At the end of the summer we’ll run a poll and get your input on which style you prefer.

For this show we tried out the new format and introduced some of the panel members. Other panel members will be joining us for upcoming shows, as well.

Panel members for this show:

Some of the things we talked about:

The new format for LIVE YM Talk this summer
Announced some panel members for the summer
Facebook privacy in youth ministry
Slowing down youth group programs for the summer
An idea for $100 budget youth ministry this summer
And a lot more…

You can listen to the whole conversation below or grab it in iTunes.

Play this episode

Subscribe to LIVE YM Conversations in iTunes

Join our next LIVE Youth Ministry Conversation!

Freebie Friday 181: A 5-day camp devotional guide

tim@studentministry.org (Tim Schmoyer) — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 19:35:54 +0000

Here’s another great Freebie Friday contribution from Paul Turner of TheDiscipleshipProject.net.

This is a five day camp devotional based on the book, Do Hard Things, by Alex and Brett Harris. Paul wrote this for a camp in Florida and is happy to share it with the rest of us.

The 5 included devotionals are titled:

Get Out Of Your Comfort Zone
Go Beyond The Expected
There Is Strength In Numbers
Do It Anyway – Respond Now – Reward Later
Take A Stand Against The Easy Way Out

Download the 5-day Tough Stuff Camp Devotional

My top 5 most common youth ministry mistakes

tim@studentministry.org (Tim Schmoyer) — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 06:02:43 +0000

5. Talking publicly about future plans and ideas (because I’m so excited about them!) before they’ve been directed through the proper approval channels.

4. Putting youth leaders in a ministry position before they are trained and passionate about our ministry’s vision.

3. Being late with paperwork that I don’t like to do, but needs to be done in order to help other people’s jobs at the church run smoothly.

2. Not keeping my sr. pastor up-to-date about all the different dynamics that are taking place behind the scenes of the youth ministry.

1. Saying exactly what I’m thinking instead of holding my tongue and running it through some filters first.

What are yours?

Spiritual deception in America is exposed by Haiti

tim@studentministry.org (Tim Schmoyer) — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 18:29:43 +0000

Disclaimer: I’m just merely sharing a story because its intrigued me since I heard it. Please don’t miss my point for the details.

During my visit to Haiti last month I learned a lot about Voodooism and the spiritual realm that is so very active in that country. Some of that I’ve already shared with you in an earlier post about my take on the earthquake and Haiti’s “devil pact,” but here’s a little more that I didn’t originally share.

One evening I was sitting with our main Haitian translater along with several other people from my church’s team. As we listened to the beat of drums from a distant Voodoo ceremony, I asked him if he had ever been a part of a Voodoo ceremony and what it was like. It turns out that not only had he been a part of several ceremonies, but many of them revolved around him being at the center, bound and tormented by evil spirits. He told us stories of how the Voodoo priests placed curses on him in attempts to get him to stop telling people about Jesus. Once he was even physically displaced (supernaturally, from what I understand) from Haiti to the Dominican Republic where he resided for several months before returning back to Hait to continue preaching the gospel. His stories about the persecution he’s endured for the sake of Christ are truly humbling, especially coming from a 25 year old guy with a limited academic education but such a thorough knowledge of God’s Word that it feels like it puts my Bible college and seminary education to shame.

After his stories I asked him to share what happens in a Voodoo ceremony, and hopefully I will never forget what he shared with those of us sitting around that evening.

He explained that, while different Voodoo ceremonies have different elements depending on what they’re doing, sometimes they’ll call on the evil spirits of a snake to come possess them, and when it does, it causes grown men to lay on the ground and slither around like snakes. They make sounds like a snake and they even slither through the trees. Sometimes the demon will leave a man when he’s slithered to the top of a tree or hanging upside-down on a high branch so that when the man comes out of his trance he falls to the ground and dies instantly.

Then he said that other times evil spirits come and possess them to make “boy like boy and girl like girl.” The men are possessed and start having sex with men and the women with women. Several times he noted how despicable this was and that the evil spirits cause them to sin in “a very bad way.” I stopped him and said, “That happens in America, too, but no one equates it to the influence of evil spirits. Some people say it’s just an attraction you’re born with and there’s nothing wrong with it.” At that, he started getting noticeably angry saying how it is absolutely an influence or a possession of evil spirits. Yikes. I decided to let him move on with his story.

He went on to share that other times the evil spirits that come during the Voodoo ceremonies are ones that possess people to be greedy, so greedy that they’ll do almost anything necessary to get money and material possessions. “Wow,” I thought, “we see that in America, too, but again, no one necessarily equates that directly to demonic activity.”

As I listened to him share more and more, not only did it confirm over and over again just how publicly active the spiritual realm is in Haiti, but how it doesn’t exist any less here in America than it does there. The enemy just has a different tactic in Western society to stay hidden and behind the scenes. If the enemy can get us to believe they don’t exist or that their influence is minimal, they achieve the exact same results with us as they do in Haiti: to focus on something other than God. We thereby are just as blinded and deceived as they are.

Now that I’ve been back in the US for a couple weeks, it’s so clear how blinded I was. I cover my sin with excuses or deem it to my list of “struggles” and fail to see what it could really be going on, not that there’s a demon behind every sinful thought or deed, but at the same time I must not discredit the power that’s there and active. That’s why I need Jesus’ strength, power, and authority so much more than I originally thought.

Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.” Matthew 28:18

“I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come.” Ephesians 1:18-21

P.S. If you choose to go to Haiti someday, be forewarned: it will mess with your theology! Whether we like it or not, too much of our theology is defined through an American lens.

Are you “doing” or “being?” [Time Out]

tim@studentministry.org (Tim Schmoyer) — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 16:33:36 +0000

Time Out: Weekly quiet times for the youth worker’s soul.
(by Tim Schmoyer)

A few weeks ago when I landed in Haiti I thought, “This is gonna be great! We’ll crank out our training this afternoon and tomorrow we’ll be out doing what we came here to do.” We had so much to accomplish in such a short period of time. It was essential to get working as soon as possible… or so I thought.

After spending the first day locked up in our compound doing nothing but praying, studying God’s Word, spending time in worship and going through last-minute prep and training material, I’ll admit I was itching to get out the door and start serving. When the same thing happened the second day, my itch had turned to frustration. “I can do this kind of stuff at home. Why are we using our time now to pray and worship when there are people outside this compound that I can help?”

It was then that the Holy Spirit convicted me and said, “Tim, if you go out and serve now you’ll be doing it in your own strength instead of mine. I’ll let you leave once you become the person I need you to be so you can do what I’ve called you to do.” Ouch.

I was so focused on what I wanted to do that I forgot that what’s really important is who God’s called me to be — a servant who is 100% dependent on reliant on Him, someone whose ministry flows from what God’s doing in me rather than from my agenda of to-do’s that honestly exist to mostly make me feel like I’ve actually accomplishing something.

Perhaps the most detrimental thing that can happen to our personal spiritual growth is becoming so busy that we start doing ministry and miss the opportunity to become the person God desires. God wants our heart more than our actions.

But it’s so easy to focus on the actions:

Preparing bible studies
Going to students’ graduation parties
Meeting with adult leaders
Encouraging parents

All these things are good, but not if you’re doing them through your own strength instead of letting God work through you and the person He’s molding you to be. He doesn’t care what you do as much as He cares who you are, because then what you do will flow out of who you are. It’s so easy to define your identity and even your self-worth by your task-oriented ministry. God wants your identity to be wrapped up in Him.

Have you ever thought something like:

I’ll pray with Johnny tonight. I don’t need to take the time to stop and pray for him now.
I’ll skip reading my Bible because I’ll read it tonight with the youth group.
I’ve got too much to do today to stop and introduce myself to kid working the checkout counter. (Can you say, “good Samaritan priest?”)

Your relationship with God is more important than the important things you do in ministry. Hunger for Him so deeply that your passion for knowing God can’t help but be so contagious that is spreads to the teenagers around you. Become the youth worker who’s known for loving God so much that service is an expression of that love instead of it being your job.

Scripture
John 15:4-5, “Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.”

Reflect

What’s happening in your relationship with God right now?
What warning signs do you see in your life that indicate you are more focused on ministry and task than on becoming a man/woman of God?
How can you become something deeper than just a director of events and Bible studies for teenagers, or someone that makes youth group “happen?”

Freebie Friday 180: Small group talksheet for Ecclesiastes

tim@studentministry.org (Tim Schmoyer) — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 17:52:26 +0000

As I mentioned in an earlier post, my church is going through a lot of transitions the summer. Several staff members are leaving for different reasons (church plant, retirement, new jobs, etc.), which is thankfully forcing the rest of us to prioritize our time, energy, and resources. It’s also causing us to focus our vision for when we launch ministry for the fall.

One of the major changes that will be coming in the fall are church-wide sermon-based small groups for everyone from teens through adults. There’s many significant advantages of this, which is a post for another day, but to provide an example for some small group leaders in a meeting last night, I drafted a mock version of what such curriculum could look like. It’s based on my pastor’s message from last Sunday titled, “Finding It,” a series through the book of Ecclesiastes.

If you go through the book of Ecclesiastes with your students (and you should!) with your students, this talksheet contains some questions and ideas that might be helpful as you prepare your lessons.

Download the small group talksheet for Ecclesiastes

63 youth ministry topics YOU should cover

tim@studentministry.org (Tim Schmoyer) — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 03:40:52 +0000

Almost two years ago I published a list of “100 blog topics I hope YOU write” addressing various aspects of youth ministry. Many people responded, used the list as a springboard of ideas for their own blogs, and covered over a third of the content I suggested. Earlier tonight I was skimming through some of the old posts people wrote and there’s a lot of real gems of wisdom here.

Let’s try to complete this list! Take one or more of these ideas and run with it. Take the best ideas from whatever these spark in you and keep coming back to this page as often as you want to see what topics people are covering. Or just use them as a way to bounce into better posts of your own. Make podcasts, blog posts, whatever. Have fun and be creative.

One favor? Would you include a link somewhere back to http://www.studentministry.org? I’ll do my best to keep up with these topics around the blogosphere as your incoming links show up in blog’s dashboard and will then link the appropriate title in this post back to your blog post so others can read your insights.

How to use Facebook for ministry
How to build community among teenagers
Technology I use in youth ministry [also posted here and here]
How to write Bible study lessons for youth group
Conversation starters to ask a student you just met [also posted here]
How to get parents involved in their kids’ lives
How to handle confrontation
How to teach students with learning disabilities
How to market your events
How to effectively use visual aids in teaching
How to make time for personal prayer and devotions
How to empower your youth leaders
How to follow-up with new believers
Using podcasts in youth ministry
How to engage students in worship
How to deal with a suicide in your ministry
Everything a youth worker should know about eating disorders
Addressing porn and masturbation at youth group
How to help parents prepare their students for college
Recommended books for every youth worker’s library
How teenage girls best relate to each other
How teenage guys best relate to each other
Teaching students to evaluate their media consumption
How to equip your students to achieve their dreams
Sermon presentations versus small group discussion Bible studies
Necessary elements for any youth meeting
Balancing youth group events with athletics, homework and jobs
How to achieve longevity in youth ministry
What students need from their youth leaders
How to take an idea and make it happen
How to plan a youth ministry budget
The real influence of celebrities on students
How to change a teenager’s world forever
Why youth ministers should read their students’ blogs [also posted here]
How to evaluate ministry and implement change
Addressing sin in your own life
How to make youth group visitors feel welcomed [and how NOT to here]
How to use the arts in youth group
The youth event no one has ever seen
What I wish every Sr. Pastor knew about youth ministry [ and What YPs should know about Sr. Pastors ]
Balancing youth ministry with my personal life
The difference between part-time and full-time youth ministry
How to fix your mistakes in ministry
How to develop students to be spiritual leaders
When I feel frustrated in ministry… [or with colleagues]
Youth group strategies for evangelism
How to come up with creative ideas
How NOT to introduce visitors to the youth group
What every youth worker needs to know about Jr. High students
What every youth worker needs to know about Sr. High students
How to earn the trust and respect of your Sr. Pastor
How to lead a youth group when you’re the only volunteer
How to help a student break an addiction
How to teach through a book of the Bible
What youth group students need from each other
Internet tools I use for youth ministry
How to develop a world missions strategy for your youth group
How to simplify your life and ministry
The future of youth ministry
How NOT to use video in youth ministry
How to handle the most common youth ministry struggles
How to keep God’s Word fresh for teenagers
How to work in a church that doesn’t support it’s youth ministry
What to do with “God sightings” stories in your youth group
Tools for working with hurting teenagers
How to get kids plugged in to God’s Word
Youth ministry topics that need more coverage
How to become a student-led youth group
Expectations to hold for any youth worker volunteer
How to turn conversations toward Christ
How to respond to criticism
Ten youth ministry sites I like and why
How to work with the hyper-active kid
How to address self-esteem at youth group
How to get your kids sharing and contributing to small groups
A story of how Christ changed my youth group
When to let go of a student and trust God take care of the rest
How to recharge your emotional batteries
How youth ministry made me go crazy!
How to make the most of a youth group retreat
How to shake a student from their apathy for God’s Word
Things to consider before purchasing a curriculum
American youth ministry and how I would change it
How to give yourself away
How NOT to give advice to a student
The top 10 excuses every youth leader makes
The top 10 excuses every youth group student makes
How to settle a disagreement with your Sr. Pastor
Common mistakes to avoid in youth ministry
Guidelines to follow for selecting new youth leaders
How to facilitate communication between students and parents
How to partner with parents in youth ministry
Reaching rural kids versus reaching urban kids
How to support a student through difficult times
The #1 best thing you can do for the kids in your youth group
How to promote an attitude of prayer in daily life
How the Internet is changing students’ perspective of community
Why I’m in youth ministry today
A passage of scripture every student should know
How to get students involved in the rest of the church body

4 tips for preparing youth group Bible lessons

tim@studentministry.org (Tim Schmoyer) — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 03:28:17 +0000

Exploring family family [podcast]

tim@studentministry.org (Tim Schmoyer) — Mon, 31 May 2010 16:00:10 +0000

Last Monday we had a great conversation with Matt Archer about family ministry. Two years ago his church shifted its focus a bit by combining children and youth ministry and changed his title to Family Ministry Pastor. He shares a bit about the history behind that shift, the programs they cut, and how it currently fleshes itself out in his church’s ministry.

Some of the things we talked about:

How to start changing the mindset in your church from children and youth ministry to family ministry
Why a comprehensive plan from child through adult ministry is important
Resources for shifting to family-based ministry
The story of one church’s shift from “silo” stage-of-life ministry to family-based ministry
Including teens and children who don’t have Christian parents or have no parents at all
And a lot more…

You can listen to the whole conversation below or grab it in iTunes.

Play this episode

Subscribe to LIVE YM Conversations in iTunes

Join our next LIVE Youth Ministry Conversation!

Finding Time to Rest – Part 2 [Time Out]

tim@studentministry.org (Tim Schmoyer) — Mon, 31 May 2010 13:00:01 +0000

Time Out: Weekly quiet times for the youth worker’s soul.
(by Adam Wormann)

Last Monday, the same day that Time Out launched a devotional about the Sabbath (and coincidentally my day off), I received a call from a parent. There was a situation with a student having some significant difficulty and they needed me to come and talk to them. I broke my own rule and went to see them. My family was gracious and understood the need to help.

A few years back, a church I know pretty well had a child that died. Funerals are usually difficult enough, but when there’s a child involved, it makes it so much harder. There was a memorial service being planned for the following Monday. The worship pastor of the church was asked to lead some music for the service. He kindly told them, “I’m sorry, I can’t do it that day. Mondays are my day off.” I can’t imagine what that response was like for the family.

There was an attempt to trap Jesus in Matthew 12:

“He went on from there and entered their synagogue. And a man was there with a withered hand. And they asked him, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?” – so that they might accuse him. He said to them, “Which one of you who has a sheep, if it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will not take hold of it and lift it out? Of how much more value is a man than a sheep! So it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.” Then he said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” And the man stretched it out, and it was restored, healthy like the other. But the Pharisees went out and conspired against him, how to destroy him.” (Matthew 12:9-14, ESV)

Last week we talked about the need for the Sabbath, and let me reinforce that thought again. Take a day of rest. Read it again if you need to. But, we’re never truly “off.” We are always called to do good. We are always called to love. We are always called to be followers of Christ. Don’t plan meetings, do logistics, check email, etc. on your day off. There are things like this that you should certainly avoid, and it’s healthy to do so – they can wait. But, please don’t neglect the opportunities that come to you. This isn’t an excuse to work, but a call to always do good.

In Mark 2:27, Jesus adds that the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. The Sabbath was created because we need rest from “work” (not good). God does not need a specific day for us to honor Him. In fact, we ought to honor him the same way, every day (Romans 12:1). So don’t be legalistic about it. If an opportunity to do good comes up, take it. If you can take a few minutes, or an hour or two, to bring someone to rehab, do it. If you can stop to help a woman with a flat tire, do it. If there’s someone crying in deep need, talk to them. Don’t let your day off become a rule, that’s never what God intended. And just maybe, we can wrestle with the question “If I only do what is good and helpful when the opportunity comes during “work” time, what does that say?”

Think about these things for a minute. Give the questions some time:

-What do you really value more, “rule” or “good”? Do your actions agree with that?

-When was the last time that you honestly put yourself aside to do good, apart from paid ministry (if you are paid) or when not “convenient” (if you’re not paid)?

-Jesus makes the contrast to the value of the sheep. What is truly valuable to you in your life?

-Where are your opportunities that you’re taking and/or missing?

(*And yes, it’s okay to change your day off when something like the funeral story comes up, in order to still get some kind of a break, but please value people. And yes, you need to guard yourself and your family. Use discernment in taking phone calls, and clearly communicate to people that you can take emergencies, but if it can wait until the next day, please let it.)

Freebie Friday 179: Youth pastor business card PhotoShop file

tim@studentministry.org (Tim Schmoyer) — Fri, 28 May 2010 16:28:47 +0000

Andreas Fronius has I blog I wish I could read more often called Holy Sheep. It’s pretty much like Life In Student Ministry except for our German friends.

Andreas recently posted his PhotoShop file of a business card for youth pastors. It looks pretty slick, so if you don’t already have a card that’s designed by your church, maybe this would be the perfect fit for you.

I’m curious to know how many youth pastors still use business cards or not. I’m running a poll to find out. Take a second to vote!

The youth pastor business card includes:

two sides
for any type of business or personal usage
easy to edit the information
layered PSD file
3.5×2 inches
300 dpi
CMYK
Print ready

Obviously it requires PhotoShop to edit. If you don’t have PhotoShop, you can get a free 30-day trial from Adobe’s site.

Get the Youth Pastor Business Card [original link, English at the end of the post]

Get the Youth Pastor Business Card [Google Translate link]

A theology of youth rooms and buildings

tim@studentministry.org (Tim Schmoyer) — Thu, 27 May 2010 17:02:59 +0000

Last December I wrote a short rant about church consumerism, cliques, vision, youth rooms, attention spans and more. A discussion that followed that post on Facebook is worth sharing with you.

Item number 6 in that post mentions that I turned down someone’s vision to build a youth building or at least a youth room in our church because right now we have neither. The reason is because I think it’s more important that the teens become a natural integration into the church body and a youth room/building could unintentionally allow them to separate from the body too much. Plus, I don’t think it’s healthy for kids to feel like they belong in one room of the church building more than any other place else in the rest of the church, nor for adults to reinforce that notion by sending them to their “youth room.”

Here’s part of the discussion between me and a high school student (not from my church) on Facebook that followed my original post:

STUDENT: I don’t know if a youth room is such a bad thing. I would really, for me, enjoy that. You get to do stuff with your own age group and its like a spot where you can fit in. (Well, my whole church is like senior citizens, so I think a room for my church is sort of a good thing.)

ME: I’m not saying a youth room is bad, but I am saying it’s easier to do exactly what you mentioned — separate from the rest of the church (i.e. senior citizens).

STUDENT: Oh, I see your point. Well, I just kind of like it because I’m able to interact more with my age group more it seems that way. Like with other the other generations I get to do that in church and during coffe hour or whatever. But afterwards you are able to get togather and be with people with similar circumstances and problems. Isn’t it important to spend time with your peers spiruatally and with other generations too? I personally like to be with the older generations instead of my peers, but I like also being able to spend time with my peers also.

ME: Yup, there’s absolutely value in both. And like I said, there’s nothing wrong with having a youth room as long as relationships are continuing to be formed intergenerationally. It’s when the youth room becomes the hideout for the youth that the segregation starts.

Don’t get me wrong, the intentions for a youth room/building are usually pure. Like, “Let’s give the youth a place where they feel comfortable, a place where they can belong, feel like they fit in, a place they can make their own and have meaningful conversations about what they’re going through in life.”

I agree with all that and say, “Yes, let’s make the church a place where teens feel comfortable, a place where they can belong, fit in, can make their own and have meaningful conversations about what they’re going through in life rather than sticking them in a corner room somewhere, conveniently out of the way from the rest of the church.”

For me personally, I’d rather not have a youth room than have to fight against that “us” and “them” mindset between adults and teenagers in the church. Biblically, it’s supposed to be “we” and, for me, that’s easier if everyone is together without “our room” and “their room” (like, the church sanctuary is usually perceived as a room for the adults, ya know?).

Agree? Disagree? How does your ecclesiology impact how handle youth rooms and buildings? How do you balance the separation of teens from the rest of the church body? How do you avoid the problems that come from having youth group as a mini-church inside the larger church? Is this part of youth ministry’s contribution for why 20-somethings are missing from many churches? Can it sometimes become youth group vs “big church”? Share in the comments below.

UPDATE: Please don’t get defensive or feel like you need to justify to me why you have a youth room and how you use it. I promise I don’t think any less of you either way! lol

FAQs for taking a youth group to Haiti

tim@studentministry.org (Tim Schmoyer) — Wed, 26 May 2010 04:42:35 +0000

During my past two trips to Haiti I met an Adventures In Missions staff member named Benny. He’s kinda the head guy for AIM’s efforts in the country. He recently wrote a series of misconceptions about Haiti on his blog. They’re definitely worth checking out if you want a real perspective of someone who’s been living on the ground there for the past several months.

Since returning from Haiti and now planning another trip to go back this fall and spring, I’ve received a lot of questions from you guys about Haiti and how it relates to your youth groups. First of all, if you’re thinking about going to Haiti yourself or with a team from your church, make sure you read Benny’s misconceptions series above.

Video about taking a youth group to Haiti

While in Haiti, I sat down with one of my high school youth group girls and another youth pastor and talked about tips and FAQs for taking a youth group to Haiti. We discussed the experiences teenagers will have in Haiti, the safety concerns, what God is teaching us, and a lot more. Here’s a video of our discussion.

[Download this video in iTunes.]

Here are my thoughts on some of the other common questions I receive about Haiti and youth groups.

Can teenagers really make a difference in Haiti?

Absolutely. It’s easy to look at the big picture of all the devastation and think, “There’s no way we can put a dent in that. Let’s leave it to the experts.” While the experts are definitely needed, there’s also a need for normal every-day people like you and me to be there and serve. The experts can operate the big heavy machinery and provide medical expertise — we can minister to the spiritual and emotional needs of the Haitians.

Although you and your teens might not make a big dent in the lives of every Haitian, you will make an incredible difference in the lives of some Haitians. And if enough believers step up and do it, that can add up. It certainly matters to the individuals who you are able to help.

Can I go by myself?

Yup! Just go to Adventures.org, select the date and trip you want to join, and sign yourself up. In fact, there was tremendous value in me going to Haiti that first time without anyone from my church because it allowed me to come back and authoritatively share what I saw and experienced. People trusted my judgement and jumped on board very quickly after that. If you have the time and resources to go ahead of your youth group, I highly recommend it.

Is it safe?

Benny addressed some of those concerns in one of his Haiti Misconceptions posts above, so you can read that for his perspective.

My perspective is that it’s totally safe! Yeah, there’s a kidnapping here and there, but nothing more than what’s happening in cities across America at this very moment. Sure, there’s also violence in pockets of the country among certain people, but again, nothing more than what happens here on our own turf every day. The domestic issues are so common here at home that the media doesn’t cover it much anymore and many of us forget that those things are even happening at all.

Just like taking your youth group through unfamiliar urban territory in the US, there’s places of the city you’ll want to avoid, certain allys you don’t want to explore, and sections of town you want to avoid after dark. It’s no different in Haiti. Use common sense and you’ll be fine. And when you’re not sure what common sense is in Haiti, the translators AIM hires have excellent instincts. They know their people very well. Just follow their lead if in doubt.

It’s worthy to note that, as we shared in our Haiti testimony video, many Haitians feel that the world is looking down on them right now. There’s been a couple small cases of bad things happening and the rest of the world focuses on that and blows it out of proportion from all the positive things happening there. Several Haitians told us to tell Americans back home that they are good people with good hearts, and from my two weeks there, it is absolutely true.

We talked more about the safety concerns in the video above. If safety is a concern you have, I encourage you to hear about it from the perspective of Brook, the high school girl in my youth group.

What will my kids experience?

I don’t think this is a question I can really answer because everyone’s experience will be different. In the video above, Brook talks about her experience in Haiti as a high school student. Also the stories in my last trip’s recap video shares a lot about what we experienced.

Generally speaking…

They’ll be challenged to take ownership of their faith, to live it out instead of just talk about it.
They’ll see the power of prayer as they listen closely for Him to lead them.
They’ll see spiritual realities at work all around them.
They’ll develop a burden for lost souls and people struggling through hardships.
They’ll have a hard time entering the United States again. In many ways, that was the hardest part about each trip for me.

What did you think about Adventures In Missions?

I did both of my trips to Haiti through AIM and I highly recommend them for many reasons. Perhaps the biggest two distinctives AIM has that are very important to me is their emphasis on discipleship and listening to God in prayer. They make the missions experience become one of the most intense discipleship experiences you and your teens can go through together. And everything they do is saturated in prayer, so much so that some of our teens spent all morning and afternoon praying and walked away totally energized by it. For most of them, it was one of the most meaningful times on the trip. They had never spent more than 5 or 10 minutes praying before, so 4 hours was a pretty big jump for them that totally rocked their prayer life.

I plan to do all my future trips to Haiti through AIM. (And no, I am not getting any perks from AIM to say any of this. It’s my honest opinion.)

Do I need to go right away or will my visit still be helpful a year from now?

While there is an immediate need for help in Haiti right now, most of us cannot go there on short notice. Yes, there’s a sense of urgency right now, but the relief work in Haiti will be ongoing for a long time. They need help now. They’ll also need help a year from now. Go when you can and consider a long-term relationship with a Haiti church through the Church To Church Program.

Finding Time to Rest – Part 1 [Time Out]

tim@studentministry.org (Tim Schmoyer) — Mon, 24 May 2010 13:46:49 +0000

Time Out: Weekly quiet times for the youth worker’s soul.
(by Adam Wormann)

Ministry is long. And busy. And never seems to end. I love it, I think it’s important, and I don’t bemoan doing it (well, most of the time), but it is constant. This morning, meeting with two other youth pastors, 2 of the 3 of us got calls about students in crisis, while we were sharing stories about crazy things that have happened in our ministries. This is after the call yesterday from a parent, very concerned about something their kid posted on line. And it keeps going.

But our ministries are nowhere near as busy as Jesus’ ministry. Yet, he still found time away. Look at these two passages from Mark:

“And rising very early in the morning, while it was still dark, he departed and went out to a desolate place, and there he prayed.” -Mark 1:35

“Immediately he made his disciples get into the boat and go before him to the other side, to Bethsaida, while he dismissed the crowd. And after he had taken leave of them, he went up on the mountain to pray.” – Mark 6:45-46

As youth workers, paid and volunteer (let’s face it, volunteers usually work/school full time, then invest crazy amounts of time with students on top of it!), we need time to rest. We need to be refreshed. Tragically, we often don’t take the time to do it. Or we rest, but don’t invest spiritually because of all the other time we spend studying, preparing messages, and reading blogs during the week. We functionally act as if that is enough, even though once again it’s pouring into others. Selflessness is great, but if Jesus needed to take time away from everything, so do we.

Take out a Bible and look up the two passages at the top. Seriously, grab a Bible and turn there. Look what’s around them. There’s intensity to Jesus ministry. Not to compare us to Jesus, but there’s times when ministry is really busy, and those times are frequent. Bottom line, we cannot pour into others if we don’t take the time to be refreshed ourselves. That’s what Jesus modeled. It usually doesn’t happen through services that we’re in some way involved in. It doesn’t happen (usually) when we’re studying with the point of teaching. We need to take the time out ourselves.

God created the Sabbath for a reason. It’s a pattern for us to follow. We don’t need to be legalistic about it, but we do need to be realistic about the way God has wired us – that we need rest. So, if you haven’t done it, schedule a time to rest. Take the day to be with family. Mark off part of that time to be alone with God. Don’t check your work email. At all. Don’t peek. Emails can wait. Don’t plan out your events, or try to multitask with family. God told us to rest, let’s honor Him by resting.

Here’s some questions to think about. (Lots of times, we get to the question part read the Q’s, then close out. That’s not reflecting, refreshing, or growing, that’s a task. Don’t let it become a task, let it be a time to feed your soul.)

-What do I need to rest from? What is draining me? (Doesn’t have to be bad)

-What is it that’s refreshing for me?

-What am I doing that’s really helping me connect to God, outside of ministry? What do I need to do?

-Am I really being faithful in rest?

—————————————————————-
Adam Wormann is a Youth Pastor in Old Bridge, NJ where he’s been serving for the past 8 years. He is also one of the mentors at Life in Student Ministry and the editor of the “Time Out” series. You can stalk him on Twitter and Facebook.

The passion, process and principles of youth discipleship [podcast]

tim@studentministry.org (Tim Schmoyer) — Sat, 22 May 2010 04:37:13 +0000

Paul Turner of TheDiscipleProject.net joined us to talk about the passion, process and principles of youth discipleship. It was a good discussion revolving around many issues and questions we all have about discipleship and helping teenagers become more like Jesus.

Some of the things we talked about:

Why passion for discipleship is important
Making a discipleship process contextual to your ministry and kids
Principles for discipleship in your ministry
Evaluating the discipleship process in your ministry
Evaluating discipleship by process vs destination
And a lot more…

You can listen to the whole conversation below or grab it in iTunes.

Play this episode

Subscribe to LIVE YM Conversations in iTunes

Join our next LIVE Youth Ministry Conversation!

Freebie Friday 178: Themed event promo invite card and PowerPoint slide

tim@studentministry.org (Tim Schmoyer) — Fri, 21 May 2010 15:06:22 +0000

This past spring E.J. Swanson flew in to be our guest speaker for my youth group’s retreat for high school juniors and seniors. The theme for the weekend was “Transitions.” We talked about all the upcoming transitions in their lives, everything from moving out of the house, being responsible for finances, transition in relationships with parents, transition in taking ownership of your faith, and more.

E.J. was kind enough to create a logo PowerPoint slide image for the retreat as well as a promotional invitation card for it. He gave permission for me to share it here with you all to use and modify for your own retreats or events.

This package contains:

Transitions JPG image for PowerPoint slides
4×6 postcard front PSD (requires PhotoShop to edit)
4×6 postcard back PSD (requires PhotoShop to edit)

Download the Transitions event promo packet

Why my youth group is going back to Haiti this fall and spring

tim@studentministry.org (Tim Schmoyer) — Thu, 20 May 2010 15:04:16 +0000

It’s only been a couple weeks since we returned from Haiti and already we’re planning our next trip back, most likely in October.

It’s becoming clear to me that short-term missions is one of the most powerful ways to do discipleship that has long-term life-transformation condensed into a short, but impactful, period of time. It’s basically following Jesus’ model of discipleship by traveling with teens to do ministry as you teach and model for them them what discipleship is all about. (Note: there’s a difference between missions trips and work projects. I’m talking about missions trips.)

Because of that, it seems to me that, not only should we be doing more mission trips, but we should also be pushing more resources toward it than we do. Since my church’s fiscal year starts July 1, I recently proposed reallocating over half of my youth group’s budget toward two trips to Haiti next year, which will probably be approved.

Listen to the testimonies and stories from the adults and teens on our last trip to Haiti. It explains why.

I’ve also learned that there is tremendous value in doing church-wide missions trips rather than just youth group trips. When parents, adults, grandparents, siblings and college students all come together to serve, something incredible happens and the impact is far greater than if it’s just a group of teens with a couple adult leaders.

Church To Church program

You can also get involved by participating in Adventures In Mission’s Church To Church program, an opportunity to partner with a church in Haiti for prayer, encouragement, rebuilding, and even trips to lend helping hands. In fact, Mark Oestreicher, Doug Pagitt, Seth Barnes, and others have formed a team are going back to Haiti next week to finalize the Church To Church program. They’re also trying to raise $35,000 to fund the salaries of a few Haitian leaders for the next three years who will lead and mobilize the effort on the Haitian side, thus impacting even more churches and communities for many years to come.

You can follow their trip on Facebook and Twitter.

How to raise awareness in town about your ministry

tim@studentministry.org (Tim Schmoyer) — Tue, 18 May 2010 03:57:09 +0000

No related posts.

The Time Out series is turning to the community

tim@studentministry.org (Tim Schmoyer) — Mon, 17 May 2010 15:05:57 +0000

Since the first Monday of January 2008, my dad, Jerry Schmoyer, has been the sole author of the weekly series, Time Out. He’s been doing an outstanding job with it! Two years later now, there’s a shift coming in the series.

The vision behind Time Out

The vision behind the Time Out series is to provide weekly reminders, challenges, and encouragement specifically for youth workers to spend personal time with the Lord in the midst of ministry. We all know it’s way too easy to become so focused on teaching God’s Word to teens that we fail to soak in God’s Word for own soul’s nourishment.

Combine that with my bigger vision for Life In Student Ministry to become more of a “conversation among youth workers” with many voices besides my own, it made sense to shift Time Out to a community-driven series rather than a single author series.

The first LISM Editor

One of the Youth Ministry Mentors, Adam Wormann, offered to coordinate the series and has thus become the first of a future team of Life In Student Ministry Editors.

Adam has already begun to collect and edit Time Out contributions from other members of the Youth Ministry Mentorship Team. I’ve read some of them and you’re in for some excellent reminders and challenges in both your spiritual growth and ministry growth. However, we don’t want Time Out to be a mentor-driven series — we want YOU to write it for your follow youth workers.

How to become a Time Out contributor

Keep your Time Out devo to about 400-600 words total.
Include a scripture passage and a couple reflection/journal questions at the end.
Send it to Adam Wormann at adam@studentministry.org.
Optionally, if you include a brief bio (60 words or less) along with your blog/Twitter URL, we’ll be happy to include those in the footer of your post. Even if you don’t, you’ll still get full attribution for the content.

Feel free to submit as many Time Out devos as you’d like over any period of time.

There’s no monetary compensation, but for you youth ministry bloggers who are looking for some exposure, this could be a perfect opportunity to spread the word about your site while edifying the body of Christ.

Feedback?

If there are questions or comments about all this, Adam and I would love to hear them in the comments below! Also, you can follow Adam on Twitter.

Answering recent questions from MinistryQuestions.com #4 [podcast]

tim@studentministry.org (Tim Schmoyer) — Sat, 15 May 2010 16:07:11 +0000

It’s time to have another MinistryQuestions.com episode where we discuss recent questions that are posted at MinistryQuestions.com. Unfortunately, I had technical difficulties with my Internet connection and was kicked out of the show twice, but the other guys on the call just kept on truckin’ away with me, which was cool. Just hang tight through some of the interruptions — there’s a lot of good stuff in this recording!

Some of the things we talked about:

You can listen to the whole conversation below or grab it in iTunes.

Play this episode

Subscribe to LIVE YM Conversations in iTunes

Join our next LIVE Youth Ministry Conversation!

Freebie Friday 177: 4 week lesson series on Haggai

tim@studentministry.org (Tim Schmoyer) — Fri, 14 May 2010 16:52:25 +0000

Usually when I write Bible study lessons for my youth group I scratch it down in notes that are rarely usable by anyone other than me. I know the direction I want to take and the points I want to make in my head as I study a passage, so my notes are usually random words or sentences to keep me on track, remind me of questions I want to ask, cross-references I want to address, or a transition I want to get just right. Because of that, it takes a lot more time for me to format my lessons in a way that’s usable for other people. But I had so much fun studying the book of Haggai that I thought I’d write it so you guys could use it, too.

The lessons aren’t perfectly written out, but it’s good enough that you could hopefully use your knowledge of Haggai to teach through the book with the direction provided in these lessons.

Each lesson contains:

Lesson notes in Word format
Handouts ready to print
Some of the lessons include a slideshow presentation in PowerPoint and KeyNote.

Download the 4 Week Lessons Series on Haggai

IMPORTANT: As with any lesson, please make sure you study the book of Haggai on your own before you teach it to students. Internalize it first so you teach from your heart, not from a lesson plan. You must apply it to your own life before teaching it to others if you expect teens to follow your example. Otherwise, this is nothing more than time-filler for your youth group meeting, which is extremely disrespectful to the Word of God because it’s meant to be so much more than that.

Group Project: Share your youth ministry tips and advice on video

tim@studentministry.org (Tim Schmoyer) — Thu, 13 May 2010 04:32:42 +0000

Let’s start a little group project to help us identify some helpful youth ministry tips and advice. It involves you guys recording your best youth ministry tips and advice on video and sharing them with the wider youth ministry community.

Here’s how it will work:

Record a short video (under 2 minutes if you can) that contains your best youth ministry tip or advice.
Upload it to your YouTube account. You’re welcome to use other video sites, but it needs to be embeddable for me to feature it here.
Tag your video ‘youthministrytip’.
Leave a link to the video in comments below.
I’ll feature some (or maybe all, depending how many there are) in the coming weeks here on Life In Student Ministry.
Try to record a tip or give advice that might be a bit different from others to make it a little unique. Also, in the video, feel free to share your blog’s URL so we can check it out and your Twitter name so we can follow you.

My hope is that this project will do a number of things:

It’ll get you thinking about something that has helped you in your ministry.
It will help others to learn something that will help them improve their ministry.
It will help us to get to know each other a little more as we see and hear each others voices.

I’m really looking forward to seeing what you come up with on this! Please submit your videos in the next 7 days and I’ll pull something together to feature them next week here at Life In Student Ministry. Thanks everyone!

Challenge: Write your own job description

tim@studentministry.org (Tim Schmoyer) — Wed, 12 May 2010 04:59:07 +0000

My church is going through a lot of transitions right now. One pastor is retiring, another is being sent to plant a church in our community, and various administrative staff are moving away and stepping down. It’s all very positive and I’m excited for how God is leading each individual, but with all the staff changes in such a short amount of time I can’t help but wonder where God is taking us in the very near future.

My Sr. Pastor and I have spent some time vision casting, dreaming, and talking through our church’s future ministry and direction. They’ve been very healthy discussions. My Sr. Pastor knows that our vision and direction needs to be clearly defined before we start to bring new staff members on board to help us move in that direction, which I wholeheartedly agree.

As we’re evaluating all the different areas of ministry in our church, the youth ministry included, and revisiting things like job descriptions, I thought I’d pull out my church’s old job description because it’s been a long time since I last looked at it. Here it is:

———————————————————————————

What this person is:
A person called by God to further the mission of the Evangelical Covenant Church as we experience and express the life and love of God through Jesus Christ. This person will reflect God’s heart for people and our commitment to Jesus’ Great Commandment and Great Commission, with a special focus on targeting middle school students through college age students.

What purpose this person commits to:
To provide an atmosphere where youth feel accepted, God’s love is revealed, and where all can grow in their desire to serve and honor God. In light of that purpose, this person will seek to reach out to uninterested students helping them get connected with Christ and other Christians and challenge interested students to grow in their faith.

What this person does:
Nurture a Spirit-filled relationship with God and Jesus Christ through the spiritual disciplines of the Christian faith.

Partner with the Youth Ministry Team and pastoral staff in ministering to youth and families. Participate in weekly staff meetings and regular Youth Ministry Team meetings.

Partner with parents in student’s spiritual development.

Develop a relational style ministry that includes:

Connecting with students in their culture.

Identifying and equipping volunteer adult leaders.

Establishing and maintaining small groups.

Training adult leaders for student ministry.

Developing student leadership within the youth group.

Communicate and promote youth ministry to the broader congregation.

Keep good records of activities and programs.

Keep financial records and manage student ministry checkbook.

Work in conjunction with other churches in city wide youth events.

Work in conjunction with the Northwest Conference and Evangelical Covenant Church in the area of youth ministries.

———————————————————————————

I’m glad to see that it is still a fairly accurate reflection of my role in the youth ministry, but there are some things I’d like to add, emphasize, and specifically address that aren’t reflected as clearly as they should be.

Here’s a challenge I’m going to take and I want you to do it with me:

If you could write your own youth ministry job description, what would it say? I’m going to write mine and review it with my Sr. Pastor as an exercise that will probably facilitate some good discussion. I’ll share my self-written job description with you later after we’ve had that discussion.

In the meantime, write your own job descriptions and share in the comments below. Take this seriously, not just some general “help kids grow spiritually” statement or something.

What’s your vision for youth ministry?
What roles and responsibilities should be yours and not yours?
What degree of supervision and accountability should you have?
How much of your job is doing youth ministry and how much of it is supporting and encouraging others (i.e. parents, youth leaders, and teens) to do youth ministry?

A whole new look and feel to StudentMinistry.org

tim@studentministry.org (Tim Schmoyer) — Tue, 11 May 2010 03:18:14 +0000

Two and a half years ago I overhauled this site with a premium template I purchased from a site. It was definitely an upgrade from what I was using before, but it was still just a skin I forced to work with my content. It didn’t take long for it to become cluttered and confusing to navigate.

After saving and saving for months, I hired Tyler Shick and Jeff Smith of Five Ninety Labs to completely redesign and rebrand my site, this time building around my content instead of trying to make my content fit in someone else’s design.

Some of you noticed the new design when it went live a couple weeks ago, but we were still working out some kinks and minor design issues until last week. Now’s it’s all finished! Check it out at www.StudentMinistry.org!

Discipling teens through summer missions trips [podcast]

tim@studentministry.org (Tim Schmoyer) — Sat, 08 May 2010 08:15:10 +0000

Last Monday Jake Dudley and Julio Nieves joined us to talk about using summer missions trip as a discipleship opportunity. Both Jake and Julio were with me during my last to Haiti last week and together we saw a lot of pretty intense discipleship taking place between each other and the students who were with us.

Some of the things we talked about:

Some sample debriefing questions that lead toward discipleship
How to teach students to “test” their experiences
Difference between a missions trip and a work project
5 things to implement into your next missions trip
And a lot more…

You can listen to the whole conversation below or grab it in iTunes.

Play this episode

Subscribe to LIVE YM Conversations in iTunes

Next LIVE YM Talk

April 26:There is no LIVE YM Talk this Monday while Tim is in Haiti.

Join our next LIVE Youth Ministry Conversation!

Freebie Friday 176: Photo scavenger hunt list

tim@studentministry.org (Tim Schmoyer) — Fri, 07 May 2010 08:15:19 +0000

Last Wednesday our junior high small groups raced around our community to earn as many points as possible by taking pictures of themselves in certain locations or doing certain things. It was a great time for the small groups to bond and have fun together. Here are some of the pictures.

Below is our list you can download in Word, PDF, and Pages format. I created it in Pages, so if you’re on a Mac, that’s what you’re gonna want to edit the sheet for your group. The Word version is just an export from Pages and lost some formatting along the way, but is still much easier to edit than the PDF copy.

Have fun!

Download the Photo Scavenger Hunt list

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