It’s been well over a year since I’ve taken a true week-long vacation, so I decided now was a good time. Kayla is in Kenya, and Cole is in a cast due to a broken wrist (a wrist we waited about TWO months to have checked out by a doctor!) so we really don’t have anything planned. Just some lazy days followed by a dirt bike trip with some buddies. Today was my first official vacation day and it was action packed (insert sarcasm).

- Woke up about 9:00 a.m. and laid around watching news and ESPN until Rachel got back from a morning coffee date with a friend.

- At 11:30 we went to Chick-Fil-A for our usual Monday morning date…I drank way too much sweet tea.

- Over lunch I began to warm her up to the idea of purchasing a used pick up truck to haul our bikes around. I had a truck for years and about three years ago I donated it to our church thinking I had outlived my need for a pickup. Of course, that was before we started dirt bike riding. Doh!

- This afternoon we picked Cole up from school and took him to get a cast on his broken wrist.

- A few minutes ago I got back from test-driving the truck I have my eye on. I highly doubt I will end up buying it (or any other one for that matter), but it was kinda fun. My environmentally-minded, global warming sensitive friends will be disappointed in my vehicular choice should I make a purchase.

- Now I’m getting ready to eat some chili, hang with the family and gear up for 24.

Dear vacation,
I think I love you.

What happens when there are tons of homes in foreclosure in Southern California? According to this article, skaters from all across the country and even from overseas are staking out communities with lots of empty homes……with empty swimming pools.

(Thanks, Jason.)

Three key tasks of a communicator are to convince the listeners you care about them, to convince them you know what you’re talking about and to convince them that what you are saying is worth listening to.

The last two are easy….simply know what you’re talking about and communicate in an engaging way!

But the first one is a tougher challenge. How do you let listeners know you really care about them? How do you, in essence, gain the trust of your audience? You can begin earning the trust of your students in a few fairly simple ways:

- Be yourself…students can smell a fake.
- Be consistent…students can smell a flake.
- Be vulnerable…students trust people who are willing to share failures and struggles.
- Be fair….life isn’t fair, but young teenagers think it should be.
- Be involved long-term…students in 8th grade will more quickly trust leaders they’ve known since 7th grade.

As you begin to build more and more trust, your students will more easily believe you truly care for them, and they will be more likely to pay attention and put your bible studies and lessons into action.

If you are the leader of your ministry, one of your primary roles is to equip other godly men and women to share the ministry load. But what does it mean to “equip” somebody? Here are some thoughts:

Empower: Give them the freedom to minister and lead.
Quietly correct: When correction is needed, do so privately.
Unlimited support: Become their biggest cheerleader.
Invest time: Follow Christ’s example…he invested time with those carrying out his ministry.
Provide tools: Make sure training, seminars and resources are available.

Ever wonder whether something is worth the time and effort it takes? Is it really worth it to spend a full day making a 5 minute video that your students don’t seem to care about? Is it worth it to spend two days making a 3 minute video that they absolutely love? How much time should be spent creating cool graphics? How much money should you spend on your summer calendar?

A few of us on our team recently made a commitment to try to run the vast majority of these types of decisions through this little grid. Basically, I want our team to avoid doing things that are high in investment and low on impact. However, I would love for us to focus on things that are low in investment and high on impact.

A few examples of things that might be high investment/low impact:
- A game that takes an hour ahead of time to set up, 10 minutes to explain but only TWO minutes to play!
- A 5 minute story/illustration that is funny but doesn’t tie into lesson well.
- Running every aspect of your own camp instead of letting the camp do the programming (maybe the same impact but much different investment….)

A few examples of things that might be low investment/high impact:
- Borrowing ideas from our ministry friends.
- Repeating really good lessons and series from time to time.
- Buying pre-produced videos instead of creating our own.
- Less time spent creating promo and fliers and more time “talking it up” with students.

A pretty good weekend, especially considering the fact that things felt a little “cut N paste” together due to so much attention on our Believe retreat.

ATTENDANCE: Attendance was a little low. Again, I think this may have been due to lots of kids who went to the retreat may have skipped church upon their return.

FUN FACTOR: Pretty high. Our lesson was around the idea of learning to grow on your own and we did a good job of tying much of our program into the theme.

LESSON: David Hughes, one of our college-aged volunteers taught the bulk of the lesson after a short video set-up by me. He did an AMAZING job; one of the best JH lessons I’ve heard in a really long time.

MUSIC: Music was great! Probably a little mellower than usual, but the band was tight, the kids singing blended well together.

VOLUNTEER INVOLVEMENT: Very low. Because so many leaders went to Believe, most of them didn’t show back up for the weekend program which made things a bit rough around the tables.

The truth is, I’m a pretty laid-back guy and really don’t get too worked up over much. But there are a few things recently that have bothered me a little bit. For instance:

SHAVING: the whole process is such a bother which is why I choose to only shave once a week or for an important meeting. Electric razors don’t work well and traditional blades are a hassle.

MY COMPUTER SCREEN: I have a brand new lap-top that seems to be pretty nice (I know nothing about computers so maybe it’s really a turd), but whenever I am in battery mode, the screen flickers ever so slightly….not enough to be a major problem, just enough to bother me a bit.

850 BILLION DOLLARS: I’m no economist, and I really don’t understand how we got into this mess or what the best way to get out of it is, but 850 BILLION Bucks maybe fix it? That bothers me.

FEET: Mine are gross, and I imagine most people feel the same way about theirs. The fact that I have to try to “un-gross” my feet bothers me.

MEETINGS: They usually don’t accomplish much but everybody seems to think we need them which is why I have to stop this post short….I’m late for one. Meetings bother me and me being late for meetings bothers other people.

About once a month or so (and by “or so” I mean once a month…once every-other month…once a quarter….whenever I get around to it!) I shoot a short, 10-15 minute, video podcast dealing with various topics related to junior high ministry. If you’ve never seen one, you can find the archive here. The goal for each podcast is to give a quick little bit of insight and share some of my learnings on any given topic.

Here’s where I could use your help: What are some topics you think other JH youth workers are wrestling through? What do the paid “Point People” struggle with? How about their volunteers? What might a part-time youth worker in a mid-size church want some insight into? How about the “point person” who is also a volunteer in a small church?

Got up early to go riding on Monday and didn’t have time to post, and yesterday was a full day and I simply forgot! So, some basic catching up here:

THE WEEKEND:
I twittered that last weekend was like the titanic….big, elaborate etc. that somehow hit an iceberg. It really wasn’t any one single thing that went wrong, but more like several little ice bergs that slowly sank us!
- We forgot several things for the program and had to scramble to get them in place.
- The crowd was bigger than normal combined with fewer than normal adult leaders.
- The crowd was rowdier than normal.
- We had a ‘guest’ speaker who was GREAT, but was new to our stage.
- The fire alarm went off in the middle of the lesson causing a ton of confusion (false alarm).
- All in all, one of the tougher weekends….specifically our Saturday night service.

JR. HIGH BELIEVE:
I am super excited about this weekend’s Believe event! For the first time, we are taking a group of students to this incredible conference. If you haven’t heard of Believe, you really do need to consider taking your students when it comes to your area, which it will because they have something like 14 different tour stops. Believe is a 24-hour event designed specifically for junior highers.

SCOTT RUBIN:
On a selfish note, I may be most excited about Believe because my buddy, Scott Rubin is the speaker (I typically speak at a few Believe events each year and it would make sense for me to speak at the So. Cal event but since I’m bringing my own youth group the good folks at Believe agreed that it would be a drag for me to charge my students to hear me speak when they have to suffer through me for free every weekend!). Scott is the junior high Pastor at Willow Creek and what started out as a professional “iron sharpening iron” relationship has, over the past several years, developed into a great friendship. We even wrote a book together, which apparently nobody has purchased (want to be one of the few and the proud?). Scott is flying in a day early and we’re going to do some “California” stuff which won’t involve snow, ear muffs, or ice.

SMALL GROUPS:
For the past three weeks, our small groups have mixed it up a bit. Instead of meeting in homes as usual, we are all combined in The Refinery for a large group teaching time followed by some small group discussion. The purpose was twofold: first, to give our leaders and host homes a little bit of a break and second, to allow us to teach a few deeper topics that we normally don’t cover in our small groups.
- Week One: Sex and Dating
- Week Two: Foundations of Faith (Christian doctrine 101, basically)
- Week Three: How to Grow On Your Own
Overall, things have gone fairly well but I REALLY miss being in the host home with my group of guys.

Not sure why, but this little video made me giggle like a 3rd grader.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65I0HNvTDH4

p.s. sorry, but I’m having trouble embedding a video…thus a link.

(S.O. to Rhonda. I don’t like the ‘hat tip’, so I use the shout out)