Spiritual Journaling

Here's a great idea to start as you begin your fall program with youth or young adults to help foster some spiritual discovery and relationship building. We always want to grow closer with our youth and young adults, but is often hard to do and involves a tremendous amount of personal one-on-one time. Well here is an easy way to reach out to all students in a very intimate way as well as teaching them some good spiritual disciplines.

In order to do this you will need a bunch of one subject spiral-bound notebooks. (You can usually find these on sale at the beginning of the school year). What these one subject notebooks are going to become will be individual spiritual journals that each member of your group will be able to use.  At one of your first meetings, pass out the notebook and have your students decorate and personalize them. After they have done that, inform them that these are now their spiritual journals that they can use throughout the year to share or reflect on things happening in their life. Every time your group meets, have your students take about 5 to 10 min. to share what they're feeling for that particular week in their journals. It can be as simple as how they're week is going to reflecting upon a spiritual passage that you have written up on a board. Encourage them to participate as much as possible, even if they simply write in them, "I don't have anything to write this week."

 Inform them, that their mentor/counselor/pastor will be reading these journals and will be responding to their entries every week. Be very clear with them that only their mentor/counselor/pastor will be reading their entries and that they have been informed by the youth leader to keep what they read confidential. (Note: do not allow the students to take these journals or allow anyone the other than their mentor/counselor/pastor to read what has been written.) Tell your mentors/counselors/pastors to respond in the journals with supportive and affirming comments. If there student is not there on a particular week when you do this, have the mentor/counselor/pastor write a note saying that they miss them that particular week.

This can be a very powerful way to connect with your youth leaders and students. At the end of the year, have the students take the journals home. Good luck and happy journaling!

Youth Mission Trips

Summer is usually a very active time in a successful youth program. There are usually a lot of activities and programs that happen during the summer. One of the most exciting is a Summer Youth Mission Trip. They are great opportunities to grow relationally with young people and have young people have an unbelievable experience that they can remember for the rest of their life.

A successful Summer Mission Trip however, takes a lot of time and planning to do well. Below are just a few suggestions I would have if you are considering doing a mission trip.

Plan Early - If you desire to do a summer mission trip with young people the best time to start planning is now! Depending on how elaborate your trip will end up being, you will need between six months and a year to make the event happen. I have seen too many groups try to do mission trip too quickly and the result has been a disaster.

Have a Clear Purpose - Don't just do a mission trip for any old reason. Have a clear purpose in mind as to why you want to participate in this particular mission trip. Maybe your purpose is to build relationships with your young people. Maybe your purpose is that your church has done a similar mission trip. Whatever the reason, be sure that your young people and you understand the reason why you are participating in this mission experience.

Fund-raise, Fund-raise, Fund-raise - Mission trips are usually very expensive. As you plan for your mission trip understand that you are going to be spending a large amount of your planning time trying to raise funding in order to do the trip. Don't wait until the last minute to fund raise. Plan good fundraising activities throughout the year that engage not only the congregation but the community in large as well.

Mission trips can be a lot of fun and as I mentioned earlier provide great experiences for young people. Talk to other churches or other youth groups who have gone on mission trips to gain insight, ideas and planning to make your mission trip go smoothly as possible.

Planning Youth Programs

As summer is in full swing, now is the time to think about planning for next year’s programs and activities. The farther you plan and get activities and programs on the calendar, the more success you will have with those activities. For a lot of youth leaders, planning in advance is very difficult. We like to spend our time forming relationships with our students, rather than work on administrative planning. The truth of the matter is however, that if you don't have good plans in place it won’t really matter the types of relationships that you form.  

If you're lucky enough to have good volunteers who are skilled at this, you can turn the planning over to them. However, as I discovered early on in my youth ministry, I had to do this task myself.  So I came up with an easy way to help in my planning out the year’s activities, discussion programs and mission opportunities, as well as, a way to get student’s input. In order to do this you simply need a pack of 3 x 5 cards and pens or pencils for all your adult leaders and students. (If you can find different color cards to give the adult leaders, this will help you keep their ideas separated from the students.)

Then at one of our largest activities (usually during the summer) I would gather them together and have them do this: on 1 side of the 3 x 5 card have them write down three questions of faith that they would like to discuss or learn more about. Examples could be, "What does the Bible say about suicide?" Or "How can I share my faith?" They could also list books of the Bible that they would like to study. The point was to get them thinking about what they would like to talk about over the next year. Once they had done that, on the other side of the card they were to write 2 fun activities that they would like to do and 2 mission opportunities that they would like to do. Give them 5 or 10 minutes to complete this. Now you have a whole stack of ideas to work with and begin your planning for the next year.

Note: Sometimes you will get some real duds, but by in large you will have a wealth of ideas to work with for the next year. It goes without saying that if multiple people ask for the same thing, then you definitely want to make sure that you do that sometime during the year.

Good luck with your planning and have a great year getting to know your student’s by drawing them deeper in their faith.

Youth Leadership

Last week I participated in my Conference’s Annual Conference Session. This is our annual meeting of all of pastors and church, usually held in late May or early June.

As is our custom, we invite youth and young adults to participate in these sessions as voting members. We have done this for a number of years and see it as important because it allows the youth and young adults within our churches to express their opinion about the issues that we face as  a church.

Having their opinion and presence at these gathering is incredibly important for a number of reasons. First and foremost, their involvement is critical in making decisions for our church because they are full members of our church. Youth and young adults are not just part members or affiliate members, they are full members with all rights and privileges that any other adult member of our church has. If we treat them as less than full members, then we are essentially telling them that they don't matter.

Secondly, having youth and young adults be a part of the decision-making process of our church is necessary so that we get everyone's opinions into the decision. No one would ever consider not allowing women to speak at meetings or not allowing anyone over the age of 65 to speak and share their opinion. However, I have heard it suggested and modeled that young people should be seen and not heard; they are pushed to the sidelines because they do not have the capability of making the right decision. When we do this in the church we send a very strong message to the young people of our churches that we don't want them or need them.

Finally, their involvement and participation in these gatherings and meetings is important so that they will learn how these meetings and gatherings work. Adults have the responsibility to mentor young people. When we ignore those responsibilities, we set up a system by which the church loses its future leadership. If we do this long enough, there will be no church in the future.

The piece of advice that I would have for you in the local church would be this: make it a high priority to have youth and young adults serve on decision-making committees or ministry teams. Don't use excuses like their opinion doesn't matter or that they should be seen and not heard. Instead, value their opinion and help them learn in the best ways possible. 

25 Great Graduation Gifts that Graduates Will Actually Use

I received this message via e-mail from one of my followers on my blog and I have had a chance to check out website in reference to my last blog posting. There are a lot of really great gift ideas that she has and I would encourage you to check it out. Below is what she sent me and a web link to her site.

Her name is Katina Solomon. thanks Katina reading my blog and I hope people will visit your site!

---

Hi,

I’m a frequent reader of your blog and wanted to let you know that I just posted an article on my site that I thought you might find interesting “25 Great Graduation Gifts That Graduates WillActually Use” If you think your readers might like it, too, would you consider sharing or mentioning it on your blog? I’d appreciate it if you have time to check it out.

http://www.collegedegree.com/library/college-life/25-Great-Graduation-Gifts-That-Graduates-Will-Actually-Use/