SYM Show: Margin Smargin

On this week's show the fellas clear up the fact that Starbucks IS NOT an official sponsor, they get cool new shirts from youthHOPE and Jason takes issue with Josh and Kurt's articles about vacation and days off. These Supertones guys can be quite opinionated!

SYM Show: Margin Smargin

On this week's show the fellas clear up the fact that Starbucks IS NOT an official sponsor, they get cool new shirts from youthHOPE and Jason takes issue with Josh and Kurt's articles about vacation and days off. These Supertones guys can be quite opinionated!

Help Junior Highers Ruin Their Lives!

Today I received in the mail what I think may be the best quiet time/devotional tool to come our way in a long, long time.
Ruin Your Life by my friend Nate Severson and Chris Folmsbee is a highly creative book of 46 activities. Borrowing from the best selling Wreck This Journal, Ruin Your Life functions as a sort of interactive journal meets scrap book meets quiet time tool that I think will have students captivated IF they bite on the premise.The premise being that teenagers are willing to truly engage and interact with such a book instead of merely reading traditional devotions.

I think once a junior higher actually tries one or two of the experiences, he/she will quickly develop a desire to complete them all.We all know junior high students find it tough to spend time with God a meaningful, regular, experience and I think this book may just do the trick!

Well done, guys….well done.

SYM Show: Worship Band Wacko

Two weeks in a row with no show sponsors has Jason in a fit, so he makes a passionate plea for somebody to send the guys sunglasses. This week's discussion includes student-lead worship bands (and the risk that come with them) and thoughts about how to dismiss a volunteer who "doesn't fit".

SYM Show: Worship Band

Two weeks in a row with no show sponsors has Jason in a fit, so he makes a passionate plea for somebody to send the guys sunglasses. This week's discussion includes student-lead worship bands (and the risk that come with them) and thoughts about how to dismiss a volunteer who "doesn't fit".

P2P: Are You Having Fun?

Welcome to our first edition of Power To The People (from now on just called, P2P)!
P2P is an occasional shout out to other in-the-trenches youth workers by pointing readers of this blog to a post on one of theirs in the hopes that youth ministry (in our case, mostly related to MS ministry) influence wouldn’t belong solely to the “Youth Ministry 1%” (of which I am a proud, card-carrying member….). All of us are smarter than a few of us, and all of us can challenge and stretch the community more effectively than just a few of us.

Wow, that is a really noble sounding proclamation for what will likely be a fairly small portion of the content on this blog….but we’re taking baby steps!

Today’s P2P post is from David Hausknecht who is a middle school pastor in Lexington, KY. He recently wrote a Post entitled, “Are You Having Fun?”.Here is an excerpt:

“Last week my wife relayed a story to me that happened at our Sunday morning middle school service. Nicole (my wife) met a girl who was there for the first-time and (most likely) was there because her parents made her. She had a pretty sour demeanor, arms crossed, not interested in what was happening. She kept asking my wife when “class” started. Nicole continued to assure her that our middle school service is nothing like a “class,” and in fact, what we were doing in the moment was all part of the experience. Between the Interlude dance, the French Fry Fling game, and the rocking worship by our band, this girl was clearly confused. She had her paradigm of church in a small little “box,” and our version didn’t fit in that box…..”

Go to David’s Blog HERE to read the rest!

My Favorite Tweet of the Last Month

I don’t know how many tweets you see in a month … much less how many you actually remember for very long.  But there’s one that I read this past month that has stuck with me – and I think that it might stick with me for a long time to come.

 “The penalty of bad leadership: you’re always stuck with the same problems; The reward of good leadership: you get to solve new ones.”

I’ve heard it said that when it comes down to it, “Leadership” at its core is figuring out how to solve problems.  And I think I buy that.   But sometimes, when I have to try to solve the same problem over & over, I subconsciously blame outside factors.  (If parents would only _______,       If students would just _____ … then this problem would be so much easier to solve!)

 But this tweet has made me re-examine the recurring problems I’m trying to solve.   And It’s made me think: maybe they’re repeat-problems because my l need to find a new way to tackle them.  So this month, I’ve been trying some new strategies.  And although it’s not been “perfect” – I do see progress.  And that’s been encouraging.

The other dimension of this tweet that I really like Is this:  Sometimes I’m tempted to think “If I was just a better leader, all the problems would get solved!”  And looking back at my own leadership experience, (and leaders that I respect most), I’d have to say that’s just not true.  There will always be another problem, another challenge.  But that’s actually a pretty exciting thought!   Because if I’m taking ground on the “old problems”, I can see results that encourage me to tackle the new ones!

So – there you have it.  My favorite tweet of the month.

What about you?  Any “favorite tweet” from the last 30 days or so?

SYM Show: Painfully Powerful

This week the guys discuss 50 Shades of Grey (even though they know nothing about it), overly powerful parents and when it's okay to leave your church. Plus, Kurt accuses a Christian band of lacking integrity.

SYM Show: Painfully Powerful

This week the guys discuss 50 Shades of Grey (even though they know nothing about it), overly powerful parents and when it's okay to leave your church. Plus, Kurt accuses a Christian band of lacking integrity.

Power To The People!

In my recent, highly controversial and edgy post (which, as suspected, resulted in a spike in traffic), I made this statement:

“Men and women in full-time local church youth ministry ARE the experts. There I said it…and it feels good! No, you don’t have to be in full-time ministry to care about students, to make a kingdom impact, to have opinions and a level of expertise; but let’s be honest for a minute: The people who spend 50 hours a week neck-deep in the local church youth ministry world do have a little bit more to say on the subject. Let me tweak that statement. They may not have more to say, as there is obviously no shortage of stuff being said about youth ministry, but what they do have to say carries more weight….especially the stuff said by people in average-sized churches doing average stuff! Sadly, most of these youth ministry experts don’t have a way to voice their expertise!”

I’d like to help change that in some small, baby-step, ways.Here are four:

1) If you are a full-time youth worker in a local church setting and have a blog that you update regularly, PLEASE leave the URL to your blog in the comments section, and I’ll begin to frequently feature a blog from “The Youth Worker Nation” here in hopes that it will give attention to folks with good stuff to say that aren’t being heard like they should. Being featured on this blog isn’t a big deal (certainly not as big a deal as being featured on the BIG DOG BLOGS like Griffin, Fields or Marko) but…it’s a baby step in the right direction!

2) If you don’t have a blog, but have something to say….write a 600(ish) word article and if it passes our highly intricate approval process we will post it here for you!Send your article to symshow.gmail.com and put “BLOG” in the subject line.

3) You’ve probably seen these but don’t know that you likely qualify to write one! The “everyday youth ministry” line of books from Simply Youth Ministry includes books from the well known experts, BUT is also the place Simply/Group is giving a voice/power to the in-the-trenches youth workers who might normally not have an opportunity to get published! These books are shorter, less polished and often a tad bit grittier than what you would normally expect, and that’s because they’re mostly written by youth workers who are neck-deep in local church ministry. If you have a proposal for a book that would fit this line, shoot Nadim an email at nadim@simplyyouthministry.com and he’ll give you more details! Here is one of my favorites.And another. And another.

4) It’s a secret….can’t tell you right now….give us a few months….it’s awesome.

“The 3 Harms” — and High Risk Conversations

This isn’t the most “upbeat post” I can think of, but it’s pretty important stuff in our ministry as we get the school year started. Our church’s pastoral care area has been a huge help to us in student ministry when it comes to prepping our volunteers to navigate “high risk conversations” with students.

Throughout the course of the year, we’ll have hundreds & hundreds of conversations with students. And some percentage of them will have some drama associated with them. (I’m not commenting on which gender might produce more drama … ☺ ) But there’s clearly a difference between a high-drama conversation, and a conversation that moves into the area of “High Risk”. Over the last few years I’ve been introduced to some language that not only helps me, but also helps us to prepare every one of our volunteers who work with students.

Around here, we talk about listening for one of The 3 Harms.
Being Harmed – This can include physical or sexual abuse, but also any kind of neglect or exposure to harmful materials or circumstances
Harming Others – This includes threats or abuse of other people, or even threats about it.
Harming Self – Quite a range here, from self-injury, suicidal thoughts, drug/alcohol abuse, and more.

In each of these cases, we tell our volunteers not to hesitate to call 911 if immediate safety is a concern. And then, we let them know how they can reach out to someone else on our team for help. Handling situations like this alone is never a good idea!

As we’re training our volunteers in our middle school ministry, we like to remind them of a couple of things. First, we’ll never leave them on their own in dealing with a situation like this! They’re likely to be the first one to find out about an issue, though, from a student in their group, so we want them to be prepared. And secondly, we’ve found that the chances of one of these things happening with their small group of 6-10 students is actually fairly low… because we don’t want to freak them out.

When I do run across these high-risk situations, my other rule-of-thumb is to never handle them by myself, either. I always involve other pastors from our church as we try to help students navigate tough times like these.

Controversy Erupts At Simply Youth Ministry

Okay, there’s no controversy at SYM (other than the ongoing debate about Jason Ostrander’s skinny jeans).
But I’ve noticed that controversial blog posts seem to entice readers (in fact some of you decided to read this post simply based on the title), and while this tactic is usually denied by those who write in such a way, it was admitted the other day by a blogger I read who stated that he was afraid his week-long series about missions would hurt his stats due to lack of edgy material.

Since I’ve never been edgy or controversial….I thought I’d give it a shot!These random thoughts truly are about as edgy as I get:

*I think bloggers who post controversial topics for the sake of driving traffic to their site lack integrity…unless they admit that it is part of their strategy.

* Without question, junior high ministry is the most important (but not hardest) ministry in the church.

* I went to see the documentary, 2016, Obama’s America because I love stuff that is conspiratorial in nature. My conclusion: Tough to argue with the facts of Obama’s background and upbringing, but drawing conclusions about what his past means about his plans for the future is tricky (maybe dangerous?). But the dude has an interesting history!

* I’ve never been so tempted to stay home on election day. I can’t see myself voting to put Obama back in office, and I can’t see myself voting to put Romney in his place. If I stay home, it wouldn’t be a statement of “I don’t care”, but rather one of, “I care too much to lend my vote of approval to either one of these guys”.

* Men and women in full-time local church youth ministry ARE the experts. There I said it…and it feels good! No, you don’t have to be in full-time ministry to care about students, to make a kingdom impact, to have opinions and a level of expertise; but let’s be honest for a minute: The people who spend 50 hours a week neck-deep in the local church youth ministry world do have a little bit more to say on the subject. Let me tweak that statement. They may not have more to say, as there is obviously no shortage of stuff being said about youth ministry, but what they do have to say carries more weight….especially the stuff said by people in average-sized churches doing average stuff! Sadly, most of these youth ministry experts don’t have a way to voice their expertise!

* I would describe myself best as a “Big Tent Christ-follower”.Here’s what, to me, matters most:
- Salvation through Jesus’s grace alone by faith.
- Authority of Scripture.
Ummm….and that’s about it. Almost every other debate about doctrine, denominations, etc. bores me.

* The biggest sin I see in Christian Leadership circles?Pride. By far. In a landslide. I see it every time I look around, and every time I look in the mirror.

Okay, here’s your chance: Push back, agree…or post something controversial of your own in the comments!

Live To Give

Since he was 9-years old, Austin Gutwein has been raising money to help children in Africa who are orphaned due to HIV/Aids. In addition to raising over three million dollars (yes, you read that correctly), he speaks to thousands of teenagers each year challenging them to use their gifts and passions to make a difference in the world.

Austin, now an 18-year old about to enter college, just released his second book, Live To Give. Austin’s story is unique, but he really isn’t; he’s a pretty normal teenager who decided years ago that he wanted to help people who were hurting.

In a time when society seems to be lowering the bar of expectations for our teenagers, Austin is a great example the “different way” Jesus calls us (including teenagers) to. Buy a bunch of his new book and make them available for cheap to your students….or just buy one and use it to create your own “Live To Give” teaching series.

Let’s rally behind teenagers who are breaking the mold!

Cheesy Vacation Analogies

Our family returned last night from a week-long trip that consisted of four days camping with friends followed by three days in Yosemite with Rachel’s side of the family. On the long drive home, I started thinking of some cheesy vacation-to-ministry analogies that I thought I’d share.On the “Kurt should have been thinking of other things on the drive home” scale of 1-10….these might be an 11.

- Rumors Of Bears Swirled Through Our Campsite, Making Everybody Nervous, But There Were No Sightings: Makes me wonder how much time we spend in our ministries worrying and fixating on stuff that, at the very best has little chance of manifesting, or, at the very worst ZERO chance….we worry about stuff that has no impact on the day-to-day realities of our ministry.

- My Family Caught One Fish….ONE! We were so excited to spend four nights fishing at the lake, only to be almost completely shut out. Fish were biting; just not our bait. Kai Hall was the big winner bagging about 6 fish over the course of the trip. Kai is 6 years old. How do you respond when ministry disappoints? You plan a big event and hardly anybody shows up? You get excited about a project, but can’t get others on board?How do you respond when you get “shut out”….but other ministries seem to be getting all sorts of “bites”?

- Almost All The Waterfalls In Yosemite Were Dry: The source of their water, in this case snow-melt, had completely vanished. With no fresh source to fill them, the waterfalls quickly dried up. No explanation needed for this one!

- Our Condo In Yosemite Was, To Put It Nicely: Ghetto Fabulous.As we were all busy complaining about various short-comings of our condo, I (like a typical dad) suddenly interjected: “We are spoiled, aren’t we….how generous must God be to us day-to-day that we would complain about a vacation condo?”How often do you find yourself comparing your church/ministry to the “nicer” ones in town? How quickly do you complain about stuff your ministry is lacking instead of thanking God for his incredible generosity?

It was a great vacation. I’m well rested and ready to jump back into the saddle(back).

Volunteer Vision

Like Kurt, I’m coming off of some family time – hope you’ve had some rest this summer, too!
And like lots of you, I’m gearing up for THE NEW YEAR!

Most of our students go back to school this week or next… I can’t believe it, because I’m not ready to say that summer is anywhere near “over”. But as the school year begins, it’s also a crazy-huge opportunity for us to help students connect to our ministries… and to people who care about them, and will point them towards Jesus!

Whether you’re a part of a ministry with 1 volunteer or 100, I’m a big believer in doing some kind of “kickoff” as the school year begins — without any students there! From my first days in youth ministry, I’ve needed some kind of Kickoff to launch me into the new school year. Two key components stuck out to me this year:

Vision! I really think that even the most passionate people in youth ministry need fresh reminders about “why we do what we do”. And often times, those reminders come in stories. At our kickoff last week, I told of a high school student who I’d reconnected with recently … she’d disappeared from our ministry after 7th grade. Well… she didn’t really “disappear”, as she was still connected with her volunteer small group leader. But she wasn’t able to come to our weekly gatherings anymore, because of some crazy family circumstances. And as I talked to her this summer, for the first time in a couple of years, she told me about how her 6th & 7th grade years in our ministry were crucial for her following God into HS – even though she wasn’t able to come to church anymore. It fired me up! And it motivated our volunteer leaders, too.

Prayer! Gathering together at the beginning of the year, to pray for students, for parents, for our connection to God, and for His way in our ministry… what a great way to launch a season. We decided to devote more of our kickoff gathering to prayer, and someone on our team said “Not Prayer-to-End-a-Meeting, but Prayer-to-Launch-a-Season!”

I’m lifting a prayer for you right now, as you dive into this new school year … let’s serve this students with all our might, and point them towards the One who loves them most!!

On Vacation!

I apologize for the slow blogging week(s). I’ve been at summer camp, out at Group Publishing headquarters in Colorado with 30 youth workers, and now off to a week of family vacation.

We’ll be spending 4 days with about 30 friends up at June Lake near Mammoth Mountain. We’ll be camping, fishing, hiking and lazying about. Then we head to Yosemite for 3 days with just our family and Rachel’s parents.

Soooo……I won’t be posting for the next week, but Scott will likely have a post or two while I’m away! Hint, hint, Mr. Rubin!

SYM Show: Struggles

On this episode, Jason and Kurt take a detour to discuss some of the struggles the've faced over the years. What do you do when you just don't "feel it" anymore? How do you navigate the self-impossed pressure for results? One of our more serious episodes...and also one of our more meaningful. Funny how those two things seem to go hand in hand.

SYM Show: Struggles

On this episode, Jason and Kurt take a detour to discuss some of the struggles the've faced over the years. What do you do when you just don't "feel it" anymore? How do you navigate the self-impossed pressure for results? One of our more serious episodes...and also one of our more meaningful. Funny how those two things seem to go hand in hand.

On Taking Risks

I consider myself a risk-taker…especially in ministry contexts.But this past week reminded me that a more accurate statement may be, “I am a highly calculated risk-taker…I mostly take risks I’m fairly certain will succeed.”

Last Friday night, in our high school ministry, I witnessed the results of true, “never-done-that-before”, risk-taking.And it was in the form of a Zombie Apocalypse.

Several months ago, one of our high school Pastors had the idea of creating a massive capture the flag meets, tag, meets hide ‘n seek meets amazing race meets air soft wars meets zombies type of event.Josh Griffin said okay…..and they were off to the races. One guy had a vision in his head of how it would all go down, and worked diligently for two months to make it happen.

On Friday night, over 400 high schoolers….dressed up as zombies, survivors, medical personnel and military peace keepers roamed our campus for 4 hours.It was CRAZY, it was AMAZING, it was FUN…..and it almost worked like they planned.There were a few key mis-steps here and there that kept the massive, highly complex, game from unfolding exactly the way they wanted.

Hearing about the idea, watching how hard the team worked to pull it off, seeing the “buy-in” from our students and leaders, and watching the event as it unfolded Friday night left me with a TON of random questions about risk-taking.

Here are a few I’m pondering:

* Why don’t we take more risks of the “I’m not really sure how this will turn out” nature?
* Is it because our churches have created atmospheres where only a home run is celebrated? Is a foul ball never acceptable? Our Zombie night wasn’t a home run…but at least they “got a piece of it”.
* Am I, as the leader of our ministry, creating an environment that encourages or discourages risk-taking?
* If I knew I wouldn’t fail miserably, what is a new ministry idea I would try?

As the summer wraps up and fall peaks around the corner, lets determine to try something new; to take a risk. I highly doubt it will result in a zombie apocalypse!

Slow Enough to See Clouds Move

Not many people would disagree with this statement: “The Best Fuel for youth ministry is Time Listening for God’s Voice.”

But lots of us (definitely including me) have trouble with that.
Things move so fast. If it’s not my schedule moving fast, it’s my brain. (sure, maybe that’s some ADD… but that’s another issue)

Last weekend, I got to go to a Father/Son camp with my 12 year old. The camp program was ok, the camp facilities were good, and time with my son was fantastic. But one of the best “benefits” of this camp is that for nearly 4 full days, I was out of cell-phone and internet range!

When’s the last time you unplugged for 4 days? It’s been a while, for me.

An obvious highlight was time with my son… climbing rock walls & launching off rope swings into a river. He won’t leave my side since we’ve been back home. ☺
But another highlight was the hour every morning when the camp staff organized games with the sons, so that the dads could sit by the river and listen for God’s voice.

I realized that even when I slow down… it’s hard for me to slow down all the way.
And as I sat there by the river, breathing deep, I looked up & saw the clouds slowly drifting by.
They were moving!
You might say “duh” … but I was struck by the fact that I hardly ever notice that.
Mostly because I’m going too fast.

So — since I’ve been home — I’m taking time every day to get slow enough to notice the clouds moving. And it’s been a great catalyst for me to Really Listen for what God wants to say to me.

If slowing down is a challenge for you… give this a try!