PURE

It is officially Spring, and love is in the air. ‘Tis the season for prom and dances and end of the school year romances. Why? We are not sure, but it always seems to SPRING up this time of year without fail. What should our response be as the church?

Unfortunately, too many churches have shied away from talking about sex and relationships while the world has gotten more bold about flaunting these issues.
STATS THAT SPEAK:
Josh McDowell is one of Christianity’s foremost experts on teenagers. His research shows that in evangelical church circles: 65% of teens have had some kind of sexual experience before the age of 18. 43% say they have actually gone all the way. He asked them where they learned their values in this area, and 73% said, “from the movies.”  The good news is that of the 35% who had no experience, the vast majority said the reason was because of a commitment they have made to God.

It is response to these stats that we do Purity Commitment nights at H2O youth. I am a big believer in Purity Commitment nights.  I know, I know, those are kinda old school, but I like the old school.  I would love to resource you in any way I can with what we have done to make this a BIG DEAL.  I will hook you up with our series artwork and anything else that can help you win.

Here are a few things we did this past month:
-4 week PURE series (based on Psalm 119:9). We do it around prom season on purpose. Enough said.

-We kicked the series off with a message out of the Jacob and Esau account where Esau sold his birthright for a moment of self gratification.  You can see the parallels to purity and waiting and not selling out.  We had a big old massive pot of beef stew cooking the whole time as a multi-sensory reminder.  I showed my wedding video highlights in the background and pulled my family up at the end.  "Why did I wait?  I waited for Janet, I waited for Brianna, I waited for Isabella!"

-We often split the middle schoolers off in these types of series and also boys and girls separate. This year we did a ladies only talk on PURE dress on the premise that "Modest is Hottest". We also did a fellas only talk on PURE eyes and making a covenant with our eyes not to look at a woman lustfully.

-We ended our series with a PURE PLEDGE night.  We invited parents a month in advance with a Save The Date postcard.  Of course many students discourage their parents to come.  But for those who pushed through, it was SO worth it.  We had Kevin Moore (former youth pastor at Oneighty) speak to our students and parents and we ended the evening with a PURE pledge commitment.  Every student that committed to be men and women of purity recieved a 1 inch PURE band like the one pictured below.  I can tell you as a youth pastor how amazingly awesome it is to see so many students daring to be different and commit to purity with their parents and leaders.

If you do not do a PURITY commitment night at your student ministry, I challenge you to try it this year.  I would be honored to help resource you in any way I can.

FREE RESOURCE OF THE DAY:
Judah Smith's book on purity for students "Dating Delilah". Includes a free e-book, workbook, and audio book.  www.datingdelilah.org

RESET

I was a beast at Super Mario Brothers on the original Nintendo as a kid…ok, maybe not so much.  I tended to make frequent use of the RESET button while playing, because it offered an amateur like myself a fresh start, new lives, and another chance for me to go back to the beginning before I screwed the game up.

This past 5 weeks has been life on RESET for me.  For those of you who know me closely, you know I have suffered with a condition called “ulcerative colitis” for 19 years.  This past year has been the most challenging for my family and I have been hospitalized twice in 2010.  The most recent hospitalization was over Christmas. While in the hospital and home recovering, I have kept getting a picture in my head of that Nintendo RESET button. It was as if God was saying, I am giving you time to RESET your life. 

Our youth ministry has been reading through the New Testament in 30 days and I have been wowed by the amount of times Jesus snuck away to RESET. Luke 6:12 says “Jesus went up on a mountain to pray, and he prayed to God all night.”  You and I may not have a mountain hideaway [if you do, let me know!], but the question I have been asking myself is, where is my mountain getaway?  Where do I best get away from the crowds, best connect with God, and get fresh vision and direction?

For me, it has been on one of Wisconsin’s cleanest and most beautiful lakes.  I have spent many days these past weeks of recovery there.  I love the water.  I love nature.  I love the peace and serenity. I connect with God there. As a result of this forced RESET, God has given me 1. clarity and vision for my own life, 2. clarity and vision for the future of H2O youth and our church, 3. reorganization of my priorities, 4. fresh passion and vision for my role as a Christ-follower, husband, dad, pastor and so much more.  A number one priority for me in 2011 is scheduling these RESET times regularly into my life.  I want to be more trigger happy with my life RESET button.

Maybe when it comes to our life as a leader and or pastor, we ALL need to be a little more trigger happy and hit the RESET button much more frequently.  So where is your mountain getaway? Where do you best get away from the crowds, connect with God, and get fresh vision and direction?

Adopt A School

God has been doing some amazing things here in our community (just outside of Chicago & Milwaukee).  We are seeing God move through a multi-denominational group of youth pastors and student ministries called "Allies".  We pray together on a weekly basis, worship together quarterly (The Gathering) and serve our community and schools together every year over Sping Break (The Noise).  It has been an honor to be friends with such an incredible and selfless group, who are more concerned about "God's Kingdom" than "their kingdom".

One of the things that I have been most energized about going into this fall is a student-led movement I like to call, "Adopt a School".  This concept has only just been birthed in my heart over the past 3 months, however God spoke to me about it being much bigger than us.  Adopt A School is very simple and is much like Adopt a Highway, only students adopt their school and pick up the garbage inside and outside thier school's campus at least once a week and pray while they serve. 

Adopt A School 3 fold purpose:
1. Serve Your School - Be a light to the administration, staff, and fellow students through serving selflessly.
2. Pray for Your School - Pray for God to clean up the lives of your friends while you are cleaning up the school grounds.  This excercise is extremely experiential & gives you a heart for your school like none other!
3. Talk to Your School - For every person that sees you serving and asks why, it is a wide open door to show that you love what you are doing and share what God has done for you.  You always need to be READY with an answer, because I can promise you the questions will come.  Most will ask you what you did to get in trouble or if you are serving detention.  Imagine their suprise when you tell them you volunteered and love it!

We are casting vision for this initiative at our student leadership retreat this August 20-22.  I am beleiving for every one of our school campuses to be adopted an served at least once per week.  Can you IMAGINE what kind of testimony this could be!?!  Imagine if at least 5 students served weekly on our 20 school campuses for at least an hour per week,...that would be a mind-blowing 180 total hours of prayer and service on each campus, and 3,600 hours of prayer and service in our community this school year!!! 

This may just be a God initiative for every school in our state and nation, it may just be for us here in Kenosha, Wisconsin.  Whatever the case may be, I wanted to share this idea with you and see what God can do in your schools and community when your students begin to "Adopt A School".  Take it, steal it, share it.

Let me know if you have any questions about this initiative.  I would also love to hear your stories if begin to adopt this in your youth ministry context. 

Sources For Resources [Part Four of Six] - Websites

I have once heard it said that, "creativity is 90% stolen and 10% your own".  So allow me to help you with the 90% in this post, and the ball is in your court for making it your own.

I not only have one freesource website for you, but 13 of the best free church resource sites I have found on the web!!!  I am including a brief description with 1 or 2 of my favorite resources from each site.  You can start thanking me now, or maybe start thanking these amazing churches who have shared their hard work with us. These are listed in no particular order.

1.NEWSPRING.CC - Sermon series resources from Pastor Perry Noble's church in South Carolina which includes countdowns, motion backs, intro's, and layered Photoshop documents which can be edited.
My Fav - SEXED series

2.ELEVATIONCHURCH.ORG - Sermon series resources from Pastor Steven Furtick's church in North Carolina which includes graphics, t-shirt artwork, banner artwork, psd's, and bumper and trailer videos.
My Fav's - STUDENT TAKEOVER and HEALER series

3.LIFECHURCH.TV - Sermon series resources from Pastor Craig Groeschel and team from Oklahoma which includes message transcripts and outlines, videos of the sermon, illustration and opener videos, and all the graphics you would ever need.
My Fav's - POSER and SATAN'S SEX ED (there are some incredible illustration videos in this series)

4.MYARORA.CC - Student ministry resources from my friend, Pastor Chris Lindberg from Texas which includes some great sermon series ideas, incredibly creative graphics, and some message transcript downloads.
My Fav's - GLOW IN THE DARK and TWO-FACED

5.CREATIVEMYK.COM - Tons of great photography, logos, vector art, sermon series artwork and bulletin templates for churches and ministries.
My Fav's - UPSIDEDOWN and FREE CHURCH WEBSITE

6.STUFFICANUSE.COM - The best student ministry sermon series resources I have ever found from the student ministry of Southeast Christian in Kentucky. Graphics, slide backgrounds, countdown videos and series loops.  They even have an HD option for download.
My Fav's - HOW TO SURVIVE A ZOMBIE ATTACK and SCHOOLED

7. CHURCHTECHTALK.COM - Random videos and graphics from the genius tech crew from Southeast Christian in Kentucky.  You can grab anything from worship background loops, to talking babies, to Photoshop brush sets.
My Fav's - HISTORY OF THE BIBLE VIDEO and MADE SERIES INTRO VIDEO

8.STUDENTMINISTRY.ORG - This site it the home of Pastor Tim Schmoyer's blog, a youth pastor from Minnesota.  Tim has tons of resources on his site, but I love to frequent his Freebie Friday page the most.
My Fav's -130 YOUTH MINISTRY TIPS AND IDEAS EBOOK and THE ONLINE MISSIONS TRIP

9.INSIDENORTHPOINT.ORG - Administrative and behind the scenes resources from Pastor Andy Stanley and Northpoint Church in Georgia.  This site is chock full of org charts, job descriptions, and manuals from one of the most effective churches of our generation.
My Fav - GUEST SERVICES DOCS

10.OPENRESOURCES.ORG - This one stop shop collection of resources.  Materials include sermon audio, countdowns, promotional design graphics and opening videos from a wide variety of message series and churches.
My Fav - BEST SEX EVER

11.MYNORTHSIDE.COM - Sermon resources from Northside Christian Church in Indiana.  This site says it has video, graphics and web, but all I have been able to find is the graphic elements. 
My Fav's - RETHINK WORSHIP and TIS THE SEASON

12.THECHURCHBOX.COM This site is a collection of resources from Four Corners Church in Ohio. Each series resource package contains bulletin covers, PowerPoint series and Scripture background, and sermon MP3's.
My Fav's - NO PERFECT PEOPLE ALLOWED and TAME

13.SXC.HU - Free stock footage and photos at hi-res quality

Now that I have given you enough to check out and waste a whole day salivating over the best of the best on the web, it is your turn to take some time and GIVE BACK.  Please take the time to look or research the subject and leave a comment and hook a brotha up.

Also, be sure to check back in next week as I continue with part 5 of this blog series entitled: "Iron Sharpens Iron".  We will be taking a look at mentoring relationships and creative idea sharing with some of the most creative people you already know.  You may be suprised at the gold mine of resources that is in your life right now.

Sources For Resources [Part Three of Six] - Pop Culture

Pop Culture in the context of the church has always been a source of controversy.  To use it, or not to use it, THAT is the question.  We can choose to condemn the culture. We can let the world know that it is wrong and we will have no part in it.  We can choose to ignore the culture.  We won't condemn, but rather we will just stay focused on the Word of God and provide inspirational services.  We can choose to embrace the culture.  We give culture a full frontal hug, with no filter and no discernment.  OR, we can choose to leverage culture. We can look for new and creative ways to let people know how much they matter to God, without compromising our Biblical message.

Condemn. Ignore. Embrace. Leverage.  My hope is that you will choose to leverage pop culture.
1 Corinthians 9:19-23 (MSG) "I have voluntarily become a servant to any and all in order to reach a wide range of people: religious, nonreligious, meticulous moralists, loose-living immoralists, the defeated, the demoralized—whoever. I didn't take on their way of life. I kept my bearings in Christ—but I entered their world and tried to experience things from their point of view. I've become just about every sort of servant there is in my attempts to lead those I meet into a God-saved life. I did all this because of the Message.

Leveraging popular culture is easier than you may think. I like to think of it like mining for gold, looking for modern day parables, or finding redemptive analogies that connect with today's unchurched generation.
Where do I mine?

1. Awards shows - Watching Teen Choice Awards, MTV Movie Awards or the Academy Awards can educate you on what is captivating in our culture.  I love to grab ideas on staging, presenters, props, video and creative elements, and graphics from these shows.
2. Movies & TV shows - I want to re-iterate how important it is to be spiritually discerning when watching, however it is important to know the themes of these popular shows the students in your community are watching.  Recently we did a series entitled "How To Survive a Zombie Attack" on surviving spiritual apathy because the subject of zombies was prevalent in TV shows and movies.  We also did a series entitled MADE.  We redeemed culture by training students how to be MADE in the image of Christ.  Each Wednesday night we were the MADE coaches on the specific areas that students wanted to be MADE more in the image of Christ in.
3. Entertainment Weekly - This magazine will give you great insights on trends and how people are responding to the culture.  You can get a quick fix on their top 20 charts on all the latest movies, music, and TV shows.  Do I read this because I care about who is dating who?  Absolutely not.  I read because I want to leverage the culture in order to reach my high schools and middle schools with the greatest message ever.
4. Music - Music is the soundtrack for our lives.  Find out what is hot in your area.  You may not find music you can use in your services, but you can for sure find out what issues and topics are important to the people in your area, and thus better bring Christ to their context.
5. Students - Have regular conversations with your students about what they like, what are their friends watching and listening to.  Don't just talk to your youth group students, ask their friends.  The answers may be different.  Also, don't just use culture because YOU like the show or the song. I am a HUGE fan of the show "Lost", but in conversations with our students, I have found many of them have never even seen the show (they are missing out).  It is a show more for my age demographic.  Thus, just because I like it, does not mean we should use it in our next sermon series. 

Grab a hold of these shows, movies, music, and magazines that are redeemable and speak the language of your student culture.  I try to always store these ideas in my cell phone or in a notebook.  I am constantly writing ideas down as I watch a show or listen to a song.  Don't rely on your memory, because you WILL forget it.  WRITE IT DOWN.  We use an amazing program called Evernote (it's FREE) to store all of our ideas and brainstorm notes for our whole team to access and add to at any time.  And, if you have an iPhone or iPad, Evernote has an app for quick and easy access when ideas come your way.

It also is important to note here that we must be spiritually discerning in what we endorse to our students.  If we are not careful in the student ministry context, we may trample and undermine the standards of our church families.  Be wise and discerning that you do not accidentally give permission to watch or listen to something that you used as an illustration.  If you are questioning your decision, ask a few of your parents their opinion.

Again, why do I believe that leveraging the culture is so important?  "I've become just about every sort of servant there is in my attempts to lead those I meet into a God-saved life.  I did this ALL because of the Message." -1 Cor 9:22,23

For more on this subject of leveraging pop culture, check out Tim Stevens' book Pop Goes The Church. It is chock full of great ideas and ways that they leverage pop culture at Granger Community Church.  Much of my information and my formation on this subject was taken from Tim's book.