- My NBA predictions: Lakers will win Sunday but loose in six games to Denver. Celtics will beat Orlando but loose in five games to Cleveland. The Cavs will beat Denver in 5 games for the championship. 

-An NFL prediction:  Brett Favre will not play football again. ESPN and others are trying to make a story where there really isn’t one.

- A Stanley Cup prediction: Detroit over Pittsburgh in seven games.

-A MLB prediction: It will be discovered that the ONLY reason Manny took steroids was to stengthen his amazing dreads.

- A Nascar prediction: Most of us will continue to not care about it.

I’m really excited about this weekend. On Sunday I will be heading to the homeland of Whittier, CA to speak in both morning services at my home church, First Family Church. In addition to the adult worship service, I will be speaking at their all-church leadership luncheon. Because the leadership luncheon includes everybody who serves in any leadership capacity I’m finding it hard to land on something “universal” that will apply to everybody from 15 year old nursery workers to 55 year old board members. 

I’m pretty sure I’ve landed on this topic: “What I’m Still Learning About Christian Leadership”.  To be honest, I’m still learning way too much about Christian leadership to fit it all into a 20 minute presentation, but I think these ongoing learnings have the best shot at making my final cut:

- I’m still learning that taking care of the soul is a leader’s greatest priority….and greatest challenge.

- I’m still learning that people really do matter more than programs.

- I’m still learning that it’s impossible to over-encourage.

- I’m still learning that leadership is over-rated.

- I’m still learning that Jesus is really all that matters.

A re-cap of our junior high weekend service:

SERIES: We kicked off our three week “Exposed” series (sex and dating). This week’s lesson: “What Was God Thinking?” As you can imagine, this topic was one our students wanted to hear!

LESSON LENGTH: 29 minutes….a little longer than normal, but the lessons during this series will tend to be a bit long.

ATTENDANCE: Average

FUN FACTOR: High. We did some pretty fun stuff. We painted half our our stage wall pink and half blue, we had our stage lights set half pink and half blue. We did a “battle of the sexes” type format for our games which was super fun.

MUSIC: Above Average. For our students, the energy level on the stage TOTALLY dictates how students engage in the singing time. Because this week’s band was highly charismatic and engaging, our students responded really well.

VOLUNTEER INVOLVEMENT: Average

Note: On his blog today, Mark Ostreicher has some interesting statistics concerning junior high students and sex.

I never post twice in the same day but I’m so stinkin’ excited that I had to. In the mail today, I received the final manuscript for a new middle school ministry book written by Mark Ostreicher and Scott Rubin. Middle School Ministry is destined to become a, if not the, classic middle school ministry book for this generation of middle school youth workers.

Middle school ministry in the local church has come to age in the last few years, and Mark and Scott have created a resource that everybody who works with young teens really must read. I say this not because I’ve read the book yet (remember, I just got it in the mail today), but because I know Mark and Scott and I can’t think of two people better qualified to write a “training manual” for the rest of us. It isn’t available yet, but be on the lookout for it and buy a copy for everybody on your junior high team as soon as it’s available!

I plan to read it this weekend. Of course if it sucks I will have to ammend this post!

- I’m not a huge baseball fan (I cheer for the Angels, but don’t follow all that closely….), but the Manny Ramirez situation has really bothered me. I’m both angry and sad. The pressure these guys feel to perform at such a high level must be overwhelming. But, that certainly doesn’t excuse cheating.

- Just finished the rough draft of sermon I’m preaching in my home church in Whittier on the 17th: “How To Run Like A Champ When You Feel Like A Chump”.  I’m teaching in our college ministry next Thursday night and will probably teach a hybrid of this same sermon.

- Going to see Star Trek tonight with some friends. I have never been a fan of Star Trek (in fact, I really don’t like it!), but the previews look so good that I have to see it.

- Last night I told my 6th grade son, Cole, that sometime in the next month we are going to have a “man night” at which time I want to talk to him in depth about sex. We have had the basic “talk” but haven’t talked seriously about details, how to treat girls, why sex is such a problem spot for so many people etc.  The look of fear on his face when I mentioned this was priceless….but he was suprisingly warm to the idea after it settled in a little bit.

My son, Cole, just turned 12 and is getting ready to head into junior high. Lately, I’ve been thinking about the fact that I don’t remember my dad making any real efforts to pro-actively instill certain qualities into me. He was a GREAT guy and led through example in an extraordinary way, but because of his parenting style, I never really had any “man to man” talks with my dad until, well until I was a man myself.

I want to do a better job at that with Cole. And I want to be strategic. As I’ve been thinking about it, I’m landing on three key character traits that I want to help him develop. I’m thinking that these three, for the most part, encompass all the other qualities I think young men need. I’m sure there are holes, but it’s a starting point:

CONVICTION: What do you really believe? What would you “fight” for? What is non-negotiable?

COURAGE: The desire and ability to actually live out your convictions.

COMPASSION: The ability to feel for, love, get along with and embrace people on a different life journey and those with different convictions.

A recurring theme in our junior high team conversations lately seems to revolve around the value of providing students with variety vs providing them with consistency.  Here are some areas of ministry that this has bubbled to the surface:

- Weekend Music: Is it better to have one music/worship leader that is in front of students each weekend, or is it better to mix it up? One leader can build momentum, create a consistent level of quality, create a music “culture”, build relationships with students off stage that helps the “on stage” presence be more effective etc.  Having a variety of music leaders….four or five that rotate….has some obvious benefits, too.

- Seating and room set up: Is it better for students to have a consistent experience (be that around tables, in rows, on the floor) that they can depend on or is mixing it up better?

- Large Group teacher: Is a team approach better than having one person who does bulk of the teaching?

Much of this discussion, if not all of it, comes from the fact that we have been mixing things up much more lately than we ever have. In my mind, it makes a TON of sense to have a ton of variety in our weekend program. But, the interesting thing is that after a few months of variety, I’m feeling oddly drawn back to some sort of consistency. I feel like students never know what to expect when they come through our doors…which is something I thought would [...]

Continue Reading “Variety or Consistency?”

- The new Simply Junior High catalog can now be accessed online. If you work with young teens, there are some great new resources.

- Speaking of new resources, we are getting ready to film THREE new sets of small group video curriculum next week which will include Bible Stuff 3: The Red Stuff (words of Christ), Bible Stuff 4: Smart Stuff (book of Proverbs) and Tempting Stuff. I’m super excited that Scott Rubin, the junior high Pastor at Willow Creek, will be teaching The Red Stuff series!  Look for all three sets of curriculum to be available by late Summer.

- Just read this article which I found to be quite interesting. It was passed on to me by Jana Sarti, the director of our intern ministry.

- I am sitting in Starbucks dreading my 11:00 dental appointment. Since I really dislike going, I haven’t been to the dentist since 2005! Let the fun begin.

This is my first post all week because I have been in three full days of youth ministry discussions that  has captured my thinking. Without going into details, here are nutshell highlights of some discussions I’ve been in:

1) Our student ministry “Core Leadership” (department heads, directors and regional campus leads) escaped for a couple of days to discuss two key areas:  1, what do you LOVE and HATE about youth ministry? 2, What did you think about this book (I had an advanced copy that I photocopied, with the author’s permission, to give the team)? Both discussions were really rich and the second one led to some great conversation about how we can better train our adult leaders to be good question askers, listeners and fellow journeyers instead of “answer givers” and “information imparters”.

2) We talked A LOT about what a good “entry level”  weekly large-group program for students really looks like. How important is a tight program? Is a program that is jam-packed with games, videos, comedy bits etc. really all that much better than a fairly trimmed-down program? Do students value the production quality as much as we think they do? Would we be better off spending less time during the week on production of the program and more time with the leaders and students who come to it?

3) Today I was with a group of about 20 junior high youth workers and we talked about a bunch of different stuff.  We talked about teaching: [...]

Continue Reading “A “Brain-Stretching” Week So Far”

- Church in jeopardy of loosing it’s meeting space over sex series.

- Serbian union leader eats his own finger. Talk about dedication to a cause!

- Have you seen iCarly? Your younger students sure have!

- Some interesting history about Hollister.

- Random, obligatory Broncos news.