Great video on prayer

Got this in an email...What a great video for the C.O.W.'s we do...

Ministry never stops when there's students hurting...

During this week off with the new baby, I picked us up some Coldstone ice cream...

It's delicious...

and the guy, Kyle, who helped me just looked worked over by the day...

So I asked a simple question, "How's it going" with a tone implying it looked like it had been a hard day...

Found out he's a senior in high school which would be great except his girlfriend who just graduated moved to San Francisco state yesterday and all his seniors friends just smoke pot all day which is so "boring" as he put it...

And his girlfriends friends all graduated too and will be leaving for college...

So he feels alone and sad and is working at coldstone which he's bummed about...

He needs hope...so I started to build into him letting him know what I do for a living...

I didn't have money to tip, but he said I was the first person to listen to him so it was a therapeutic tip

SK :)

A week off...

I took 5 weeks and gave myself two days off each week as my "vacation"

and now, with the new baby, I'm taking an entire week off (including Sunday)

I was a fool...A week off is so much better...

Even with the sleep deprivation

lesson learned

SK :)

A Sunday without me...

Friday night we had the baby and Saturday was the beach clean up and then Sunday was program like usual...

So I prepped my leaders that they needed to "step up" and coordinated with the middle school guy to preach my message (That I had done ahead of time)

They did small group sign ups, and made all the student contact...

Sounded like it went great...it will be interesting to talk to students about it

SK :)

Leaders without the big cheese...

It's so easy for everyone, including your leaders to say "you get paid for this" as their excuse for not working as hard or being as committed..

But since we had the baby, it was a perfect time to let them loose (and I had not choice unless I wanted to cancel)

So we did a beach clean up the morning after our baby was born...

The only thing I did was show up @ 8am with the supplies to drop off with them and then prayed over the leaders...

I didn't want to interact with students too much and take away the authority of the leaders running the event all day...

So I prayed and left...

And the leaders stepped up and led!!

Amen

SK :)

Welcome Back...

Well, in the midst of a great summer of beach days with students, we had a healthy baby boy...

So, as we work on boundaries in ministry, we took the whole week off...

Two great things came out of it...

My leaders had to run a beach cleanup service event without me...

And the next day they had to run a Sunday morning without me...

Yikes!!

SK :)

Rethinking Outreach...

I've never felt fully comfortable doing purely outreach events that cost a lot of money and then begging students to bring friends to make the event work.

This year we did an overnighter which went fantastic. We had a whole night of fun with students and volunteers who were stoked to be there.

But is it the best use of our time and energy.

If we're going to spend 3-4oo dollars over what we get in from students, should we be spending it on a night of pure fun with little impact long term...or should we be spending it on things like a student leadership retreat to develop student leaders or for small group trips to bring small groups together for fun and development during the year?

I'm not convinced, so my wife and I got talking last night about how to rethink outreach in our Youth Ministry. Lot's of good thoughts to start.

Will definitely blog about it as thoughts come up...

And yet as a youth worker, Overnighter's are so much fun...Check out the video of our time together. Definitely not wasted time...

Overnighter tonight...

Youth ministry in full swing as we end the school year with an overnighter...

Here's the plan

Meet @ Church
Head to broomball
Head to Pump It Up
Head to park for park games w/ glow sticks
Head back to church for an hour of organized games like "Stick It"
Free time for a couple hours
7am pick up

It's going to be great!!

Volunteer Appreciation...

Our church does an appreciation every year for all the volunteers in the church which includes the youth volunteers, but it's so general that we do our own appreciation.

So Last night we got all of our volunteers together, changed the scenary a little and went to the beach:

We talked to them about "what an effective summer looks like" for them.

We prepped for our Overnighter coming up next week

And then we went back to the church for appreciation including a small gift card to the movies to thank them and their spouses for the sacrifice of their time and a picture collage of the different things each volunteer was involved with during the year

Let's face it...the larger church doesn't know the commitment we ask of our volunteers, the countless hours, and all the events, camps and Sundays that they do all the time. So a special appreciation is necessary.

I heard over and over again last night... "At the beginning of the year, I had no idea that God would bring us this far."

Praise God for Volunteers!!

Advertising your ministry...

Working through the importance of advertising the ministry.

To the other staff
I send out a once a month update on cool things God is doing
to the Elders
I send a report to the pastors to update the elders with
to the congregation
I made a banner of the summer calendar with slots for flyers to display in main service
to the parents of students
I made a parent blog with forms and important info
and to students
Twice a week flyer communication at events as well as a student blog

I think it's working

SK