Identity Week 1

We just finished week 1 of the Identity Series! At my church, we have a Student Ministries Staff of 6 people, each of us each week brings our talk outline and we discuss how we can change or make it better. God used this time to have me change some cool things and add some interactive pieces I probably wouldn't have normally bring to the table.We started the talk time by having the teens split up into 2 teams and get together to draw two people...

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New Series: Identity

Middle School students (i.e. early adolescence) have three main struggles (these are Mark Oestreichers and Scott Rubin's findings...guys who freaking ROCK at Middle School Ministry! These are listed on page 152 of their book: Middle School Ministry):- Identity: "who am I?"- Autonomy: "How am I unique?" and "What's the extent of my control?"- Affinity: "To whom and where do I belong?"God has laid it on my heart to go about working on these specific...

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Old Skool Jesus #10 and #11

We are definitely nearing the end of our Old Skool Jesus series, which makes me a bit sad since we've been having so much fun...but se la vie, no? Old Skool Jesus #9 got wrapped into the "Save Christmas, Save the World" theme, so you can re-catch that here: "Save Christmas, Save the World"Old Skool Jesus #10- Jesus Style Ministry (Zach) Luke 19:1-9 We all know the story of Zacchaeus and the song that goes with his short stature, but he was more...

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Deep Teaching

My last post on my Thoughts on Deep Teaching to Middle School got my mind thinking about how I teach and the level I go to when I teach.If you know anything about me, I love to preach, teach and communicate. It's the thing that gets me up in the morning, the thing that excites me most about ministry...so how do I teach to youth?As I fought for significantly in my previous post, I am a proponent of deep teaching, even to Middle Schoolers. I was...

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Thoughts on Depth of Teaching to Middle Schoolers

Middle School ministry as a whole gets a pretty bum wrap. Most youth pastors I know with an exception of a few prefer High School ministry over Middle School. In fact, most churches are set up where the High School pastor is the head of the Youth Min. department and the Middle School pastor is waiting to “climb the ladder”. The belief is that the hierarchy is normative and that most people want to move out of Middle School ministry. When I...

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Christmas Ideas for Youth Ministry Pt. 3

I know this is EXTREMELY late, but I was given a weeks vacation for Christmas and decided to not be distracted by trying to have an "online" presence. The Night went amazing on December 23rd! We had over 150 people there and 11 youth raised their hands to recieve Christ for the first time!We played several fun games and had some great activities.The Games:a. Human Present Relay (2 ppl from each section will be wrapped up like a present)b....

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