More Than Dodgeball | Youth Ministry Blog by Josh Griffin

Colton HarkerMore Posts Homeschool Ministry

We recently headed into some uncharted waters: homeschooled ministry. We realized that the homeschooled community was something that we never really focused on. We are always looking at ways to reach out to our high schools, but we seemed to let any kind of homeschooled ministry slip through the cracks.

With our recent Prayer Walk, we decided it was a great time to start doing something for homeschooled kids. While all of the schools were meeting on their campuses, we had the homeschooled students meet at classroom at our church. On the walls, we had different things that they could pray for (i.e. graduating seniors, Students transitioning from public school to home school, etc.). It was awesome!

At first, we were unsure if there was even a need for doing an event for homeschoolers. We just weren’t sure if anyone would come and if it was worth it. But, while we were looking at marketing it, we asked our core homeschooled students to invite all of their homeschooled friends. What we realized is that none of our homeschooled students really know each other! That is when we discovered that the HUGE ministry opportunity we had been missing for a while now.

With a new crop of freshmen coming in and a new school year right around the corner, we think the time is right to start to find out more ways for us to minister to homeschoolers.

What are you guys doing to ministry to your homeschooled community?

Colton [Email||Twitter]

1 View Comments June 7, 2013

Josh GriffinMore Posts Graduating Senior Map

A couple weeks ago I posted about a fun idea we had an an incredible senior who took on the project to map where our graduating seniors were headed after they finished high school this year. I was tagged on Twitter to someone who made their own for their youth ministry, too! Love stealing ideas and love sharing ideas. This is the best!

JG

Add Comment June 6, 2013

Josh GriffinMore Posts This is Jesus Spoken Word

Powerful spoken word from down under. Appreciate the tip to it from Dave Miers!

JG

1 View Comments June 6, 2013

Josh GriffinMore Posts Youth Ministry Takes the Extrovert Out of You

I really enjoyed this post over on Aaron Buer’s blog – I find myself (as an extreme extrovert myself) feeling this same way at times. Interesting observations – here’s a clip, head there for his whole observation:

At first I panicked because with thoughts like, “I don’t really like people anymore” I wondered if maybe it was time for a career change. I floundered for a while but in the last year, I have fully embraced my new personality. At first it was a little embarrassing but now I am an introvert and proud of it. I no longer feel guilty about wanting to be alone or feeling anxiety about initiating conversations with people I don’t know. Don’t blame me, I’m an introvert. Don’t hate! I’m just better suited to a book and a coffee shop.

So what about you? Are you feeling worn down? Running on fumes? Maybe student ministry has knocked the extrovert out of you. Maybe you too are an ex-extrovert. I suspect that there are a bunch of us in student ministry. Fear not, this doesn’t mean you can’t do extroverted stuff it just means that you need to understand that extroverted tasks will drain you and you’ll need to schedule times to recharge.

JG

5 View Comments June 5, 2013

Josh GriffinMore Posts The Youth Ministry Numb3rs Game

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As youth pastors we don’t like to talk about numbers, or if we do, it’s with wailing and gnashing of teeth as we imagine the elders shaking their heads in frustration at the job we’re doing to reach the students in the community. Or we laugh at the image of the same elders shaking their heads with concern because the numbers are up, but the students you’re reaching are causing problems…serious problems like an occasional swear word, and wearing ear-buds on church property.

Here’s the truth: Numbers matter.

Try as we might to help leadership see the student ministry discipleship process as more than a head count, it remains one of the universally accepted currencies of “health” in youth ministry. Here are a few numbers to keep an eye on.

Youth group attendance
We use a simple head count to track this metric. It matters, especially to see trends in the year, trends by series/topics, and shifts in big picture participation. This measurement is often weighted too much in many church cultures (ours included), but it can still be a helpful number to watch because people do vote with their feet. A growing number reflects a strong ideal entry-point for our student ministry; students are entering the ministry through the top of the funnel. To some degree, this reflects the health of friendship evangelism in our ministry.

Small group signups
There is an additional level of commitment to join a small group, which causes participation to decrease, so we expect this number to be less than the youth group number. Knowing how many students are signed up and/or actually attending can be helpful to make sure students are entering and flourishing at the next step in the discipleship process. This number should grow in proportion to the weekend number; if we had 60%+ active in a small group we would be thrilled.

Salvations/baptisms
We try to share about the life-changing message of Christ every week, and once a month we have baptisms. It is continually important and recharging to see how God is changing lives. We celebrate any student who accepts Christ and gets baptized, because it is such an important step across the line of faith. This number is usually compiled from response cards collected at youth group.

Text database / Instagram followers
Texting is our primary method of communication with students, and seeing this number grow is a reflection of the lives we are touching. Students can sign up online and be added/removed with a checkbox on the response card.

Blog/social media traffic/friends
This one is still new and emerging, but it would be nice to see what kind of “buzz” is out there in the wild about your youth ministry. Does your student ministry Instagram have more followers this month than last? That’s a winning number. You can get all into this as well using Google Analytics, YouTube Insight, Twitter Search, and other analytical tools you can see who is viewing your videos, visiting your blog, how many people are checking you out, and see what people are saying about your services and their church experience.

There are other numbers that certainly matter (kids doing ministry, offering, distribution of spiritual growth tools, etc.)—what matters most to you? What’s missing here?

What other numbers matter? How do you deal with the reality of attendance-based performance grading? Speak up in the comments!

This post was written by Josh Griffin and Kurt Johnston and originally appeared as part of Simply Youth Ministry Today free newsletter. Subscribe to SYM Today right here.

4 View Comments June 5, 2013

Josh GriffinMore Posts HSM Summer Camp Promo Video Contest Winner

Here’s the winner from HSM’s Summer Camp video contest – in all honesty we didn’t get a ton of them, but this one was really, really great!

JG

3 View Comments June 4, 2013

Chris WesleyMore Posts Why You Should Care About Children’s Ministry

For a long time I used to resent the children’s ministry at our church because I felt we were in competition. Whenever we had to share resources or space I would do my best to leverage the situation in my favor. All that would occur was unnecessary tension. It’s not that I didn’t get along with the children’s director at the time, I just didn’t see eye to eye with her. Finally, after receiving wisdom from a few friends and conferences I realized I needed children’s ministry more than I knew.

A healthy children’s ministry is the foundation to a strong student ministry. If they aren’t doing their job and producing young disciples it’s going to make yours that much more difficult. What that means is youth ministers need to not only focus on teenagers but see how they can invest in the ministry that is building up the next generation. To invest in the children’s ministry at your church be sure to:

Cheer Them On: You know that student ministry can be a thankless calling, well so can children’s ministry. Show your support by stopping by the programs, complimenting the volunteers and giving positive feed back to the children’s director. If they see that you care then in turn they’ll care what you are doing too.

Get To Know The Programs: If you are going to work with the children’s pastor you need to understand their lingo. What do they call their programs? Do they have a special term for their volunteers? What curriculum do they use? If you know the programs you’ll know how to approach them when you have a comment, question or observation.

Meet Regularly With The Leadership: Meet regularly with your children’s team so that you can get to know one another. By sharing life together you’ll understand how to serve one another better and approach conflict. Take the time to share what’s happening in each other’s lives and grow as a team.

Invest In A Similar Strategy: While ministering to kids is different than ministering to teens, you want to make sure that you are on the same page. There needs to be synergy from elementary school to middle school and on to high school. If your programs compete or collide, you’ll find yourself starting from scratch each year.

When you invest in your children’s ministry you invest in the future of the student ministry. Youth and children’s ministry need to come together to see how they can tackle the whole journey of childhood and adolescence. Work together, share a vision and continue to grow disciples.

How do you work with your children’s ministry?

Chris Wesley (@chrisrwesley)

2 View Comments June 4, 2013

Josh GriffinMore Posts The 2013 HSM Summer Calendar

We’ve been unleashing the 2013 HSM Summer Calendar this week in our ministry, and learned a few things:

Make all your fonts big enough for parents to read easily. Before you go to print have a 50-year old man tell you if he can read it or not.
There is such a thing as too big of a calendar. This one potentially falls into that category – I am the one who pushed for it to be bigger. We’ve joked about making a pocket-sized edition … if you thought the font size was difficult to read before… look out!
Physical printed pieces still very much matter in youth ministry – excited to see these used this summer! Been thinking we should do a photo contest where people post pictures of it hung up on their fridge/house/room.
Dates change: at least one of the key events of summer already moved. Argh!