Friday Night Flood - Extended (5/16)

It is certainly clear that we are nearing the end of Friday Night Flood for this season. In many ways.

For starters, for the second week in a row, we have had zero new students in attendance. Second, students really are either catching on to our behavioral principals we ask them to follow, or the ones who don’t want to have decided to spend their Friday evenings elsewhere. Third, our adult leaders just don’ seem to have the time or energy to spend together after FNF at Perkins debriefing and hanging out. Yep, things are definitely winding down.

Anyway, tonight went quite smoothly. We had a return of our big Assault event (see this post for details on what Assault is) which was well-received (video will be up early next week). One of our students shared our message of Truth tonight based around music, fire, the soul and Jesus. It was a bit rambling at points, due in large part to the fact that he left his outline in my basement this afternoon. But in the end he was able to get his point across, and it opened up a nice segue for me into our moment of silence and rest that I like to include in our evenings.

It was a good evening relationship-wise. Lots of opportunities to work on existing ones. Plenty of chances to build new ones with students who we didn’t have existing relationships with. Unfortunately for me, some of the programming elements got in the way of some of those conversations tonight. A good one, but it could have been so much better.

Wednesday Night Live in Review (5/14)

Tonight was week two of our Dear God series in H20’s Wednesday Night Live. We had three new guest panelists, all volunteers in our student ministry program, and they tackled nine more of our remaining 73 questions from our list. They did so admirably, researching and pondering over many of them beforehand. I even spent some time with one of our panelists last night looking for some answers on his question of where Eden was located.

All in all, it was another satisfying night of answers, and it still managed to instill even more mystery into our teens’ understanding of God. A very good thing in my opinion. Answers given, student follow-up and interaction, a good night all around. Even our time spent in music was better than last week (a strong byproduct of having more than three times as many bodies in the room than we had last week) with teens jumping, clapping singing and really engaging the music.

But I think my biggest excitement came from seeing a student who has been coming for the past month against his will (someone that does not claim Christ at all, and is only here because his aunt thinks that it is a good place for him to be), begin to come out of his shell tonight, between interacting with another teen in a game of Madden beforehand, engaging in listening to our panelists, and dancing during our music portion.

I think tonight was a good night.

For updates on Dear God, visit our Dear God page on our church website. Videos from tonight should be up before the weekend is out.

Pretty Boys

In my last post, I stated that I have been unable to post videos from my blip.tv account, and have found nothing here at WordPress that gave me any indication that I could. I was quickly informed that I am able to generate a WordPress code from my blip.tv account (it’s been a while since played around with my blip.tv account) to embed my videos here. So here goes nothing. Just ignore the grossly oversized image it places here and click play to enjoy! I give you last Friday’s Friday Night Flood challenge: Pretty Boys.

Dear God Answers

I finally was able to get all of the video done for our first week of Dear God, and posted it Sunday night onto our Dear God page. I would post the videos directly here, but I use blip.tv, which as far as I have been able to find, WordPress does not yet support. So if you have a few minutes and would like to see our panelists answer 8 of the 81 questions, then cruise on over to our Dear God page, located here.

Friday Night Flood In Review (5/9)

Tonight’s Friday Night Flood was definitely a building evening. We had absolutely no new students there, our message came from a senior who shared about eternity, and the latest Purple Police episode aired. There were no real problems (save for not having any adult leadership arrive until 5 minutes before the doors opened) this evening. But there were also no tangible advancements either.

Well, I can’t say that is completely true.

Over the course of the evening, we had a full-court basketball game (5-on-5) that enabled us to encourage some genuine teamwork, and even a little team building amongst a few of our core Friday Night Flood teens. We also had a fair sized soccer game that enabled us to do the same. There seems to have been a small change happening in which a fair amount of our teens are starting to at least look at each other as equals instead of looking down their noses at each other. At least at Friday Night Flood anyway. I can’t speak for how they interact outside our building.

And there is one teenager in particular who came for the first time a few weeks ago and won our Fear Factor competition. Since then, last week was the only wee where e has not come, engaged the rest of the crowd, a shown a genuine hunger to learn more. He is still a bit on the outside looking in on this last part, but it is quite tangible that being a part of Friday Night Flood has been a positive element in his life.

Tonight was a building evening. And there were tangible results. Sometimes it just takes a little reflection to see the tangibles.

New Purple Police

The latest episode of The Purple Police is in the can, and will premiere tonight! But if you want a sneak peek, just scroll down a little farther and watch it for yourself. It clocks in at 9 minutes and 27 seconds, but it feels like 4. And remember, you can find the rest of the episodes under the Purple Police tab at the top of this blog.

Enjoy!

Book Review - Growing Souls

I looked forward to reading Mark Yaconelli’s Growing Souls: Experiments in Contemplative Youth Ministry with much anticipation. Especially after reading his previous work in exploring the implementation of contemplative practices into Youth Ministry. (You can find Contemplative Youth Ministry here, and my review of it here).

I think I set my expectations far too high, though.

The book is not bad. It really isn’t. It follows up Contemplative Youth Ministry by giving more background on the Youth Ministry and Spirituality Project (the thrust behind the first book) and its mission. It follows several churches that participated in the Project. But it doesn’t seem to build upon the work of Contemplative Youth Ministry. It actually almost seems to go in a different direction. Not necessarily a bad thing, but it did not feel like a follow-up.

Another problem is that Yaconelli is not the sole author. There are a few other contributers, and the writing styles, while similar, were very different while I was reading. Distracting at times, in fact. And there is a lot of petition in the book, at times making it feel that Zondervan wanted them to fill a page quota, and not write a completed thought.

There are several good reasons to read the book, however. The stories from those who did seek out integrating contemplative practices in their youth ministries, succeeding or failing, serve to teach so much to the reader. The appendices alone about several contemplative practices are worth the price of the book. Yaconelli’s storytelling remains his strong suit, and his chapters are quite enjoyable.

All in all, a good resource if you are considering implementing contemplative practices into your ministry. But start with Contemplative Youth Ministry. This one will probably spend more time on your shelf than in yr hands.

New Movie Reviews

Wow. I logged into my Blogger account earlier this week and saw that I had not posted any new content since February. Wow. Well, in the past two days, I have posted not one, but two new reviews of movies that I would like to share with you. So if you are interested at all, cruise on over using the links below:

Iron Man

I Am Legend

Both could be utilized within a Youth Ministry context, in case you were wondering.

To Write or Not to Write - part 4

I wrote up a little article about curriculum usage for a magazine that has not been used so far (their theme was pushed back until early next year). So I thought I would share it with you, and maybe use any feedback you might have to offer to help make improvements before re-submitting it in January.

Make sure you read part one, part two and part three before reading this post.

With these pros and cons, what is a youth leader to do? There is no easy answer. This is one area of youth ministry that is wide open to interpretation, and will change from ministry to ministry. But when it comes to choosing whether to write or purchase, keep these ideas in mind:

Time – If you are writing your own curriculum, are you losing time with students as a result? Don’t write during any times that you could be spending with students. Your best teaching will come during the relational times that you spend with your teens, not during a group lesson. I do not view that Evangelism series as a waste of time, as it was a study that was needed for our group, and I did use time which I would have been unable to spend with students. But I can’t help but wonder if there were other things that might have needed to be a priority during that time…

Theology – Make sure that any curriculum you might purchase lines up with your ministry theologically. Many suppliers of curriculum will allow you to either see the curriculum first hand, or download a sample. Drive it around a few times. Kick the tires a little. Look out for any glaring discrepancies. Invite your ministry team to look through it with you. Many perspectives should help you to make a better, more informed decision for your group.

Money – If you decide to purchase a curriculum, do so with an eye toward your budget. Make sure that you are not spending money that might be better spent elsewhere in your ministry.

Content – Remember, just because someone else wrote it, does not mean that you have to be married to every single word. Feel free to make tweaks, corrections or alterations to the original source material, whether they are due to doctrinal differences or to your group’s unique needs.

So there you have it. The definitive word on whether you should write your own curriculum or buy it. There is no solid answer. Take what advice you can from this article and run with it. Just don’t spend so much time wrestling with this debate that you forget to make a choice… and have to lead your group without anything prepared. It might get a little bit sticky. And just because most of us can wing it like pros, does not mean that is what God desires for our ministries. Make a smart choice. Make an informed choice. Just don’t forget to make the choice.

To write or not to write. My, what a big question.

Continued tomorrow…

Wednesday Night Live Extended - (5/7)

Tonight was our first night in the first-ever Q&A series Dear God, with our first-ever guest panelists/teachers. That’s a lot of firsts for one night. But I think it went well.

We opened with some announcements (a few. I am in the process of trying to phase them out entirely and direct our teens to our website and bulletin boards - among other options - to find information about upcoming programming and events), our “Found Online” video of the week (in which I share a humorous or interesting video with the group that I found online somewhere), which can be viewed below this writeup. And we shared in a few songs together. Our smaller group tonight meant a lot more of my voice and guitar, but there seemed to be little or no distractions otherwise during this time. Then it was time to bring up our guest panelists.

One panelist is a volunteer leader for your Student Ministry program. He graduated from college with an engineering degree and thinks like an engineer. Our second panelist is our current High School Sunday School teacher. He is a college graduate as well, and a very intelligent man who is also very Biblically literate. I rounded out the panel, and we answered, to the best of our ability, 8 of the 81 questions that were placed into the Dear God box over the past month (side note, 53 of those questions came from the same student). Our  answers were  Biblically grounded, and seemed to satisfy our teenagers’ curiosity, even encouraging a few follow-up questions. Our leaders really seemed to enjoy sharing their knowledge and experience. Our teens enjoyed hearing the different perspectives, and we were able to at least offer encouragement on several things that a few of our teens have been wondering.

I did record video for the evening, and will be uploading it over the weekend. Our church website has a new page devoted to this study where I will embed the video, and will be placing a DVD copy of the entire series in our church library for anyone who was unable to make it. I’ll provide links once everything is uploaded.