morethandodgeball.com

GUEST POST: Teens are Like Mobile Phone Batteries

I remember when I got my first mobile phone. I was told it was really important to charge it all the way up to the maximum, and then run it down until it was completely flat, and then charge it all the way up again. If you didn?t, your battery wouldn?t have its upper and lower limits properly established. It would learn that it?s ok to only give 80, and that it?s ok to give up early. It would never operate at its full potential.

I wonder if the same thing applies to youth ministry?

Filling up to the max ? Are your young people confronted with the rich, deep, passionate prayer lives of people who walk intimately with Jesus? Are they thrown in to environments of extended, humbling worship? Are they exposed to others who flow in the supernatural and who can testify to real-life miracles?

Running completely flat ? Have your young people actually witnessed injustice (as opposed to just hearing about it)? Do they regularly find themselves in situations where they are completely out of their depth and need to rely fully on the Holy Spirit? Do they know what it feels like to sit with someone in need and feel powerless to do anything to help?

The consequences for getting this wrong with a mobile phone are reduced potential and decreased effectiveness. Are they any different for a young Christian?

(My fear is this: We get this wrong, and the result is Christian adults who are cynical of the supernatural, apathetic for justice, and lazy in their relationship with Jesus.)

Jarrod Newton is a regular contributor at The Salvation Army?s Youth Leadership Blog.

simplykurt.com

Random Randomness

- After spending the better part of 3 days with middle school youth workers at SYMC, I am (once again) convinced that many of the sharpest minds in youth ministry are found in middle school ministry!

- At a conference like SYMC (or YS or any other large gathering of youth workers) you meet lots and lots of people. It’s always such a great reminder to me that God uses an amazingly vast array of people to pour into students. I’m so thankful that the stereotypical youth worker (young, cool, plays guitar, surfs, rides skateboards, has a tattoo….) is no longer the “norm”.

- We are starting a 3-week series this weekend called “STUFF”. We are using household stuff as object lessons to teach a biblical truth. It’s a series we have done once before with great success. This week’s lesson: Take Out The Trash!

- Quite a few people tracked me down at the conference to ask me about regional campuses (basically church plants that are still part of the mother ship). Questions about how we structure etc. My simple answer: “Treat them like a franchise with freedom” They are a franchise in that there are certainly some things that they have to do in line with the main campus because they are the same church. But there shouldn’t be an overly large amount of control…they need freedom to tweak the ministry to their context.

- Dear Denver Broncos, Please get rid of Brandon Marshall.

- Dear senate and house leadership, Please either sign [...]

youthministrygeek.com

Remember to Pray More with Echo Prayer Manager

If I had a dime for every time I heard someone in ministry say that they did not pray as much as they thought they should, I’d be doing ministry in the Caribbean somewhere or maybe a cruise minister. Permanent vacationing aside, most of us really do want to pray more. My bet is that you feel you’d do it more if you just had something like, say, a text message to jog your memory.

That is exactly what Echo Prayer Manager does: it reminds you to pray via email or SMS. After signing up for the free account, you enter your prayer requests choosing how you want to recieve the reminder (email or SMS) and how often (more, normal, less, or non-random). Then you go over to the reminders area and decide when is the best time in each day for you to be reminded to pray.

Here’s the genius thing, unless you tell it otherwise, it reminds you of a random prayer request from your list at that time! Of course you can ask it to remind you to pray for your friend at the exact moment he is getting his appendix removed, but the real genius is that once you decide when you want to remember to pray, you don’t have to also decide which prayers to pray at which moment.

There’s also [...]

collegeministrythoughts.com

Training Leaders?In Africa

Jeff Atherstone is a friend of mine from seminary. We also worked together for a few years at Cornerstone – he was the pastor of student ministries in one of our church plants. Cool and very sharp guy.

A few years ago he left the ministry at Cornerstone and went out to Uganda to be a part of training leaders there. Church leaders. Pastors. There is a video here that has some very interesting statistics that honestly kind of surprised me. But in this video Jeff articulated a vision for what they are doing. He sees the big picture and is trying to get people behind it. He has been challenged by some questions by pastors of churches in Uganda:

Do I feed the orphans in the church or my own children? Do I pay for the widow?s hospital bills or do I take my own wife to the hospital? How can I find something to teach when I have never been taught?

Deep and penetrating questions. I wanted to post this video for three main reasons:

1. There are so many ministries world-wide that nobody has a clue about. Are you exposing your college students to new ones? If not, please consider doing so. They can and will get behind these types of things.
2. I believe in what Jeff is doing. He’s meeting a need that is not being met. He became aware of the need, and is seeking to meet it. Are you finding unique needs and helping those in your ministry meet unmet needs? Maybe even use this video as an illustration of seeking needs where you are…or, just watch it and be exposed to someone doing something for the furthering of the gospel.
3. I appreciate Jeff’s heart for protecting the gospel message. Sometimes we focus more on protecting or building a program. The truth is we ought to only be concerned about protecting and furthering the gospel message.

Anyway, watch and enjoy this short 2 minute video….it’s very well done.

marriedtoayouthpastor.com

It Really was a Stretch?

simplyurbanministry.com

Soul Food! If you love yourself, feed yourself!!!