- On Halloween, our student ministries department hosted “Trunk or Treat” for the young kids in our community. Families in the church sign up to host a trunk and are assigned a parking spot in our lot and decorate their cars and hand out candy as little ones file by. It was really, really fun and attracted an amazing number of families from our community who had never stepped foot on our church campus.

- “Trunk or Treat” ended at 7:00 p.m. and we then spent two frantic hours turning the Refinery around and setting up for our High School department’s “Pumpkin Fest” which lasted until midnight. Our high school team and several of our junior high team members worked until about 3:00a.m. cleaning up and getting the building ready for the weekend.

- In Junior High, we kicked off our first week of our new series, The Red Stuff, and overall I think it went pretty well. We had lots of fun programming around the topic including a “Red Stanley” activity that involved giving every student their own Red Stanley to take home in the hopes that they will take a fun picture of Red Stanley and email it to us for a slide show next week. The music was great, the games were fun, attendance was strong. I ditched out of the fourth service and hustled down to our San Clemente campus to cheer on their new youth pastor.

- Football: I think my Broncos might be lucky to finish 8-8…but that could be good enough to win their division. Hard to believe a USC dropped two spots in the ranking after a blowout win. It is shaping up to be a wild finish to the college football regular season.

- Today, I’m having lunch with an old friend from San Diego who I haven’t seen in years. Every time I am with him I go home refreshed, challenged and spiritually sharpened so I’m looking forward to re-connecting.

Just typing that little title to this post was tough. The reason: I feel like I care a little too much about the election Tuesday, who becomes our next president, the future of our country etc. I’ve been so caught up in this election and the various levels of implications that I have allowed myself to forget a few things such as…

- I’m a child of God and a Christ-follower first. I’m a husband, father and friend second. The fact that I’m also a proud American is, at the very best, third on the list.

- God’s kingdom is really the kingdom of my citizenship.

- Ultimately my trust, security, future and everything else I hold dear is not protected by the United states or the person charged to lead us.

- Obama isn’t going to bring about “Change we can believe in” any more than McCain is going to be a “maverick”. That’s all just a bunch of campaign hype. They’re both politicians who will forget about promises made and positions staked out shortly after entering office. Partisanship, bickering, finger-pointing and gridlock will prevail under our new leader just as it always has.

I think this was more for my own “therapy” than anything else, but it feels good to remind myself of a few things.

We shot this podcast over a month ago, but some “technical difficulties” kept it from being posted until this week. Phil Shinners, the junior high pastor at Mariners Church, joins in the discussion.

- We had an incredible, but really long weekend. On Friday night we hosted our first “7th Grade Retreat” for 7th grade small groups. It was short, sweet and simple. The event started at 7:00 p.m. and went until noon on Saturday.

- After the retreat, we took 150 students to High School Musical 3.

- Then, we ran four youth services that included our annual wrap up to Choctober…THE MUDSLIDE (a massive slip n slide made up mostly of soap and water with a little bit of chocolate syrup added for effect). Historically, we’ve done this event down the center isle of our junior high room, but this year we moved it outside and we built a ramp that ran down our amphitheater stairs which turned out to be super fun. The video was taken after church when one of our adult leaders got a massive running start and caught some serious air pretty much missing the entire ramp!

- I spent much of my day yesterday doing some very basic maintenance on our dirt bikes. Basic maintenance for most people, that is, but for me it took several hours!

- Today actually feels a bit slow which is nice. We are kicking of a new series this weekend called “The Red Stuff” that will focus on the words of Jesus (red letters in the bible…). I’m in the process of trying to categorize Jesus’ teachings in some junior high friendly terms.

Okay, it’s not really a “fest”… just a few links you may find interesting.

SOME FUNNY/STRANGE NEWS
- Racoon Vs. Taser
- Oh, Deer

NEW JH RESOURCE TO HELP STUDENTS SPEND TIME WITH GOD
- 10-minute Moments

HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL 3 DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
- Wildcats Weekend

A SUPER FUN HOTEL IF YOU FIND YOURSELF IN ANY OF ITS LOCATIONS
- The Ace Hotel

Today in a meeting, we somehow went down a very fun rabbit trail. We started recalling all the traditions, sayings, activities, approaches to ministry etc. from the churches we grew up in and even from the youth ministries we’ve been a part of. Here are just a few….add your own to the list.

- Singing “In The Round”
- Extending the “Right Hand of Fellowship” to new church members.
- Overhead projectors.
- Being driven around in the back of the youth pastor’s pick up truck while Christmas caroling.
- Hearing the phrase “backsliding” as part of our vernacular.
- Goldfish swallowing contests.
- Showing students “physical affection” in the form of swirlees, wedgies, noogies, charlie horses, pink bellies etc.

Others????

- This past weekend we wrapped up our six-week series, The Face of Love. We rarely do such long series, but it was part of a church-wide emphasis. Two weeks ago, we started having a Friday morning “Talk Through” of our weekend program because it felt like we were showing up on Saturday without a good enough grasp on what we were doing. So far, the results have been tremendous and well worth the extra effort.

- I feel really tired. Since the opening of our building in June, our team has been running 110% all the time. But the end of October looks like it will bring a little bit of down time for all of us.

- Big game tonight! A Broncos win will put them in the driver’s seat of the AFC West.

- My wife and I have been meaning to for years, and today….at the deadline…we officially switched our voting registration to “Decline to State”, which puts us as independents. I feel like I’m betraying my party….and my parents!

- Speaking of parents: I feel like I was a crappy one this weekend. I wasn’t around much, I over-reacted to a situation with Cole, and when I was around, I choose to huddle up and watch too much football. Unlike me, and probably a sign of my fatigue.

- Heading out for a short date day with Rachel. Smiles all around.

Nobody has ever accused me of being a deep thinker, and I’m surprisingly okay with that. I’m a pragmatist through and through….with all the good and bad that comes with it.

After over 20 years of hands-on youth ministry combined with undergraduate and graduate education in the field mixed with extensive reading and writing on the topic combined with attending and teaching countless seminars and workshops dealing with youth ministry, I think I have come up with my own manifesto, of sorts (shout out to Marko…).

This is in no way meant to be a response to Marko’s book or to Chap Clark’s books or to Doug Fields’ books or to Kara Powell’s books or to Mark Yaconelli’s books or to my own books or to…..well you get the point…there are a LOT of youth ministry books with a lot of incredible, important, information about how we can be better at what we are called to do. I’m a proponent of being a life-long learner, and I think the more reading and training and sharpening we can get, the better we become. But with all that also comes a muddying of the waters. Some of the most basic principles in youth ministry can get lost. So sometimes a little simple, pragmatic thinking can be a good thing.

So, my pragmatic youth ministry manifesto is this: Build a team of caring, Christ-following adults who like teenagers, then do whatever seems to work best in your unique setting to assist those adults in building relationships with your students as they walk with them through their journey of faith.

That would be a pretty short book, I suppose.

Youth Ministry 3.0 Update: Apparently the book won’t be available on Amazon or through any other online or physical vendor until early next year. So until then the only place to get a copy is at one of the two remaining NYWC conventions. If you aren’t going, find somebody who is and ask them to buy you a copy.