During this week off with the new baby, I picked us up some Coldstone ice cream...It's delicious...and the guy, Kyle, who helped me just looked worked over by the day...So I asked a simple question, "How's it going" with a tone implying it looked like it had been a hard day...Found out he's a senior in high school which would be great except his girlfriend who just graduated moved to San Francisco state yesterday and all his seniors friends just smoke pot all day which is so "boring" as he pu... Read Full Story
I took 5 weeks and gave myself two days off each week as my "vacation"and now, with the new baby, I'm taking an entire week off (including Sunday)I was a fool...A week off is so much better...Even with the sleep deprivationlesson learnedSK :) Read Full Story
Friday night we had the baby and Saturday was the beach clean up and then Sunday was program like usual...So I prepped my leaders that they needed to "step up" and coordinated with the middle school guy to preach my message (That I had done ahead of time)They did small group sign ups, and made all the student contact...Sounded like it went great...it will be interesting to talk to students about it SK :) Read Full Story
It's so easy for everyone, including your leaders to say "you get paid for this" as their excuse for not working as hard or being as committed..But since we had the baby, it was a perfect time to let them loose (and I had not choice unless I wanted to cancel)So we did a beach clean up the morning after our baby was born...The only thing I did was show up @ 8am with the supplies to drop off with them and then prayed over the leaders...I didn't want to interact with students too much and take a... Read Full Story
Well, in the midst of a great summer of beach days with students, we had a healthy baby boy...So, as we work on boundaries in ministry, we took the whole week off...Two great things came out of it...My leaders had to run a beach cleanup service event without me...And the next day they had to run a Sunday morning without me...Yikes!!SK :) Read Full Story
I've never felt fully comfortable doing purely outreach events that cost a lot of money and then begging students to bring friends to make the event work.This year we did an overnighter which went fantastic. We had a whole night of fun with students and volunteers who were stoked to be there.But is it the best use of our time and energy.If we're going to spend 3-4oo dollars over what we get in from students, should we be spending it on a night of pure fun with little impact long term...or ... Read Full Story
Youth ministry in full swing as we end the school year with an overnighter...Here's the planMeet @ ChurchHead to broomballHead to Pump It UpHead to park for park games w/ glow sticksHead back to church for an hour of organized games like "Stick It"Free time for a couple hours7am pick upIt's going to be great!! Read Full Story
Our church does an appreciation every year for all the volunteers in the church which includes the youth volunteers, but it's so general that we do our own appreciation.So Last night we got all of our volunteers together, changed the scenary a little and went to the beach:We talked to them about "what an effective summer looks like" for them.We prepped for our Overnighter coming up next weekAnd then we went back to the church for appreciation including a small gift card to the movies to thank... Read Full Story
Working through the importance of advertising the ministry.To the other staff I send out a once a month update on cool things God is doingto the Elders I send a report to the pastors to update the elders withto the congregation I made a banner of the summer calendar with slots for flyers to display in main serviceto the parents of students I made a parent blog with forms and important infoand to students Twice a week flyer communication at events ... Read Full Story
