Tonight I’m teaching a short parenting workshop at my kid’s school and I’m super nervous about it. I really don’t like putting myself in the position of “expert” of any kind, so I’m hoping to present in a way that communicates that I’m just a struggling parent myself! I’m trying to create a series of “pictures of parenting” that I’ll work through. I’ll update tomorrow with an honest report of how things go tonight.

Ridiculously cheesy but I had to give it a try. I guess I’m not as tough as I like to think I am.

15

Years ago, Group Publishing actually had an entire magazine devoted specifially to junior high magazine. They discontinued it a dozen or so years ago but have decided to give it another try…almost.

Instead of a magazine, Group and Simplyjuniorhigh now have a monthly 12-page newsletter focusing on junior high ministry. Each issue will have some training, some research, some interviews, some lesson ideas and some other really great stuff. Forty Bucks for a year feels a little pricey, but it’s probably the cheapest way to get ongoing, monthly training and encouragement.

I would suggest you buy one subscription and then photocopy key articles etc. to give to the volunteers on your team (but I don’t know if that’s legal!).

We’ve landed on a name for our new student building. Thanks a ton for all of your suggestions. A few names that got us thinking and were in the running were:
- The Hub
- The Foundry
- The Warehouse
- The Mill

Ultimately we landed on ‘The Refinery’ as the name. We think it matches the look of the building and also has a great biblical tie-in. Since nobody suggested Refinery, I will hold onto the $100 worth of free Junior High resources until somebody suggests an easier contest!

I’m sitting in Peet’s Coffee (my favorite new hang out because their tea is great) enjoying a pot of English Breakfast tea while I journal (something I’m trying to do once in a while even though I’ve never been good at it….but today I’m being good at it). What started out as a normal cup of tea has turned into a great cup of tea because of the conversation at the table next to me.

It’s a young married guy and a student who looks like he’s in 9th or 10th grade. The moment they sat down I thought, “looks like a youth pastor hanging out with a student to me.” Sure enough. As soon as they sat down the conversation begins to take a classic mentoring/discipleship turn: Small talk followed by a little bit of catching up followed by some deeper conversation followed by some great discussion about the life of David. As I listened I was reminded of a few things.

- Relational ministry really is the best kind of youth ministry. There’s no doubt in my mind that the 30 minutes this kid has spent with his youth worker is way more effective than anything else that particular youth ministry has going on.

- Kids respond to caring adults. Relational ministry isn’t easy, and takes a ton of extra time and effort but the pay off is huge.

- I don’t do enough of it. Maybe the biggest reminder for me as I watch this whole thing unfold is that I simply don’t do enough one-on-one ministry with kids. I’ve got a ton of excuses for why it doesn’t happen like it should but none of them are really all that valid. Time to step up.

GREAT WEEKEND.

1st…it was week #1 of our new series, “Bad Girls”. Each week we will focus on a bad girl from the bible, and a different woman from our team will teach. This week the bad girl was Jezebel. We’ve taught this series once before several years ago and it was a big hit so I’m excited to repeat it. Plus, I get a little teaching break!

2nd…most of us weren’t there this weekend because it was our annual volunteer leadership retreat. Each year we invite all our junior high volunteers plus their spouses down to San Diego for an over-nighter. We hang out, eat good food, play games, have worship, share communion and pray for one another. There is no training and no tight schedule. It’s basically our way of saying thank you to the team for their ministry. We charge $25 per person and our ministry picks up the rest of the tab. We typically only have about 1/3 of our team attend so it’s a little smaller and way more relational than a typical staff meeting or gathering. The best part may be the fact that almost every year we end up having a spouse of a volunteer join our team because he/she had so much fun on the retreat.

Your Movie
The website using you as it’s URL
A really nice, but kinda expensive version of you
Your rules
How to run your tournament
A blog with you in the title
A book with you in the title
Your own wikipedia entry
A cute, little video game of you

I’m glad we’re friends. Knowing you makes me feel more important.

At one point during our junior high track at last weekend’s conference, we broke up into round table discussion groups. We offered for different round table topics and each participant could chose two of the four.

I was hosting the “misc. junior high issues” group. The idea behind this discussion group was simply to power our way through as many junior high topics as possible….topics that hadn’t yet been covered in the 8-hour training track.

The first group came through and we put about a dozen topics on the board and had some really good discussion. When the second group came through, I assumed most of the topics they would suggest would be repeats from the first group. Much to my surprise, the list of topics proposed by the second group was ENTIRELY different; not a single repeat topic!

You are probably wondering what the topics were. So am I, because I foolishly left both flip-chart pages in the conference room. But I do know that they ranged from running games to dealing with abuse and everything in between.

So, just for fun: If you were in a circle of other junior high youth workers what is one topic you would want to discuss?

My 500th post.
It took me almost two years to get to this point.
It probably only took Josh Griffin two weeks.

As it turns out this may be my last post. I had hoped to make it to 500 (this is number 499), but these three hours may in fact end society as we know it.