-We are wrapping up our Summer series this week. I like the idea of a Summer-long series, but 10 weeks always feels long.

- We are on a short, three-day, vacation in Palm Springs with Ron and Katie Edwards. Ron’s parents have a time share so we are staying in a REALLY nice resort at no cost.

- I went golfing today in 106 degree temperature and hoped to play alone. Instead I got paired up with another guy who had the foulest mouth I’ve heard in a while. He used all the classic words about a thousand times each and introduced me to several phrases I’d never heard. The Pastor and The Cusser on the course together. It was actually a pretty good time.

- My daughter downloaded most of the songs from High School Musical 2. How embarrassing is it to admit that I actually like most of ‘em!

- I flew out to Colorado a few weeks ago to shoot 10 video small group lessons and learned today that something went wrong and two complete lessons never got captured. Now I’ll need to fly back out for one day to re-shoot those which is a total bummer, but I promised my team we’d have 10 ready to go by Fall.

- I’m watching sports center and most of the stories are revolving around NFL and College football. The season is almost here! GO BRONCOS.

I was going through a bunch of old stuff while working in my garage, and ran across some old baseball cards. To my astonishment, I found a Barry Bonds rookie card, mint condition. I really think that at some point in the future Bonds will be exonerated of most all steroid charges and will go in to the Hall of Fame distinguished as the best hitter of all time.

If you, or anybody you know, might have an interest in buying this card, let me know ASAP. I’m giving it 2 weeks and then putting it on Ebay and taking whatever I can get for it. I’ve included a scanned copy of the card to show it’s condition – as you’ll see it is in MINT condition.

(SO to Alan Mercer)

…I’m wondering if this is what it looks like when Willow Creek takes their junior high ministry to the local water park.

I’ve been doing a whole lot of thinking lately….maybe a little too much. It seems like the majority of my recent posts are trolling for answers and insight which serves as a reminder that we’ll probably never totally figure this thing out!

Here’s my current wrestling match: What does a truly effective weekly junior high program look like?

In our setting, we’ve got a variety of programs for students at a variety of places in their spiritual journey, but we do have ONE PRIMARY program each weekend that is more of an entry level experience for students. This is the program we hope will attract un-churched students and the program we hope our regular attenders will invite their friends to.

It’s a solid program, and one that I think is serving us well, but we’re missing something.

Is it that we need more adult volunteers loving on kids? Is it that we need a better follow up system to help us notice when students are missing? Is it that we need better lights, a new fog machine and bigger screens (gosh, I REALLY hope it isn’t that…)? Is it that we need to radically examine how we teach the gospel? Is it that the program is fine but we need to be spending more time with students on campus, at games etc. earning the right to be heard?

This could prove to be a lively discussion….so don’t be afraid to fire away with your ideas, your successes, your failures and your reactions to what others say.

A reader recently posted this comment:

“I just discovered you, the simplyyouthministry newsletter, and the simply jr. high podcast. One question: where do I look to get your best training material? Podcast, articles from the newsletter, or somewhere else? (I miss the podcasts! But I’m sure you are crazy busy). If you have time, please let me know.”

This reader may already be aware of the fact that there are plenty of other, BETTER places to get junior high resources and training, but I thought it would be worthwhile for everybody to share a few places, companies, people, events etc. you go to for your training, resources and encouragment. If you feel so inclined, include what that particular organization’s ‘specialty’ might be.

I’ve been in a little email discussion with several junior high youth workers concerning the best way to approach music/worship. Some questions that have been raised:

- What types of songs are best?
- Should students be able to understand all the concepts the words and theology of the songs they are singing?
- How often should new songs be introduced?
- Other than singing, what elements are being mixed in to the worship time?

Great questions…..what are your thoughts?

Attendance: Below Average
Lesson Topic: Week 8 of our summer series: Road Trip Summer (How To Handle A Breakdown)
‘Fun Factor’: Above Average
Volunteer Involvement: Below Average
Music: Above Average
Lesson Quality: Above Average
Length of Lesson: 24 minutes
Student Response: Above Average

We had a really fun weekend. One of our interns, Brian shared the lesson and did a fantastic job! He told a great story that inner twined through the whole lesson that really connected with our students. Games were fun, music was great. All in all a good weekend.

I’m on a quick road trip trying to film 10 video small group lessons in two days. Last year, we filmed ten lessons that our leaders could throw in the dvd player without any prep. The idea was that they would be used when a leader hadn’t had time (or taken the time) to prep the usual lesson, if it felt like the group needed a break from the usual curriculum or for any other reason.

We purposely only filmed 10 lessons because we didn’t want the use of video curriculum to become the norm in a small group. Despite the super poor quality lighting and sound, our groups absolutely loved the stuff.

So this year we are going way more professional in hopes of producing a much higher quality resource for our leaders and students.

I’ve written ten ‘scripts’ but I tend to freestyle quite a bit so it should be interesting. We’ve budgeted our time to allow about one hour per video! I’m stressed about the next two days, but excited to put some better stuff in the hands of our leaders.

- Weekend: It was a pretty good weekend over-all. The weekend immediately following Summer Camp is always interesting because students are super tired, but super excited at the same time. I ditched the programs on our Lake Forest campus to head down to our San Clemente campus (A beach town about 30 minutes South) to be a part of their first Saturday night youth service. About 25-30 kids showed up and it was really fun. In fact it was fun enough to make me pause and wonder what the heck I’m doing in a massive ministry setting. The whole vibe was super mellow, highly relational and just wonderful.

- Another camp: My 10-year-old son, Cole, heads off to camp his afternoon and is pumped. Our children’s ministry seems to do everything really well, and camp is no exception.

- Still another camp: We head out next Wednesday to our second summer camp…Beach Camp. This camp is only open to about 80 students and is much more laid back than our traditional summer camp. We stay at a church near the beach and spend the days hanging out surfing, body boarding and laying around. Oddly, this camp seems to be gaining popularity while our traditional camp seems to be losing popularity.

- Football Season! I spent much of last night at a friend’s house with my family. In addition to a few rousing rounds of Guitar Hero, we watched most of the Hall of Fame Game between the Saints and the Steelers. I can’t believe football season is almost here.

- Worst Show Ever: I was channel surfing late last night and stumbled across “Rock of Love” on VH1. I’m not even willing to link to it. Ridiculously bad television.