Our junior high team is away for a 24 fall planning retreat. Fine-tuning and clarifying roles, planning the fall calendar of events and teaching topics, and creative brainstorming are all part of our schedule.

So far we have talked about what real teamwork looks like, added a few really exciting events and activities, made a little tweak to our small group schedule and eliminated a highly successful sacred cow (after at least an hour of seriously passionate conversation and debate). We have three hours together this morning to finish the tasks at hand.

In my opinion, this fall is shaping up to be fairly different than any in the past but quite a bit more exciting, too.

Things that I have spent anywhere from 10 seconds to 10 minutes thinking about today:

- Internships: What makes them a win/win (a win for intern and the ministry)?
- Internships: Do they have to be two years long to be effective?
- Olympics: Crazy how a communist country ripe with human rights violations can look so appealing on television and under a certain spotlight.
- Starbucks: Why am I here instead of Peete’s?
- Communicating to teenagers: Is it as important part of a youth ministry program as we think it is?
- Youth Pastors: What are the top 3 or 4 qualities of a truly effective one…one that can be successful in any size church and setting?
- Student Leadership programs: Ugg! So important, but are they really? Do they ever accomplish what we hope they will?
- Coffee: Why does it result in such bad breath?
- Public restrooms: Even though they all have that little chart that shows who cleaned it and how often…they are usually nasty.
- Leadership: So many books, and ‘irrefutable laws’, but certainly there are a handful of non-negotiables?

Just saw this interesting list of the 10 worst gadgets of all time. Fun, little piece, but I would have LOVED if it included some list of what these products ultimately led to. My hunch is that some of them, though huge flops, were actually the predecessors to some pretty sweet stuff.

Can you think of a time a significant ministry “flop” turned out to be a springboard for something really great?

Middle School Talksheets
If I remember correctly, Youth Specialties has been publishing Talksheets since somewhere around the mid 80′s. If you are looking for a GREAT way to get your middle schoolers talking about and engaged in your lesson, it’s tough to beat Talksheets. The newest edition by Terry Linhart focuses on the life of Jesus.

My Changes and My Future (from the Middle School Survival series)
This six-book series comes to a close with the final two books written by Mark Ostreicher and Scott Rubin. Now that the series is complete, I’m hoping they package them in a cool “box set” parents can give their junior highers.

Group’s Emergency Response Handbook
This book is about a year old, but somehow I just stumbled upon it and….WOW! Full of one-page insights into how to minister and respond to issues of grief, divorce, gender identity, addictions and more. On Group’s site, it looks like maybe this is only available as a download, but I’m sure there is a way to get hard copy if you’d like. This is a book I would put in the hands of every volunteer in your ministry.

Today I was reminded that I’m getting older by…

- Taking my soon-to-be freshmen daughter to her new high school to meet with counselor to discuss class schedule etc.

- Spending about an hour outdoors today cleaning my side yard. It’s going to take about 3 hours in my air-conditioned house to recover.

- Talking to my neighbor who recently suffered a stroke and had heart surgery…he’s only about 10 years older than me.

- Grumbling under my breath as my son decided to trade a bunch of his video games etc. in at Game Stop to get a PSP. His other stuff is perfectly good and they don’t fetch much value in trade-in (I hear my dad’s voice in my head as i type!).

- Talking to a guy who is about to run a half marathon and realizing I couldn’t even run a 1/10th marathon!

I’m on a short vacation to Palm Springs so not thinking too much about anything very blog-worthy.

- Week 7 of our Summer Series “Full Service Summer” was smooth. Each summer we do a 10-week series and, depending on the series we pick, it can either be incredible or start to feel way, way too long. This summer has been really good. I think the key to long series is to have some sort of “umbrella” theme but let each lesson stand on it’s own…trying to build off of each lesson for too long is where we seem to run into problems.

- Saw Wal-E last night and was pleasantly surprised. Such limited dialogue made good story telling a must.

- Check out Zombo.com (S.O. To Erik Williams)

- The first part of our vacation is exactly the kind I like: Lazy, nice hotel, swimming, movies, sleeping in (although I have a hard time doing that), eating out, reading…just being lazy. The highlight today will be the super fancy all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet.

- The second part of our vacation will entail a bunch of chores and projects around the house. Cleaning the side yard, pulling weeds, cleaning up planters, working on dirt bikes to get ready for riding season. Not nearly as fun or lazy as part one.

Kyle Loza, a GREAT young man who grew up in our youth ministry (he broke his ankle at junior high camp bombing a massive hill on a dirt board), won the gold medal at X-games for best trick in freestyle MotoX for the second year in a row. If you haven’t seen this you’ll need to watch it a few times to comprehend.

Summer Camp Reminds Me That…

- A good jr. high camp speaker is clear, simple, and short. Ours this week has been all three.
- My wife is a really good cook.
- Junior high boys cabins have always and will always smell like warm feet.
- Organized recreation brings out the very best and very worst in people.
- Junior high girls cry very easily, and so do their counselors.
- Paintballs hurt.
- Pranks always start off innocent enough and always escalate out of control.
- “Lights Out” really means “Okay gang now is the time we suggest you begin to start thinking about getting ready for bed….brush your teeth, take a shower, play some games, wrestle, go for a night hike and then turn your lights out in a few hours.”
- Most of our students live life at a really frantic pace and slowing down for a week is good medicine.
- God is in control, that he is a very present creator, that he loves his creation very much, that he has a unique, remarkable plan for every one of our students and we are privileged he allows us to play a small part in that plan.

- We had a GREAT weekend in our junior high ministry. The lesson felt good (Car Battery…”How To Re-charge When You Feel Drained”), the games were fun, music was great and our live “bit” that we’ve been doing each week during the lesson was one of the strongest yet. But, perhaps the highlight of the week was that we finally had some acoustics installed in the ceiling of our room which made the sound much, much, much better. I was amazed at how much more attentive and involved the crowd was, which is logical since they could actually hear what was being said from stage!

- We’re up at camp right now. The first night was great and day two seems to be off to a good start. Tons of kids who are new to our church and youth group. This is our 11th year at Thousand Pines and I’m still convinced it’s the best camp experience for our group.

- News you’ve probably already heard: Youth Specialties has joined forces with Mark Matlock and Wisdom Works. Two really, really great organizations that, together, will do make a great team as they look for ways to minister directly to kids. Good stuff.

- One of my weird, quirky, favorite things about heading up to Thousand Pines is the library of old ministry-related books in the house I stay at. I stumbled across one today written 25 years ago. The topic: How the ‘battle’ between the fundamentalists and the more liberal theology is poised to rip apart evangelicalism as we know it. The back cover suggests this book offers a practical reminder about what evangelicals should, and shouldn’t cling to. Not sure I’ll read the whole thing, but it sure seems like it may have been more prophetic than people probably realized back in ’83.

In what has to be the slowest time of the year for sports fans, this selection of recent sports pictures itched my scratch.

Of course it was the first one that caught my attention. Denver Bronco Rod Smith’s retirement brought tears to my eyes, too.