You Call That Fun?!

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  "Thank you so much for the all nighter. I never felt like I fit in at "Chaos" because everybody already had friends and everything. After the all nighter I have people to hang out with can be myself at Chaos now."

Like almost everything, if I'm honest, there are parts of jr. high minstry that wear me out. Not surprisingly, one of those things is Allnighters. It's a jr. higher's dream come true: stay out all night with  friends doing fun stuff without my parents. As a youth leader, I regret to say I don't share the same enthusiasm. It literally takes me days to recover from 12 hours of lazer tag, roller skating, broom ball, scavenger hunts, and cheeseburgers at 2:00 a.m. Just when I'm about to feel sorry for myself that at almost 28 years old I'm "getting too old for this", I get the facebook message above. I snap back into realizing why we do all the crazy events that we do. There is a saying that says something about when you share the gospel with the hungry they can't hear you over their grumbling stomachs. I think the point is that ministry becomes more effective when we meet the physical needs of the people around us. If a student shows up to youth group worried about where they'll sit, if they'll sit alone, if anyone will talk to them, if anyone likes them, if they'll know anyone, etc. they will be so preoccupied worrying that it will be tought to get them to relax and actually focus on the message. But if those "physical" needs are taken care of: they feel they are liked, they belong, they connect, they are accepted they can much more easily get their eyes and their concern off of themselves (or at least a little more off of themselves) and onto God's Word. One of a jr. highers main desires is to connect. As youth leaders it's so important that we provide these opportunities for conncection keeping in mind that a jr. highers love language is "fun". My idea of fun and theirs might be a bit different, but it's a small price to pay for a student to finally feel at home when they're at church. Now we are one step closer in what we're really here to do! 

Oh and the picture above is a high schooler I found asleep in our storage closet as he waited for his parents to pick him up.

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Recycled Sugar

I discovered another reason why I love jr. highers at  youth group last night...I got out of our pre- youth group prayer meeting and found one of our 7th grade boys digging through the trash. "What is he doing?!" I kept watching him. He then pulled out a McDonalds cup with soda still in it and put the straw to his lips. "Alfie, no you didn't!", I said. He just smiled and looked at me. I again said, more whiney this time, "Alfie, NO YOU DIDN'T!" I then realized he had made up his mind. So I just put my arm around him and said, "Ok, if you don't tell, I won't." He happily scampered off with his soda, huge smile on his face. I guess you can call it resourceful?

I'll Speak to Their Ears, You Speak to Their Hearts

I was doing my weekly prep for my message last week and a prayer suddenly popped into my head: "I'll speak to their ears, YOU speak to their hearts." Maybe it was God speaking to me, and maybe it wasn't, but either way it made me realize that I can do my diligence of preparing a message each week, but without the Holy Spirit convicting their hearts and speaking to their souls, I'm just noise. Ultimately the goal is to see students become doers of the word, not hearers only, but the only person who can stir up desire in a student's heart to act upon spiritual things and change them on the inside is Him. We can stir up their emotions, but true and lasting change is really out of our hands. We all obviously know we are supposed to rely on the Holy Spirit to speak deeply to someones heart, but us relying on our own gifts of communicating and influence usually takes a front seat. Every time I prepare a message now, my prep will include the prayer, "I'll speak to their ears, please speak to their hearts." The heart is where change happens, I'm just a tool. There is supernatural power in God's Word and I need to remind myself to let it speak for itself. My gifts as a youth pastor don't hold a candle to the life changing power of the Word of God and revelations of the Holy Spirit. Once again, His Word says it better...
"As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth
and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth:  It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire
and achieve the purpose for which I sent it." Isaiah 55:10-11

Listen, Interact, Act

"We know that within two hours after leaving a church service, the typical individual cannot recall the theme of the sermon they heard. But, if they have a discussion about the principle and it's application to their life, or if they have a multi-sensory experience with those principles, they retain the information much longer and the probability that they will act on that information rises dramatically."- George Barna

George Barna seems to quantify what I somehow suspected, but never was able to put it quite so intelligently. As a youth pastor, there is a brief moment of stressful anticipation whenever parents ask their children the typical after church question, "What did you learn about today?". This is the moment where I hold my breath and think, "Please make it sound like we did more than play 'extreme musical chairs' ".  The truth is, a lot of church goers, not just kids, sometimes have a tough time recalling the main point of the pastor's message. I know it's hard to believe that a message that took us hours in research and preparation, sprinkled with well-timed humor and strategic illustrations could be so easily forgettable to students, right?

Well, I believe, like Barna, that there is more to student's spiritual and Biblical understanding than just listening and leaving. This is only step 1 in the process. Here's how I see it: Sunday morning church is where students simply listen to the material and process it on their own. There is some interaction here, some questions get asked, but for the most part students listen while we talk. They process things in their own hearts and minds, through their own perspective, and God speaks to them as individuals. Then, a couple days later on our youth group night step 2 happens: In our big group, I reintroduce our Sunday topic from a slightly different angle so that they don't tune me out with the "I've already heard this" attitude. Then, we move from our big group to small groups of ideally 8 (ish) other students of the same gender lead by an adult volunteer. These are like mini youth groups where they go through and discuss the topic on a personal level. Now students get to ask personal questions that they're wrestling with, listen to what other students their age think about a spiritual idea and form meaningful connections with other Christians. They get to move from just listening to the material to interacting with the material, seeing how it applies to their life. The goal is, through a consistent small group, students will start to get real with each other and their relationship with God letting their walls and opening themselves up to accountability and discipleship. The third step is challenging the students to now act on what they've heard on their own. This can be as simple as leaving them with a relevant challenge at the end of the small group and have a follow up discussion about it the following week. Or it can be something like a service project or an individual challenge to students depending on where they are personally at. Good small group leaders will follow up with their students about how it went.

I now see each part of this process as part of my "talk". As much as I would like to think that students are growing more and more spiritual the longer my talk goes on Sunday, I'm seeing this is not all it takes to have a student grasp the Truths in the Bible. A meaningful and challenging mulit-sensory experience is what takes it from "what I heard" to "what I know".