Okay, Summer is just around the corner and finances are tight for many families. Here are 5 super cheap Summer Ideas:

- FAST FOOD FRIDAYS: We want to have at least one event or activity every week during the Summer but we don’t want everything to cost a ton of money. Our solution is Fast Food Fridays. We’ve simply picked a different fast food place for every Friday of the Summer and are letting students know we will be there from 11:30 to 1:30 if they want to come hang out.

- PARK DAYS:Sounds so old school, doesn’t it! Tell students to pack a lunch (you provide a cooler full of drinks) and meet at a local park for an afternoon of ultimate frisbee, kick-ball etc. Cheap, relational youth ministry at it’s finest.

- MOVIE MONDAYS: Let students know that you will be showing a different movie every Monday afternoon. pop popcorn, dim the lights and enjoy the show.

- ADOPT A BLOCK: Pick a street in a neighborhood near your church and “Adopt” it for the Summer. Ahead of time, ask families what household projects/chores your students could do for them when you show up on X days. Pulling weeds, mowing lawns, washing cars etc. is a cheap and easy way to serve families in your community.

- “AFTER GLOW”: Okay, that is such a lame name, but it’s what we called them back when I was a student in youth group. In short, an After Glow is simply a loosely planned hang out at a student’s house after church (after Wednesday night, for example). Students sign up ahead of time for the night they want to host. Should you choose to try this, please come up with a better name!

- With the “shutting down” of YSMarko, I feel like the youth ministry world is loosing a daily glimpse into the mind of one of our leading voices. I will miss my daily dose.

- A couple weeks ago, mentioning the possibility of a Nuggets/Magic NBA finals would have been laughable.  Could it happen?

- Enjoyed a really lazy Memorial Day with most of the family. Cole was at Universal Studios with some friends so Rachel, Kayla and I laid around a lot and then went to a BBQ at some friend’s house.

- About the only physical thing I did yesterday was take a TON of plastic bottles and cans to our church. We have a recycling program that provides bibles in needy countries…..every 10 bottles or cans = 1 Bible. My wife helps collect the bottles at Cole’s school and we clean them, store them and then deliver them. We hadn’t “delivered” them for several months so yesterday I took enough bottles and cans to the church to provide bibles for the entire nation of China! I’m not much into going “green”, but there has to be some catchy “The Gospel Goes Green” slogan we can attach to the effort.

- A somewhat slow week (lots of meetings, but not a hectic schedule) and then Rachel and I head out to Chicago for a combination Believe meeting/hang out with theRubins/Anniversary get-away. The two of us haven’t been away together for more than a couple days since our 10-year anniversary so we are super excited.

Lesson Topic: 3rd and final week of “Exposed…The Naked Truth About Sex and Dating”
Lesson Length: 34 minutes which is WAY longer than I normally teach. But the subject matter held students attention the entire time. After each service I promised to shorten it, but simply couldn’t figure out what didn’t need to be in the lesson.
Attendance: Below Average. A holiday weekend combined with about 50 of our students away on a mission trip made our attendance quite light.
Fun Factor: Average. Nothing overly crazy or creative, but a fun program.
Music: Above Average. The band was tight, we had a GREAT adult leading with the students, and we kicked the program off with a really fun cover of “I’m Too Sexy”.
Volunteer Involvement: Below Average. Not many in attendance.

On Deck For Next Week:Next weekend is our 8th grade retreat (It’s an overnighter on campus) so we have asked one of our high school Pastors to speak in Wildside to help 8th graders begin their transition to high school.

An old buddy from my youth group days posted this video of him singing a litter of puppies to sleep. Pretty cute stuff.

Sorry that comments have been turned off for a while. a setting got re-set accidentally and I didn’t realize it. I  just figured my posts weren’t all that interesting lately. It’s fixed now.

In a previous post I mentioned that I was teaching a leadership luncheon at my home church this past Sunday. At the time of the post I had settled on the topic: “Things I’m still learning about Christians leadership” and was planning to work through a short list of bullet-point learnings. On Saturday night, I changed my mind and ended up free-styling about “The People In Your Path”.

I talked about all the people throughout my life who found me “in their path”, and what they did with that opportunity:

- My junior high sunday school teacher found me in his path and took an interest in me. Although I didn’t yield my life to Christ until later, his efforts left a great taste in my mouth about church and spiritual things.

- My best friend (a stranger at the time) found me in his path when I was a guest at beach camp in high school….I didn’t know anybody and was out in the water all alone when he paddled over to me, introduced himself, and made sure I felt welcomed and at home the rest of the week.

- The youth pastor at that church found me in his path when I started showing up to youth group. He saw something in me that I didn’t see in myself and began investing in my life.

- A professor at college found me in his path and challenged me to start a 10-week day camp for junior high students  at my home church over the Summer.

- The senior Pastor at my church found me in his path when I tracked him down to see if he would trust a couple college kids to try something new and different.

When I look back at my life, God placed me in the path of people who could have ignored me, brushed me aside or gotten involved just enough to appease their conscience. But time and time again, people who found me in their path chose to go the extra mile, give the extra attention and give an extra dose of encouragement. I wonder how my life may have been different had any one of these people shrugged off the opportunity to pour into the person God had put in their path.

The heart of Christian leadership isn’t vision casting, building better programs, strategic planning, creative problem solving, inspirational speaking, etc. While all of those things, and many more, do have their place, I’m convinced that at its core Christian leadership is paying attention to the people God puts in your path.

Today is poised to be an interesting one.

First, I’m going with couple of good friends to meet and have lunch with Andrew Marin. Andrew heads up the Marin Foundation…a ministry dedicated to helping the church and the GLBT (gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender) communities build bridges toward each other. I’m really looking forward to the time together and I’m sure the discussion will be an enlightening one for us. To be honest, I know nothing of the Marin Foundation (I heard Andrew give a 20-minute interview last year, but other than that have no insight into his organization) and don’t know what to expect.

Tonight we are trying an idea that we stole from Scott Rubin and the junior high team at Willow Creek. It’s nothing revolutionary, but it sounded good to us! We are having all our 8th grade small group leaders over to our house for a short time of food and saying thanks for serving as small group leaders for the past two years. I will spend a few minutes “pitching” them on the idea of picking up a fresh new group of 7th graders and staying involved in JH for two more years and we have asked Josh Griffin, our high school Pastor, to pitch them on the idea of moving up with their students and getting involved in our high school ministry for the next four years.

Hopefully our voices of “THANK YOU” will be heard more loudly than our voices of “PLEASE SIGN UP AGAIN!”

- My NBA predictions: Lakers will win Sunday but loose in six games to Denver. Celtics will beat Orlando but loose in five games to Cleveland. The Cavs will beat Denver in 5 games for the championship. 

-An NFL prediction:  Brett Favre will not play football again. ESPN and others are trying to make a story where there really isn’t one.

- A Stanley Cup prediction: Detroit over Pittsburgh in seven games.

-A MLB prediction: It will be discovered that the ONLY reason Manny took steroids was to stengthen his amazing dreads.

- A Nascar prediction: Most of us will continue to not care about it.

I’m really excited about this weekend. On Sunday I will be heading to the homeland of Whittier, CA to speak in both morning services at my home church, First Family Church. In addition to the adult worship service, I will be speaking at their all-church leadership luncheon. Because the leadership luncheon includes everybody who serves in any leadership capacity I’m finding it hard to land on something “universal” that will apply to everybody from 15 year old nursery workers to 55 year old board members. 

I’m pretty sure I’ve landed on this topic: “What I’m Still Learning About Christian Leadership”.  To be honest, I’m still learning way too much about Christian leadership to fit it all into a 20 minute presentation, but I think these ongoing learnings have the best shot at making my final cut:

- I’m still learning that taking care of the soul is a leader’s greatest priority….and greatest challenge.

- I’m still learning that people really do matter more than programs.

- I’m still learning that it’s impossible to over-encourage.

- I’m still learning that leadership is over-rated.

- I’m still learning that Jesus is really all that matters.

A re-cap of our junior high weekend service:

SERIES: We kicked off our three week “Exposed” series (sex and dating). This week’s lesson: “What Was God Thinking?” As you can imagine, this topic was one our students wanted to hear!

LESSON LENGTH: 29 minutes….a little longer than normal, but the lessons during this series will tend to be a bit long.

ATTENDANCE: Average

FUN FACTOR: High. We did some pretty fun stuff. We painted half our our stage wall pink and half blue, we had our stage lights set half pink and half blue. We did a “battle of the sexes” type format for our games which was super fun.

MUSIC: Above Average. For our students, the energy level on the stage TOTALLY dictates how students engage in the singing time. Because this week’s band was highly charismatic and engaging, our students responded really well.

VOLUNTEER INVOLVEMENT: Average

Note: On his blog today, Mark Ostreicher has some interesting statistics concerning junior high students and sex.

I never post twice in the same day but I’m so stinkin’ excited that I had to. In the mail today, I received the final manuscript for a new middle school ministry book written by Mark Ostreicher and Scott Rubin. Middle School Ministry is destined to become a, if not the, classic middle school ministry book for this generation of middle school youth workers.

Middle school ministry in the local church has come to age in the last few years, and Mark and Scott have created a resource that everybody who works with young teens really must read. I say this not because I’ve read the book yet (remember, I just got it in the mail today), but because I know Mark and Scott and I can’t think of two people better qualified to write a “training manual” for the rest of us. It isn’t available yet, but be on the lookout for it and buy a copy for everybody on your junior high team as soon as it’s available!

I plan to read it this weekend. Of course if it sucks I will have to ammend this post!