The Divine Crash

The month of October was Pastor’s Appreciation Month. (P.A.M) and to celebrate the youth group kids made me my favorite food.  Deviled Eggs!! They presented them to me in church on plates. They made 4 dozen of them.  I immediately started eating them. At various times during the service I ate an egg.  They were wonderful.

Which I guess brings the question, what is your favorite food?

What do you do to get your favorite food?

When someone wants to show you the appreciate you, what do they do? What do you wish they would do?

If you have a pastor, did you appreciate them in October? How about in July?

Here is talk two from my camp meeting week.  Feel free to listen to the teaching at the bottom of the post or download on iTunes. (more…)

I spent a week at a youth camp outside of Philadelphia.  It was an awesome experience and the next few posts will be my recordings and notes from that camp.  You can check out the camp website here, and my podcasts on iTunes here.  Don’t forget, my notes are just that, they may not make sense to you but listen to the audio, which you can find at the end of the notes. (more…)

This is a post I wrote on www.calledtoyouthministry.com As the pastor of my church I often get ads for different groups, camps, fundraisers, and all sorts of things that are “perfect” for my ministry.  Those of you in full-time ministry know exactly what I mean.  Normally I look over them and I can tell within a few seconds if they are any good or just garbage.  However, today I got an ad that has stuck with me.  It was an ad for a weekend camp and the ad said “We let you do more stuff with your youth.”

More stuff?  Is this what youth ministry needs?  Between an after school program, midweek small groups, monthly events, and regular youth group on Sunday nights we need more stuff?

Is more going to help a youth? Maybe, but probably not.  Is more going to help a youth with their problems? Probably not.  Is more going to bring in more youth?  Maybe, but it won’t keep them.

So perhaps stuff isn’t the answer to youth ministry.  So then what is?  The answer is more relationships.

No youth cares that you took them to a concert last week. They will say it was fun but if you press them the best part was that moment you and they had to talk about what really matters and that you cared enough about them to ask.

What our youth ministry needs is relationship with youth.  Each youth has approximately 3 people that pay attention to them; parents, teacher, and a sports coach.  However, all of these are forced to pay attention to the youth.  Every youth needs a person who cares about them without being paid/forced to.

So then, We don’t need more stuff we need to know the names of our youth and what is really important to them.

Needless to say, I threw the ad away.

So then, may you put the stuff away and just spend time with your youth.

This weekend I wasn’t at Tanoma to preach, I left the congregation in the very capable leadership of the Church’s lay leader.  Instead I took my youth and about 100 other youth to Camp Jumonville for the annual “Winter Ski Retreat!”  Our theme was “Lift” and we start by watching the movie “Up!”  Each speaker spoke about a section or character of the movie.

You can hear my talk on iTunes or you can download it from this website.

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Proverbs 22:6 says

Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.

What happens when that doesn’t happen? What happens when I as a youth worker do all in my power to make sure that by the time a youth graduates from youth group they know they way they should go and they depart from it?  Did I fail? (more…)

A lot of times in all jobs people get burned out and tired of doing what they do.  Doctors get tired of being a doctor and lawyers get tired of being a lawyer.  Pastors and youth pastors get tired of what they do too.  Often, this happens because a person forgets why they started or they have gotten distracted from the main thing they love.

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