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Stay tuned, there’s more coming!

August 20, 2012 by Leave a Comment

This past week or so our blogs have been sporadic at best. But there is a very good reason for this. We took own own advice and were on vacation last week. If you want to excel in ministry–especially student ministry–you need to take a break, re-charge your batteries and re-connect with God on a big level every now and then. The Bible even tells us to get rest. While on vacation we both spend some great quiet times with God and new blog post ideas came to both of us. We can’t wait to share those on this blog.

We’ll be back this week with new posts and new ideas and ways of sharing God with students. Stay tuned!

Filed Under: Youth Ministry Tagged With: , ,

Is your life “copy and paste”?

June 18, 2012 by 1 Comment

Matt: It’s so easy to get in a routine and to make ourselves busy. It might even mean making yourself busy doing something that you love. The problem is over time, no matter how much you love what you do, you can get burned out. When that happens everyone loses. For me it’s work. I can get so busy with work and not taking time off that I get stuck in a rut and then I feel overwhelmed. Sometimes we need to have someone point that out to us because we get so wrapped up in our daily activity that we don’t realize the effect it’s having on us.

I’ve had to do some real soul-searching here and realize that I’m in a rut right now. We need rest and we need to step out of the day-to-day routines that trap us. When you’re in student ministry either as a career or as a volunteer we need to remember that students are watching us very closely. They see what we do. It’s important that we don’t set the example of spending so much time serving God that we forget to stop and take time to worship God. When you work for a church, especially a mega-church where there is just so much good you can do and get involved in that you don’t realize that at the same time you’re hurting other areas of your life. We also need to remember that God tells us to take a Sabbath. He knows that we are no good to him if we don’t take time out to recharge our batteries and keep our ministries fresh.

Steven: When I look at my life, I notice that I have a tendency to fall into periods of repetition. Especially during a school semester, each week seems to be a copy and paste of the week before. This is good for structure and keeping on task, but after a while the monotony starts to wear me down. Between work, school, relationships, ministry and other things, there’s a lot competing for my time. After a while, there needs to be a period where I take a break in the repetition and free up some of the things that are competing for my time.

Luckily I recognized this trend early on and I made a course correction to keep my sanity. Normally I work at the church Saturday through Monday. Because I’ll be starting a brand new group of 7th graders this year and I want to get to know some of them before we start small group signups, I decided to take Saturdays off so I could serve with our junior high ministry’s weekend services. Not only does this give me the time relief and break in monotony I need, but it helps me to get to know some of our new students that just came in to our ministry. I had to give up some valuable hours of work (and the pay that comes with it), but I know the tradeoff is way more important right now.

A great resource that talks a lot about freeing up time for the most important things in your life is Doug Fields’s “What Matters Most.” It’s a really quick read (45 minutes or so), and you can get it nice and cheap on Doug’s site. It even ships out from his garage, so it may even come with Doug’s fingerprints on it!

Filed Under: Encouragement, Spriritual Life Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Are you as effective as you can be without rest?

November 28, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Matt: This might seem like a strange topic to write on but its one that is very important to student ministry workers and volunteers. If you’re not getting rest then you’re not giving all you can to your students or to God. If God has placed student ministry on your heart, it should be something that you are giving your all. It’s hard to do that if you’re not taking time to rest. You need time to recharge your batteries, you need time to stop and look at what you’re doing. Once you do that ask yourself  these questions about your ministry:

  • Am I being as effective as I can be?
  • Am I putting students first?
  • Am I spending time on putting together a lesson or am I throwing something together at the last-minute?
  • Am I taking time to listen to what students have to say or am I so busy I don’t have time for that?

If you don’t like the answers to any of those questions you need to stop and slow down and figure out how you can be the best you can be at student ministry. I think a lot of students  have adults in their lives that don’t really give them the time they need or really listen to them. I don’t want to be just another one of those people in their life. I want to be someone they know that God has placed there and someone who will give them quality time. The Bible actually commands us to rest, even God took a day and rested after he created the world. If God needs to find time to rest, I’m guessing we do too!

Steven: With our busy schedules every day, it can be super difficult to find a time to slow down. Between 6 classes, working part time, ministry and trying to be intentional in relationships, there is just not enough time in a week for me to find a normal “Sabbath” day like I know I should. If you’re a youth worker, or even if you’re not, chances are you’re in the same boat.

So how do we find time to set aside to just rest?

For me, it would be ideal if I could set aside a whole day to rest, but it’s just not possible. Instead, I make sure to find pockets of time throughout the week to accomplish the same thing. There are definitely days that I know I won’t be able to do this, but it’s important to plan ahead. For me, I have to put everything on a calendar. Every meeting, class, small group and appointment goes on the calendar on my iPhone. The advantage of doing that is I can visually see the the pockets of time I have to rest. Sometimes I’ll even schedule a “Do Nothing” time on the calendar to make sure I get the rest I need.

Without getting rest throughout the week, I know I will not be as effective as I can be. I’ve had weeks where I’ve had so much work to do that it seems non-stop. Those are the weeks that I look back and realize how little I actually got done. It seems weird, but when you get rest, you’re actually more effective. Think of how this would look in your ministry–rather than going hard for a straight week, take some intentional time out of each day to just. slow. down.

Question: What is the best way for you to slow down during the week? Share it here!

Filed Under: Spriritual Life Tagged With: , , ,

Time For Rest

August 23, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Life comes at us pretty fast and if you’re a student ministry worker or volunteer it can come at you non-stop. But there is one thing we need to remember to do and that’s to rest. Now people who know me are reading this and saying, “Matt is writing about needing rest? The guy who works 6 days a week? The guy who has not taken vacation for a year and a half is writing about rest? The guy who is hyper and annoying is writing about rest?”

Yeah, I am and the reason I am is because Steven convinced me to take a week off last week. A week off from everything and just rest. Not gonna lie, the first couple of days I felt awkward and felt like I needed to be someplace. But by the time Wednesday rolled around I started feeling good and rested. It also made for some interesting quiet time with God and it was then that I remembered that the Bible commands us to get rest so we can be better prepared to work in God’s garden.

I came back feeling refreshed and recharged. I am very good at having a quiet time everyday, its been part of my daily routine for over a year now. But when I did my quiet time this past week I felt like I was putting more into it, and getting more out of it. Getting rest is necessary for good health. That’s something we need as a student ministry volunteer, if for no other reason than being able to get out of the way of a dodge ball being flung at us from a high school senior who has a throwing arm that equals Nolan Ryan’s.

I know I have not been as effective as I could be. By going full-steam all the time and not resting and recharging has led to health problems for me and it’s let stress take too much of a toll on me. I make better decisions when I’m rested, I have better advice when I’m rested, I’m funnier when I’m rested. I could go on and on but I think you get what I mean. So, I have committed to make sure I’m mixing the proper amount of relaxing time with work time so I don’t get back in the same rut again. Pray for me, because I know how I am and I know this won’t be easy for me, but I know its something I need to do. You need to also.

Filed Under: Spriritual Life, Volunteer ministry Tagged With: , , ,

What we’re doing in youth ministry this summer

June 13, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Steven: Summer is quickly approaching. For me, summer is already here, and it feels great to have more time to relax and recharge after a busy semester of school. Out here in California, a lot of our students in junior high and high school are also getting ready to break for the summer, so my co-leader and I have been thinking about what we want to do with them over the summer.

As a student ministry, Saddleback Church typically starts and ends their small groups along with the school year. Start around September, end sometime in June. For my group, I realized that we probably need more time with them this year than just a 9-month school year. A few weeks ago we asked the boys if they would be interested in meeting through the summer instead of taking a few months off, and we got a unanimous YES. It was great to see that they had bonded and didn’t want to go three months without seeing the guys.

With that being said, we do want to allow some “break time” with the summer. We normally meet in one of the boys’ house, so we’ll meet somewhere else to give them a break from the mayhem and chaos that happens every Tuesday night. We’re also going to keep our discussions and lessons a bit lighter. We realize that a lot of the guys will be out on vacations and other commitments, so summer attendance will be lower. We’d rather wait to do the heavier lessons when we have more of the guys available. Lastly, we want to be more intentional about spending time together outside of small group. Going to the beach, going to spontaneously grabbing a bite to eat, going to baseball games are all things that keep the group connected, but aren’t as heavy during a normal break time.

I’m so excited for what the next year has in store for us, and I’m just as excited for this summer to be able to continue the relationships we’ve already formed.

Matt: This year my group was comprised mostly of seniors who are graduating which means this is our last week with them during the “official” small group time. Our guys have asked us if we can continue to meet during the summer. I love that! It’s a sign to me that they get this whole small group thing and what a relationship with God is all about. But I want to change some things during the summer. First, I’m not going to lead, I’m not going to prepare a lesson each week. I want them to do that. I want them to pick a couple of leaders and each week, have one of them put together a lesson. That’s how its done in adult small groups, might as well get them ready for that. Second, I want to spend time with them outside of the normal small group time. I want to spend time doing fun stuff, movies, baseball games, beach time, etc. I want it to be random time, but also intentional time spent together.

During the fun stuff though, don’t forget to add some Jesus time in there. Show them what its like to incorporate Jesus into all areas of their lives. Use different events during the summer to highlight different lessons, for instance on the Fourth of July, have them do a lesson on freedom and use biblical passages that highlight freedom. On hot days, use that time to talk to them about being modest in how they dress, this is really important if you have a group of female students, but sometimes guys need that same lesson.

I want to use the summer to prep them for next year. I want them to be ready to start a college age small group and bring all the necessary skills with them so they can hit the ground running. I want to send my seniors off into the world as Godly young men, guys that can be a great example of what it means to live your life as a Christian and be an example to others.

Question: If your small group is going to continue to meet during the summer, what steps are you doing to take full advantage of the time?

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

Sabbath Sunday

May 22, 2011 by Leave a Comment

While it is our goal to post something new every day on this blog, we also feel that it’s super important to take time off. Not only do we think it’s important, God does too. With that being said, Sundays at GenToGenYM will now be known as “Sabbath Sunday.”

Make sure to take some time off today and spend some time with the Lord. See you tomorrow!

(Note: To those of you who have put two and two together and realized we’re doing what we just said we didn’t want to do – post on Sunday – we actually wrote this post earlier this week and scheduled it. So there, smarty pants.)

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