Posted By Jared Moine

WHAT NOT TO DO

I learned this past weekend a good life lesson. When considering a prize for the winner of a junior high game, never-ever pick a yo-yo ball. What seemed like a great prize to award to the winner of a game quickly turned into a terrible decision. My problem… the game was won by a 6^th grade boy who was sitting in the front row. You might be thinking, “Well what’s the big deal?” Well this 6^th grader proceeded to play with the yo-yo ball throughout every word of our twenty three minute lesson. Every word… Right in the front… the whole time! If I made eye contact with him he would stop but as soon as I moved on to the rest of the room he went right back to yo-yo balling it up. I didn’t have the guts to call him out because he’s a great 6^th grader in our ministry and I knew it would just crush him to be embarrassed like that, so I just pushed through.

Lesson learned… say no to the yo-yo ball.

Posted by Kurt Johnston

It happened this weekend….live….while I was teaching….in front of students…and I am totally surprised I was the culprit. Mostly because it embarrassed somebody I care for deeply, and partly because I have another friend in ministry who seems to make this same mistake over and over again and I have convinced myself, after seeing the hurt it can cause, never to do it myself. Oops.

At one point in my lesson I made a joke about getting older and at that point a really funny picture of a super super old, wrinkly, could die any moment looking person flashed on the screen. It was a god bit, I had hand picked exactly the picture I wanted. For two services on Saturday night, it went off without a hitch. But during the first service on Sunday morning when I “called” for the picture, something happened: Instead of the picture we had used the night before…the one I had hand picked…up popped a picture of a different old person, but not as old and not as funny (at least in my mind).

Somehow, this TOTALLY threw me off my game…I simply couldn’t figure out how it was possible to not have the same picture. What happened, who made the decision, why wasn’t I told, who is dumb enough to think this picture is funnier than the other one? All those thoughts went through my mind in a split second…AND THEN THEY CAME OUT OF MY MOUTH! Yep. It was idiotic on multiple levels:

- Super hurtful to my friend and co-worker who genuinely thought he was doing me a favor.

- I constantly tell my team That the best way to serve with me is to be an initiative taker…it is one of my love languages. But my reaction was completely counter to that, and only served to show that initiative taking my get you called out in public.

- It makes me wonder if my lesson was so weak, and was I so insecure that I let a change in one simple picture wreak havoc?

Let’s learn from each other by sharing some leadership mistakes. I’m calling out Rubin and asking his next post to tell the story of his most recent blunder. Feel free to share one of yours, too.

Posted by Kurt Johnston

Recently I have been thinking, praying, reading, journaling, and even talking a very little bit about some changes I think may be around the corner in the ministry I lead.  And what I’ve discovered along the way is gravity.  Here’s what I mean:

As I am thinking about what the future could hold, the “gravitational pull” of the past has been a constant and surprisingly strong force.  My dreaming, wondering and thinking has consistently been interrupted by the gravitational pull of the past.  Past successes, past traditions, past memories, past paradigms, etc.  And frankly, I have been shocked at how strong the gravitational pull has been.  And this is just my own, personal gravitational pull; I can’t help but wonder what this gravitational pull will feel like if I begin to go public with some of my dreams of the future.  Here are a few thoughts about “gravitational pull” that I am working through….feel free to add one or two of your own.

Gravity is good:  It keeps us grounded, keeps us from spinning out of control.

Gravity isn’t going away: It is a force of nature…a natural force in leadership….I need to learn to live with it and use it to my benefit.

There are ways to defy gravity…to some degree:  When gravity holds us back, there are ways to overcome its force.

Posted By Kurt Johnston

Every fall, our church embarks on a church-wide campaign; meaning that over the duration of the campaign (usually 6-8 weeks) everybody is teaching the same stuff.  This is quite often a challenge for the children and youth departments because the campaigns are often around topics that are very adult-centered and tough to make highly applicable to children and teenagers.

This year is no exception.  Our campaign this year is “Decade of Destiny” and it revolves around the challenge to make the most of your life over the next 10 years….basically to use the next decade to leave your legacy.  It’s good stuff, actually…but feels like a huge challenge to get junior highers thinking about the next 10 years when what they are most concerned about is simply making through next week!

If you have had success helping your junior highers think about how today affects tomorrow, making choices that impact their future, etc. I would LOVE to hear about it. 

Or, just answer this question in the comments section:  “Is it really possible for early adolescents to have a “long view”…to consider the future as they make decisions and lifestyle choices today?”

Posted By Kurt Johnston

Back in 1997 when I arrived at Saddleback, I noticed something right away that disturbed me; the junior high ministry was in the habit of using high school seniors as leaders.  It bothered me partly because seniors in high school seemed so young and it felt like we, in essence, had a youth group within our youth group and seemed like a ton of work. But mostly it bothered me because it was unfamiliar….I hadn’t seen students that young in a hands-on leadership role before. In my previous settings, we had always had a “college age and over” age limit for our junior high volunteers. I can’t tell you why that was, it just was. I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised by what I observed!  Our high school seniors have proven time and time again to be fantastic leaders.

Fast forward to today.  Today as I was walking through our church office, I stopped to talk to Bryce Kelly. Bryce is just starting his JUNIOR year in high school and is about to embark on his journey as a junior high small group leader and was in our junior high area to get a last minute pep talk.  Yep, we have had such success with our seniors in high school that we have decided to use Bryce and his friend Elise as guinea pigs to see if high school juniors can serve well in junior high. 

My hunch is that I will be pleasantly surprised once again.

Posted by Kurt Johnston

Normally my random thoughts are entirely unrelated. But today I share a few random thoughts and observations from my weekend at Youth Specialties’ NYWC

- It is great to se YS flourishing. With the departure of Marko and the sale to Youthworks, there was certainly reason for youth workers to wonder what the future of YS held. This past weekend made it obvious that under the leadership of Tic Long and the youth works team, that YS is in very good hands.

- I think I know, but I have NO idea! I’m specifically talking about grace. After hearing Ted Haggard and his wife in the general session, and sitting in a workshop led by Ted, I am really….maybe for the first time…beginning to see that my understanding of Grace is too limited, too small.

- Apparently, us youth workers love thinking we suck. I was shocked at how many of the workshop titles revolved around the negative, and how much of the workshop content was focused on all the stuff organized, church-based youth ministry is doing wrong, and the horrific consequences of our wrongness.

Soapbox Alert: are more kids walking away from church than ever before? That seems likely….but how do we REALLY know? Maybe we are just more concerned about it than ever before, which is really good, but did we really track this or study it back in the day? And assuming way more teenagers are walking away from faith, is youth ministry the sole culprit? What about all the other factors that contribute to the
faith journey that have as much….or more….influence than our youth ministries? Do many of our current youth ministry methods need to be evaluated? Of course. But to say that they are to blame for adolescent faith abandonment (or even that they are primary cause) doesn’t seem completely honest to me. It makes for wonderful workshop titles and sells books, that’s for sure. But if it gets us to take an honest look at what we are doing, and helps us move the ministries new directions we feel we need to….like it has with me….then that’s a good thing.

But PLEASE don’t let a book written by a seminary professor or an article penned by a youth worker in a completely different context than yours, or a workshop led by somebody who sees themselves as a prophetic voice to the youth ministry world…..please don’t let anybody tell you from a distance whether or not you are making a lasting difference in the lives of the kids God has entrusted to you.

Youth ministry isn’t perfect, and we have done lots of things wrong (chubby bunny), but I gotta believe things would be way worse had we not been trying all these years.

- Middle school/junior high ministry still lacks resources. YS is one of, if not the biggest publishers of youth ministry resources, yet in their store I had to look long and hard to find books, curriculum etc directed at this age group. I have met dozens and dozens of sharp junior high ministry minds who certainly have something to contribute….come on Publishers, go find ‘em. Or call me and I will give you their names.

-Wayne Rice is the man! To see Wayne, one of the co-founders of YS, warming up the crowd singing old school youth group choruses while playing his acoustic guitar was one of the highlites of the weekend. You probably had to be an over-forty youth worker to really appreciate it, though.

Posted by Kurt Johnston

This has nothing to do with junior high ministry, but because most who read this are still junior highers at heart, I think you might appreciate it.

It’s awkward, but funny…inappropriate, but not really….offensive, but innocent. And I’m pretty sure it was meant to be legitimate. 

I’m not a business man, but I saw this one coming for years. For lots of reasons, one biggie being that their online business is about 1/10th that of Netflix, Blockbuster has filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy and hopes to reorganize.

Some leadership things popped into my head when I was thinking about the Blockbuster saga; some of them may even apply to youth ministry:

- Change isn’t bad….in fact sometimes it is necessary for your survival.
- If it ain’t broke, it will be soon enough.
- it isn’t about what you think works….it’s about what your “customers” think works.
- objects in mirror really are closer than they appear.
- if outsiders recognize problems before leaders on the inside do….there are BIG problems!
- Success almost always breeds complacency.

Share one of your own!

Posted By Kurt Johnston

- I was recently struck/challenged by the amount of what I call “God Talk” we use in our junior high ministry setting. By “God Talk” I mean the fact that we talk about God….a lot, but don’t talk about Jesus nearly enough.  Some may see it as semantics, but I think it is more than that. In a culture where just about everybody is pro-god, I want students to begin identifying more and more with Jesus. Not sure where this is leading me, but I think it’s the right direction.

- Speaking of Jesus, we are about to wrap up a three-week series we called “Give Me a J!” which is a look at who Jesus is, what did he have to say, and what it means to us.  It’s been a really great series. So good, in fact, that it will likely become a super series at simply junior high.  But in case you don’t want to pay for it, here are the very basic key points from each week:

WHO IS HE:  1. God in a Bod.   2.  The Promised Savior   3.  The Only Way to Heaven

WHAT DID HE HAVE TO SAY?  In a word, his message was about FREEDOM.

1. Freedom From Sin   2.  Freedom From Acting Religiously   3.  Freedom From Selfishness

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO ME?  1. If You Don’t Know Him, Meet Him.  2.  If You Do Know Him, Share Him.

- Do you have Xbox live or use your Wii online?  If so, and you enjoy television and movies, then I strongly recommend considering the online Netflix subscription for only $9.00 per month.  the number of movies and television shows that are available to watch instantly is quite impressive.  Of course, you can subscribe even without Xbox or Wii, but will only be able to watch on your computer Vs. your television.

- I find the Tea Party movement fascinating. If they can manage to stick to their original agenda (in case you wonder, TEA stands for “Taxed Enough Already”), they may have some legs….and may even be able to attract some moderates to their side of the discussion. But if they begin to meddle in other traditionally conservative issues (abortion, gay marriage, immigration….) I think they will loose effectiveness.  Of course, I don’t really follow all this stuff enough to have a strong feel for it….it’s just an extremely un-educated observation about politics; which I’m interested in to some degree.

- Just got the new EVO phone.  I may have crossed the line into a realm of technology/bells and whistles/awesomeness that I shouldn’t have. I truly can’t figure the thing out.

Posted by Jared Moine (for those of you who are new, Jared is a junior high pastor in the D.C. area who is in his first year of full time junior high ministry. Thus, the name of his column.

 We’re Making Changes

The high school pastor and I have successfully talked the senior pastor into a crazy idea we both had and to both or our surprises, after some thought, he said yes. Up until this weekend our high school ministry has always had their “worship service” entry level program on Wednesday nights and since I have been here we have been having our middle school ministry service on Sunday nights. Both nights work and allow us to use the new, main, and only building. Our adults had been using the main building on Saturday nights and three times on Sunday morning. Since being here, I’ve noticed that only one of our services is full on Sundays and our Saturday night crowd is a good crowd but not massively growing and mostly full of people who come out of convenience that weekend. Meanwhile, both the high school pastor and I feel our student ministries need a change to make them healthy.  We have a strong desire to have our students plugged in to small groups, and with the main high school service happening on Wednesday nights, finding another night of the week available, proves difficult. That, combined with the fact that most students don’t have much to do on Saturday evenings, we decided that Saturday would be our ideal time to have student services. However, this would require a significant shake up within the adult world of our church.  We are so blessed to have a senior pastor who not only believes in us, but also believes in the importance of student ministries.  We must have said the right things, because our senior pastor agreed to allow us to make this change that affects the whole church. This is huge and exciting and mostly scary. This is the first time for me to have a crazy idea, and to then get a chance to put it in place. If it’s great, then I’m part of a genius decision. On the flip side, if it sucks, it was my idea. That’s a scary sink or swim scenario that I, for the first time in ministry, find myself in. It’s terrifying, yet I think this is what faith is suppose to be all about, carrying out plans that you think are right and good, yet you don’t really know if it’s going to work.

Maybe you’re someone in the same shoes as me and you’re just getting started and everything is a new faith building exercise, or maybe you have been in your current job for a few years now and have really settled in and are doing some great ministry in a place where you know the culture and know what works for your students. If you have settled in, chances are you know what you are doing and you know that you can pull everything off. This is a good place to be, and to be honest I pray a lot to get to that place soon but there is something amazing about living in the moment and trusting God to make something grow. My prayer would be for those of you who have all the experience in your craft of youth ministry, that you would not be afraid to fail and try something new. Maybe it isn’t a complete shake up of your church, but just a small change could push your faith into an exciting new adventure.  However, maybe God does have some big plans for your church and it’s you who needs to have the faith to dream and share an idea with a trusted ministry partner. Our current new adventure started with the idea of “what would be the best time for us to do youth services?”  As we brainstormed the Saturday night plans kept getting better and better until finally we made a positives and negatives list and the positives in making a switch were so great that we even convinced our senior pastor.

I don’t know what God may have for you, but I do know that He always wants to grow our faith and the older and wiser we get the bigger steps of faith we need to be willing to take. Our next step starts this Saturday, when does yours?