For Young Men Only
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I had the opportunity to check out the latest installment of the “Only” series from Jeff & Shaunti Feldhahn, For Young Men Only & I have copies to give away to two faithful followers of this blog since I haven’t updated in like 2.5 weeks!
Here is what the back cover says:
Okay, the authors aren’t girls. But to bring you the facts they surveyed more than 1,000 of them. Every teen guy wants to know how girls are wired, what they want, and how they really think…
Or at least how to talk to a girl without feeling like an idiot.
Here’s your chance to find out.
To be completely honest, I have not read the entire book but I have read a bunch of it and I really studied the pictures, they are good 
! Anyway, I would HIGHLY reccomend this book for both youth leaders and parents that spend a lot of time with teenage guys.
I would say that this book will probably not be much of a help to a guy that is younger than 9th grade but it’s a home run for the older teens because of the honest talk and practical relationship tips. The older teen guys have experienced enough to know that they need to learn this stuff from somewhere.
I loved some of the chapter titles, I think they had a copywriter from one of those teen magazines write them:
- Chapter 3 - Why Good Girls Like Bad Boys: Understanding a girl’s greatest secret fear - and what you can do about it
- Chapter 6 - No Dropped Calls: How to talk and listen to a girl without looking like an idiot
- Chapter 7 - What It Really Means To Score: The truth about girls, guys, and sex
The book also includes a conversation guide at the back of the book that is a great resource for any youth worker that is leading a guys small group and needs a lead into talking about relationships and sex.
Okay, here’s how you can win a copy of this book! Simply be one of the first two people to leave a comment on why you would like the book! I’ll email you back in order to get your mailing address.
If you don’t win a book, you can buy it on amazon.com!
The Allure of #s
No matter what area of ministry you work in or are involved with there is always a strong pull to focus in on the total numbers in attendance at a particular program. This can be a very slippery slope down into the land of serving our own egos through our ministry.
Sure #s are vitally important because each # is an individual. But the story of the raw numbers does not always tell us the full story. Are these people coming from other churches, are the same people showing up multiple times? Anyway…
I’d like to focus in a little more on youth ministry right now. The story of the total #s in youth ministry is perhaps one of the greatest sources of pride as well as lack of self-esteem for many youth workers.
I read a blog post very recently in which the youth pastor relayed that they had 587 students at their last gathering. Sounds like a ton right? Well, if we look closer we would realize that # is only 5.8% of that particular church’s Sunday attendance (according to the blog of one of their pastor’s.) Now, think about this situation that is much more common, a church has a part-time, of volunteer based youth ministry that is drawing 25 students each week, the church’s weekly attendance is 150. That means that their # is 16.7%!
I am by no means trying to degrade the big church and what they are doing, I am simply trying to get us thinking about what is really going on in our ministries. It is so easy to look at the mega-church’s youth mins and be discouraged. This is one of a number of reasons that I have started to look at my ministries numbers a little differently lately. I’ll be outlining some of those reasons in posts to come.
Some encouragement?
Let’s try to be the Church for each other first. What area of life do you need some encouragement in? How can we be praying for you?
Leave a comment below, anonymously for today, and we’ll pray for you! Hey, I’m even going to jump in and make my comment anonymous today! (Yes, you are allowed to invent an email address for that box, just for today.)
Sharing My Space
Since this is really the first full day of the LifeShare experience I decided that I would put in the effort to make my space here on the web look a little different, to draw some attention to this event.
Hopfully this can blog event can help to draw together this community and connect us with many others around our nation and the world.
I hope you like the new look, but don’t get too used to it. It’s only here for a week
LifeShare - 9pm (8 central)
[FOR RSS READERS: Video Feed Is Embeded, Click Through To See]
Google Docs & Youth Ministry
Chances are pretty good that you have heard of Google Docs and know that you can do a lot of the stuff that you can do in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, plus more. Have you stopped to think of the possibilities for your ministry though?
Here are just a few ways that I use Google Docs in the youth ministry that I lead:
- Student Info
I have found that a pretty easy way to make sure that my staff is able to contact new students and to stay in contact with the regulars, to not miss birthdays, and to work with parents, is to keep the youth min data updated in a Google Spreadsheet. Since it is possible to keep the info private and not open for the whole world to see while adding individuals with Google accounts to be either “viewers” of the data or “collaborators.”
- Ministry Stats
I have found that a great way to see which direction a ministry is going isn’t to look at the total attendance numbers, but to look at the break downs within grade levels & between sexes. Once you have these breakdowns you can track which way the trends are moving. Is your jr. high ministry getting too “old?” Is the mix of male/female way out of whack? When you see the trends then you can act to move closer to the vision that God has given you for the ministry. Here are a couple quick charts from our jr. high evangelistic program that I am tracking:
9th graders are not part of our jr. high ministry but we give them the option of attending the evangelistic program as part of a transition between jr. high & sr. high.
- Surveys
I am actually not using this one right now, but I am super excited about the possibilities. Check out this little survey and then let me know what you are thinking you might use some of this stuff for.
Are there better options out there for what I am doing?
Fun new toy!
I got a fun new toy today and I am using it to write this post! Yes it’s an iPod Touch. I already have it loaded with the YouVersion app, the Facebook app, Wordpress app, and Twitterific app!
“Being the Church” Online
Two of my favorite people (Tony & Carlos) that I have never met have teamed up to attempt something that I don’t think has ever happened before, an event that ties together thousands of people from all over the world in “being the Church” online. Here is what Tony had to say about the event:
I have been asking myself how are we to “be” the church in online community, social networks and all the “Friends” we have have compiled through these tools. I think part of the struggle is that a lot of these relationship and community tools are focused on keeping us “connecting.” Meaning, they don’t want us to leave the site, they want us to stay there as much as possible so we will either buy things or click on advertisements.
I think the same thing can happen in a local church situation, where we are always gathering and connecting for church, but never moving to the next level and “being” the church to each other, to the hurting and “in need” around us and to people who need to hear about Jesus.
So, this last week was my first week at LifeChurch.tv working on their Internet Campus. We were thinking how we could do an online missions event - with the idea of as a community “being” the church online. What we came up with is an online event starting next Wednesday 8pm CST (September 17) called LifeShare: a 7 day online challenge.
You can go to this post on the Internet Campus blog for all the details, but the idea is that sharing is a huge part of online communities, just as it is for believers. As followers of Jesus it is all about sharing what we’ve heard, sharing how we have been loved, and sharing of ourselves as it glorifies Christ. To launch the even we will start with a live stream through Mogulus where we explain the event, we give some “sharing” ideas and we pray for each other and then all of us as a community take a 7 day challenge at “being” the church online!
AND we didn’t want to just limit it to LifeChurch.tv, or have the event be something flown under our “banner”, so we have invited Carlos Whittaker and the Ragamuffinsoul.com community to participate and help us to lead the 7 day challenge. YOUR community is invited as well! After the first launch we are going to have daily live stream check ins and prayers lead by people taking the challenge from across the world!
Again, all the DETAILS are here, with schedules, the 5 different levels of “sharing”, and some tools to help your sharing of your life for Jesus!
Some Recent Videos
In this past week we have put out two new videos to advertise for our Fall Weekend for our jr. highers. This trip is one of the best ways that we have had to get newer kids to our ministry tied in tight & quick. Spending an entire weekend together doing crazy fun stuff & hearing about who Jesus is, is a great way to connect!
The first vid is just a cheesey Windows Movie Maker job. I think that it’s pretty fun though and I hope it gets the point across that this is not your average “church camp!”
Top 10 Reasons To Be At Wildside Weekend from Chris Szulwach on Vimeo.
This second video was made with Animoto.com. This service is sweet, they let you upload your photos, pick out your music, then their computers analyze it all and put together a great video! Say goodbye to your old slide shows! If you use this link to check animoto out you’ll get $5 off their unlimited plan.
Anyway, here’s the vid…
10 Tips For Missional Youth Ministry - Bonus Round
Over the past few days we have gone through 10 tips for a missional youth ministry, it started here.
I did want to make sure that I took the time to mention what is probably the most important tip, one that I didn’t mention in the 10. I believe that the most important tip of all is that you and I, as youth workers, must be living out the 10 before we can attempt to teach our teenagers how they whould be living and following Jesus.
Make the time and effort to make expanding the Kingdom a reality in your own life today.
