- The weekend was a pretty good one! It was week 2 of our “Piece Of My Mind” series where we ask a different volunteer each week to teach on any subject they would like. This past weekend we bent the rules a little bit and allowed one of our full time JH team members to speak. Jaime spends most of his days “producing stuff” for our ministry. He is in charge of most of the weekend programming, our blog, our promo, our graphics, our videos etc. He is a talented guy who has never taught our students so we thought it was a good time to give him his first shot. He was excellent! Since he spent so much time preparing the lesson, the rest of the weekend was a little more “bare bones” than usual, but sometimes less can actually be more.

- Last week I spent a full day with 5 other JH/Middle School pastors beginning a project that I’m really excited about! I will share more about it in the near future.

- Our JH team is in the middle of a project that you may want to consider (if you work with JH students….). We are conducting a “what if” scenario. What if we decided to cut our programs and “stuff” by 25-50%? What would we keep? What would get cut? What new stuff would we create? My hope is that we will create a fairly fresh looking ministry plan that is less cluttered and leaves much more time for relational/organic youth ministry to flourish.  For now, it’s just an exercise to get our minds thinking and our juices flowing, but I’m hoping we can translate it into an actual ministry plan at some point soon.

Rick Warren posted this tweet this morning that has me thinking: “Be as much troubled by unjust praise, as by unjust slander.” – Philip Henry

Some of my thoughts:

- Everybody loves, and to a certain degree needs, a “good job, buddy” now and then. So encouragement is valuable.

- As a leader, a whole lot of the “good job, buddy” comments you hear are really because of what somebody on your team did…you just happen to get the praise.

- The “higher up” you are, the more “back slaps” you have had along the way and the more you need to dish out to others on their way up.

- It’s interesting how many back slaps and “good job buddy”statements are at the expense of somebody else: “you are doing a much better job than our previous youth pastor”, says a parent. Or “You’re way nicer than our last small group leader, says a student”.

- The source of the praise is usually a pretty good indicator of how valid it is. Do they have something to gain by slapping your back or is it because they have your best interest in mind?

- As for the quote itself…OUCH! I’m embarrassed by how bothered I get by unjust criticism while unjust praise serves to feed my ego.

- Mark Oestreicheris back to blogging! His blog has been a longtime favorite of mine, and I’m glad he’s back at it.

- Weekend Update: This past weekend we kicked off week one of “Piece of My Mind” where we ask one of our volunteers to speak each weekend on any subject they want. Our first week was amazing.

- Since I’m not teaching for three weeks, I am ditching Sunday services at the Lake Forest campus and visiting one of our regional campus youth ministries each week. On Sunday I visited our original regional campus in San Clemente.

- Speaking of regional campuses….my heart is torn on this new trend (“trend” may not be the right word as I think they may be here to stay). I love the ability for successful churches to expand their reach by expanding into regionals, but I also wonder why these same churches don’t just send a pastor they trust to the same community and let him/her plant a church of their own?  That being said, I am super impressed at the way Saddleback has approached our regional strategy. Our regional campuses are much more autonomous than many I have seen.

- Saw “The Box” a couple nights ago. I can’t decide if I absolutely loved it or absolutely hated it. It had some really good  spiritual themes and I think it could have been a great flick but there was a whole layer of unnecessary plot, in my opinion. Is  it a remake?

- I feel the Broncos slowly opening my chest cavity on their way to ripping my heart out.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this.

My working definition of youth ministry “programs” has always simply been: The stuff you do.

It seems as if there is a fairly strong resistance to programs in many circles of youth ministry today. Yet, by my definition this means they are against doing stuff, which I know isn’t true.

So….is my working definition wrong?

Are youth pastors really against “doing stuff”?

If youth pastors aren’t against “doing stuff”, but they are against “programs”,  what then are they doing, and what do they call it?

Is what they call it, just another word for “programs” or is it really something different, better, etc.?

You may not know, but Simply Junior High has an online discussion forum dedicated to junior high ministry. If interested in talking shop, you can check it out right here.

Have had lots of ministry related thoughts running through my mind in the past 24 hours or so. No answers, just observations and ponderings:

- Should Christian businesses be more “christian” or “business”? Why do business decisions often seem so un-christian? Is it fair to expect a christian owned business to act like a ministry….obviously there is a difference, but there are also similarities.

- Got a phone call from my friend Gary Hunt, a junior high Pastor in Florida who just celebrated his 60th birthday! Can I still be an effective junior high pastor at that age? He certainly is, but surely he is an exceptional case.

- Highly relational youth ministries don’t seem to grow much and growing youth ministries don’t seem to be highly relational….do the systems and structures that help contribute to, and organize,growth also serve to hinder relational approaches? Of course, this all depends on how one defines “relational”.

- When and how did the term “fundamentalist” get hi-jacked? It hasn’t always had such strongly negative connotations.

- The verdict is in: Francis Chan is my favorite author and speaker. He is both simple and brilliant.

- We had 10 students at our Saturday night (Halloween) JH service….it is usually our largest gathering. We knew we would take a hit, but nobody suspected something like that.

(SO to Tony J.)

In just about every profession/industry there is a tendency to get caught in ruts (even good ruts), to get so bogged down in the day to day busyness that creativity falters, fresh thinking disappears etc. Youth ministry is no different.  Yesterday, I was reminded of the importance of getting out, looking around and being willing to “steal” ideas from other ministries when I visited my friend who is the junior high pastor of a church about an 30 minutes to my north.

GET OUT:  Every now and then you need to get out of the four walls of your church, out of your community and out of your usual circle of colleagues.

LOOK AROUND:  Once out and about, look around and notice all the stuff that is different, new, fresh, uncomfortable, stretching etc. My friend’s church is much older and much more traditional than mine, yet his junior high room is WAY more creative and forward thinking! His theming, his decor, his floor plan….the overall atmosphere forced me to evaluate the atmosphere in my youth ministry space.

STEAL:  When you see ideas that you like, when you hear a conversation that pricks your interest, when you experience something in a different setting that you think will translate to yours….STEAL IT!  Simply ask permission to take that new “something” and use it in your context. Chances are you will need to tweak it a bit because no two settings are exactly the same.

I’ve learned that if I go through seasons when I don’t get out, look around and steal I typically find myself in seasons of repetition, ruts and non creative thinking.

- Weekend Wrap Up: The weekend started Friday night with “The 3″ which had about 1,600 students, a ferris wheel, a magic show, and tons of other fun. Our weekend program included our 5th lesson in our “Happy” series, a chocolate slip n slide (in honor of Choctober), some fun videos and great music.  All in all it was one of our better, but more tiring, weekends in quite a while.

- After Monday Night Football, I actually heard a commentator say that he thinks the Broncos are best team in AFC…better than the Colts. So funny that a couple weeks ago they were just lucky; the worst unbeaten team in history and now they are the BEST team in the AFC?

- Going to Disneyland with the family today. I have managed to navoid the place for several years….today my luck runs out.

- Beginning to work on new book, The Best Practices In Youth Ministry (that’s the working title for now, anyway). I am really excited about what this book will offer youth workers.

- Rode the motocross track for only the second time yesterday. When you have the courage to go faster and jump farther, the track is supposedly much smoother and actually easier to navigate. I say “supposedly” because I have no courage!

Here is an article that you simply must read if you work with teenagers (passed on to me by Scott Rubin). In fact, it may be one you will need to read a few times as you process it. Here are a few questions that popped into my head right away…questions I haven’t tried to answer yet.

1) Does the fact that the writer of this article is gay add credibility, hinder credibility?

2) If the writer were not gay, would that add credibility, hinder credibility?

3) A key point the writer makes goes along this line of thinking, “We don’t question 12 year old boys when they say they have started liking girls, why would we question them when they say they have started liking boys.”  How valid is that point?

4) Is society’s increasingly openess about GLBT lifestyles helping young people come out of the closet or is it creating a bit of a trend of experimentation within younger circles?

5) Is the junior high ministry I lead in prepared to appropriately respond to a student who decides to come out?

6) What IS the proper response, and can a junior high student REALLY even come out?