How to be a man part II

Here's the presentation from tonight's talk to our guys. I'm highlighting some concepts as road markers for them to look at as they pass on to manhood. The presentation will make more sense along with my talk, so it may seem a bit abstract.

How To Be a Man Part II on Prezi

Flowers don't lie: We are loved.

     Barak and I grew up in the same youth ministry. He was my theatrical mentor in middle and high school by example. I learned the art of improv from him and it was so encouraging to have an upperclassmen affirm me at such a young age. He really left a mark on my life.
   
     I did and do now look up to him as a good buddy of mine and a wicked talented artist, actor, and comedian. I go to his site often for inspiration and often wind up procrastinating there for a while, but it is time well spent. This video made me realize that I extend grace to other people but not myself.  Hey, if a flower says it, it must be true!

Let's realize that We really are loved!

Flowers Don't Lie from 50YearPlan on Vimeo.

homosexuality: stumbling towards a youth ministry response

You Were Born What Way? | Youth Specialties

I just came across this article on the YS site. It's about the first time a youth pastor had a young person tell of their struggle with sexual identity.

He walked into my office, a junior high student in my student ministry – a young man that I had led in the salvation prayer several years ago when he was still in our children’s ministry program.
This was my first year as a student pastor – a novice. A newbie. I thought I knew all there was to know and thought I was prepared for any situations that came my way.
I was not.
He sat in my office and quietly began to tell me that he was unsure of his sexual identity.

 This is not a new issue, of course. I am grateful for his perspective. Dealing with the topic of homosexuality is tricky for sure. In my experience there are no nuggets of truth to instantly take the struggle, feelings, or whatever away. I don't know of any homosexuals that have been argued out of their persuasion. 

If I could do anything differently… if I could somehow go back in time to that first encounter in my office, I think that I would want the first and last words out of my mouth to somehow communicate that I loved him. And then I’d take him out for a coffee or soda and try and let him know that I’d be with him for the long haul.

Honestly, I've been cautious to address homosexuality directly in our services, because I've noticed that highlighting a particular sin can sometimes make young people think that they SHOULD be struggling with that area. However, I do feel the responsibility to address the issue, but will another sermon really help? In my experience, the approach of the author is highly effective, it just takes effort, prayer, lots of time, and wisdom.

Does this topic come up in your church or youth group? How have you approached the subject? How have you seen God's redemption at work in this area?

What wakes me up at 7 AM Sunday morning: A mini rant

Can we talk? (I guess so since you're reading this.)

If I'm honest I have to admit that I'm frustrated. There are a handful of amazing youth workers that show up to volunteer first service on Sunday morning. I realize that support and consistency are huge emotional needs for me, but what frustrates me goes beyond my emotional health. I could rant about being true to one's word, keeping commitments, and duty. Relax, I don't think that will help. I realize that much of my frustration comes from the fact that I'm asking people to serve 12-14 year olds at 8 AM on a Sunday morning. The rest of it comes from an inability I've had as a leader to cast a vision that helps people see the importance of what happens from 8:30 AM -10:00 AM each week.

I want to be clear that I'm not mad at any specific person. I don't think there are bad guys or gals in this situation. I also do not think that a church service is an 'end all' 'be all' to a young teenager's spiritual formation.

I have however, accepted the responsibility and the task of making sure that young teens are loved, guided to God's presence, and personally engaged every week, regardless of the time.

Here's a few reasons why I show up on Sunday.

• Someone did it for me.
• On some level, young people expect to meet with God at church. It's an honor to be a concrete representative of Christ when someone is looking for Him!
• It's fun.
• It makes a difference. The longer I'm involved in relational youth ministry, the more effective I've been with teens, parents, and their families.  Trust takes time, and after 5 years I'm seeing more "results" than ever. 
• The "week to week" matters.  With tons of change at school, community, and family, young people benefit greatly from knowing that there is some consistency in their lives.

Ok, I feel a bit better now. I keep thinking if people really knew what goes on in our services, it would be difficult to STOP them from helping these teens. Maybe I'm crazy. 

Thoughts?

Back From Challenge Camp

I just got back from a great youth ministry experience. Several seasons of my life converged in one evening and it was quite overwhelming. This was caused by the realization that I already knew many of the young people transitioning into jhi. I knew them as YOUNG kids though. I know their parents and older siblings that have already graduated from jhi and high school. It's fun to see entire families move through the ministry here.  In the previous post I talked about how our Children's pastor ivited me to a special event for the outgoing 6th graders. I drove out to Giddings Texas about an hour away with one of the leaders from our middle school team, Matthew. It's so fun talking about ministry and catching up with our leaders. He's been on vacation, working hard, and going to school full time so we haven't caught up in quite a while. Matthew is a fantastic relational leader in middle school and high school groups and is a tremendous support to me administratively. It was nice just to chat on the way there and on the way back.

Camp Tejas is amazing. Our youth ministry at church has been on the waiting list for this camp for quite some time, but it's always too full to find a week for us to enjoy it. The camp will be well worth the wait. I was so impressed. Speaking of impressed, I was blown away by how smoothly the teams moved in and out of the services with so many kids to take care of. Pastor Ken and his team do a tremendous job with organizing summer camps!

After their evening service, we took the kids transitioning out of the 5th grade and into our middle school ministry on a hay ride. I thought it was interesting that most of them thought we were going to try to scare them or leave them in the woods. It was so cute that they were showing that they still wanted to be taken care of. The hay-ride was a great chance to get to know the kids and laugh a lot. for 6th graders, they were so fun, so bright, and FUNNY! One girl kept pulling hey out of the stack and saying, "HEY!" as if to say hello. Brilliant!

At the end of the hey-ride we came to a clearing with a huge campfire in it. Pastor Ken talked about how important this week is in their lives and how important the next few years will be in their lives and that they can nail down a commitment that night to serve God. Then he gave the youth ministry a huge endorsement and tried to settle their fears about the unknown youth ministry transition. We sang some praise songs and then I had a chance to encourage our kids to care more about what God says about them than way people say about them. I tried to unpack that idea in light of some embarrassing examples from my journey through middle school. I'm not sure how much of the talk they will remember because the fire was so stinkin' cool, but we did connect.

The thing that blew me a way was Pastor Ken asking them to commit to attending our middle school service for a year and really endorsing me and the jhi ministry. I was overcome by this show of trust because those kids LOVE him. Something really good is cookin' at our church. Departments are communicating. Parents are getting involved. Leaders are stepping forward from the congregation to help out the youth ministry. I can't wait to see what happens!

Rights of Passage: Challenge Camp

Today Shoreline's ministry to children is going to challenge camp! I'm going up tonight. We missed doing summer camp this year for middle school and high school, so this will be my summer camp fix for the year. In addition, I'm taking one of our all-star volunteers from middle school ministry with me in the car. Having Matthew with me will help redeem some of that driving time!


Tonight after the summer camp dinner and service we will do a hay-ride out to a bonfire for all of our kids going into the 6th grade. We'll have a worship leader with a guitar out there and have a moment with them to mark the transition in their lives. Pastor Ken, the children's pastor here at Shoreline has been so great to work with these past few years. For quite some time we've been trying to think about the best way to transition families from children's ministry into youth ministry. This is a great first step. 

A couple of years ago I went to a breakout session about rights of passage at the YS National Youth Workers Convention. The Author, Rick Bundschuh taught that many of our problems in western culture stem from a lack of rights of passage. Young people are forced to mark their own path to adult hood. I learned that it's important for a community of adults to mark out a path to adulthood, articulate it to their young people, and then affirm when adults emerge from adolescence. Tonight is a nice start. After all, we are only transitioning them out of elementary school, but hopefully it will be a night that these kids look back on as one of the road markers on their way to growing up.

Lift the City Fall Kickoff: Weekend Review

Fall Kick-off, Super Sunday, Back to School Weekend, whatever you call it that's what we had this weekend at Shoreline. We planned to rearticulate our senior pastor's vision to unveil God's love to our world. We did that by raising money for an orphanage and making cards for patience at Dell Children's hospital.

Feel: We had Alex, one of our Young Adult members of our tech team come in and DJ for us during hangtime and it was so great. Feel is so important to middle school aged youth and Alex made the room feel great with his music. I noticed our teens talking to one another more than usual and there was an overall easiness to the room that made people receptive to the message and to our cause.

Volunteer Involvement: It was fairly good. We have a lot of opportunity to help out in a hands on way during first service on Sunday. We've added some amazing new helpers in both services though. Chris, Donna, Christella, and Latonya have been key players in getting things going in the right direction first and second service. Thanks guys!

Music: We started out our meeting with the band on stage playing live music as our group came in. That felt pretty good too. There was a creative element planned that combined video with live music, but it never synced up quite right. If we do that again I think we'll need to practice it a few times. We didn't have the full band that we are used to, but the youth responded really well to a post worship set altar call.

Overall: I think the most important things that needed to happen did happen. Young people were challenged to look beyond themselves and live for something bigger. They met new friends and were connected with caring adults. We raised a ton of money for the orphanage and the cards our kids made were super cool!

Next Week: Lift the City part 2 - We will talk more about being the church and getting into community. After the teaching we are all making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to give away to Austin's homeless populations through a local shelter. The youth are bringing the supplies to make them with too.

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Memories

Ok...so this is a wee bit lame...but I want to see what you guys come up with. Make me laugh or cry...or ignore...whatever.

Leave one memory that you and I had together.
It doesn't matter if you knew me a little or a lot, anything you remember.
Don't send a message, leave a comment on here.
Next, re-post this as “memories" in your notes and see how many people leave a memory about you.

Game Idea: Bran' Spankin' New

Last week was our 2009 new year kickoff service called by the title above about being a new creation in Christ. We decided to give two guys a makeover and have the group decide who's makeover they liked the best. We were careful to pick guys that would like that kind of thing and we were careful to say that they were evaluating the wildest craziest makeover...not which PERSON they liked the best. The 'stylist' was being evaluated, not the person being made over.


I'm generally not a fan of elimination games in youth ministry. Here are the pictures snapped from my phone. (my next phone will have a better camera)



The guy in the cream sickle suit is not Benny Hinn rooting for UT, it's our intern.




And the winner is...

Middle School Birthday Parties

I love watching new volunteers at these things.

Some of my handy work as an English teacher

I got an e-mail today from one of my former students. Here it is:

"Thank you.
Everyone is a fun person.

If it can do the basketball with you, it is happy."

I miss you Norifumi!

bare youth room.

Tonight I'm observing one of our wonderful volunteers, Kyle.

He's taken over as teaching pastor of our Wednesday night gathering and its added a lot of life to Wednesdays. He programs the whole night and its a huge help.

Tonight we decided to go on with service despite our monthly tradition of joining the grown ups for communion service. As a result about 1/2 of our regulars didn't come in.

I used to cringe at low numbers on a night, but now I see it as an opportunity to connect with everyone there.

Here is a pic of our chapel. This is the room that well get to upgrade a little. The room next door is the one getting a major face lift.

Sock stuffer

Tonight we played a great game of giant 4 square because we found a kickball and some painters tape. Sometimes the best youth ministry moments are spontaneous.

When we started our meeting we divided into two groups and asked for a volunteer to put on giant socks. Then we had their teams empty pockets and purses to stuff the giant socks with.

I didn't find the game, but had heard of it before. I especially appreciated the added twist of making the contestants do jumping jacks with out loosing and items. The guys group wound up stuffing trash in their socks. It was beautiful.

Where did they go? Skater Small Group

In February, we started a small group for guys who like to skate board. The format is pretty simple. We skate then we do a short bible study and pray. A few months ago our services had a ton of skaters at them, so we started a small group around interest. Since then ice noticed a small shift in our culture. Not as many guys skate. I don't think it is anything we did. I just wonder if 20 or so guys decided to find their identity in something else.

My first blog from my phone.

I didn't know I could do this but I just had to post this pic of our worship leader. We played this game called donut try this at home, which inspired this game called fisher of men. We put donuts on this HUGE fishing pole and had people eat them. They loved it.

weekend review

This weekend's services were really fun and they had a good feel to them:

creativity: We tried a different call to worship that worked well even though it was the first time lift was exposed to it. It also seemed like this weekend was full of videos. They all seemed to work well. The videos were a scripture reading with cool graphics, the narnia preview, and an old fresh prince video we edited and used for a sermon intro.

fun: lots of smiles all around, though i feel like our lobby experience is still lacking.
health: We're smaller but healthier these days. Some of our regulars that regularly give us a challenge were really engaged in the song service and i didn't hear a peep out of them during the teaching time.

systems: We had some new kids that had a good time, but I want us to get better at training our regulars and high school leaders to engage the new comers. Also, we have to figure something out for setup. It takes one person an hour to do (me). it takes 2 people 30 minutes and so forth... The problem is getting people to come to set up on either Saturday night or super early Sunday morning. Any takers? :)

leadership: We have some good leaders in our 'pipeline' that I want to get together with this week. Right now it seems like 3 out of 10 new leaders stick. I think the ones that Marie and I really get to know or find a place to serve in stick, and the ones we don't just find other places to serve.

extra: We went to see Narnia yesterday with a ton of our peoples. I was proud at the turnout and even some parents came!!! I was extra proud of that. The movie was great and all of us (about 50-60) gave a standing ovation. I recommend the movie without reservation.