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Teaching Students God’s Truth: Can we teach it all?

November 9, 2011 in Balance, healthy ministry, messages, planning with 0 Comments

A long time ago I read The 7 Checkpoints by Andy Stanley and Stuart Hall. In this book Stanley and Hall outline the need to teach students the absolute essentials for their faith development. At the time I remembered agreeing with the premise that we only have so many hours per year of teaching time with our students. Therefore, the question we must ask is: What do we absolutely want them to know and understand by the time they graduate? Stanley asserts that the Bible is full of truth, but not all of it is applicable to teenagers. We can’t give them everything, so must consider what gets ditched and what do we keep and teach?

For me recently, I have been evaluating my teaching and programs and I am concluding that some of our teaching isn’t essential. It’s good yes, but essential, no. Given that my total teaching time with my high school students will be around about 50-60 hours per year, I must be ruthless in getting rid of teaching that could be good, but not essential when all is said and done. I am must work equally hard in adding material that is essential to the specific group of students I am working with. Here’s what I can do to ensure that I am hitting the most important and applicable areas:

1) ESSENTIAL AREAS OF TEACHING: Write down the top ten areas that every student in your program needs to know by the time they graduate or “move up”. Look at what you teach in a 3-5 year period and make sure these top-ten areas are included first. This process should take a few months to come up with as you prayerfully consider these areas.

2) ESSENTIAL BIBLE BOOKS: Write down the most essential books of the Bible that you need to cover in a 3-5 year period and map out a provisional a plan. Be sure to have a balance in Old Testament / New Testament material.

3) BALANCED PROGRAMS: Create a clear balance of programs that “fire fight” the issues students are facing as well as environments that help students to “fire prevent” by teaching foundational theology and doctrine. For us, we have two weekly meetings. One is topical and mostly issue related (I call this “fire fighting”), while the other is clearly foundational faith building (I call this “fire preventing”).

4) ASK STUDENTS: Every few months, ask them what issues they and their friends are facing and create a “moving plan” that will hit the felt needs of the students. When we hit their issues and felt needs, they usually will learn more. These messages are presented in our midweek program that tackles topical issues in students lives. I survey my students once a year and I ask them every few months what areas / issues / topics they need to learn about.

5) ASK YOURSELF: Are you simply following a curriculum plan that someone else created for you, or whether you are giving your students the essentials that is specific to your group of students?

6) INVOLVE OTHERS: As noted above, I ask students continuously, but it’s essential to gain the insight and opinions of other youth workers in your ministry. Ask God to speak through the people who are working with your specific group of students and evaluate what you need to change and tweak. It’s imperative that we realize that we need to create a custom program for our specific group of students and not rely on someone else’s research that worked for their ministry in a different context. Too often we rely on curriculum and a scope and sequence that worked somewhere else, but maybe not for us. With all this said, I do you use curriculum regularly, but I tend to pick and choose what I feel we need for my group and dismiss what is not needed…

A hard question I must ask you today is this: Are you simply going through the motions of using a canned curriculum, or are you really seeking to create a custom program that is best for your specific context, environment, and students God has called you to minister to?

Finally, feel free to share any ideas as to how you create a balanced program with essential teaching?

Phil <><

Are Kids Fighting to Come To Youth Group?

November 2, 2011 in healthy ministry, Leadership, messages, Relational Youth Ministry, Volunteers with 2 Comments

I’ll never forget my friend Rick telling me about the night students were “fighting” to come to his midweek program! One evening, just before youth group started, he looked outside to see more students than he had ever seen at his church. He quickly thanked God for the gigantic turn-out and then went outside to greet many new faces… That’s when he discovered the sobering reality: One of his students was in conflict with another student at their local high school, and both had shown up to his youth group to “settle the matter”. Apparently a large number of students had come to watch the main event too!  Rick tells of how he “settled the matter” with the students in a more Christian way, but yet many of the students stayed for youth group.

As I talked to him about this incident, I will never forget thinking this: How can we get that many students to passionately show up for youth group and bring their friends every week? (Without the fights of course).

In the first few months of the Fall we have seen a big jump in numbers and have actually struggled to keep up with much of the growth we are seeing. If I am honest, I can point to some factors that have helped us grow numerically, but I don’t know that I am wise enough understand the full picture. However, below I  mention what I consider to be the greatest factors that have helped us grow in depth and numbers. Caution: This has taken nearly two years of prayer and hard work and there has been no quick fix to create growth…

Pray Earnestly! I know this should be a given, but it’s easy to get into the habit of depending on our skills and programs and forget to partner with the Holy Spirit. We cannot expect great things to happen unless we are depending on the One who is able to do immeasurably more than we can ask or imagine.

Fixate On Healthy Community: When I use the word “fixate”, I really mean that! Our students will tell you how much we have talked about, taught them, and created activities to build healthy community. We have students from over five different school systems and it is easy to have pockets of students who never get to know each other. If we don’t fixate on building healthy community we will default back for comfort and cliques. Therefore, it’s been imperative to create ice-breakers and activities that get new and established students talking, laughing, and working together. Students begin to realize that they have so much in common with people they did not know before. This in itself helps them to belong!

Listen and Give Ownership: Every year we survey our students to gain insights in a number of ways. It’s imperative that we listen to them! One question we ask them is, “What issues or struggles are students facing that we could talk about and help with?” From this question and ongoing conversations with our students, we gain incredible insights to their world as well as their spiritual and emotional needs. When we create a message series based on these needs you can bet they will show up! Next month we will also being doing a video series called “Slice of Life” where I video interview students about their faith, their struggles, and how God has helped them. We did this series last year and it had a huge impact. It all came from an idea one student gave us… Students show up when their questions are answered, their hurts are healed, and their ideas become reality…

Note: Obviously, we create messages and Bible studies based on what we know they need too. We can’t only respond to their felt needs. There has to be a good balance on “fire-fighting” the issues while also teaching many foundational “fire preventing” topics.

Invested Leaders: In my usual month I have many meetings and conversations with my youth leaders. In fact, I would say that my contact time with leaders has recently been higher than my contact time with students. It’s imperative that I realize how my investment in caring adults will pay off in the way they invest in students lives. I can either choose to be a shallow hero to every student, or I can choose to equip my leaders to become the fully invested youth leaders who make a greater difference on student at a time. Students will show up week after week when they know that a caring adult will be there to listen to their heart, celebrate life with them, and challenge them to grow spiritually.

There are many things I can add to this list, but I feel these are the “big ones” that have impacted our ministry over the last couple of years. What is working for you? What are you working towards? How are you helping students to fight to come to youth group?

Phil <><

 

The Lesson I Learned When My Laptop Crashed During Sermon Prep

July 15, 2011 in messages, Mistakes, planning, Review what we do with 5 Comments

Today my Macbook Pro crashed!

It was a BIG crash! The good people at the Apple store told me my hard drive is not recoverable. Ever have that happen? Believe it or not, this is the first time I have ever had a computer crash in this way… But here’s the bigger problem:

I AM PREACHING IN CHURCH THIS SUNDAY AND I JUST FINISHED WRITING MY SERMON ON THAT LAPTOP.  No back up, just some notes I had gathered on Evernote.

So, apart from backing up my sermon as I wrote, or writing it on a web-based application like Evernote, here is my BIG lesson I have learned:

“Owning” The Message And Preparing Well Is Helping Me Now:  It’s a pain to have to write it again, but ownership of the message will make it easier to write again.  In Communicating for a Change,  Andy Stanley talks about the importance of “owning” a message and internalizing the core of the message. He even goes so far as to say, why should people listen to us if we don’t own it ourselves? Since reading the book I have tried to ensure that I prepare in such a way, I could preach without notes if needed.

So, even though I have to write my sermon again. And even though I am crammed for time to do it before Sunday, I am thankful that I feel fairly confident that I own the message and have the big idea (and most of the points) in my head… Owning the message is imperative for our audience, but I found out today how helpful it is to write the same sermon again!

For now, here are 5 simple things I do in my writing process to help me “own” the message:

1) Pray: Obvious, yes. Crucial, for sure! Good prayer time saves time!  It’s easier to discern what God is wanting me to say. So often it’s easy to jump into research or even writing without considering what direction The Holy Spirit might want me to look in.  

2) Prepare: Lots of reading of commentaries around the passage or topic. (This really helps to solidify what I own and know). I use Logos for Mac.

3) Plan a Map: This is where I outline a starting and ending point for my message. In many ways, we take people on a journey with us. It’s important that we consider how to get them on the journey, how to keep them on the journey, and how they land at their destination.

4) Put it Together: I don’t write every word, I write an outline that is a detailed version of my map. (This is the part that is lost on my hard drive at the Apple Store).

5) Practice: This is perhaps my best way to own the message and internalize God’s Truth for myself as I preach. It also helps me to iron out transitions and make tweaks as I go. When I practice, I actually talk out the whole message from start to finish. I particularly focus on the take off and landing…

So, there you go. Not rocket science, but perhaps you have struggled in putting sermons together in the past. These 5 points really help me a great deal. Hope they can help you too in case you don’t backup your sermon as you write it!

Phil <><

UPDATE:

  • My Macbook Pro will be in repair for a few days getting a new hard drive
  • I backed up my Macbook 3 weeks ago…
  • I started using a our student ministry Macbook Pro to finish my sermon… It crashed. Not kidding. Can’t get the thing to work!
  • I wrote this post on my lovely wife’s laptop. Unfortunately the laptop is not very lovely. I need to buy her a new one!

8 Reasons Why My Second Office is Starbucks

June 3, 2011 in Balance, healthy ministry, messages, planning, Relational Youth Ministry, Volunteers with 2 Comments

If you follow me on twitter or foursquare, you will regularly see me checking-in at my local Starbucks or a similar coffee house. Recently a lot of youth ministry friends have suggested that I have a coffee addiction and need serious help. Often my reply is, “we are in youth ministry… we all need help”.

Before I go on, it’s important to point out that I do spend a good amount of time in my office at church, and I love working with a great team of people. It’s also imperative that I spend a good amount of time in the office to stay connected and communicate what is happening in my ministry while also hearing about others ministry areas. But, for now, let me share 8 good reasons for why I think it’s also important for me to spend time working at Starbucks too… Continue Reading…

Midweek Series “Slice of Life”

January 11, 2011 in High School, messages, planning, Review what we do, Student Leaders with 0 Comments

SLICE OF LIFE: This Week we kick off a new video series called, “Slice of Life” where we interview students from our ministry. This series has been created for a number of good reasons:

CREATED BY STUDENTS: Students themselves came up with the idea to have a series focused on their “slice of life” and how God is working in their lives.

OWNERSHIP: Anytime students are excited about an idea or series, it’s important to help channel their excitement into somethig that will impact other students. When I can get out of the way and help students to minister, I often see greater fruit…

BUILD COMMUNITY: One of the premises to this series is the idea that we have students from different backgrounds sharing their faithwalk. In our ministry we have about 6 different high schools represented, (plus home school students too). It’s important that this group of students get to hear stories from students from different places and situations. In the long-term, students feel like they are getting to know each other better… Long-term, it builds community.

VIDEO MESSAGES: We try to shoot the students on video. This helps if students get “stuck” or lost for words. Editing is a beautiful thing. In addition, it helps to present another mode of learning for them.

CONTACT TIME: I find these kind of message series where we interview students is incredible for greater opportunities for contact time… It’s amazing to see to the insights and thoughts that students share when you place a video camera in front of them… After the interview, I find some brilliant opportunities to talk, catch up, and hear more about what is happening in their lives…

PREP TIME: Perhaps the least important, but helpful thing with this series is this: The prep time is less that a usual week and it allows me to prepare for upcoming messages and have greater time to meet with students and leaders during the week…

That’s all for now. How are you creating opportunities for students to share their “Slice of Life”?

Phil <><

Fun

October 19, 2009 in Balance, healthy ministry, messages, planning with 0 Comments

This video has been making the rounds on facebook. Here’s what it made me consider…

There’s often been a lot of debate between youth ministry guru’s wondering if we spend too much time entertaining students and not enough energy goes into teaching Biblical truth.

In this video, the experiment was to see how much more people would walk up the stairs (and ultimately exercise more), if they created a fun way to do it. Normally people would likely take the escalator and take the ‘lazy route’ instead. Isn’t that human nature for so many of us?

Well, I think that it is not that different when it comes to spiritual exercise. So many of us (and especially busy students), will often will try take the easy route in discipleship. As we know, there are no short cuts to discipleship… However, what happens when you and I take time to research great lessons and incorporate fun and creative ways to communicate Biblical truths? Do we see students take good steps in their faith?

If you are like me, I want students to be excited about Jesus and excited about growing in a deeper relationship. It’s important that I find ways to help students take the best steps in their faithwalk. Sometimes I need to pray and think harder about how to make those steps fun while also partnering with the Holy Spirit to see lives transformed…

To simply say that any fun element is shallow in youth ministry neglects the need to engage and excite students with the truth of the gospel. I believe that creativity and fun should be core values in every youth ministry to help students take ‘healthy steps’…

Final Thought:

If you are like me, it is easy to spend a lot of time on content or an idea. There have also been times when I have spent too much time on a fun element and my message / study has been lacking. It’s important that we strike a good balance between creating solid material that will be engaging with fun elements too.

Phil <><

Planning – A Volunteer Perspective

June 25, 2009 in messages, Review what we do, Volunteers with 0 Comments

Yesterday I posted about how I plan our message and series for the year. I emphasized why it is so important to pray and plan well in advance. One of the reasons is to help my leaders and students be involved the process creatively as well as give our speaking team time to prep.

In my post, I mentioned one of my leaders ‘Sara’ who speaks regularly in our large group environments. Not only is Sara a great communicator, she is an authentic and effective youth leader who has been ministering to teens for nearly a decade now. However, she is a full time mom and wife, and has her own speaking and prayer ministry that keeps her very busy. Yesterday Sara commented to my post and gave her perspective of why planning well in advance is helpful to her as a volunteer.

PLEASE NOTE: I hesitated to post this since I did not want anyone to think I am giving myself a high five for what I do. I felt it is important for all of us who are in the trenches full time to consider the ripple effect we have on volunteers and their effectiveness when we plan well…

One of Phil’s greatest assets as a leader is his dedication and determination to plan in advance with an openness to have to change or fly by the seat of his pants if needed. As a volunteer, I cannot tell you what a blessing this is! I am not constantly given last minute projects, spontaneous times to teach, whirlwind ideas and unnecessary crises that could have been avoided if there was good advanced planning. In Youth ministry and in any ministry frankly, we have to throw down often enough for crises, last minute emergencies or changes and there are always fun, spontaneous moments. But, to be following a leader who doesn’t plan in advance eventually becomes draining, exhausting, frustrating and frankly a complete drag since their last minute plans now become your problem when everyone is expected to drop everything in their life to make it happen. People and families get burnt. Phil leads a great example in this area and guess what one of his biggest problems is? He has more leaders than he needs! People are drawn to those who are respectful of their time, talents and families!

Message Planning

June 24, 2009 in messages, Review what we do, Volunteers with 2 Comments

It’s been a couple of weeks away from the blogosphere for me since the summer break began. In ministry I have slowed my pace a little,  I am getting some extra time with my family, and getting jobs around the house done before the birth of our second in a couple of weeks.

Today I got together with one of my key leaders to finalize our Fall message plans and talked about some changes in the way we do our messages in our large group environments. Here’s what we do:

1) What we Teach for the Year: As I look at the year I have found that I need to consider which foundational areas students need to know and apply by the time they get to end of the school year. I wish I could say that I have developed my own system to ensure we have balance and foundation to what we teach, but I have not. Instead, I have found that ‘The Seven Checkpoints’ by Andy Stanley and Stuart Hall is a great start to ensuring that what we teach throughout the year. The premise of Checkpoints is this: We are likely to get about 32 hours of teaching time per year in our large group environments. However, we cannot teach students everything that is in the Bible in that short time. Also, everything in the Bible, while being true, is not relevant to students.  Checkpoints helps us to ‘narrow our focus’ (an Andy Stanley term), and ensure that we are teaching students the most important and relevant topics. Through a typical year we hit 7 areas that we feel every student needs to know.

2) Team Teaching: Although I lead my ministry, I have found it to be important and neccesary to incorporate good communicators to teach God’s Word to students. I have to be able to admit that different students need to hear different personalities and perspectives. It is easy for students to tune out the guy who is on stage every week. I am very blessed to have one leader who has her own ministry as a speaker to teens, and I have two other leaders who I utilize often who do a great job too. Even though team teaching requires a lot time, meetings, and investment on my part, it is so worth it to see students being blessed. Even if you are a volunteer, consider who at your church might do a good job coming in to speak or lead one evening?

3) Planning Well in Advance: Planning well in advance is imperative since it allows me to ‘perculate’ ideas and themes over weeks and months. It also allows the other speakers to prepare well and be creative. They get the opportunities to draw in students and leaders into the creative process.

4) Leave Some Gaps: My experience has taught me to leave at least 4-8 weeks of teaching unplanned for the year. In other words, every Fall and Spring I try to leave an intentional gap in my series teaching so that as a ‘current need’ or topic with greater relevancy comes up, we can be flexible to teach about it.

5) Be Flexible: As well as having gaps, it’s important to be flexible. No matter how detailed we try to be, there are always variables and last minute changes to consider. Whether it is a change in the large church schedule that requires me to change, or a leader who cannot speak for me, there are always changes to be made. I have found it is important to create a great teaching plan, but remain flexible with it.

6) Pray: Finally, but most importantly, I am always trying to seek God’s Leading as I plan for the Fall and the rest of year. I firmly believe that the Holy Spirit works just as effectively a few months before as well as a few weeks before. Therefore, it’s imperative to be praying carefully before I start planning.

That’s what I do, hopefully this is some help to you as you plan what you teach. Feel free to comment or send me a message if you have any questions.

Phil <><

Helping Students do Great Things…

June 8, 2009 in messages, vision with 1 Comment

Today I watched this video on cnn.com (below), and I was amazed by one high school students dedication and passion to make a difference in the world. As I watched, I was struck by two major revelations. 

First, I can’t underestimate how God will use me to challenge students to do something great. In this video, Emily Blake shares of how a speaker at a camp challenged her and others to, “not just be good students, but to do great things for God”… As I paused to consider this today, it made me wonder whether or not I am always expectant that God will do grand things with the words HE gives me? How about you? Are you expecting students to respond, or are you hoping they will? There’s a difference isn’t there? As speaker and teacher of God’s Word, I need to be reminded that there is power in His Word and promises. When I teach, I should expect God to do great things…

Second, it was a good reminder to me that students will often approach me with grand plans to change the world and make a difference… it’s means everything in how I respond. As adults in their lives, it is often easy to simply explain away an idea with a dose of reality from the ‘been there seen that – it won’t work’ reaction. However, her parents and Compassion International did more than simply give her a chance with an idea. Not only did they believe in her, they saw fit to come alongside her and help her navigate the steps she needed to take. It reminded me that I must not only encourage, I must also equip and empower.

 

Let’s face it, will all our students attain what Emily Blake did? Who knows? On average, probably not. However, I believe it means so much to students when we challenge them to raise the bar and do something amazing. It is also imperative that we support them as they try ideas in a safe environment. The steps (and how we support them in these steps), are crucial in this cynical world that always seems to have a way to dispel dreams. They may not be world changers today… but what they experience and how they are equipped and encouraged today means everything for what they attain tomorrow…

What Susan Boyle Can Teach us about Youth Ministry…

May 27, 2009 in British Stuff, messages, vision with 3 Comments

susan-boyle-pic-smA few weeks ago, this lady from my home country was all over the media with her performance on ‘Britains Got Talent’. Today, once again I was watching this show on itv.com and got to see her make it to the final of this competition. 

The premise behind the show is similar to American Idol, except people with all kinds of talent, (including singers like Susan), can perform to win a large sum of money and perform at the ‘Royal Variety Performance’ in front of Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II. 

As I watched again this evening I was struck by a common theme that seems to be running through this show in the last couple of seasons. Here it is: 

Take an individual who clearly does not LOOK like they ‘have what it takes’ and certainly does not look like ‘star material’.  Stand them in front of the ruthless Simon Cowell and a judgemental audience waiting to heckle… Then, with the eyes rolling and the their hands on their ‘elimination buzzers’,  the judges let them begin… This is when this average, ordinary, unexceptional looking individual blows the roof off the house with an incredible performance… and the whole world looks on amazed… Soon, before you can say, “tea and crumpets”, she is on Oprah, Anderson Cooper and Larry King…

In many ways, I believe the producers of the show amplify much of the circumstances to create drama and a greater storyline. Nonetheless, why is this such a great storyline? Why do the producers play to the audiences need to see the unexceptional lady do an unimaginable performance?

Is it because this storyline is written on our hearts that has been played out again and again since God created the earth? Is it because each person was made for greater things, and that God is able to do the unimaginable in our lives? In fact, is it because we all sense that we are designed to “immeasurably more than we could ask or imagine” when the God of this universe shows up in our lives? 

Moses, the disciples, even Jesus himself, were the underdogs who were judged and written off before they had a chance… They were the ones who were marked for elimination at the first opportunity… yet, as we know, God is the God of extraordinary…

So, with all of this said, what does this have to do with Youth Ministry you may ask? Good question, let me explain:  

You see, the students we work with, live in a world full of eliminations… For some, it is: Broken marriages or tough parents, school, friends… maybe the church? They might not look the part or have it altogether yet,… they live in a world of rolling eyes and hecklers. Many of them don’t need a judge or an elimination buzzer since they have their own low expectations of themselves. Even students who come from great families, face struggles and challenges in our world today. Many of them don’t fit the mold of your typical leader or typical world changer, but isn’t it students like this who God loves to use? 

Here’s the most important part for those of us who are in youth ministry… It is our job to allow them to learn about the people God used for His purposes and let them know that God is able use them too… for extraordinary! It is our job to help them move from glimpsing a dream to living the dream God has for them. It is our job to create a ‘stage’ for them to shine and discover their unique gifts and abilities and see how they can be used in this incredible playground called earth. It is our job to help them believe in God and to embrace this truth: He believes in them more than anyone else! It is our job to equip, empower and encourage them to become so much more than the world could ever give them… Make sense? 

Check out Susan Boyle’s Video over at youtube, (currently close to 60 million viewers): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lp0IWv8QZY

Phil <><

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