Here is my quick review of the last Group Magazine sent out.

Something I liked: Doug Fields’ voices article on the “power of non-significance” was excellent. I love to create “remember when” moments with my kids (hey Mark you remember when we wiped out on the sky slope together…). Doug talks a lot about the importance of presence in our kids’ lives — awesome stuff.

???: Steve Argue’s voices article “gospel = good news” had a great title. But as I started reading it I was going “Huh?” more than “O — I get it.” When I got close to the end of the article I got what he was trying to communicate but it took a little while to get there.

Key Statement: Duffy Robbins said, “In over 30 years of youth ministry I’ve discovered it’s relatively easy to get teenagers to say yes to Jesus. What’s difficult is getting them to say no to those things in their lives that have nothing to do with Jesus.”

Creative idea: Brenda Seefeldt article, “Growing a Youth ministry that looks a lot like your church” had some great thoughts as well as practical ideas in it. I sent her an email for one of her brain-storm ideas she talked about in the article and she sent it to me in just a couple days — thx Brenda for being such a great resource.

Posted by Kurt Johnston

Recently I have been thinking, praying, reading, journaling, and even talking a very little bit about some changes I think may be around the corner in the ministry I lead. And what I’ve discovered along the way is gravity. Here’s what I mean:

As I am thinking about what the future could hold, the “gravitational pull” of the past has been a constant and surprisingly strong force. My dreaming, wondering and thinking has consistently been interrupted by the gravitational pull of the past. Past successes, past traditions, past memories, past paradigms, etc. And frankly, I have been shocked at how strong the gravitational pull has been. And this is just my own, personal gravitational pull; I can’t help but wonder whatthisgravitational pull will feel like if I begin to go public with some of my dreams of the future.Here are afew thoughts about “gravitational pull” that I am working through….feel free to add one or two of your own.

Gravity is good: It keeps us grounded, keeps us from spinning out of control.

Gravity isn’t going away: It is a force of nature…a natural force in leadership….I need to learn to live with it and use it to my benefit.

There are ways to defy gravity…to some degree: When gravity holds us back, there are ways to overcome its force.

posted by Scott Rubin

This past weekend, our church celebrated its 35th birthday.

…so we cancelled our regular student ministry services, and our middle schoolers and high schoolers went to the adult service, which we do from time to time. It was a great service, and there are some super-exciting things going on around our church these days!

But the “moment” of the service, for me, came at the very end.

After our pastor spoke, we closed our service with a final song. And because the focus was not so much on the past 35 years… but on what God might want to do through our church in the next 35 years… the adult band & vocalists & choir that had led us in the first part of the service were replaced by teenagers at the instruments and microphones. But cooler than that… after the first verse of the song, all of the students were invited to come to the front of the room for the rest of the worship. For the next few minutes, the stage filled with teenagers.

And I almost couldn’t breathe. Face after face, singing their lungs out to God… reminding me that the future of the church really is in their hands. (I realize that they’re also the “church of today”, too!) As I sang along with them, I didn’t think at all about the past 35 years of our church. But I kept thanking God for students who are striving to SEE Him, to have the guts to FOLLOW Him, and to introduce their friends to Him. I’m not the weepy type, but it was like my eyeballs were melting as I thought about all the life that’s ahead of these students… and our church.

And it reminded me of why I serve middle schoolers, once again. Because they won’t be middle schoolers forever.

A week ago we had a “Parents Weekend” in our Jr. High Ministry… where we invited parents to come and experience a regular weekend in Elevate — teaching, worship, games, meet their kid’s small group leader, the whole bit. Then afterwards, when their kids were in small groups, I gathered all the parents together to encourage them in the challenging job they have as parents of young teens — and to suggest some resources & ideas for them. Now that the weekend is in the rear-view mirror, I have a couple of observations:

- In our ministry, there’s still a pretty common stigma that “Parents are Uncool.” The week before, when I reminded students that the next weekend was Parents’ Weekend, there was actually an audible “boooo” from the crowd! Sure, it felt a little bit playful … but there are definitely students out there who are frustrated with parents, or embarrassed by parents, or maybe just didn’t like us messing with their safe place. I want to do everything I can to help kids & parents connect — even though there’s built-in challenge sometimes between them.

- I was a little surprised how encouraged I was every time a parent said something positive about our ministry. We can all feel underappreciated sometimes; at least I know that I can. And even though my ultimate significance doesn’t come from parents’ compliments — it did feel great to hear encouragement. There aren’t a whole lot of middle school students who pull me aside and say “Hey Scott, I just want to say THANKS for all that you do for us, planning, preparing, and trying to think of creative ways to point us kids towards Jesus!” So … it’s good to hear their parents say it sometimes.

- I was a little surprised how bummed I was when a parent had a stern criticism of our ministry. During the countdown before the program started, we showed a video of 2 middle school aged students singing a Justin Bieber’s song “Baby”, while their dad danced GOOFILY in the background. It was hilarious! Afterwards, a parent expressed great disappointment that we’d play a secular song in a church. I guess I was sad that it was his only observation from the 90 minutes he spent with us. One more reminder that you can’t please everybody all the time… nor should that be our primary goal!

Posted By Kurt Johnston

Every fall, our church embarks on a church-wide campaign; meaning that over the duration of the campaign (usually 6-8 weeks) everybody is teaching the same stuff. This is quite often a challenge for the children and youth departments because the campaigns are often around topics that are very adult-centered and tough to make highly applicable to children and teenagers.

This year is no exception. Our campaign this year is “Decade of Destiny” and it revolves around the challenge to make the most of your life over the next 10 years….basically to use the next decade to leave your legacy. It’s good stuff, actually…but feels like a huge challenge to get junior highers thinking about the next 10 years when what they are most concerned about is simply making through next week!

If you have had success helping your junior highers think about how today affects tomorrow, making choices that impact their future, etc. I would LOVE to hear about it.

Or, just answer this question in the comments section: “Is it really possible for early adolescents to have a “long view”…to consider the future as they make decisions and lifestyle choices today?”

Posted By Kurt Johnston

Back in 1997 when I arrived at Saddleback, I noticed something right away that disturbed me; the junior high ministry was in the habit of using high school seniors as leaders. It bothered me partly because seniors in high school seemed so young and it felt like we, in essence, had a youth group within our youth group and seemed like a ton of work. But mostly it bothered me because it was unfamiliar….I hadn’t seen students that young in a hands-on leadership role before. In my previous settings, we had always had a “college age and over” age limit for our junior high volunteers. I can’t tell you why that was, it just was. I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised by what I observed! Our high school seniors have proven time and time again to be fantastic leaders.

Fast forward to today. Today as I was walking through our church office, I stopped to talk to Bryce Kelly. Bryce is just starting his JUNIOR year in high school and is about to embark on his journey as a junior high small group leader andwasin ourjunior high area to geta last minute pep talk. Yep, we have had such success with our seniors in high school that we have decided to use Bryce and his friend Elise as guinea pigs to see if high school juniors can serve well in junior high.

My hunch is that I will be pleasantly surprised once again.

Posted by Kurt Johnston

Normally my random thoughts are entirely unrelated. But today I share a few random thoughts and observations from my weekend at Youth Specialties’ NYWC

- It is great to se YS flourishing. With the departure of Marko and the sale to Youthworks, there was certainly reason for youth workers to wonder what the future of YS held. This past weekend made it obvious that under the leadership of Tic Long and the youth works team, that YS is in very good hands.

- I think I know, but I have NO idea! I’m specifically talking about grace. After hearing Ted Haggard and his wife in the general session, and sitting in a workshop led by Ted, I am really….maybe for the first time…beginning to see that my understanding of Grace is too limited, too small.

- Apparently, us youth workers love thinking we suck. I was shocked at how many of the workshop titles revolved around the negative, and how much of the workshop content was focused on all the stuff organized, church-based youth ministry is doing wrong, and the horrific consequences of our wrongness.

Soapbox Alert: are more kids walking away from church than ever before? That seems likely….but how do we REALLY know? Maybe we are just more concerned about it than ever before, which is really good, but did we really track this or study it back in the day? And assuming way more teenagers are walking away from faith, is youth ministry the sole culprit? What about all the other factors that contribute to the
faith journey that have as much….or more….influence than our youth ministries? Do many of our current youth ministry methods need to be evaluated? Of course. But to say that they are to blame for adolescent faith abandonment (or even that they are primary cause) doesn’t seem completely honest to me. It makes for wonderful workshop titles and sells books, that’s for sure. But if it gets us to take an honest look at what we are doing, and helps us move the ministries new directions we feel we need to….like it has with me….then that’s a good thing.

But PLEASE don’t let a book written by a seminary professor or an article penned by a youth worker in a completely different context than yours, or a workshop led by somebody who sees themselves as a prophetic voice to the youth ministry world…..please don’t let anybody tell you from a distance whether or not you are making a lasting difference in the lives of the kids God has entrusted to you.

Youth ministry isn’t perfect, and we have done lots of things wrong (chubby bunny), but I gotta believe things would be way worse had we not been trying all these years.

- Middle school/junior high ministry still lacks resources. YS is one of, if not the biggest publishers of youth ministry resources, yet in their store I had to look long and hard to find books, curriculum etc directed at this age group. I have met dozens and dozens of sharp junior high ministry minds who certainly have something to contribute….come on Publishers, go find ‘em. Or call me and I will give you their names.

-Wayne Rice is the man! To see Wayne, one of the co-founders of YS, warming up the crowd singing old school youth group choruses while playing his acoustic guitar was one of the highlites of the weekend. You probably had to be an over-forty youth worker to really appreciate it, though.

It’s one of those days where I wish I could be in 2 places at once!

Today a whole bunch of people I love & respect are gathering in San Diego for the National Youth Workers Convention. If you’ve been there, you know it’s a fantastic event for training & learning & talking to other people who love youth ministry the way that you do. But I’ve got that feeling you get when a bunch of your friends are at a great party, and you’re somewhere else.

I shouldn’t be complaining… I get to be at the NYWC in Nashville in late November, and also at the Simply Youth Ministry Conference right here in Chicago in March. Both those events absolutely energize me, and leave me with great ideas about how to serve students better — and give more of myself to Jesus. So today…I’ll just look forward to them, instead of whining about not being in beautiful San Diego.

But since I don’t get to sit in any sessions today, I decided to read a chapter of Kurt Johnston & Tim Levert’s new book, The 9 Best Practices for Youth Ministry…. and imagined I was in some fancy hotel ballroom listening to them speak wisdom to me, instead of just reading it. I’m a dork, I know. But they did a great job, in my imagination. I’m loving the beginning of their book — I’d highly recommend picking it up if you haven’t already!

(PS – yes, I figured out how to add links to my post, so I wanted to make the most of it!)

Posted by Kurt Johnston

This has nothing to do with junior high ministry, but because most who read this are still junior highers at heart, I think you might appreciate it.

It’s awkward, but funny…inappropriate, but not really….offensive, but innocent. And I’m pretty sure it was meant to be legitimate.

They’re putting up a new sign in front of our church. The old one has been there for about 30 years, and was starting to crumble. My friend Bruce works on projects like this for the facilities team here; he was describing to me the cool design of the sign, and what it’ll look like when it’s done. It’s going to be terrific. Then, with satisfaction in his voice, he mentioned that he just got done remodeling some of the little kids ministry rooms in our church. The rooms are way more functional now, and they look fantastic, too. Last summer he worked his tail off updating our old chapel… but the great result was visually evident as soon as you walk into that room.
But that got me thinking about middle school ministry, and how the work that we do is designed to impact the soul of a young teenager. Which is really, really hard to “see”!
It’s so different from finishing a “project”, and being able to stand back, look at our work, and say “it’s all done!” Renovated, updated, complete…. Not so much. People are a “work in progress”, right? I know that I am! And I’m a long way from finished.
These middle schoolers that we’re serving have so much life in front of them yet. And the stuff that we’re trying to build into them could effect them for the next 50 years or more! Everything we do to try to point them towards a life with Jesus can have profound impact, eternal impact. On them, on their friends, on their current family, on their future spouse, on their future family. Grandkids, even! But most days it can be pretty hard to see… so that’s what I’m trying to remind myself of today.
I’m trying to notice what’s invisible!