- Finally finished the manuscript for The 9….Best Practices of Youth Ministry! I’m sure there will be some re-writes, but feels wonderful to be done with the majority of the project.

- Have spent the last two days at GROUP Publishing in Colorado with at the annual junior high pastor “Summit”. Each year, for the past eight, a group of about 20 of us gather together to talk shop, sharpen and challenge each other, pray and hang out. This year was different because we are missing several of our regulars, but it has been a fantastic time.

- Saw Date Night the other night….I was pleasantly suprised.  Not going to win any awards, but enjoyable.

- Today my son, Cole, turns 13 and in a couple months my daughter, Kayla, will turn 16. I’m still 30.

Last night my wife and I had dinner with some friends who are getting ready to start a full-time middle school position at a church in the D.C. area. It is is his first full-time position and, up until now, he has only worked with high school aged students as a volunteer. He asked me what some of the differences are. There are many, but here are a few of the biggies:

- Your ministry is almost as much to parents as it is to junior highers. You have to keep them informed, you have to keep them excited about your ministry, you have to stay in their favor etc. Because they don’t drive, and because JH ministry does so much more “extra curricular” stuff than a typical children’s ministry, mom and dad’s willingness to shuttle their kids to and from your program is a major factor.  You also have an incredible opportunity to provide a little bit of hope and help to parents who are new to raising a young teen.

- Lessons: Keep them short, simple and highly tangible.

- Relational time: You just can’t expect the same depth of conversation, “give and take” etc. when you are spending time with a junior higher.

- Building trust: It’s much easier with junior highers. In fact, it takes almost no time at all.Most of the time, if a junior higher feels like you like them and are interested in them, they will like you back and instantly begin to trust you.

- “Preventing” Vs. “Fixing”: Those aren’t the best words to describe it, but junior high ministry is on the front end of so many of the struggles teenagers go through, and we get a chance to help them learn to make wise choices, etc. and prevent a lot of the pitfalls of the teen years. High school ministry often plays the role of coming along and helping students who have already made some really poor decisions.

There are lots more…..add one or two!

- My blog isn’t dead, just slowing down for now. Partly because we are in the long, slow process of creating a new “Simply Junior High” blog that will include additional contributors, some fun special features etc. The process isn’t “long and slow” because the blog is so amazing it’s taking a long time to create, but because the good folks at Simply Youth Ministry are swamped right now.

- Part of what is keeping Simply Youth Ministry so busy is that they are putting a ton of energy into a new resource that we are SUPER excited about. If you are familiar with the LIVE small group curriculum, you will be glad to hear that we are gearing up to release a junior high version tht includes two full years of online, downloadable, customizable small group curriculum written specifically for young teens.

- I’m still up early every day with a goal of spending three hours working on The 9….Best Practices of Youth Ministry. I think it’s shaping up to become a book that will spur lots of great youth ministry thinking. This is largely due to the subject matter as well as the really, really good contributions of  my co-author, and long time friend, Tim Levert.  Tim has a PhD in Youth Ministry and serves in a United Methodist church outside Columbus, Ohio. Melding our two minds has been an interesting proposition at times! You know how it is; some people have the brains and others have the looks.

- My church has been taking some heat for having the Jona’s Brothers, as musical guests at our Easter Service.  My response to the numerous critics I have talked to is usually a simple one:  1) Our pastor has an evangelistic heart and wants to reach out to as many non-believers in our community as possible on Easter. This should help that effort.  2) The Jona’s Brothers offered to play for FREE because they want to be part of our Easter celebration. Cetainly some churches would turn down that offer, but my hunch is most (including those led by some criticizing the decision) would welcome the rare opportunity.

- Years ago, my wife and I made a prayerful and strategic ministry decision: Instead of being loyal to a denomination, we would be loyal to Jesus and would serve in any setting we felt He was being glorified and lost people were being reached.  As a result we have served in an Assemblies of God setting, a Presbyterian setting, a Wesleyan setting and a Southern Baptist setting (yes, Saddleback is Southern Baptist!). I am a theological “mutt” who really just wants to see the name of Jesus lifted higher and most of the other stuff minimized.  Luke 19:10 is one of my favorite verses, “For the son of man came to seek and save those who are lost.”

- With only six more episodes of Lost, we are FINALLY getting somewhere!

- Just settled on final title and (almost) final cover design of new book. Actual release date is still several months away.

- I have been reminded the past couple of weeks how quickly negativity spreads.  Sarcasm, bitterness etc. can quickly poison the well.

- I filled my NCAA tournament bracket out in approximately 53 seconds (right before the deadline). Sadly, the early results reflect this.

- Next month, I speak at the Southern California District of the Assemblies of God annual gathering.  The audience will be comprised mostly of Sr. Pastors. I’m excited (and more than a little nervous) to share my heart with them.

- The Broncos recently acquired quarterback Brady Quinn.  Here is a text message exchange I had with my friend:     

Dan: “What do you think of Brady Quinn?”

Kurt: “I try not to.”

Below is email one of our small group leaders recently sent to a parent who was upset about her son getting injured while playing a game during small group. She had sent a scathing email accusing him of  negligence, etc.  He had tried to call her several times but was  unable to get ahold of her. I’m not sure there is a “professional” youth worker on the planet who could have written a better email to a concerned parent.

Dear Mrs. XXXX,
Thanks for letting me know about what’s going on with XXXXX.  I’m so sorry to have left you feeling like there wasn’t adequate supervision at last night’s C Group. I’ve been leading small groups with students for about 10 years now, and I always try hard to provide a safe, healthy environment.  That being said, I can never completely remove the possibility of an accident happening, and I think this is what happened last night.  The game we were playing was not dangerous, but XXXX had an accident and got injured.  Had I known more clearly the extent of his injury, I CERTAINLY would have contacted you immediately.  When I asked him if he was OK, he assured me more than once that he was fine and never mentioned feeling dizzy or not being able to see.  Please let XXXX know that in the future he can always tell me if he is not feeling well or is injured, and I will do everything possible to contact you immediately.

For the future, XXXXXX, I hope you’ll feel comfortable that XXXX will be well taken care of and provided a safe environment at C Group.  I’ll continue to run C Group as I always have, with time for deeper learning and other time for fun and games.  Like I said before, I cannot promise you (or any parent, for that matter) that accidents won’t happen, but I can promise, now that I understand your expectation a little better, that you will always be immediately contacted in case of an injury.  I fully respect your role as XXXX’s parent and understand if you feel you need to make other arrangements for him for C Group, but I hope you’ll allow him to continue to be a part of my group.

Please feel free to call me at XXX-XXX-XXXX if you have any further concerns that I can talk through with you.  Please let XXXX know I have added him to my prayer list today and I hope he feels better soon.

Danny

- 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 a health care bill or put the thing to rest. Filibusters, reconciliation threats, back room deals, political manuevering…I think we are beginning to tire of the whole game.

As many of you who read this blog know, I have had a junior high-themed video podcast for a few years. If you’ve never seen one of them, you can check out the archive right here.

As I get ready to “crank up” the frequency of the podcast, I would love to have your input into what it looks like as it moves forward. Here are a few options (I would put a slick survey tool here but don’t know how!):

1.  Keep it as it is:  Me in front of a camera talking about one topic for 10 minutes. Short, sweet and to the point.

2.  Kurt and Guest: Me and a guest in front of a camera talking about one topic for 10 minutes. Short, sweet, to the point with one other perspective.

3.  ”Steal” the Simply Youth Ministry Podcast format: Create a 3-4 person team and make the podcast more like a radio show lasting about 30 minutes focusing purely on Junior High topics (the SYM podcast is typically about an hour).

4. Keep us guessing: Make it a random mash-up of all of the above.

Would love your thoughts in the comment section or you can email them to me at kurtj@saddleback.com

- LATELY, I have been thinking quite a bit about the need for junior high youth workers to be willing to do the tough work of getting into the minds of our kids instead of asking students to get into our minds. It seems that we often try to get students to laugh at what we think is funny, go “wow” at what we think is cool, want to talk about topics we find interesting etc.  It’s easier to minister that way, but it’s not as effective. As adults, we need to be willing to go to their level instead of hoping they will come to ours.

- QUESTION: Do you know your teaching style?  Andy Stanley posed this same question to a group of pastors a few weeks ago and it has stuck with me ever since. While I definitely seem to have a style, I’m not sure I have ever really dissected it to see if it’s the most effective style for communicating to junior highers. I am in that process now. Note: this feels much more important when I take seriously the whole “Me entering their minds instead of expecting them to enter mine” idea.

- FINGERS; I’m glad I have ten of them. I am spending a few days with my good friend Scott Rubin, and yesterday I had the first-time experience of operating a snow blower to clear his driveway and sidewalks. I naively assumed that a snow blower was just a big vacuum that somehow sucked the snow into the machine and blew it out the chute. What I didn’t know was that there is a big “fan/chopper/swirly thing” that serves to break the snow up before it shoots it out. At one point the chute got clogged and I reached way down into it to clear the snow only to have my finger get caught briefly in the “fan/chopper/swirly thing”.  Luckily I had gloves on and the snow blower was idling so no damage was done. Just a little bit of pain and a whole lot of “Scott…why didn’t you tell this California kid that snow blowers are also finger choppers!” It never crossed his mind that he had to warn me not to jab my whole hand down the snow blower chute. After all, he has been around snow blowers for years, while it was a foreign experience for me.

- ASSUMPTIONS. The snow blower incident and Scott’s assumption that I understood the inherent dangers posed got me wondering how often do we as junior high youth workers assume certain things about our students. Many of us have been around junior high ministry for years and so much of what it entails has become second nature to us. But, it’s completely different for our students! They are first-time travelers on the road of early adolescence…it’s foreign to them. Far too often, I’m afraid, I assume things about them that I shouldn’t. Note: again, this goes back to that whole “entering their minds instead of expecting them to enter mine” thing.

I have gotten out of the habit of posting a recap of our weekend program each Monday. Let’s see If I can get back in the swing.

SERIES: This was week two of our “Cup Of Joe” series in which we are taking a look at Bible characters whose names start with “JO”  Week one was Jonah, and this week was Joseph. Our theme and stage decor is a coffee shop setting.  We are trying something new and making the entire program a play of sorts with everything happening in the context of a day in the coffee shop. My lesson takes place over coffee with somebody different each week. It’s been pretty fun.

ATTENDANCE: Below average. The holiday weekend combined with about 50 kids gone on a missions trip made this a fairly light weekend.

MUSIC: Music struggled a little bit. Mostly, it was just really inconsistent.

VOLUNTEER INVOLVEMENT: Volunteer involvement was a little low due to a lack of volunteers at church and our program is a little more “stage driven” than usual during this series.

FUN FACTOR: Overall it was a pretty fun weekend. Students seem to like the fact that we are trying something new and mixing things up a bit.

Today, we (Saddleback Church) are wrapping up our first 4-day “Radicalis” conference, and I have to say it was really, really good! Here were a few highlights for me:

Andy Stanley’s message on preaching was full of wonderful nuggets; some of which I will paraphrase here:

- “If you don’t have a ‘burden’ for it, don’t preach about it until you do.”

- “Find a compelling passage, rub their noses in it, drive it home and make it stick, and send them out with one way to apply it to their lives.”

- “Going long doesn’t prove how smart you are, it proves that you are under-prepared.”

- “Don’t memorize the whole thing…just memorize the ‘flow’ of the message; where you want to go with it.”

Mark Driscoll’s message about the cross, coupled with Rick Warren’s message on Radical Compassion, was a very powerful experience.  What stuck out most to me was the simple reminder that at the end of the day our theology is nothing more than this: The Cross. 

Spending three days with youth workers in the youth ministry track was so much fun. I’m not sure anybody will ever be able to convince me there is any other group of Christian leaders who are more fun to hang around than those who work with teenagers!  I met lots of new friends including a wonderful woman who has taken “Kurt and Scott’s Junior High Adventures” and turned it into a 12-hour training session she uses to train youth workers all throughout Egypt!

Radicalis convenes again next year, February 8-11. Join us!