So, Being A Christian Is Radical? Is This News?

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I recently read an article from Ed Stetzer called Is Radical Christianity A Form of Legalism? The article was a response to Christianity Today’s piece called Here Come The Radicals Both are very good articles and I encourage you to read them both, contrast and compare.

Pastors should be looking at how to lead heir flock to living an authentic, radical faith. I believe men like David Platt, Francis Chan, and Shane Claiborne love the church and want God best for it, to shake it up, but they are men on a spiritual journey of their own. They have chosen a life that makes their faith come alive, forces them to trust God, and in the end, become stronger in their faith.

We as adults, and this generation of teenagers, need examples like this. Radical people with sharp sticks to poke us out of our affluent haze of heart, but these men do not set the bar for what radical is, Jesus sets the bar for radical and it is our indifference to Jesus’ call to be radical that has created a vacuum of life giving examples of what radical faith is and why Platt, Chan, and others take radical, if not extreme (to some) steps to reawaken the believers heart to think “is there more?” As youth pastors, we can show Chan and Platt videos in youth group or or we can just program being radical into all we do.

Jesus did not ask everyone to sell all they had and follow him as he did with the Rich Young Ruler. The Apostle Paul did not make everyone get beaten or stoned for the sake of the gospel nor shamed others for not being  beaten or stoned for the sake of the gospel.

When I was younger in my faith, I  preached on the streets of New Orleans during  Mardi Gra through a bull horn. I and some others, thought that was radical and it was. The very act made my faith come alive. My faith became valuable. God’s faithfulness became evident, and life made more sense. I gave God permission to do something radical in me. That is why radical obedience is needed in the life of every believer. If you are bored with your faith, do some radical like :

  • forgive someone you hurt you and tell them
  • Ask someone to forgive you
  • admit your prejudice and set out to make it right.
  • give money you don’t have to someone who does not deserve it
  • get out of your daily faith routine and serve in a place with people you do not know or understand
  • Step up and serve in your churches nursery (Radical x 10)
  • Go to a nerd convention and hand out New Testaments

The longer you wait. make excuses, and ignore the level of radical God is calling you to, the more frustrated, bored, and unfulfilled in your faith and with God you will be.

We can cheerlead our radical beliefs

Or we can live radically. It’s our choice.

 

 

The Correlation Between Chaos and Commitment

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I was talking with one of our volunteers about people and why thy are’t very committed to our youth ministry. I told him “you can draw a line from the chaos in their lives to their commitment level”. The more chaotic their lives are, the less committed they are to anything else other than their chaos.

Let me first define what chaos is not. Chaos is not going through a divorce (although it is), a family death, or other serious matters. Chaos, in this instance, is self imposed drama. Chaos is: a young adult in an on again off again relationships with someone from another church and they can’t decide which church they want to go to or a person who “has” to work non-stop and does not schedule their time or money well.

Other signs of chaos

  • never returning calls or text 
  • aways late
  • self defeating social media posts
  • lack of spiritual fervor

As leaders, we cannot stop chaos from happening, and the people who are in chaos are not bad people, but we need to help our volunteers manage their chaos. Here are a few tips.

1. Don’t recruit volunteers already in chaos. 

It sounds harsh, but if you get a volunteer already in chaos, they will be short lived. When it’s a choice between commitment to an aspect of the youth program  and their chaos, they choose chaos every time. Wait until your prospective volunteer hits an even level then approach

2. When a volunteer is in chaos, be grace-filled

We are only a step or to away from our own chaos so we should look at those in chose with a less judgmental eye. It’s easy for us to see that someone else’s chaos is screwing up our program. The program is not the real ministry, the program is an excuse to help others (our kids, and volunteers) in their moment of chaos.

3. Offer choices to your volunteers

Chaos happens, but you don’t have to kick a volunteer to the curb. Instead of relieving them of their duty consider these options

  • Offer to counsel them through the chaos
  • Ask them if they would like less responsibility.
  • Ask them if they would like to take a break. Set a time and check in on them often.

As I said earlier, we are only a few steps away from a chaotic moment ourselves so let’s remember scriptures call to chaos free living

Money Chaos

“Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said, “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.”              Hebrews 13:5

Family Chaos

And one of the company said to him, Master, speak to my brother, that he divide the inheritance with me. And he said to him, Man, who made me a judge or a divider over you? And he said to them, Take heed, and beware of covetousness: for a man’s life consists not in the abundance of the things which he possesses. Luke 12:13-15 …

Sin Chaos

“Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us,” Hebrews 12:1

Everyday Chaos

“No one serving as a soldier gets entangled in civilian affairs, but rather tries to please his commanding officer.” 2 Timothy 2:4

What kind of chaos is keeping your team from being fruitful?

How do you deal with chaos on your team?

Youth Camp Week Day Five: 3 Ways To Follow Up With New Commitments To Christ

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Follow-Up

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How come we spend so much time getting ready for camp but very little time on the follow up after camp? This is a question I’ve asked youth workers for years. We love to talk about camp and the camp experience and all God does in the lives of our kids, but I am thinking we count way too much on the “mountain top experiences” to carry our kids to Christian maturity; this is why I offer a few tip to get us all ready to disciple our kids after camp.

1. Create accountability partners 

For those kids who do make a commitment or recommitment to Christ, why not set up an adult to check in with them once a week to see how their commitment is going. You could also pair up more mature Christian teens to walk with new believers. This helps both teens in their walk with Christ.

2. Offer Them Resources

You may want to offer a small booklet or pamphlet a kid could read or work through themselves. I offer a resource called Get Healthy that give to my students. The journal offers them ways to get healthy in multiple area of their lives. You could also use material such as this and this 

3. Partner with Parents

Try working out a plan with parents to do the follow up with their own kids if possible. This is the best strategy and most fruitful way a teen can grow i their faith and grow closer to their parents as well.  I posted a few tips to help parents with the post camp experience called What To Expect When Your Teen Comes Home From Camp.

For more camp posts check out

Youth Camp Game Ideas

Discipline At Camp 

Getting Your Campers To Bed

Sharing Devotions At Camp 

 

How do you follow up with your students post camp?  Share your strategy below.

 

 

Youth Camp Week Day Four: 5 Youth Camp Game Videos To Steal, Umm, Borrow From

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Since I did not get any feedback on games you all use, that must mean you have no idea what games you are going to play this year. So, I thought I;d help you out with 10 Youth Camp Game Videos you could “borrow” from. Enjoy.

I like the game in this next video. Go to 2:43 and watch the chaos.

I would make a full track using this ideas and then it is game on for all kinds of stuff.

There are about 5-6 really good games on this video.

This is a channel with 10 youth camp videos and more.

Youth Camp Week Day Three : Discipline At Camp

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Discipline is no fun, but especially no fun at camp; but sometimes it has to be done. I had a student one time who had signed up for our camp. I did not know the camper very well, but he seemed a bit young to go. I was write. He was too young for this trip. He would wander way from the group and was basically on his own schedule. Here is how I handled it.

First offense: A warning to call his mom.

Second: A call to his mom and let her talk to him.

Third: A second call to his mom with the warning that if I had to call again he would have to go home.

Fourth: Called the mom and asked her to come pick up her son, six hours away.

It worked out fine. All the kids gathered around this kid and sent him off with prayer and well wishes. I don’t think he ever came back to youth group (for a different reason)  but that moment of discipline, with love, was worth it.

Here is what I think this process communicated to the parent

1. I communicated that I loved her son and wanted him to stay

2. I wanted her to be a part of the solution. She knows her son better than I.

3. I wanted to build a track record with the parent about behavior. If I would have told her to come pick up her son on the first call I would have shown that I did not  care.

Here is  a thought from veteran youth worker Greg Schmidt:  The first thing to remember is, you and the kids are representing Christ first, church second, and the rest after that don’t really count lol. JK. I always like to set the bar high and see if they can exceed my expectations. In my 25+ years of student ministry I have seen a lot of teens at camp that have gone home and a whole lot that should’ve went home. The one thing I always did was at the parent mtg. show the parents the guidelines and expectations and let them know if their perfect son or daughter happened to not follow them, THEY (the parents) would be either coming to get them or sending money for bus ticket home. With this I made sure I had the pastor and everyone else on the same page that way when something happens, and it usually did, they won’t be blindsided by an angry parent of a perfect teen.

Discipline is part of discipleship. Don’t shy away from it, even if they don’t thank you for it later.

Don’t forget to read Day 1: Tips For Sharing Devotions At Camp  or Day 2: 3 Ideas To Get Your Campers To Bed

 

Youth Camp Week Day Two : 3 Ideas To Get Your Campers To Bed

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I am old. Yes, old. I am old and I like to sleep, a lot. I have a routine and I do not like it messed with. “Then why are you at youth camp?” Good question. I have to be, I’m the youth pastor.

Just because I am old and like to sleep does not mean that I do not like to stay up late, it’s just hard to do. It’s even harder to get everyone settled down to bed. II do have a few tricks up my sleeve, and so do a few up my friends to help you avoid the whole “go to bed” tirade.

Here are two things that do not work for me : Yelling and screaming. Besides, in the age of cell phones, this is probably not a good idea unless you want to be a viral hit on You Tube. “What’s left?”  you may ask, let me give you five other choices

1. Have a plan to end the week big

We always ended our week big with wrestling matches. It became so epic you did not want to miss it. We saved this for the last night so it gave our kids something to look forward to. If they misbehaved during the week they had to sit on the bed and watch us wrestle. I never had too many of those,

My Facebook friend Tim Bo suggests,

One of the things I always do with my students is a scheduled sneak out. “Hey guys, because you’re in my room we’re going to break curfew tonight, but you can’t tell anybody, especially the girls! This has got to be our secret!” Then when it’s a good 30-40 minutes after curfew and things have quieted down I lead my group to some place cool in the camp and play football in the dark or some thing for a while. If I do it one it gauntness that they’ll be too tired to want to do it again for most of the rest of camp and maybe they’ll want to do it again for the final day just to wrap up the week.As far as actually getting students to sleep, I usually don’t worry about it too much. Camp is a long week and if they are up all night one night, they’ll be ready to crash out by 9pm the next night.”

2. Have a long good night prayer 

My Twitter friend @kevinlibick said

” one of the best I’ve come across is to do a goodnight prayer out loud for a really really long time.”

This is a great idea. I have also had campers take turns reading chapters in the book of Revelation with  flash light. That works pretty well too..

3. Keep the focus on spiritual things

My Facebook Friend Matthew Emigh says

“We finish out the day with Cabin testimony/devotions time where we talk about what God has done that day. During that time, our counselors know to remind the youth of why they are they, and to specifically address the issue. They keep the focus on spiritual things. It doesn’t always help, you still will have some knuckleheads with shaving cream who have to show off, but it does seem to slow it drastically.”

So true,

Do you have any tips and tricks to get kids to go to sleep? Share them in the comments, Thanks and get some sleep, you’re gonna need it,

 

 

 

Youth Camp Week Day One: 3 Tips For Sharing Devotions At Camp

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Here’s a video of our youth camp from last year.

I love youth camp. I gave my heart to Christ for the first time at a camp called Life For Youth Camp in Vero Beach, Fl. I worked there for 7 summers and have been speaking there, one week a summer, for the past 12 years. Oh, and I met my wife there. I love youth camp.

Summer and summer camp is almost upon our youth ministries and I thought this would be a great week for some last minute tips for making your camp awesome, and I hope you’ll share your yours tips here as well. Here are my 10 Tips

1. Be prepared to lead or prepare your leaders to lead the devotion. 

You can’t be angry with your volunteers if they did not lead the devotions the way you wanted if you have not taught them how you want them led. Be sure to meet with your leaders, train them, and build their confidence to accomplish their tasks.

2. Don’t re-preach the sermon

If you do your devotions after the service, it’s tempting, but don’t re-preach the message. I think devotions are about engaging camper, not speaking to them or even at them, but it’s a time to dig into what they really think about this “Jesus thing”.

And number three comes from

3. Your youth camp is like a house

I like this quote from a friend on LinkedIn

“Remember when you have a Camp its like building a house with four walls(four topics) your theme is the foundation and your Bible Studies /Devotions are your roofing sheets to complete the house.” - Rodgers Nkhuwa

I have never thought of Camp Devotions in this manner but Rodgers is dead on. The Theme is the foundation, topics the walls, and devotions are the shingles (like icing on the cake). Don’t obsess over the shingles, but don’t forget them either.

Obviously not an exhaustive list, but maybe it will get you to thinking deeper and wider about your devotions.

What tip would you add?

Youth Camp Devotion Resources

If you are looking for camp devotions to share with your group this summer, here are a few places you can get some. I was shocked that there were not more. I have not vetted these devos (except my one) for theological correctness so I encourage you to read the resources (including mine) thoroughly before using.

Living the Adventure of God by Andre Chua.(I really like the  format of this and it seems to be directed to boys, but it could be adapted.)

He also has an accompany leaders guide 

You could do video devotions with Jeremy Camp (name kind of suits this)

You could grab some devotions from Northern Grace Youth Camp

You could put your own youth camp devotion together using devotions from Dare2Share

If you are serious about making your own devotions here are some easy steps 

Finally,

I wrote a 5 day camp devo called Branching Out

I can also custom write you a set to go along with your theme

If you know of a good camp devo book, website, or idea, leave it in the comments section.

 

 

 

Games, God, and Youth Ministry: My Interview with Mikee Bridges of GameChurch.com

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I had a great chat with Mikee Bridges of GameChurch.com today and I wanted to share it with you today. Mikee pulls no punches when it comes to Christianity, the church, and culture, and that is why I think you’ll love our conversation. Want to chime  in? Leave a comment below

Do you reach out to gamers in your church? If so, how?

Is the church still too slow in responding to an ever changing culture? How should we change this?

Do you feel  hampered when trying to reach certain groups or cultures of people? If so, how?

 

 

Finding Your Youth Ministry Path: Experience vs Academic

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photo credit 

I have been thinking about this issue of youth ministry education and education in general for a while, but first let me give you a little history on my education journey.

I was 17 years old when I received the call to ministry when an African pastor, who did not know me, called me back after praying for me and asked me, “Do you feel a calling to ministry? ” I said I did and we prayed again. That sealed it for me.

I did not have many job choices as a senior, it was youth pastor, social worker, or professional bowler (no kidding, I had mad skills)). The prayer with that African Pastor, plus the investment of youth pastors, pastors, and camp counselors made my choice pretty easy. So, I chose to go to a year of community college and then I went to a 4 year college which lasted all of about three months. Cranial development was not for me; at least not in book form. I needed something different.

I then shipped myself off to a year long, experiential discipleship school called Master Commission. At the time, it was the only school of it’s kind, located in Phoenix, Az.. I drove my beat up Ford Galaxy, vinyl seats, and no air conditioning through the Texas and New Mexico heat. It was a great year and I learned many great tools and disciplines that helped me launch my youth ministry career.

Today, after 23 years of youth ministry, I still have no degree, but I have a blog, a couple of You Tube shows that I am proud of, a youth ministry store with 17 products and growing, and a full time youth pastor job at a great church with great kids. Life is good. ( note: I went back to school and I am two classes (both math, both I hate) shy of my two year degree)

In the end, there are 2 grinding paths. The educational path is one type of grind. We grind out grades, papers, and in the end a diploma, a masters, a Phd, write a book, teach at a college, etc. Some Pastors hire based this grinding path. The academic path is a vetting system. It tests you and if you pass you are worthy of hiring.

The experiential grind means we train early (17,18) work like crazy, develop skills, get mentors, get licenses and certifications, work on projects that are unique and succeed at them, and build a life where one day you are “in demand” because of the skills you have developed. Some Pastors loo at the experience portion of the resume before the academic accolades. The are asking: Did you pay your dues? How many successes have you have? Do you have the skills (vs academic knowledge)  to help me build this church? The experience grind, and youth ministry itself, has a way of separating out the weak from the strong; the called and the merely interested.

I chose the latter path. I am neither better nor more qualified as a youth pastor because I chose it, but I am glad I did. That path fit me perfect. If you are on a path and the grind is just too hard, or simply ill fitted to your personality, try another path. It’s ok. Freedom!

Which path did you take? Are you glad you took it?

What path are you on right now?

Did your path produce what you though it would?

If you were advising your 17 year old self right now, what would you say?

 

I’d Rather Have Jesus

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Idratherhavejesuslogo

I haven’t listened to this song in a long time. I found a current version yesterday on iTunes. The fresh, clear, bold words poured from the singers mouth like an anthem.

I listened to it again this morning as part of my devotion time and I just wept. The lyrics are simple

I’d rather have Jesus than silver or gold;
I’d rather be His than have riches untold;
I’d rather have Jesus than houses or lands;
I’d rather be led by His nail-pierced hand
Refrain:
Than to be the king of a vast domain
And be held in sin’s dread sway;
I’d rather have Jesus than anything
This world affords today.
I’d rather have Jesus than men’s applause;
I’d rather be faithful to His dear cause;
I’d rather have Jesus than worldwide fame;
I’d rather be true to His holy name

(these next two lines are left out from the modern interpretation I listened to this morning, but it take nothing away form the song)
He’s fairer than lilies of rarest bloom;
He’s sweeter than honey from out the comb;

He’s all that my hungering spirit needs;
I’d rather have Jesus and let Him lead

I meditated on the line “I’d rather have Jesus than world wide fame.” Rhea F. Miller could not have known in 1922 when she wrote the song, that the desire of men to be known and glorified, and  would reach new heights through social media. That desire for fame has always been in mankind’s heart, but it has become too simple to make ourselves the star of our own story instead of Jesus.

This is not meant to be a guilt trip in any way, just a reflection. We all

  • Check our Twitter too much to see who RT’s us
  • Check out FB too much to see who like, shared and commented
  • Check out our You Tube channel to see who viewed and subscribed.

But, I’d rather have Jesus than all these things. These tools are meant to glorify God, not ourselves. If it is choice between Jesus and fame I choose Jesus. Pretty easy huh?

The choice get tougher though, if it’s a choice between Jesus and being liked I still choose Jesus..

One harder still, if it is a choice between Jesus and sharing what I had for lunch in Instagram, well, that’s a choice we all have to make, every day, and much more often than we think.

In honor of George Beverly Shea passing away a few months ago, I give you his version of I’d Rather Have Jesus.

Finish this sentence, I’d Rather Have Jesus than….. Use it as a confessional tool.