5 Practical Things you can do to have a Healthy and Relevant Youth Program Webinar PowerPoint

Webinar - Get Real-Youth Ministry for the 21st Century from Warren Bevacqua

First Day of Mission Trip

Today is the first day of our experience working with UMARMY (United Methodist). The theme for this years trips is "Authentic Witness"-how can we be an authentic witness to the community in which we serve. Our group has been divided up with various groups from across the nation and below is a pictures from my all guys group

You can follow us on Instagram (youngpplministry) or on Twitter @yngpplministry. And check out posts with the hashtags #SUSUMC, #SUSmissions, #authenticwitness

Mission Trip to Staten Island Island

Today is been a day of fun work and fun times on the Susquehanna Conference Mission Trip to Staten Island. 

Check out the pictures below.

The greatest part is ending with worship on the Beach

Members of the Body Video

This is a skit that interprets the Scripture from 1 Corinthians 12, "One Body, Many Members." This could be used as a devotional concerning this Scripture or as an idea to incorporate youth into worship.

Special thanks to the Buffalo United Methodist Church Youth from Minnesota for coming up with this idea and using it as a devotion on their Mission Trip to Henderson Settlement, a United Methodist Outreach Program in the Redbird Missionary Conference in Kentucky.

How to Communicate with Students

Here are some ways to communicate with students—ways that are Hot or Not. 

HOT: Facebook
This is where our money is at right now—the highlight of the tools we’re using to communicate with students. The only downside is that a youth ministry page requires constant updates and management to really be effective. And there’s a desire to spend time on our OWN pages instead of building up the church site. Facebook is where it’s at, so get on board to get it mastered just in time for your students to move on to something else.

NOTE: Our junior high ministry uses Facebook, but not as strategically as high school. We walk a fine line due to the reality that Facebook has age restrictions, but most junior highers are still there.

NOT: Email
When you’re communicating to parents, email is as hot as can be. The older people get the more possessive/stagnant they become with technology. Students on the other hand are quick to jump on what is next, usually before adults have even heard of it. If you are emailing students and it is working, realize that it is a miracle of God and won’t last very long. Email is out.

HOT: Texting
Probably right up there with Facebook is texting—it comes in two flavors: individual and mass, and both work incredibly well. Use a service like Simply Text or Duffled to build a list of everyone, and don’t discount the power of a personal text from their small group leader or youth pastor. Texting is where it is at right now for sure. 

NOT: Paper
You’ve gotten very good at Publisher 2003. I get it. You like clip art and flyers made on the church photocopier. We do too, but those days have past. Sorry to be the one to break it to you.

HOT: Facebook event pages
Different from your main Facebook page are the event pages you create for service projects, mission trips, or special events. These are usually syncing with many students’ phones now, so you get calendar reminders as well as triggers built into to social media. A classic win-win-win situation.

HOT: Calendars
Calendars, if they make it home, have a tremendous return. Put a magnet on the back and you might get on the refrigerator for 2-3 months!

NOT: mass postcards in the mail
The shelf life is just too short for a postcard for a series and the cost is typically prohibitive, too. I love these and am sad to see them already fading out, but unless you’ve got cash to spare or a cheap printer to crank them out this one is dropping quickly.

HOT: individualized postcards from small group leaders
This one will never go out of style. Try it out this week: Pick up some postage-paid postcards and scribble out a few handwritten notes this week and see if it works. Or just trust us…no technology will ever replace the power of a handwritten note!

(I got these ideas from a weekly e-mail that I get about youth and young adult ministry)

4 Ways to Be More Relational in Your Young People's Ministry

1)  Add a “welcome time” to youth group each week.
We’ve all seen this before, the “shake hands with 15 people around you” but when used sparingly it can be really effective. As your group grows, it’s surprisingly easy for the “basics” like a warm greeting to slip through the cracks! Our students have come to love this time—we’ve expanded it to several minutes so that people can actually have a short conversation rather then just a cursory greeting. This is a great chance for introductions to be made, too! We have a volunteer every week who works hard to get to know someone new and makes it a point to introduce them to us specifically each week.

2) Have everyone in place before and after the service.
If you are still running around finalizing details of your program when everyone is coming in, it’s gonna be tough to be relational! Work hard to do program-related stuff before students arrive; if you’re still dialing things in as they’re walking in, it’s simply too late. And tell everyone on your volunteer team they are “dead to each other” once youth group starts.

3) Build down time to hang at every event.
If you’re at a youth conference, camp, or other big event, the planners have been paid to fill up every waking moment with something. In many cases, youth leaders choose a late-night option or yet another training session when what the group might need is some discussion time. Maybe a break is in order, and you need to ditch a session and go get some frozen yogurt and just talk over what they’ve already learned. Relational ministry fights the go, go, go approach.

 4) Train your leaders in the art of asking good questions.
Help your leaders ask good questions—open-ended questions that require thoughts instead of a simple yes or no. Help them have an instantly ready queue of questions to ask someone they are meeting for the first time. Give them the tools to help them fight the awkward silences of first getting to meet someone.

(I got these ideas from a weekly e-mail that I get about youth and young adult ministry)

How Youth Learn

The following information is excerpted from “Just the Fact: a Handbook for United Methodist Youth Ministries” by Michael L. Selleck. I thought it might give you some perspective on how you can reach youth in today's culture.

Adolescence is a normal phase of life, even though within most families the transition from childhood to young adulthood is noted by challenges that may be difficult for everyone in the family. Each youth will follow his or her own inner time schedule in the transition between childhood and young adulthood. Some youth may start maturing as early as age 10. Others may still be struggling to complete a specific developmental task at age 20. To develop a system of ministry that works with youth, it is necessary first to understand a youth's development. Early adolescence refers to middle or junior high youth (ages 10 to 13). Middle adolescence refers to senior high school youth (ages 14 to 16 or 17). Older adolescence refers to late senior high and college-age youth/young adults (ages 16 to the early 20s).

From infancy to old age, at specific times we learn a task that is instrumental for us to feel happy and successful at that stage. We learn to sit up, to crawl, to walk. Robert Havinghurst identified eight tasks of adolescence based upon his idea that each individual "learns his or her way through life." The completion of each task is a building block for the next developmental task.

For adolescents to successfully complete these "developmental tasks," growth and maturing take place in the following areas: physical, sexual, social, intellectual, emotional, moral, spiritual, self-identity, and psychological. Eight developmental tasks are noted below:

1. Meaningful friendships with both male and female peers.
2. Affirming one's feelings and comfortableness with sexuality.
3. Accepting one's physical body.
4. Building interdependent and intergeneratonal relationships.
5. Finding one's place in a world of relationships.
6. Preparing to live responsibly and independently.
7. Acquiring a set of values and an ethical system as a guide to behavior — developing an ideology.
8. Desiring and achieving socially responsible behavior.

Having an understanding of the stages of adolescent behavior and developmental tasks can help leaders design ministries that are age-level appropriate and that provide significant opportunities for youth to grow in faith and to successfully master the developmental tasks they face.

Some Thoughts on Youth Leadership

This week I am teaching the leadership camp and the topics that I then asked the: is "Attitude. " it got me thinking about other important aspect youth leadership. And here are just a couple of things to keep in mind:

Lead with Optimism

Teaching students to see a future of what could be, not necessarily the painful road of difficulty to get there. They need to accentuate the positive and minimize the negative. this will help them in problem solving said that when roadblocks occur (and they always will), they will be prepared to face them positively.

Build Fun Into Everything

I love to have fun! Everyone enjoys having a good time. Teaching students that leading can be fun and not boring, will energize them and attract more youth to enter leadership roles. don't forget, God created us to laugh, so let’s have some fun.

   

Conflict Leads to Peace

Difficult conversations need to happen – if they don’t , something small will inevitably grow into something significant and potentially rectifying.  I have done this well and I have also done this poorly. So by all means don't avoid conflict, you will not like the outcome.

By the way, if you're looking for a good leadership training curriculum for your youth. Check out Leadership Lab. Below is a you tube video that explains it in more detail.

I highly recommend this program and hope it will help you train the next generation of leaders for the church.

10 ways to use Facebook in Your Ministry

This is a link to an article that I found particularly interesting. In a recent study by the Barna Institute it found that 94% of young people do not respond to e-mail. The best way they communicate is through social media (Facebook, twitter, etc.)

I hope you find this as helpful as I did.

http://www.shrinkthechurch.com/2011/05/10-ways-to-use-facebook-in-your-ministry/

Realistic Integration of Youth Ministry and the Church

This comes from Kirk Johnson and Josh Griffin, contributors to Simple Youth Ministry. I like most of their stuff and this one really stood out me. Enjoy !

All this talk about working to integrate our students into church before they have to make a huge leap from youth group to the adult services is helpful. But what isn’t helpful is the voices who simply want you to drop everything you’re currently doing (and is working) and go with some new plan.

Sometimes you have to get rid of something and start over completely—but we’re not convinced this is one of those times. So here are a few suggestions to help you take baby steps toward the integration of youth ministry and the church.

Serve together…mostly
An easy way to get some quick intergenerational ministry happening in your church is to combine some of your service projects immediately. Consider cancelling the majority of your youth group service projects and join those in place for the church at large. Imagine the conversations that will take place as people serve food, rake leaves, or paint together. Chances are the older people in your congregation will be just as surprised as your teenagers at how fun it was to serve side-by-side!

Worship together…occasionally
Most youth groups have their own worship service or Sunday School happening at the same time the rest of the church is gathered for worship. What if you completely cancelled your youth stuff once a month so the teenagers could attend church with their parents? Sure, some might choose to stay home that weekend, but it’s a fairly simple way to make a statement that says, “25% of the time, our church worships together…and we need the teenagers to be part of the action!”

Mission trips…maybe
One of the big steps we’re considering is to integrate mission trips. Offering a Spring Break trip? What if everyone got involved? Is there a big church-wide trip to South America or Africa? Get behind it and take some students! Each church has their own missions agenda/format, but this is something worthy of consideration.

Overnighters…never
Hey, there are some things adults are happy are totally separate from them. Keep overnighters this way…but be thankful for the adults who do show up, give up sleep, and care for your students.

High School Graduation Gift Idea

Here is a great idea for any high schooler who you know is graduating this year.

If you want to keep your graduating seniors involved in their faith, especially when they are away from home, then you'll want to get them a subscription to Relevant magazine. 

Relevant magazine is a periodical specifically devoted to the spiritual enrichment of Christian young people. The magazine it published every other month (6 times a year) and is filled with articles, devotionals and information dealing with young people’s culture and faith. There is a lot about this magazine that I like, starting with its price. A years subscription is only $14.95. It also is not filled with a lot of advertisements, and what few advertisements are in the magazine have to do with Christian related events.

They have recently come out with an electronic version for the iPad and that's where they take it up a notch.  The electronic version has embedded video, special web links, and found it with the various articles. 

To learn more about this excellent resource visit http://www.relevantmagazine.com/