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What is most intriguing to me is that 70% of students would rather text than get a phone call.
What stands out to you?
Anything surprise you?
Is this what you expected?
How does this affect communication with teens in the future?
You can head over to my church’s blog to check out our latest SECOND Student Ministry newsletter for January and February. For youth pastors who read this, it may give you some ideas. I use “Pages” for Mac for just about everything.
Hope this helps!
Here is the article from the Newsletter:
WISDOM Matters
We made a challenge to all of Calvary Assembly to begin the New Year right by reading a chapter of Proverbs a day and we have loved hearing everyone’s insights. It seems the theme that continues to run throughout all of Proverbs is the phrase, “GET WISDOM”. The question we have been asking at our Wednesday night gatherings is, “Ok…if the smartest guy says to ‘get wisdom no matter what the cost’, how do we get it?” So we took time to brainstorm ideas and came up with a list:
Church, parents, teachers, the Bible, spending time with God, listening to older/respected friends, reading, conversing, youth leaders, etc.
The interesting piece for many of us is that we don’t take time to think about how frequently wisdom is available to us. We often show up to church and barely pay attention. We only go to school because we have to. It seems we miss out on a lot of opportunities presented to us to actually “GET WISDOM”. We are too busy playing games, hanging out with our friends, or just not soaking in what truth is being presented to us. Of course, there is definitely a time and a place to have fun (if you’ve seen our games on Wednesday nights, you’d know this first hand!), but I wanted to challenge you to “GET WISDOM”. As we talked about, this can keep us from the “deep darkness” the Proverbs writer talks about (Prov. 4:19). The way Solomon describes it is that people who don’t pursue wisdom “do not know over what they stumble.” Ignorance is not bliss. Having wisdom so that you can make decisions that glorify God (and not cause pain to you or others) makes much more sense.
Also, you can check out our “Parent Cue”, which is a parent discussion guide at the church blog here. Can’t wait to see you all on Sunday!
Love this video below. Thanks for pointing me to this @DerekMelleby.
What’s Youth Sunday without a music video?
Or even better, a blooper reel?
The list below was compiled by Youth Specialties. These thinkers and practitioners have been huge in my personal growth and understanding of what it means to be an effective leader for young people. Check it out!
2010 Rank / Blogger Name / Blog address
1 / Youth Specialties Blog / http://youthspecialties.com/blog
2 / Mark Oestreicher / http://whyismarko.com
3 / Tim Schmoyer / http://studentministry.org
4 / Josh Griffin / http://www.morethandodgeball.com/
5 / Adam McLane / http://adammclane.com
6 / Adam Walker Cleaveland / http://pomomusings.com/
7 / Orange Leaders / http://www.orangeleaders.com/
8 / Chris Folmsbee / http://www.anewkindofyouthministry.com/
9 / Ian MacDonald / http://www.youthblog.org
10 / Walt Mueller / http://learningmylines.blogspot.com/
11 / Jeremy Zach / http://www.reyouthpastor.com
12 / Jonathan McKee / http://blog.thesource4ym.com/
13 / Fuller Youth Institute / http://fulleryouthinstitute.org/blog/
14 / Mark Riddle / http://www.theriddlegroup.com/blog/index.htm
15 / Mike King / http://king.typepad.com/mike_king/
16 / Tash McGill / http://tashmcgill.blogspot.com/
17 / Gavin Richardson / http://www.gavoweb.com/
18 / Matt Cleaver / http://mattcleaver.com/
19 / Kurt Johnston / http://simplykurt.com/
20 / Stevan Sheets / http://www.stevansheets.com/
Tonight our youth discussed “How to Follow God Through the Summer…And How to Make That Relationship Meaningful.” Sarah and I prepared the lesson and I was pleased with the response from the students. I thought I’d post the slides below, although all the stories and points in between are really what make it interesting. My hope and prayer for the students (and for you too now that you’ve joined the conversation) was that they would intentionally think about how they were spending their time and who they were hanging out with this summer, as their structure of their day looks much different. The phrase the students kept repeating was “Garbage in, Garbage out” (meaning whatever junk you put in will come out in your words and actions). I liked it.
First, I always start youth group with a funny or interesting video, so I’ll let you check out OK GO’s song and Rube Goldberg video. If you haven’t seen it yet, it’s incredible.
*Each student had to write at least one thing they were committing to for the summer off of the list. One girl said since she loved drawing she would read a portion of Scripture and turn it into an interesting visual on a regular basis. Pretty sweet way to connect with God, if you ask me.
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So what did I miss? What connected with you?
