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Students Who Disappear

May 6, 2013 by Leave a Comment

Saw this post from Justin Knowles, one of the guys on our high school ministry staff, last week. I think it’s probably something that you’ve either gone through yourself or will go through at some point in your ministry. Definitely one to keep in mind, and a great reminder to be praying for the students that have slipped through the cracks.

Check out the first part of Justin’s post, then head over to his blog for more.

It is in my nature to want to make student feel welcome. I want to invite them in. This last year there has been a few students who joined my small group, which is amazing. These students were invited by friends, they were coming consistently  they were engaging in conversation, they were “in”… then one day he was gone. The student disappeared. Just stopped coming. Gone. Not really, cause I still saw him via social media and such, but just not coming to group anymore. The others in the group still invited him to come, I pursued him. Nothing.

What do we do? What happens when students just stop showing up?

Filed Under: Repost, Small Groups, Youth Ministry

Six Steps to Connect with Students

October 20, 2012 by Leave a Comment

One area that we think is super important in student ministry is finding ways to connect with students. With some students its easier than others but sometimes you need to get pretty inventive to connect with some students. Our friend Aaron Crumbey had a great post on his blog about connecting with students. Here’s a little taste of it below, then go here for the rest.

 

My first experience in youth ministry was taking a group of guys out for pizza, and then a sleepover full of snacks, movies, video games and conversation.  No one in the church I was attending told me to do it, I just did it.  The time I spent with those students and the things we did, was basically based off of what I would’ve loved to have happen to me when I was a student.  I wanted to be someone they could share their struggles with but also enjoy a lighthearted conversation.  I wanted to be able to speak into their lives God’s truth and also be the one they came to when they had questions.

My motive behind connecting with students was not just to be their friend, but also be someone who they could connect with when they needed guidance in the spiritual and the natural areas of life.  Now, I know some people would say well the way you connect with students is you find a leader that’s a great fit for the student you are trying to get connected.  I also know that the majority of youth groups don’t have that luxury, and personally I don’t think they need to.

Connecting with students has more to do with the leader than the student.  The cool kids, geeks, jocks, cheerleaders, the indie kids, the gamer and all of the other students we stereotype could careless about what you’re into.  They just want to know that you care.  I listed some transferable things that I’ve learned through trail and error, that has helped me connect with all types of students on a deeper level.

Filed Under: Repost, Youth Ministry Tagged With: , , ,

NOW WHAT? The options you face after a trust has broken

September 29, 2012 by Leave a Comment

This week GenToGenYM has had an unplanned theme of “trust.” We’ve written a few posts on the topic, and it seems to be something that is so important going into a new school year. Following this theme, I ran across Matt McGill‘s blog post below. It’s about the options you have after a trust is broken on either end of a relationship. Check out a couple of options below, then head over to LoveGodLoveStudents.com for the rest.

Trust is a foundation for every significant relationship. When the trust falls a part, here are some options:

repair it and confront the issue head on. Once a trust has been broken, start a conversation. Lay out the issues, forgive and ask for forgiveness. Trust typically takes time to build, so it’s usually worth REbuilding.

repress it and pretend the breach never happened. This option isn’t as bad as it sounds. When a trust is first broken, perhaps it’s best to forgive without raising the issue. Perhaps change can happen without a confrontation. If the other person doesn’t fix things, this can quickly become a horrible approach.

Filed Under: Repost, Youth Ministry Tagged With: , , , ,

The Best Question I’ve Asked a Young Person Recently

September 15, 2012 by Leave a Comment

I saw this post earlier this week from Kara Powell (Fuller Youth Institute, author of Sticky Faith) and LOVED IT! I’m always on the lookout for great questions to have in my back pocket to bring up with students, and this is a great one. Check out her thoughts below, then head over to the Fuller Youth Institute blog for the rest of the post.

I’ve always believed there’s great power in good questions.  I saw that last weekend with my own kids.

Last weekend, we had more discretionary free time than usual.  My husband decided to build a treehouse for our kids (I know, I know, it feels like a flashback to the 50s).  While he was in our backyard with the kids doing that, I told the kids they could each pick one fun thing to do with me alone, and that we’d go out for a treat afterward.

Nathan chose tennis.  Krista chose ice skating.  Jessica went with a scavenger hunt (an unconventional choice, but the youth worker in me has introduced scavenger hunts to our family over the years).

My favorite part of getting treats with the kids – especially when I have just one of them – is the conversation we get to have.  Thanks to some questions I received from one of the churches in our Sticky Faith Cohort last year, I had a whole list of questions that parents could ask kids.

I asked Nathan a question I’ve never asked him before:  What do you think young people your age tend to lie about to their parents?

Filed Under: Repost, Youth Ministry

How to Keep a Conversation with Teens

September 8, 2012 by Leave a Comment

One of the most asked questions I get asked by new student ministry volunteers is how do I start a conversation and then keep the conversation going with teens. Today I read a great post from Brian Berry with some great tips and examples. Here’ a bit of the article below, the rest you can find here.

 

 

Like many youth groups around the country, we’re launching our small groups this fall.  We also have made some changes based on learnings from the flow of groups last year.  As a result, we have decided that the first 10 weeks will be largely if not almost exclusively focused on getting to know our students.  Then in January, after the Christmas break, we’ll then build on those relationships and begin a process to dive more fully into the Scriptures together each week in a more “traditional Bible Study”.

But what this means in the short-term is that from late September through Christmas, we’ll be spending a lot of time (like an hour or so) pouring into the life of just one student in each small group each night.  Not like a hot seat where a small group grills one member with questions, but more like a moment where we say, “We really want to get to know you more… but for reals.  So tell us all about yourself.”

If the small group you lead is made up of outgoing bubbly teenage girls, well that might be all you need.  You’ll be lucky if you get them to stop talking 60 minutes later with that one intro.

But if you’re leading freshman guys, it’s gonna take some more work.

So in order to help, we put together a packet of stuff to keep a conversation going with a student.  Here’s 6 tips we’re using to train our leaders.

START YOUR SMALL GROUP EACH WEEK WITH A BUCKET TESTIMONY.  Pick an item (bucket, purse, backpack, suitcase, basket, etc) and have a different person each week come with 10 items inside.   As they pull each item out, they tell you why they put it in there and what it means to them.  As leaders, you do this first, choosing a wide range of items from serious to funny and set the tone.  Then have someone volunteer or choose a student who can do this next week.  Don’t forget to call and remind them in the days leading up to your next meeting so they don’t forget.

Click here for the rest.


 

 

Filed Under: Repost, Training, Volunteer ministry, Youth Ministry Tagged With: , , , , ,

What do you expect of your students

September 1, 2012 by Leave a Comment

I found this great little gem of a post by Kyle Sullivan, Student Pastor at Community Baptist Church in Oklahoma. It sets some great guidelines to use for setting expectation levels.

You can find a tease of the article below, the rest can be found here. 

So we all have expectations. Whether they are good or bad, we have them.
I feel this is the same for student ministry and the students that each of us have coming to our ministries. And churches all over will have stage time given to talking about getting involved and what the expectation is for a member of the church, however I think we sometimes fail the students by not placing expectations on them for the ministry they attend. I feel if we neglect expectations in our students, then our ministries will suffer and we, as the student pastors, could easily get burned out.

Expectations Pushes Personal Growth

I think back to when I was in student ministry and my student pastor gave me areas of our ministry to own and take control of even before I was saved because he saw leadership qualities in me. Student pastors and leaders need to be on the lookout for those students that can grow with a little push from us as a mentor and pastor. When students start to grow, they serve more. So start them out small and see what happens. Some of your best student leaders can sometimes be the least likely because they are just needing a push in the right direction.

Expectations Excel Spiritual Maturity

We all want our students to become sold out followers of Christ. I have not ever talked to or read something from a student pastor or leader in ministry that would say anything different. So we need to give our students expectations of what we would want to see them do in the disciplines of the faith to see their faith grow. I have seen this play out in students that have stepped up to help lead a Sunday morning small group discussion because they were asked and then months later the same student is leading a Bible study on their own with their friends not from church at school. It all started with putting an expectation on them to grow spiritually.

Filed Under: Repost, Youth Ministry Tagged With: , , , ,

The Significance of a Baptism

August 16, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Nathan Wells and Parker Clouse are two good friends of ours who have “guest posted” on this blog, now have their own blog. A week after we got back from summer camp they wrote a blog on the significance of baptism. I love this blog because I know the students involved. The awesome part of this story is that they girl who was baptized started coming to church and getting involved by watching her brother and “wanting the joy he has in his life”.  Here’s a tease below, the rest can be found here.

 The Significance of a Baptism

If you watched the video in the last post which recapped one of the days at our summer camp, there is a moment that is only 3 seconds long in that video, but that makes my heart smile every time I see it. I snapped that scene from the video to use as the image of this post.

The boy in the photo is one of the students that I have had the great honor of mentoring for the past two years. In those two years, I’ve seen him build his own relationship with Christ, share in his baptism, and watch how he has continued to challenge himself in building his personal relationship with Christ. I’ve watched as he has gone from unsure new believer the summer before his freshman year of high school, to a leader who waves the banner high over his head with pride for God. He began to see the impact God was having on his life, but God immediately started using him to make an impact on someone else’s life as well.

The girl in the photo is a volunteer of mine. She serves on our high school live production team and has a great heart. This is the summer before she starts high school. Before this, church was a casual occurrence for her. She was unsure why to go, that was until she began to see the impact God can have in the life of an individual. Quietly she observed for two years as she witnessed her brother’s life begin to transform. As she put it, I want what he has. I see the change in him and so I started coming to church because if this is what God is like, I want God in my life too. (I’m paraphrasing).

 The rest of this story can be found here.

 

Parker Clouse and Nathan Wells are both on the staff at Saddleback Church and volunteer with High School Ministry. They are good friends of Steven and Matt and are just as crazy as we are.

Filed Under: Cool stuff, Repost, Youth Ministry Tagged With: , , , ,

Top 25 Youth Ministry Blogs

August 10, 2012 by Leave a Comment

We love that you check out our blog each day and read our thoughts and ramblings but there are a lot of awesome blogs out there you should also be reading. This week TheYouthcartel.com published their list of the top 25 student ministry blogs. You should be reading these too, we do!  Here’s the list and link to their blog that explains how they came up with the top 25:

2012 Rank Name URL 2011 Rank
1 Josh Griffin http://www.morethandodgeball.com/ 1
2 Doug Fields http://dougfields.com 7
3 Mark Oestreicher http://whyismarko.com 2
4 Adam McLane http://adammclane.com 4
5 Jonathan McKee http://www.jonathanmckeewrites.com 10
6 Tim Schmoyer http://studentministry.org 3
7 Fuller Youth Institute http://fulleryouthinstitute.org/ 8
8 Adam Walker Cleaveland http://pomomusings.com/ 6
9 Kurt Johnston http://www.juniorhighministry.com/ 19
10 Youth Specialties http://youthspecialties.com/blog 5
11 Brian Kirk, Jacob Thorne rethinkingyouthministry.com 13
12 youthministry360 youthministry360.com NR
13 Jeremy Zach http://www.reyouthpastor.com 9
14 Greg Stier gregstier.org 16
14 The Youth Cartel http://theyouthcartel.com/blog/ NR
16 Ian MacDonald http://www.youthblog.org 12
17 Walt Mueller http://learningmylines.blogspot.com/ 18
18 Youth Leader Stash youthleaderstash.com NR
19 Chuck Bomar http://www.collegeministrythoughts.com/ NR
20 Rachel Blom http://www.youthleadersacademy.com NR
21 Mike King http://king.typepad.com/mike_king/ 17
21 Jake Bouma http://www.jakebouma.com/ NR
23 Kenda Creasy Dean http://kendadean.com/ 20
24 Matt McGill http://lovegodlovestudents.com NR
25 Terrace Crawford http://terracecrawford.com/ 19

 

Filed Under: Repost, Youth Ministry Tagged With: , ,

The Gift of Encouragement

August 4, 2012 by Leave a Comment

I saw this guest post on Josh Griffin’s website, Morethandodgeball.com and it really hit home with me. I like to be an encourager and Colton Harker really points out what we need to do. Here’s a tease below, go here to read the entire article.

 One of the things that the Lord has really put on my heart recently is encouragement. So far, I have realized two things about encouragement: 1) Encouragement is powerful – with just a few words, we are able to affirm, refuel, and inspire others, and 2) encouragement is a gift.  I am blown away by the fact that we have the ability to use our mouths to build each other up.  We can be used by the Lord to communicate His love to His children!  Crazy!

When we encourage others, we are glorifying the Lord.  We are appreciating the unique ways that He has gifted His creation.  We are celebrating the fact that He uses sinners to do incredible things for His Kingdom.  Because encouragement is so important, we need to make sure that we are practicing it in our lives! 

Click here to read more.

Filed Under: Encouragement, Repost Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Fast food, a divine appointment, & seed planting

July 28, 2012 by Leave a Comment

LOVED this guest post from Megan Hutchison on Doug Fields’s blog last week. She talks about a ministry moment she had while doing something as simple as walking through the grocery store. Read the intro below, then check out the rest of Megan’s post.

“Do you have a dollar ma’am?” The tattered blonde-haired, blue-eyed kid asked me as my own five-year old and I passed by the cereal section at Ralphs. I did a double take. “Excuse me?”

“Do you have dollar…please?”

I let out a sigh as thoughts ran rapidly through my mind. It was 10:00am on a school day. This teen was no older than 14…if that. He was as cute as can be under the dirt on his warn, sleepless face. And he was in need of a buck.

“Hi” I said extending my hand, “I’m Megan, and this cute thing is Parker, my son.” We both smiled. “What’s your name?” He started to scurry away. “I’m not here to get you into trouble!” He stopped, turned and studied me. “I’m Jack.”

“Good to meet you, Jack. I love your name…that’s the name of my other son! Are you hungry? Is that why you need the money?” His head nodded up and down. “Okay. There is a restaurant right over there. I’ll pay your bill.”

Filed Under: Repost
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