It makes sense that one of the first items cut from church budgets in these tough times is conference attendance. By the time you add up travel, hotel, food, rental car and conference registration, the cost of a conference can be close to a thousand dollars. But I think attending some sort of conference every year is important enough to figure out how to make it happen even in tough times.

CONFERENCES ARE IMPORTANT BECAUSE…

- They are like camp for youth workers.

- You rub shoulders with other men and women “in the trenches” who share the same passion and challenges you do.

- You get ongoing training that is very specific to youth ministry.

- If you go with from your church, you get to spend some incredible team time together.

- You get to “decompress” for a few days while also refreshing your soul.

A FEW IDEAS TO CUT CONFERENCES COSTS:

- Pick a conference that is within driving distance. Nowadays, there are so many great conferences to choose from that you shouldn’t have any trouble finding one fairly nearby.

- Buy food at a grocery store and go back to your hotel for meals instead of eating out.

- Try to find a “host home” instead of staying at a hotel. Lots of conferences work alongside local churches to help find you a host home if you can’t afford a hotel. If the conference doesn’t do this, call a few of the local churches to see if they have people in their congregation who open their homes to missionaries, traveling pastors etc.

- Take advantage of “Early Bird” rates. Almost every conference offers discounts if you sign up early.

- Rob Peter to Pay Paul. Ask your supervisor if you might be allowed to use money from other budget areas so you can still attend a local conference.

Yesterday was a bit busy so here is an update from last weekend in our junior high ministry:

SERIES: Our final week of “School Wars”, a series built around school competition. We had no worship music for the entire series, we focused on the school competition aspect of the series and each week we shared a gospel message via video. It was the first time we had ever done a team-based competition and we learned a few things….primarily that the vast majority of our students really liked the change even if they didn’t particularly love the competition part. Tons of students brought first-time guests.

ATTENDANCE: Our attendance for the final week of “School Wars” was really big….our biggest of the year.

VOLUNTEER INVOLVEMENT:High. Lots of volunteers stayed for multiple services to help run games, organize the teams, greet guests, etc.

STUDENT RESPONSE: High. We started a subscription to Poll Everywhere, an amazing text-based survey service. We decided to take a risk and ask the students to give us their feelings toward School Wars. The questions came up on the screen and we instantly saw their live responses. Their options were: “Loved It”, “It Was Okay” and “Didn’t Like It”. The overwhelming majority (about 80%) said they loved it, about 15% said it was okay and about 5% said they didn’t like it. If you can afford the service, some type of live text-based survey program holds a TON of potential in your junior high program.

NEXT UP:This week we are starting a short, two-week series called “Sunday Old School”. Again, we polled our students and asked them what classic bible story they would like to learn more about. The options: Zacchaeus climbs a tree, Daniel and the lions den, Rahab saves the spies and Joseph and his coat of many colors. The Winners were Daniel and the lions den and Rahab so those will be our focus the next two weeks.

Apparently, a high school in Texas was allowing students to settle disputes by putting them in a steel cage and letting them fight it out. I love this quote by the principal…the person in charge of quality education:

“That’s barbaric. You can’t do that at a high school. You can’t do that anywhere,” Mr Moten said. “Ain’t nothing to comment on. It never did happen. I never put a stop to anything because it never happened.”

“Ain’t nothing to comment on….”! Oh, Texas.

When I jumped into junior high ministry over 20 years ago, one of the first things I did was subscribe to GROUP magazine and I’ve been a subscriber off and on (mostly on) ever since. Each issue is crammed full ofa really good mix of educational/philosophical articles and super practical ministry ideas that you can plug directly into your setting.

A subscription costs about $30.00 per year and is, in my oppinion, the best thirty bucks you can spend. Where else can you get encouragement, tips and tricks, ready-to-use ideas and food for thought delivered to your door for only $30.00? If you follow the link above and scroll to the bottom of the page, there is an offer for a free issue of GROUP so you can check it out for yourself.

For too long the junior high ministry I lead has had a teaching strategy that feels too loose. In essence our plan has been this: 1) Identify four or five key things we want to teach each year and make sure we cover those. 2) rotate from a felt need/topical series to an expository/bible education series every month. While that has served us well, we are in the process of re-tooling our strategy. Here is what we have landed on so far as a two year plan:

- 1/3 of our lessons will be on key christian education/doctrine issues that we are still in the process of narrowing down to approximately 33 lessons, most of which will be in three-week series form.

- 1/3 of our lessons will be on the topic of “Junior High Survival Skills” (what we call this category in house….students won’t know this is what we call it). These are topics we know our students need…they may not know they need them, but we do! We are still in the process of narrowing down to approximately 33 lessons that will include jr. high survival skills such as making wise choices, peer pressure, friendship, sex and dating etc.

- 1/3 of our lessons will be “felt need”. What are students talking about? What is going on in culture right now that we need to address? Is there world news and issues that we can look at from a biblical perspective etc. These 33 lessons can’t really be listed ahead of time.

Here’s where I could use your input: What are some non-negotiable christian education/bible instruction/doctrine truths that you would include in those 33 lessons?

What are some key “junior high survival skill” topics you would be sure to include?

- Oh, Denver Broncos and Jay Cutler how did it come to this? Not sure where I land on this one. Broncos: How could you have been so stupid as to let it slip that you were interested in somebody else? Cutler: I understand you’re ticked off, but swallow your pride. Are you really willing to get traded just to prove a point?

- Race To Witch Mountain: Not often I see a kids movie that borders on lousy, but this one does.

- Girl Scout Cookies: You haven’t touched my lips in years. But I bought a few boxes of you this year and I think I love you.

- For the first time in a long time (maybe the first time ever), we are completely stealing a series from our high school group. “Sunday Old School” is a very junior high-friendly series they just completed that we are kicking off in two weeks.

- Next week marks the return of our Purpose-driven Youth Ministry Conference! I am a lot more excited than I thought I would be. If you are joining us, be sure to track me down and say hello.

- I am seriously thinking about purchasing about 5 acres of desert property. You can buy it for the cost of an expensive dinner date (okay, it’s not quite that cheap, but close) and for some odd reason I really like the thought of owning a chunk of land to pass down to future generations. Of course I can just see the reading of the will now:

LAWYER: “…and to Kayla and Cole, your dad leaves you the 5 acre property in the desert”

KAYLA AND COLE SIMULTANEOUSLY: “Ah, Crap.”

A large portion of our time atthis year’sJunior High Summit was spent in discussion with Dave Gibbons, Pastor of New Song Church and author of The Monkey and The Fish. If you have any interest in doing church a little differently, having a global mindset, and thinking outside the box, his book is a must read.

The conversation was really rich and I’m sure I will post more thoughts about it all but wanted to share two random, mostly unconnected tidbits that jumped out.

1) RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT: In order to avoid becoming obsolete, many of the world’s leading companies spend a lot of time and money on R&D. Gibbons sited google as an example….apparently, a very large portion of their budget is spent in this area to help make sure they are constantly moving forward. Might churches be wise to adapt a similar strategy? Might junior high ministries be wise to do the same? If so, what type of “R&D” should we be doing? That’s worth thinking about.

2) MINISTRY TO THE “FRINGES”: One of the ways churches can continue to grow, thrive, reflect kingdom principles etc. is to purposely neglect the “vortex” of our ministry and look for ways to adapt to the changing culture around us. By allowing leaders to experiment with stuff outside our usual methods, programs, strategies etc. (the “vortex”), we give our ministries a chance to adapt to the changes going on all around us instead of simply clinging on to our comfortable vortexy (my word, not Gibbons’) stuff. The fringes….the stuff we aren’t quite comfortable with, the people we don’t naturally associate with, the things that are in culture but not yet in the church etc. is the stuff we need to begin to think about or else we run the risk of being an outdated relic. Think of your community for a second. Can you name a church or two that once was a vibrant part of your community but instead of being willing to consider the “fringes”, insisted on feeding the “vortex” and is now merely a shell of what it once was? What are the “vortex” parts of your junior high ministry? What “fringes” might you need to begin paying attention to?

If this is of any interest to you, be sure to check out Mark Ostreicher’s blog in the weeks to come. He usually posts fairly thorough transcripts of our discussions (give him some time, it takes a couple weeks for him to get around to it.).

I’m away at a junior high ministry summit for a few days and won’t be blogging. A couple quick updates:

- Our first weekend of “School Wars” was shockingly successful. I’m super excited about the next two weeks.

- An interesting part of “School Wars” is that we are cancelling music for all three weeks. Partly because having music simply doesn’t fit the program and partly just to give our band kids a break.

- As I type this, I am waiting to hear the results of my son’s doctor appointment. He broke his wrist over five months ago, but we didn’t realize the severity of the injury and waited FOUR months to take him to the doctor! Today we find out if it looks like the bone is healing or if he will need surgery to repair and pin his wrist.

- The 21 Junior High Ministry experts I am with four three days are an amazing group of people. Each year I leave our time together feeling sharpened and inspired. I’m sure this year will be no different.

I come from the perspective that there are very few “neutral observers” in the world, thatscientists, futurists, culturalobservers and the like almost always approach their craft with a built-in bias; they begin the process with something to prove. Therefore, there exists a tendency to pay more attention to evidence that supports your bias than to evidence that seems to be contrary to what you hope to prove, discover or observe in action. All of us could make a good sized list where this is obviously happening (creation vs. evolution, global warming, the economy, foreign policyetc.).

And, it’s happening in youth ministry. The conversation about the current state and future of youth ministry is such an important one. So important, in fact that I wonder if we do the conversation harm when we ignore the fact that much of our observation of youth ministry, how we interpret the history of youth ministry, what we think of the current state of youth ministry and where we think it is or should be headed in the future is clouded by a host of outside influences. Our theology, our own personal youth group experiences when we were teenagers, our lack of youth group experiences when we were teenagers, how we have been treated by church leadership, how our parents modeled or didn’t model healthy faith, the size of our church, the pressure we feel or don’t feel to ‘perform’…..all of these and a massive host of other things totally influence us and shape our youth ministry perspective and, In my opinnion, create a bias in one direction or another.

So let’s keep talking! But let’s do so recognizing a couple things:

1) Youth ministry is more ‘art’ than ‘science’. There really is no singular formula for success. Trying to put God in any box, be that the box of a formulaic approach or the box that he can’t work within such formulaic approaches doesn’t make sense.

2) We are all biased to an extent (based on those outside factors I mentioned), and those biases keep us from truly being neutral in the discussion.

I know some of my biases…I know from what perspective I enter the discussion:

- I think the state of youth ministry is, at it’s core, okay. I don’t believe it is broken (although parts of it are)or inneed of a complete overhaul.

- I believe God is at work any time caring adults choose to enter the lives of students and that this isn’t automatically helped or hurt by the size of the church, the strategy of the youth ministry etc.

You don’t need to admit your biases in the comments (although you are welcome to do so), but I do encourage you to identify them so you can more honestly enter the discussion.

It’s Thursday and much is happening in life and ministry. Slowing down for a few minutes to think about some randomness feels pretty good right now!

- School Wars: Lots of people have asked me to explain School Wars, our 3-week outreach emphasis that kicks-off this weekend. The best way to describe it is that it is somewhat similar to classic team competition at Summer camps or in youth groups of yester-year. We are forming 8 school-based teams that will compete in a wide variety of competions (nobody will be forced to participate…..volunteers only) over the course of three weekends. The atmosphere will be an “American Gladiators meets Mad Max meets urban jungle” with volunteers dressed up and serving as team captians. Instead of a 3-week teaching “series” we are basically going to present the gospel message differently all 3 weeks. So, each week is actually the same message wrapped up differently.

- Jersey Mike’s: Do you have one in your area? I’m a lover of sandwiches, and Jersey Mike’s is my new favorite. So tasty.

- Fired Up About: I’m a little fired up over all the talk about how broken, innafective, outdated, and (insert favorite criticism here) the local church and youth ministry are. Really, we suck that bad? Or is it just in vogue to take pot shots right now?

- Best Movie That I Bet You Haven’t Seen: “Flash of Genius” is a wonderful movie about the invention of the intermittent windshield wiper and the saga of one man’s fight against the auto industry. I really, really liked it.

- Amazon Kindle: I have wanted one since they came onto the scene. Anybody have one? Are they worth it?

- Junior High Small Groups: Tomorrow we have a follow up meeting to a conversation our team had a few months ago about our small group system. I really do think we may be on the verge of making some strategic and potentially awesome tweaks.