Trends in Youth Ministry Tools

I had a great opportunity to hang out in San Antonio Texas last week with a bunch of youth pastors. It was a refreshing week with lots of hanging out and late night coffee sessions. For those of you who were involved with the discussion on trends in youth ministry and youth pop culture below are the notes I promised to post. I also put the link to Student Ministry Connect. This is a relatively new social network just for those of us involved in student ministry! I know that the last thing we all need is another web site to manage BUT this one is actually worth the time and has a great feel. Log on and sign up. You will see Yancy and other pre-teen/ jr high banner wavers!

It can be difficult, even when you hang out with students in your ministry every week, and we have all made that mistake where we incorrectly reference something in pop culture and kids look at us like we have suddenly become completely out of touch. At the end of the day, I'm in the camp that says loving students is more important that knowing every nuance of a student's subculture . . . but it doesn't hurt to do some quick homework. Paul modeled this for us in his travels. Here are some links and tools that could help you with just a few minutes a week.

trendwatching.com
cypu.org
mryouth.com
repnation.com
simplyyouthministry.com
Student Ministry Connect

tools for texting students:
constantcontact.com
eztext.com

Time to start all over again

I am working on next year’s jr high Believe event theme. The way that I usually enter our artist planning meeting is with an overarching theme and the take home message for all 5 sessions already laid out. We then spend our time talking about the best way to make that session come alive. What I need to start hammering out is that road map of the overarching theme and the 5 take home statements. For instance, as our artist group met for this year’s tour I had only this ready to go: The theme is CONNECT. God wants to connect with you so listen, speak and look. That was divided up into 5 sessions. I also knew our Bible content would be the life of Moses.

God has used two things in my heart over the past 3 months as I have labored over next year’s theme idea. The first was a sermon at youth specialties by Dr. Brenda Salter McNeil. She gave an awesome talk using The Lion King as an extended metaphor for reclaiming our identities as the people of God and our role, as student workers in pointing students back to their true calling. This session really resonated with much of what I felt our students were dealing with at Christ's Church and started me down this path.

The second is a quote in a book by Chip Wood called Yardsticks: Children in the classroom Ages 4 – 14 A resource for Parents and Teachers:

"Twelve’s greatest need is to be with their friends. Teachers and parents take a back seat on the long ride toward the driver’s license. The primary developmental struggle is the confusing struggle for identity: the child/not child begins the search for fidelity in relationships. This is an all consuming quest beginning at twelve. Minutes turn to hours on the telephone and in front of the mirror. Twelve’s define themselves by jackets, hairstyles, shoes, CD’s, tapes, movies, videos, TV preferences, sports teams, the mall, the dance rage, what older kids are doing. School becomes the place to be, but not always for our intended purposes."

Jeremiah 1:4 -10. would be a big starting point of inspiration for the tour. I just don’t have it fleshed out as of yet. I do see us using this text in programming. Students think that they are whatevers or random particles without specific direction. The Bible Character we would look at for the weekend is currently Jacob unless something else just knocks us off of our rocker.

It is an exciting process but I always feel so much better when I get the language down for the theme and main session take home messages.

let me know your thoughts!

Autism, the Response of the local church and the effect upon student ministry yet to come

With the growing number of Autistic children born every year what issues will student ministries face in 5 years? April is the national push for Autism awareness. I've watched a few TV specials on this topic but was really taken back at a regional conference I got to mingle at in Atlanta.

The Facts: In 1995 one in 10,000 children born was diagnosed with Autism.
In 2006 one in 150 children born are diagnosed with some degree of autism.
see Autism Society of America

It did not happen to me. All three of our boys are healthy and developing normal as far as we know. There were not lots of parents with my blissful story at this gathering. Teresa told me her own heartbreaking story of caring for a jr high aged child with mild to severe autism. Teresa is a Christian with a mission field she never sought out. "Its like receiving a death notice for a loved one but the grieving process never ends.". Teresa has coped through much pain to see the opportunity God has given her to now be a comfort to others.

As I walked the halls listening into informational meetings, seeing treatment vendors, and thumbing through the books on display I caught the eyes of individuals. I saw the parents that recently found out their unborn child is autistic. I noticed the women who have been coming to these events for so long they had become a loving community to each other. I sensed despair on one hand and hope on the other. What I really saw was parents, siblings, and ordinary people deciding to enjoy life to the fullest potential they can.

I am a jr high minister. I am clearly not highly educated in the medical field of this affliction. I am however, like my new friend Teresa, finding myself asking how the Church factors in to all of this. The event was not a faith based event. I did however find it interesting that a senior staff pastor from North Point (a prominent church in Atlanta) was a key note speaker at the event. Teresa went on to explain to me that many of the new parents have quit attending their home churches after finding that the church had no way of knowing how to meet their needs. The guilt and eventual resentment felt towards the church is disturbing.

The church is changing and growing at a crazy speed. Large churches with specialized staff continue to abound. Emerging churches with tight knit communities of fellowship seem to be just as able to meet the ministry needs of families with autistic children. It seems that Chap Clark’s call to the church, for adults relationally investing in students, rings ever so true.

I love middle school ministry

We are always searching for things we can do to engage the students during worship at Oasis (Our mid week jr high service where I serve locally.) A few weeks ago we had the students write out their prayers on a section of the wall we had prepared with some long streams of paper. Students were to go and write whatever they wanted to during a slow song set. We wanted to do anything we could think of to get them more responsive during our worship times. Last Wednesday night I was talking with some students near this project and decided to write a few. I started with one written in sparkly purple. The hand writing was neat and I was confident that it was a girl's prayer. After reading a few I wanted to share my favorite one with you all. I just had to take a picture of it. Middle school students are great. Jesus loves them, hears them and I am a butt head for laughing when I read this. I am okay with that though because my laugh was also a prayer. I was just reminded for a second how awesome it is to work with jr high students.