I’m so pumped about this series we are starting in high school this weekend. I really wish I was teaching all of it. I have good reasons to be gone which I’m excited about too (I’m doing a wedding for some former students in Nor Cal this weekend and then I teach in main service next weekend.) …. but I still love this series idea. It is about our core values or purposes. It’s called, “… and I meant it.” Here’s the breakdown.

• Week one: “I said I’m living for an audience of One… and I meant it.”
• Week two: “I said I love you…. and I meant it.”
• Week three: “I said my lost friends matter to God… and I meant it.”
• Week four: “I said I want to be like Jesus… and I meant it.”
• Week five: “I said it’s better to give than receive… and I meant it.”

We have a a different student or group of students telling their personal story in video format each week. They were dreamed up/nominated by our student production team and Daniel (a sweet video guru at church) is putting them together.

I made a new semi-permanent wall with one of our volunteers behind the stage that our students painted this week with the logo. It looks awesome!!! I think it looks inspiring. I’ll post pictures later. I can’t wait to teach in this series and I’m really praying it inspires and challenges our students in HUGE ways.

Last summer I was in the heart of the “OC” with some students from our high school program for a leadership conference. There was a day when all the groups were sent out to various service projects around the city with little-to-no-warning or plan. All they gave us was a sheet of paper with a proposal to see what we could do to help in a per-determined area of need. Some groups collected money from strangers, others distributed sandwiches to the homeless, while our group was given the task of gathering food items for the needy.

We decided to park our crew in front of a Ralph’s grocery store in a fairly nice part of town. We asked the manager for permission, set up some tables and made some signs at both doors, and then started collecting food. All in all we had like 300 items and something like another $200 in cash donated in a several hour project in the afternoon.

After our food collection time was up, we went over to the Golden Spoon to get some frozen yogurt and while there, these 3 girls walk in dressed to the nine. They pulled up in like a mercedes SUV and were dressed identically. Each had spent a lot of money and time on themselves and all had like some kind of cheetah/leopard print thing going on. When I asked what they were dressed up for, they said they were going to their friends MTV Super Sweet Sixteen birthday party. Which if you’ve ever seen the show, is like the most ridiculously over the top, comparison game of a birthday party for a spoiled rotten kid in the entire world.

Then today, I was reading ypulse (a great teen culture trends sight) and found an article about this kid who is turning sixteen. By the looks of his personal website, he’s not too financially hurting. He’s also heading to the House of Blues in downtown Hollywood to host a personal birthday party with a $5 or $10 cover charge- all going to the Los Angeles Homeless Services Coalition which provides aid and services to the over 90,000 people who are homeless in the area.

Interesting. I wonder if MTV will cover this? I hope he’ll be having a sweet 16 birthday. Only thing that would make it better would be if after the party, everyone went out into the community and spoke to, and loved on, and encouraged those without homes. Maybe dropped by the shelters and then handed a check to the LAHSC personally that night. I think it’d also be cool to walk the streets before hand and find some sober and hard on their luck homeless who really need a leg up on life and invite them to come and forget their worries at the party too. How sweet would that be. The high school elite of LA mingling with the homeless, all trying to better the community. That, I think, would be something Jesus would do.

3 cheers for youth who value serving others when most people say they serve themselves.

Our annual compilation of ministry salaries is out, and this year’s tally produced a few surprises:
• If you want to make more money, switch denominations.
• Female solo pastors make more.
• The extra degree is worth the money.

here’s the whole thing if you want to read it.

Guess if I want to live at the top of the paid pastor pool I should stay in seminary, join the presbytery, and get a sex change.

Both years we have driven a sweet motor home that has been donated by a family in our church. It’s tons of fun and is pretty tricked out. We use it as like a mobile office/meeting space of sorts while there and do lots of planning for our school year. We stay an extra day and use it to apply some of the ideas and plan out school year events and teaching. This process, or something like it is how I’ve planned my school year teaching and such for high school for the majority of my 13 years in student ministry. I’m actually teaching a seminar in about a month or so at Youth Specialties on the process I go through every year to develop an overall big picture plan for our high school ministry.

Anyway, this year we decided to start off our school year with a series called ONLY YOU. We just finished it today.

• WEEK ONE: Only you can be you- Psalm 139.
• WEEK TWO: Only you can take a risk- Peter/Jesus walking on the water.
• WEEK THREE: Only you can do your part- 1 Corinthians 12
• WEEK FOUR: Only you can control your attitude- Philippians 2

This turned out to be a great start to our school year, but one of the best things about this series was the set design and the level of involvement/enthusiasm in generated. We really wanted students to participate with it and to feel like they were a part of something bigger than themselves. We ended up stealing an idea from the PDYM leadership conference that Sarti designs dreamed up. But we didn’t have the space they had or the money to use full canvas pieces and the paint they used would take more time than we had to dry, so we made a giant jigsaw puzzle instead. Here’s how:

1. Bought a template to make a custom jigsaw puzzle off istockphoto.
2. Imported the template into Adobe Illustrator and made an 8 foot square design with about 160 pieces in it- minus a hole in the middle for our series logo.
3. We then counted the number of each puzzle piece we needed and printed them on 11 x17 cardstock.
4. Cut all 160ish pieces out of cardstock with lots of high school help.
5. We then printed a master copy of the design to scale on an overhead.
6. I made an 8 foot square backdrop out of plywood and covered it with soundboard so it would be soft enough for students to use a push pin to eventually place their puzzle pieces onto.
7. We then painted the backdrop white and projected the image from the overhead onto it. We then outlined where all 160 pieces would go and painted a master puzzle outline with black paint. Kinda like a kids puzzle with the impressions of where the pieces go on it- but huge. This results in a puzzle outline on the stage without any actual pieces in it- if that makes sense.
8. Then, on week one, we taught on student’s uniqueness and gave them 10 minutes in service during my message to make a puzzle piece that represented themselves.
9. Lastly, during our worship set, we encouraged students to put their own pieces on the stage during the songs using push pins in a slot that fit their piece. Much to our surprise, the first weeekend, over a hundred students actually filled one out.

Here’s the pics of the end result and some of the students. Today we let them take their piece home as a reminder of the things that are true of ONLY YOU. I really hope these lessons last- I think the messages were so needed as we look to get a lot of students involved in our ministry and serving this year.

About 3 weeks ago we had all those who wanted to be in student leadership over to our house for a BBQ. It amounted to about 30 students. We talked vision and purpose and why we do what we do and asked our students to write a one word description of what they wanted our youth group to feel like or embody or be. They wrote them on sticky notes and then stuck them on a big piece of paper we had hung up.

I asked one of the admin assistants in our office to type them up for me. Tomorrow is our next training time and we’re going to talk over these words they listed. How cool would it be if our youth ministry was this: