Posted by Kurt Johnston

TODAY is the last day to get the early bird discount for the Simply Youth Ministry Conference happening in March!  I’ve been to lots of training events for youth workers over the years, and while SYMC is similar to others in some respects (large general sessions, “big name” guest speakers, well known musicians, workshops, etc.), it is very, very different in lots of really cool ways. Even though it’s a big event, it feels small.  The speakers and trainers mingle about and are expected to be part of the conference, not just “experts” who are only there to pontificate. The program is really good…but also feels sort of like a little bit better version of a normal youth group. It won’t blow you away with awesomeness, but will make you feel like you are among friends….peers in ministry.

And perhaps the best part of SYMC is the part you won’t see, and may not even know about:  The conference truly is one that is “BY YOUTH WORKERS, FOR YOUTH WORKERS”.  There is an massive, behind the scenes, team of youth workers who help plan the event, and advise those running it along the way.  Please consider joining us in March!

Posted by Kurt Johnston

I was reminded this past weekend that junior high ministry truly is as much about ministry to parents as it is to young teens. I happen to think this is a really good thing, but it isn’t always painless.

On Friday night, we hosted our annual fall event called THE 3 (3rd friday of Oct, 3 hours, $3.00 to get in). From 7-10pm our youth center was literally over-run by 1,949 junior highers. As we de-briefed the evening over a midnight dinner at Denny’s, our team determined that it was the
smoothest, event-free event we have ever led. And then Tuesday came! Yesterday we had three phone calls from parents…three calls that required our team to confidently and compassionately minister to parents:

CALL ONE was from a mom who saw her son, as he walked through the parking lot at the end of the event, get grabbed from behind by the collar by another student. It wasn’t a super violent “tug”, but more of a teasing tug. She quickly grabbed one of our security guards and insisted he filter through the crowd looking for the “perp”. The boy insisted it was no big deal….he felt like it was a case of mistaken
identity, that the kid who grabbed his collar actually thought he was a buddy. Mom disagreed and considered it bullying and something the church was responsible for. We assured the mom that we take bullying very seriously, and that had we been able to pinpoint who the offending party was, we would have made sure he knew that type of behavior was inappropriate. Mom was only partly satisfied with our response to her concerns.

CALL TWO was from a mom who insisted her daughter’s drink (a smoothie she bought from our food services team) was spiked. Here reasoning was that her daughter mentioned to her friend that the drink “tasted weird”. Her friend agreed, so they tossed it out. The drink was never out of her daughter’s hand so the only way it could have been spiked was, according to mom’s reasoning, by one of our food service employees. As the conversation went on, the mom began to see that the plausibility of a church employee spiking the drink of junior higher was fairly unlikely. Mom ended up being very satisfied with our response to her concerns.

CALL THREE was from a dad who was EXTREMELY upset. The reason for his rage was due to the fact that his son was “turned away at the door” because he didn’t have his junior high school I.D. card. Because the only problems we have ever had at this event are the result of high schoolers sneaking in, we attempt to ensure it is a safe, JH only, event by requiring students to show a school I.D. if they don’t have one we send them over to a “holding area” until the line slows down, then we quiz them about their school, call mom or dad….do just about anything we can to help them convince us they are in junior high. As it turns out, this particular young man didn’t want to wait for the line to thin out and simply called his mom and told her he wasn’t allowed in. She picked him up, and dad called a few days later. After explaining all of this to his dad, he was only partially satisfied with our response to his concerns.

Here’s one very interesting common denominator with all three calls: All three of the parents mentioned their surprise and appreciation for the fact that we called them back right away, that we were pro-active and didn’t try to avoid the conversation.

There’s nothing fun about conversations like these, but The reality is when you jumped into junior high ministry, you also jumped into parent ministry. Embrace it!

Posted By Kurt Johnston

In many of us, there lies a tension as we lead our junior high ministries:

Should our ministry be organic in nature, or more organized, structured and systematic?

It’s an honest tension due to the fact that most of us got into ministry because we love Jesus, like teenagers, and want to spend time with teenagers so they, too, might fall in love with Jesus….nothing more organic than that!

But over time, as we mature and our ministries begin to grow, we feel the need to provide some structure and systems to keep things moving forward. The more things grow…the more organized, and less organic, they tend to become.

But maybe we don’t have to choose one over the other. Maybe we SHOULDN’T choose one over the other. What would it look like to put strategies, structures and systems in place not to replace the organic nature of JH ministry….but to ensure and enhance it?

Share your thoughts and ideas with the rest of us.

Posted By Kurt Johnston

I returned late last night from The Youth Cartel’s first-ever “middle school ministry Campference”, and I gotta say….my heart is very full!

Instead of giving my own set of observations, experiences and arguments for why you really need to join us next year, I invite you to head over to Marko’s blog where he has written a couple of great posts that will give you a blow-by-blow peek into the action.

Posted by Kurt Johnston

One of the joys of my role at Saddleback is that I sit on the executive leadership team. This mostly means that I spend a discouragingly large amount of my time in meetings. But it also means that many of those meetings are led by Rick Warren…and Rick Warren leads pretty good meetings!

Recently, Rick shared what he considers to be the 3 most important skills of a leader. I don’t think I’ve ever heard him talk about this before, and I don’t think it is written down anywhere. And, I’m sure I’ll butcher some of his brilliance by trying to pass it along…but it was so good, I have to try:

- The ability to clearly articulate the present reality

- The ability to visualize the future

- The ability to be self-aware

It is Rick’s opinion that the easiest skill of these three is the ability to visualize the future. Anybody can have a vision of the future! You really don’t have to be a leader to visualize the future, but you can’t be a leader if you don’t.

It is Rick’s opinion that the toughest skill is the ability for a leader to be self-aware. Because leaders are good at a few things, they assume they are good at everything. Leaders often lack the ability to recognize where they actually get in the way, cause bottlenecks to progress etc.

Questions for you to ponder:

- What is the CURRENT reality of your junior high ministry? strengths, weaknesses, barriers to growth, perception amongst parents and congregation? Is it a safe place for students? How healthy is your volunteer team?

- What’s your vision for the future? Have you dreamed any big dreams lately? Have you had a “God Idea” recently (an idea so big that only God could make it happen)?

- When is the last time you looked in the mirror? What are your weaknesses as a leader? What do you insist on holding onto that may actually be holding your JH ministry back? Have you truly tried to identify some of your blindspots?

Posted By Kurt Johnston

- At the beginning of the season, I predicted Tim Tebow would be starting for Denver by week 5. Turns out I was mostly right….he started the 2nd half of week 5 and quickly showed he is Denver’s best option. Now I just have to avoid the temptation to start him over Matthew Stafford inmmy fantasy league (a league I am currently dominating, by the way).

- Had an interesting experience this weekend. We are in a four-week series called, “God Is…” last week, our lesson was “God is…LOVE”, and this week we countered with “God is…JUST”. It was a full blown lesson on God’s justice…his perfect and fair ways of judging. It was pretty heavy stuff! Over the course of the weekend, at least a dozen students sought me or members of our team out to talk about it, ask questions, and share how much they had learned. Maybe you are such a great teacher that you get these reactions all the time…not me. It was a pleasant surprise!

- last night we had the team over to our house to say farewell to Brian and Bekah Schwanbeck, two former interns who served on our JH and HS teams, fell in love, got married and have been faithful serving as the part time youth pastors at one of our regional campuses. They have accepted a junior high position at a great church in South Carolina. Last night was a wonderful reminder of the joys of serving on a team that truly does love each other.

- the current episode of The Simply Youth Ministry Show is my favorite yet! Our guest is Gary Garcia….who has served at the same church for 20 years. checkmout this episode to glean some wisdom from Gary. You will glean some stuff from me and Jake, too, but it can’t be described as wisdom. Check it out right here.

Posted By Kurt Johnston

Ladies and gentlemen, this post marks the 1000th post on this blog…and what better way to celebrate (okay, there are lots of better ways) than announcing our winner for 10 weeks of junior high video curriculum from simply junior high!

Here are the 5-week video curriculum options,,,,the winner can pick any TWO, plus I am going to toss (no pun intended) in a free chat or challenge ball because that silly resource is one of my all time favorites!
- Bible Stuff 1
- Bible Stuff 2
- Bible Stuff 3
- Tough Stuff
- Messy Stuff
- Tempting Stuff
- Smart Stuff
- Red Stuff

Now that is some GOOD stuff!

Okay….there were 57 comments,which meant 57 numbers in a hat. It was tempting to pick a winner based on pithy comments, but that wouldn’t be a truly random selection. The number I pulled was comment number 39.

OUR WINNER IS:.

Chris at 2:02am October 5
F-R-E-E that spells free, video curriculum baby!

Chris…pick your two sets of curriculum, and email me at symshow@gmail.com and we will get your prizes in the mail right away!

Posted By Kurt Johnston

Since it is still toward the beginning of the school year, and the small group season is still fairly young, I want to give away some small group video curriculum!

Here’s how to win: leave any comment, and at the end of the day Wednesday we will randomly pick a winner. The prize is your choice of any TWO of our 5-week video curriculum.

Game on!

Posted by Kurt Johnston

I have spent much of my time this week in several sessions of our junior high and high school small group leaders training.  While I have done a little bit of the training, the VAST majority of it has been led and taught by our junior high and high school teams.  Here are some random “sound bites” from our training:

“You don’t need to love teenagers…you need to LIKE them”: Idea is that all christians “love” the teenagers in their church….but they don’t actually like them.

“You are the youth pastors of our ministry”: Idea is that most of the real ministry happens in small groups…the leaders are the true youth pastor to their kids.

“Make it a goal to set a warm, safe, affirming atmosphere in your group”

“Don’t suffer in silence….if something is going wrong, please let us know so we can help you!”

“Leading a small group will be the most frustrating, most challenging, most stretching, most rewarding, most exciting ministry you can be a part of!”

“Don’t be afraid to set boundaries….and to stick to them!”

I rarely mention numbers on this blog because frankly…..who cares.  But I will mention this fact:  After doing small groups at Saddleback church for over 15 years, this year is set to be our biggest year ever. Our junior high and high school teams have done an amazing job of recruiting, interviewing, training and placing hundreds of adult leaders who are about to embark on the ride of their lives!

Posted By Kurt Johnston

I mentioned in a recent blog post how much Imenjoyed the movie Money Ball. Well, over at his blog D.Scott Miller takes the main them of the movie (re-defining the skills needed by players to build a winning team)and applies it to youth ministry. It is a GREAT post! You don’t need to have seen the movie to benefit from his thinking. Here’s your assignment: go read his post, and think about these questions:

1. Do you agree with his assessment of the 5 basic skills He described that are currently needed by youth workers?

2. Do these skills change from context to context? Do they change for those of us who work with junior highers?

3. Do you think the 5 new skills he described are the skills for the future? Again, how do they change from context to context and in different age groups?