You are here: Home / Archives for accountability

Retro Friday // How do you want to be different by the end of the year?

September 21, 2012 by Leave a Comment

With the start of student small groups just around the corner, I’ve been thinking a lot about what I want to do this year. I remembered something that Steven did with his small group last year and I LOVED the idea. It’s such a great idea that it’s worthy of reposting today in case some of you new readers didn’t see this post before.

Before the C-Group year started, my co-leader and I sat down and met about what we want this year to be for our boys. We set a couple of goals for them based on their personalities and where they are in their walks with God. We set these goals for them, but we needed to figure out a way this week to make them set those goals for themselves. We needed some buy-in, some accountability.

That’s when it hit me.

Tonight we got the buy-in we were looking for. Here’s how we did it:

1. I brought a large, sealable envelope and two notecards for each guy.

2. We explained what we wanted them to be thinking about this year – how they want to be different by the end of the year, and a “next step” they need to take to grow closer to God.

3. On the first card, we told them to write what they wanted to change about themselves or how they wanted to be different by the end of the year. On the other, we told them to write what they think their “next step” should be.

4. They folded both cards and wrote their name on the outside of both, then dropped them into the envelope.

5. I sealed the envelope for two reasons – they knew that what they wrote was just between them and God. We weren’t going to be looking at them. I also wrote on the outside of the envelope, “Do not open until May 29, 2012.” This is the last official day we meet for small group this year.

Those notecards will be the way they keep themselves accountable. The envelope is going to be with us every week, so it will be a constant reminder to the guys that they set goals for themselves. By having them write it down and not tell anyone what they wrote, it was a way to get them to keep those goals in their minds. I’m super excited to open up that envelope at the end of the year and see how far they’ve come.
Filed Under: Retro Friday, Small Groups, Youth Ministry Tagged With: , , , ,

GUEST POST: What my Small Group has done for me – Part 1

July 6, 2012 by 1 Comment

Today our guest post comes from one of the students in Matt’s high school small group. Erick has an amazing story about how his faith has grown because of a small group. Erick is interning this year with the Membership Team At Saddleback Church. Here’s part one, check back tomorrow for part two.

 It’s funny, today we are more connected through different media like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram but we feel more disconnected! One purpose of a small group is to have people speak into our lives when life sucks and to listen when something cool happens in someone’s life. The second purpose of having a small group is to belong in God’s family. When I think of my small group, I think of the second purpose, the purpose that keeps us together.

From the moment I could walk I wanted someone to help me every time I fell. When I got older I stopped falling onto concrete and started falling into things that hurt more.  Lies, drugs, bad group of friends and porn. My friends wouldn’t pick up the phone when I was hurting-but they would text me to tempt me into making bad choices! In junior year of high school I asked myself, “are these people my friends, is this a friendship?”

 That summer of my junior year, I made real friends for the first time! I felt a connection to these guys, they were different from me but had the similar problems. I had met them at camp (High School Ministry Camp), but I latched on to them because our cabin leader suggested staying as a small group

I wasn’t alone anymore. When we talked about struggles, our small group leader (Matt Reynolds) turned to the Bible for answers. He didn’t try to solve our problems; he gave us the opportunity to trust God through them. What stood out to me about my small group leader was that he took the time to have a one-on-one conversation with me whenever I needed to talk.

Here’s what my small group did for me this year:

I was challenged to live a Christ-like lifestyle. Every small group lesson is applicable to my life. Jesus is the center of our discussions and of the lessons. Most importantly, our small group leader reflects Christ’s love! High school guys don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. My small group leader always listens, focuses and relates to my struggle

I was comforted by belonging to a body of Christ. Like in 1 Corinthians 12:12, my small group is “not made up of one part but of many”. My small group has a spectrum of personalities. We have guys that are incredibly funny, popular, great abs (Matt Regueiro) quiet guys, awkward reserved guys. Each of us contributes something to the group. How? Accountability partners. The unique talent(s) and spiritual gift(s) of each guy is put to use through keeping a friend accountable

I was counseled when I shared a struggle. Small group was a safe place to share my R rated struggles. My leader’s advice came from the Bible, his own experience, or a Pastor’s quote. It was said with love, truth and to the point. A lot of times confessing my struggle was an opportunity for another guy to confess his! To give you an idea, here are three main reasons why I could share my struggles: 1. I wasn’t going to be judged or interrogated 2. My small group leader didn’t interrupt or give an “opinion” 3. A simple rule was set when we began small group:   Whatever is shared in the small group, stays in the group

Check back tomorrow for part two!

Filed Under: Guest post, Small Groups Tagged With: , , , , ,

Students’ reflections on your last year in ministry

May 7, 2012 by 3 Comments

Matt: This has been a unique year for my high school small group. We met at summer camp last July and over the past year I have watched these guys form into a solid student small group. One of my favorite things is watching how they minister to each other. We haven’t had a lot of messy issues to deal with in this group, but we’ve had a few. I think one thing that would stand out to my group is that they know they have a solid group of Christian brothers around them when times get tough.

At the same time this group celebrates together. This past weekend two of my guys were baptized. My whole small group showed up that night, bathing suits in hand, and we all got in the water. We celebrated as a group the public display of faith by these two guys. The other thing that would stand out with this group is accountability. I love how they hold each other accountable. They have partnered up for accountability and they watch out for each other, all-the-while keeping confidentiality between them.

This year this group has cried together, laughed together, celebrated together and mourned together. I think at the end of the day if there was one thing that would stand out to them is that they all know they have a group that cares about them. A group they can tell anything to without fear of being judged and a group that will offer criticism when needed and a group that will love on them when they need to feel wanted and loved.

Steven: One of my favorite things about leading in student ministries is making memories. I love the fact that some (if not all) of the guys I’ve come in contact with will have a significant memory from their time spent in my ministry. My co-leader and I have done some really intentional things to make memories this year, like our tradition of making Eggo waffles the first night of small group, or taking one of the guys out to Taco Bell and all we could eat was Doritos tacos. What’s more important to me is what my students would say about what stood out to them this year.

I wanted to make a big push with my group for intentional one-on-one time. I wanted each guy in the group to feel like we spent good, quality time with just them, caring for their needs and knowing the details of their lives. My hope is that my students would say we did a good job in this, and that they felt like we cared about them in a way that no one else did.

I would also think my students would say our discussions were on things that mattered. We tried not to push our own agenda, but really focus on the things that the guys would need to hear about. We tried to not get the students to our level, but really get to their level.

I know some of my guys read this blog (Jared), so if you wouldn’t mind, it would be awesome if you would answer the question so people could see: What stood out to you most from our time as a small group this year?

Question: What would your students say stood out from your ministry this year?

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

Kicking the baby birds out of the nest

May 3, 2012 by 1 Comment

As the school year is rapidly coming to a close in a few weeks, I decided to try something different with my high school small group. I have all seniors and they will be moving on after summer camp this year and I want to have them prepared to be a young adult small group on their own in the fall. I’m trying to get them to be more reliant on each other.

After the lesson last night I started off the discussion with some questions and then had one of them keep the discussion going and I told them I needed to go take care of something and that I would be back in a few minutes and to continue on without me. I was out of the room but close enough to hear what was going on. They strayed a little bit from the topic a couple of times, but for the most part they stayed right on track and kept the discussion going.

After about fifteen minutes I came back into the room and we finished off the night with our normal praise and prayer request time. As hard as it is for me to move these guys on, I know it’s the right thing to do. I have a great group of young men and it’s been an amazing ride watching them grow in their faith and in their walk with God.

For the rest of this school year I’m going to keep slowly backing out and letting them run their group from start to finish. I’ll always be there for these guys and they know that, but it’s time to kick my baby birds out of the nest and get them ready for the next stage of life.

QUESTION: How are you preparing your students to move on, either to college if they are high school students or move on to high school if they are junior high students?

Filed Under: Small Groups, Youth Ministry Tagged With: , , , ,

Accountability in junior high

May 2, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Last night my co-leader and I did a little experiment with our junior high small group.

In our experience, we’ve found that accountability is something that doesn’t usually work in junior high. It works fine between students and leaders, but when we’ve tried to get them to choose accountability partners and follow through with them, they’ve failed every time. Up until last night, we hadn’t really tried to push accountability on our current group because we didn’t think it would be effective.

Last night we tried a different approach. We started off by talking about some common struggles that the guys have talked about, either one-on-one with us or in the group. We talked about how God wants us to be unified, and since they’re moving on to high school without us in a couple months, they should be able to count on each other for support. We walked them through what accountability looks like and then gave them a chance to choose partners for themselves.

We know that not all of them are going to follow through with accountability. In reality, there’s only a few of them that will actually take it seriously. But we also know that by planting the seed, they know what being accountable to someone looks like. They can take that with them into high school and hopefully use it someday when they need it most.

I’m excited to check in with everyone next week to see how they did, but I know that even if it’s not as successful as we hoped, they have a powerful tool in their back pockets to pull out sometime in the future.

Question: If you lead junior high students, have you tried teaching them about accountability?

Filed Under: Counseling, Small Groups, Spriritual Life, Youth Ministry Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Getting students to communicate with each other

April 25, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Carrying on with our (unintentional) theme of communication this week, I’ve been thinking recently about something that has happened in my junior high small group.

We have 9 guys in our group that are going to be ready at the end of the school year to move on into high school. We know that most (if not all) of them will stay together into a high school small group. Until last week, we hadn’t really empowered our students to rely on each other for stuff that they deal with on a daily basis. They come to us with stuff, which is great, but if we let them move on and they aren’t communicating with each other, things will fall apart. They need to build a level of accountability and trust with their small group brothers.

To encourage this, last week I got them thinking about unity. I explained that God calls us over and over again in the Bible to be unified. There is some unity in our group as it is now, but they still have a long way to go. I had them think about some things they can do between now and the end of the year to encourage unity within the group. They came up with some good suggestions, but the most important one was that they needed to bring themselves together to get through their issues as a team, not just with us as leaders.

Next week we’re going to push hard for accountability partners in the group, further building on this idea of unity and relying on each other for backup.

Question: How do you encourage unity and communication within your youth group? Let’s start the discussion here!

Filed Under: Small Groups, Youth Ministry Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Have you set goals for your youth group/small group?

November 7, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Steven: Last Wednesday I wrote about something I did with my junior high small group that was meant to encourage some goals that we had set for them. I didn’t go into the goal-setting part much, so we wanted to revisit that idea and encourage any leaders reading this to follow suit.

Before the small group year started, my co-leader and I met to discuss the guys in our group and what we wanted to see accomplished this year. They are all 8th graders, so this is the last year they will be in our group. The main thing we decided was that we didn’t want them to leave the group as the same people they were when they started with us. The other thing we realized is that we didn’t do a great job last year of intentionally encouraging them to take next steps in their walk with God that were specific to each guy.

As a result, those are two of the main goals we set for them this year – don’t leave the group the same way you came in, and take some kind of significant next step in your walk with God.

Goal-setting in the area of ministry is crucial if you want any kind of success. Last year we learned this the hard way when we didn’t really set any goals. We had some subconscious goals in mind, but we never put them on paper to hold ourselves accountable for them, and as a result we didn’t see a ton of fruit come from our group. This year is different. We have definite goals ON PAPER that we’ll constantly be referring back to throughout the year to not just keep our boys accountable, but ourselves as well.

Matt: Over the years I’ve discovered some important things about goals. First off, you have to write them down. If you don’t you’re gonna forget about them in about a week. Write them down and look at them constantly. I write down my goals on a 3X5 card and put it on my bathroom mirror that way I see it every morning.

Second, goals have to be measurable. If you can’t measure it, you have no way of knowing if you met, came close, or surpassed your goals. For instance, if your students make a goal that says, “By the end of the school year I want to be more spiritual,” how do you measure that? Instead make a goal that would be along these lines: “By the end of the school year I want to be spending 45 minutes a day in a quiet time with God.”

It easier to obtain your goals when you have someone pulling for you.

Two people are better off than one, for they can help each other succeed. -Ecclesiastes 4:9 NLT

When you have someone helping you who knows how important your goal is to you, it makes it so much easier to achieve your goal. Suggest to your students that they also use an accountability partner with their goals. As a leader make sure your students know that you are there for them as well. I intend to also set a couple of goals along with my students, that way they can see that I am very involved in this goal setting exercise, and that I don’t ask them to do something that I wouldn’t do.

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

“How do you want to be different by the end of the year?”

November 2, 2011 by 2 Comments

 

Before the C-Group year started, my co-leader and I sat down and met about what we want this year to be for our boys. We set a couple of goals for them based on their personalities and where they are in their walks with God. We set these goals for them, but we needed to figure out a way this week to make them set those goals for themselves. We needed some buy-in, some accountability.

That’s when it hit me.

Tonight we got the buy-in we were looking for. Here’s how we did it:

1. I brought a large, sealable envelope and two notecards for each guy.

2. We explained what we wanted them to be thinking about this year – how they want to be different by the end of the year, and a “next step” they need to take to grow closer to God.

3. On the first card, we told them to write what they wanted to change about themselves or how they wanted to be different by the end of the year. On the other, we told them to write what they think their “next step” should be.

4. They folded both cards and wrote their name on the outside of both, then dropped them into the envelope.

5. I sealed the envelope for two reasons – they knew that what they wrote was just between them and God. We weren’t going to be looking at them. I also wrote on the outside of the envelope, “Do not open until May 29, 2012.” This is the last official day we meet for small group this year.

Those notecards will be the way they keep themselves accountable. The envelope is going to be with us every week, so it will be a constant reminder to the guys that they set goals for themselves. By having them write it down and not tell anyone what they wrote, it was a way to get them to keep those goals in their minds. I’m super excited to open up that envelope at the end of the year and see how far they’ve come.

 

Filed Under: Small Groups, Youth Ministry Tagged With: , , , ,

Rick Warren’s “The Invisible War” small group study

August 22, 2011 by 1 Comment

Matt: Recently I wrote a post on this blog about a small group study we are doing with out small groups, check here for that post. We wanted to give you some details on how the study was going.

I think for my group of high school guys the biggest realization for them has been that temptation comes in all forms, not just lust. I think at the beginning of this study that’s what they thought this was going to be. After three weeks they are looking at how temptation can come in all shapes and sizes.

One thing I have noticed in my group and a couple of the other leaders who are doing this study with their groups have mentioned to me, this study is bringing out a LOT of discussion. Discussion is very healthy in a small group, and when you can get students talking, that’s half the battle of being a small group leader. A lot of the discussion in my group has been on ways to keep themselves in check, and about getting accountability partners. As we have talked about different issues where temptation comes into play I think a lot of students are realizing that they are not the only ones who struggle with a particular issue. I can’t recommend this study enough for a student ministry small group study. One thing we have done, as leaders we review the video before we meet with our students and have several discussion points ready. This series is getting the students talking and interacting so much, I’ve yet to get to all of the discussion points that I have each week.

Steven: This study has been surprisingly good for my junior high guys as well. To be honest, I was a little nervous about it when the topic first came up. The format was different than they were used to – we would be the only junior high group there out of five. The topic was familiar, but Pastor Rick’s primary audience is adults – not suitable for junior high.

Luckily those things haven’t really gotten in the way of this being a great study for the guys. They seem to have really clicked into this topic, which makes my job as a small group leader much easier. Rick does all the teaching, so all I have to do is ask relevant questions. For the most part, once we get rolling, the boys take over and lead us off with their own questions.

Students, especially junior high students, are hungry for information about temptation.

Temptation is something they face every day, and it’s not just related to lust or sex. There are so many different areas, and I think this study has been great in helping them recognize and identify the temptations they have.

We’re also trying to push accountability out of this. We know that accountability is one of the best ways to deal with temptation, so we’re trying to start early in getting these guys to turn to each other in times of need. So far it has been difficult to get them to be fully open with each other, but luckily they come to us with some of the stuff they struggle with.

Overall, this is a great study for students. Pastor Rick speaks in a way that is accessible to anyone, and it’s a relevant topic that everyone needs to hear. You can find out more about The Invisible War at Saddleback Church’s website.

Filed Under: Small Groups, Youth Ministry Tagged With: , , , , , ,