My life-long buddy Chris and I rolled into town early this morning and have been going non-stop ever since, although at the moment I can’t seem to find him. A few highlights and observations from day one:

- At lunch we ordered what, without doubt, were the tartest, tangiest, most bitter glasses of Lime aide ever put to lips. Delicious.

- During the opening session Mark Oestriecher said what he always says: “relax, eat a good meal, make new friends, skip sessions…do what you want to do to make the weekend a great one for yourself”. I’ve heard that for years, but this year it really sounded good. I think I’m more tired than I realize and will probably sleep, read and relax at least as much as I do “conference stuff”.

- In that spirit, I snuck out with some buddies to see Body of Lies. Good flick.

- I’m posting from a little internet cafe smack dab in the middle of the meeting hall and worship is in full swing. Feels a little awkward to be online while 3,000 others are engaging in worship (although there are three other people online next to me) so I think it’s time to sign off.

- I’m excited about NYWC in Sacramento this weekend. It is always a great time of connecting with old ministry friends and meeting new ones. I mentioned trying to grab a meal with frequenters of this blog, but my meals are all booked! But if we see each other in the hallways, be sure to say hello.

- Speakers are no longer allowed to promote their books, resources, ministries etc. in their workshops (a good policy, I happen to think…) so be sure to drop by the simply youth ministry store in the exhibit hall to check out all the newest junior high resources.

- Don’t go see American Carol. Even if you agree with the politics in the film, you will be shocked at how appallingly un-funny and offensive it is.

- Disney sent my family invitations the the High School Musical 3 premiere in LA next week. I’m not sure who’s more excited my kids or their parents! They are excited to see the movie and the stars, I’m excited to walk the red carpet and be mistaken for a star…an aging, balding star.

I’m trying to create a list of helpful resources for parents of young teens. Websites, books, newsletters etc.

If you have a favorite, would you mind sharing it?

On the hunt for small group curriculum?

I’m super excited about two brand new small group resources created specifically for junior highers.

Bible Stuff Vol. 2 video curriculum contains five video-driven lessons. Each video sets the small group leader up for some really great discussion with their students. Bible Stuff Vol. 2 focuses on God’s story.

Active Bible Studies contains 20 hands-on, experience-driven small group lessons.

- Weekend at Church was really fun and really busy. Started it off Friday by going to a high school football game, then popping into our high school ministry’s ’5th Quarter’ which was really fun. On Saturday I went to our 4:30 JH service for our 4th week of “Face of Love” and then skipped our 6:30 service to attend Mariners Church for the grand opening of their new student center. On Sunday I attended our 9:00 a.m. JH service then hustled over to our Irvine campus to be a part of their 11:00 a.m. youth program. Whew….!!

- In addition, each year our JH ministry ‘cancels’ October and replaces it with CHOCTOBER…a month of chocolate games, chocolate prizes etc. Week one was a huge success.

- Pastor Rick took a whole crew of us to see “American Carol” last night. Fun idea and really great to be out with him and a bunch of the staff…but TERRIBLE movie. The best way to describe it would be a wacky “Airplane” type movie. But in order to even have a chance at laughing at the gags one has to be really, really well versed in the Left vs. Right politics of our times. That mixed with the fact that it just wasn’t funny made for a rough ride.

- Interesting that it seemed like the media was united in calling for the “bail out” and now only a couple days later they are united in questioning if it was a good idea. I once heard that much of the media exists to first build people and stories up and then tear them down. This feels like an example of that.

- Does anybody watch “The Unit”? It is quickly becoming my favorite show.

- My wife has been laid up for over two weeks and today is her first real day up and around. She took one of the kids to school which made our morning much less hectic.

- Spending date day with Rachel by having breakfast together then taking my dad to the doctor followed by prepping for my Youth Specialties workshops. Not sure where the date in date day went!

If you are interested in downloading a free HSM3 Bible study/discussion guide to use with your students, you can get that here.

After much deliberation from our judges, the three prize winners for the HSM3 promotional stuff are:

3rd Place: “It’s the start of something old…” submitted by Rob
2nd Place: “HSM8…The 20 Year Reunion” Submitted by Chris Trent
1st Place: “The parents’ crisis intervention team realized after an initial panic that it was not Harry Potter robes on the youth pastor after all.” Submitted by matthew mcnutt

If you three will send your mailing address to me at Kurtj@saddleback.net, we will have your prizes mailed out early next week. Congratulations.

If you work with students, you understand the juggernaut that High School Musical has become! Disney Studios and Grace Hill Media asked if I would be willing to work on a project to help youth workers take advantage of the fact that virtually every kid in their youth group is going to see HSM3.

I haven’t blogged much this week because my wife, Rachel, has been in the hospital with a pretty severe kidney infection.
Last Friday, she started complaining of some pain in her side and had a bit of a fever, but she wasn’t feeling too bad and we figured it was just a small bout with the flu. This continued over the weekend and when things got a bit worse she went to see her doctor on Monday. He said she had a kidney infection and prescribed some antibiotics.
By Monday night, Rachel’s fever was higher, and she couldn’t keep anything down so we took her to the ER first thing Tuesday morning. That’s when they discovered that her kidney infection was quite severe and admitted her, hooked her up to and IV and began pumping her full of 3 different types of antibiotics to fight the infection.

She came home yesterday afternoon, and as we were leaving the doctor told us, “If you had waited another 24 hours before bringing her in, she would have been here for several weeks”. It was weird because we didn’t feel like she had waited or tried to “tough it out”…we just thought she had a flu bug.

Anyway, she is home now and resting. Starting last night, we have had really yummy meals showing up at our door. Not sure it’s worth what we’ve been through the last several days, but it sure is nice to see the body of Christ in action.

I’ve mentioned our new monthly outreach event that took place last Friday night called “The 3″. It was an amazing event that turned out almost exactly how our team envisioned it would. However, while parents were picking up their kids, a very upset mom grabbed one of our volunteers and frustratingly blurted something along the lines of, “I thought this was a church event! Why was there freak dancing? My daughter won’t be coming back!” By the time the volunteer leader found one of our paid team, the mom was long gone.

But she wasn’t gone for long. The following morning she shot an email off to Pastor Rick who forwarded it to me. I share the following email exchange in the hopes that it will encourage you as you deal with conflict in your ministry setting. while I’ve certainly learned that not everybody response the way we hope they will, this exchange was a powerful reminder of the importance of quickly dealing with concerned parents.

SHE WROTE:
Pastor Rick,
Why are our youth leaders allowing “freak dancing” at the youth activities??? My daughter was at the Refinery last night and came home with this disappointing news. She won’t be going back.

I WROTE:
Dear Mrs. O’Brian,
My name is Kurt Johnston and I’m the junior high Pastor here at Saddleback. I wanted to shoot you a quick note thanking you for expressing your concern over the dancing at last night’s junior high event. You would be surprised at how few parents are willing to let us know when they have a concern. I’m the parent of two young teens myself and, like you, I expect church events to be an appropriate place for them to attend.

God Bless,
Kurt Johnston
Pastor To Students

SHE WROTE:
Hi Kurt,
Thanks so much for your reply. I appreciate the time you took and the information you gave. I feel a lot better about our church and youth group now that I have read it. My daughter brought three girlfriends last night to “The 3″ and we brought the same girls tonight to the 6:30 service. Hopefully they will continue to attend, hear the power of God’s Word and have changed lives!
Thank you for your commitment to the youth and thanks again for your response. I will definitely be lifting you, your team, and the jr high ministry in prayer.
In Him,

I WROTE:
WOW….3 friends to church last night, awesome! Hopefully ‘The 3′ will continue to open doors like that. Please tell your daughter that wildside is proud of her…that is exactly what we hoped students would do. Good for her!
kj

- Our first “The 3″, a new monthly outreach event, was big success. We had way more students than we anticipated and everybody seemed to have a great time. Here are a few details:
* The 3 happens on the 3rd Friday of each month, for 3 hours and costs $3 to get in.
* Includes dinner and a variety of activities such as skate park, earth ball games, smores in the fire pit, dancing, scavenger hunt, classic t.v. shows in the theater, volleyball, giant twister and more.
* It is meant to simply be a front door event. We didn’t gather students together for a message or anything like that…just a place for students to come and have good, clean fun. The hope is that un-churched students will come to “The 3″and decide they want to come to one of our weekend services. The plan actually worked! We had about a dozen or so first time visitors this weekend at church who had attended “The 3″ on Friday night!

- We had a roller coaster of a weekend. Our 4:30 Saturday night service was a disaster. Probably the worst we’ve ever experienced. One of the videos was edited wrong and left a sexual reference in place (nothing crazy, but not church friendly). Another video had such poor sound that it was inaudible. We didn’t think through the game and as a result it took about 3 times longer to play than it should have. The songs that were picked for worship were WAY to slow for a junior high “seeker-friendly” church experience.

- BUT….we re-tooled the service and the rest of them went really, really well.

- I had to respond to two parents over the weekend who were concerned about something in our ministry. One was actually quite irate (in fact, I’ll post on that tomorrow), and the other was super cool…just concerned.