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Investment in Small Group

January 23, 2013 by Leave a Comment

The other day I was talking to a friend of mine who is also a high school small group leader. He told me of an example he was using with his students about how they can get the most of out of being in a small group and I loved the idea. Loved it so much I’m stealing it and using it tonight with my group.

He and his co-leader are telling their students to think of being in a small group this way, imagine that they are giving them ten thousand dollars. They are giving it to them now in their freshmen year and over the course of the next four years they need to invest the ten thousand and make it grow. At the end of four years, at the end of their senior year in high school they need to give the ten thousand dollars back. Once you do that, what do you have to show for it?

Was small group just something you did for a few years, you showed up once a week had a snack and socialized with your friends and then sat there quietly while others participated in the group? You never got in the habit of having a quiet time everyday and you didn’t reply on prayer and reaching out to your brothers in small group for help.

Or did you do just the opposite and really invest your time and effort in small group. You reached out to others; you made a quiet time part of your day- everyday not just once in a blue moon. You put on your suit of spiritual armor to help battle the inevitable spiritual warfare that will come your way. You got deeply rooted in your church and in God so that when winds of trouble came you were able to stay standing and not get knocked down in the wind.

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

Focus

January 4, 2013 by Leave a Comment

I recently met with a former student from one of my past small groups. He told me he had disconnected from God and he wanted to get reconnected and he also wanted to stay connected so that he didn’t go through this again. One of the things I talked to him about was where his focus was. If we take time to focus on God everyday then we stay connected, at least I know I do. But if I have a day or two in a row when I don’t have a quiet time and I don’t intentionally take time to focus on God it’s easy to stray away. It also makes it easier for us to sin. This student’s response to me was that after I explained it that way, he felt that was the problem he was having. He was not focusing on God, he was keeping God on a shelf and only bringing Him out when he needed help with something or it seemed like life was throwing him a curve ball.

I think a lot of us do that, I know I’m guilty of it from time to time. I think that Satan loves when we go through these times of losing our focus on God. It makes it so easy for him to find the crack in our spiritual armor and the spiritual warfare begins.

There are a lot of ways to make sure you take time to focus on God every day. One is to remember that whatever you do, do it for the glory of God. Steven and I write this blog as a way to glorify God. When we write together we always start with prayer and we both pray that what we write will glorify God, that some where a  student ministry leader going through a similar situation or problem will read this and find some information they can use. We also pray that what we write will be God’s words not ours.

Students need to apply the same principle to what they are doing. Keep God in everything they do, take time to connect with God and set aside time every day to focus on their relationship with God. If they do that, the relationship will stay strong and connected. It’s just like our personal relationships with family and friends. If we don’t stay in contact and connect with them, the bond grows weak and we feel separated from each other.

Where is your focus today?

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

Keep Fighting The Good Fight

December 8, 2011 by Leave a Comment

What a week this has been…and it’s only Thursday! Last weekend one of the guys in my high school small group gave his testimony in our high school services and he did an awesome job. Several students going through what he has experienced in his life could relate to his testimony and came up to talk to him afterwards. It’s awesome to see God use one of my students in that way, it shows all of the guys in my group that God can and will use you when you open yourself up and tell Him you will do whatever it takes.

At the same time I’ve had four of the guys in my group come up to me this week and ask for some advice and help with some stuff going on in their lives. And while I love that they feel comfortable with me to talk to me about anything, it kills me to see the pain on their faces while they explain what’s going on.

This week Steven sent out a tweet that said in the past couple of weeks he has experienced the highest highs and lowest lows in four years of student ministry.

What’s the point of this post? I think I have several that are rattling around in my head but there are a couple of main ones. First up – Spiritual Warfare. Satan HATES when things go good in your ministry and you win more and more for Jesus. His tactic is to bring you down emotionally. Well sorry Satan but Steven and I aren’t falling for that one. We will not back down and we will not give you power over our minds or our ministries. We’ll keep plugging along and bringing students to Christ and helping them grow in their faith. The one thing that is always true: God is faithful.

Second one and I still have to remind myself about this one. It’s not my timing it’s God’s. I’m just a piece of the puzzle. I won’t back down, I’ll keep finding ways to grow and stretch the faith of my students to grow their relationship with God.

We all have good and bad seasons in student ministry. My hope today is that somewhere, someplace, sometime, other youth workers who have experienced what Steven and I have this past couple weeks will read this post and they won’t back down either.

We’d love to hear your experiences with this and how you fought back.

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

Retro Friday // Whose Time is it Anyway?

August 12, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Some of our frustrations in ministry are because we want to do things on our timeline, not God’s.

Steven: I have a bittersweet quality when it comes to youth ministry: I’m a fixer. While it might sound really great that I want to fix students’ problems and issues, it can also get me into a lot of trouble. I do think God wired me to want to help people and care about them and want them to be better, but the other side of it is that I get frustrated when I can’t fix them.

This week my junior high small group co-leader and I were planning on wrapping up a 3-week series on “pains and struggles.” This week we were talking about how people are designed to want to help each other, so we should be seeking to help people around us recover from their pains and struggles. As we were leading the lesson, our 13 seventh grade boys decided to go into “rowdy mode.” No matter what we did, we couldn’t get more than two minutes into discussion without them going off on a tangent and then we would have to reel them back in. The part that frustrated me most was that the boys causing most of the disruption were guys that have the most struggles in their lives. Normally we would spend some extra time during the week with these guys ministering to them and loving on them, but we’ve run into a common issue: lack of time.

My co-leader and I are both college students. I just transferred to a Christian university that I commute to everyday, and the workload is more than I’m used to. All in all, I have a lot less time than I did a month ago. The downside to this is that I don’t feel like I have enough time to minister to my students that need more attention, which then leads to a less-focused small group time. The irony in it all is that one of the things we tried to teach the guys this week was to remember God’s timeline; when we’re trying to help people, it’s usually not going to happen overnight, it’s a process that takes some time. After I left group that night, I was frustrated with the lack of focus in our group, but I had to force myself to remember that God’s timing is WAY better than mine is. I made it a point to spend some time in prayer that night and connect with God to give Him more control over our group, rather than try to take care of it all myself.

Matt: I use to hear people talk about spiritual warfare and think to myself that was something they made up to explain away mistakes they had made that were now coming back to them.  I now feel very differently about that term.  I have felt it myself now, and it’s very real.  It seems the closer I get to God, the closer my students would get to God, I would have something happen in my life that would affect me in a negative way.  I have been dealing with an on-going health problem that I know is Satan pulling me back.  I have even thought to myself, why is God letting this happen?  I’ve been doing all the right things, doing all the good works, why is this happening, why are my prayers not being answered?  It really is a simple answer.  Satan hates when we grow closer and closer to God.  He hates seeing the positive change we bring to students lives when we let God work through us.

 I have recently come to realize that my prayers are NOT going unanswered.  I’m just judging them on MY timetable, not God’s.  I remember the phrase, “The Teacher is always silent during a test.”  That describes what I’m going through!  I know that God is stretching and growing me right now in ways that I don’t understand, but one day it will be very obvious.  How do I battle spiritual warfare?  Simple answer, I tell my friends know what I’m going through and ask for their prayers.  I dive really deep in my quiet time now.  I read the Bible, pray and then sit back and LISTEN to what God is telling me.  I know this season won’t last forever, even though it seems like it will.

This is my frustration right now in my ministry that I’m dealing with.  I  know I’m not alone, I have people who care, truly care about me praying and loving on me right now.  My health problem seems so small now that I look at it in that pretense.  When i come out on the other end of this season, I know I’m going to be stronger, more faithful and a better teacher, mentor, brother, friend and small group leader than I was before.  I know I’m going to be passing down my spiritual gifts to the next generation.

How do your frustrations affect your ministry, and how do you handle them?

Filed Under: Encouragement, Retro Friday, Youth Ministry Tagged With: , , , , , ,