Where to Begin?
Congratulations! You are in Youth Ministry! You are excited, passionate and called to do fun and exciting things in the lives of your students- but where to start. We would love to help you organize. Here is a list of some of the things we do to help you maybe figure out what kinds of things you want to do. Let the Spirit lead but feel free to let us help!
How do I organize? Are you super planner everything perfect?- You will need to learn to plan in pencil. Is a calendar or a to do list completely foreign ideas to you? Then you probably need to learn to plan.
God has gifted you in a special way, build on your strengths but be prepared for growth and tough decisions that will come your way.
How do I make decisions? Here is a great sermon on making decisions Click here Part 1 Part 2
Don't forget this motto, "You can do anything but you can't do everything." Don't overburden yourself and your kids with too many things. Keep it simple, yet meaningful- action-packed, yet chill.
Structure for growth- it is so hard to scramble from behind and play catch-up. Work first on the health of your team, if your team and program is healthy yet you feel stalled as a minstry, stressed beyond just a "season", and/or unable to take time to breathe, you might just need to grow organizationally. There isn't really a perfect way to do this- make sure you and your team know your purpose as a youth group, then start throwing around ways to restructure or reorganize yourselves so that your volunteers and your students needs get met. Hey, maybe you are the only show in town, it might be time to hire staff, it might be time to find more volunteers. If you would like to contact us, we can tell you what we have done and are doing organizationally, you can get lots of ideas, but ultimately you'll have to decide what is the best fit for your youth group.
Weekend Sermons
Our weekend sermons are geared to teach truth. In more of a lecture format, our teaching time is aimed at helping students learn more about the Bible and how it relates to their lives right where they are at. Our studies include both topical and scriptural subjects. To listen to our sermons check out our "weekends" page here. The most recent sermon series are in the main section and to the left you can see archive sermons. We also podcast. 11-13 year olds have an attention span of about 13 minutes but if you change things up or get them excited and interested they can probably hang on a bit longer. We break up the monotony on the weekends by starting with a sweet game, followed by crazy worship before we start to slow things down.
Mid- Week Program- TNL
Tuesday Night Live (TNL) is our mid-week program where we focus on building relationships with our students through Mid- Groups and Small Groups. While still aimed at teaching truth, this program is a little more seeker friendly with plenty of game time and crazy worship!
Mid-Groups are divided by age and gender. Here we often play a game and have a small teaching time of about 10 minutes to introduce the discussion topic for that night. From here we break up into our Small Groups.
Small Groups are lead by 1-2 adults. Discussion time is based off a talksheet designed specifically for that age and grade. Click here to see what we currently have going on at TNL or contact us for our Small Group discussion series, talksheets and games. Our Small Groups stay together for the 2 years they are in junior high- same students and leaders for the most part. As new students come they go with their friends. Once a Small Group reaches critical mass (about 15-20 students) we split it. Other then that we try to keep the faces consistent.
Student Leadership Teams
A must for any size ministry. Having students be an active part in serving and learning, amongst their own peers is very cool. Designed for students who want to go deeper, these programs are used as a sort of discipleship program. There is an application process and the teams run 9 months out of the year. We have 2 programs, one for 7th graders (LIGHT) and another for 8th (SALT). Meetings occur once a month where students get together to discuss what they learned and to get their next assignment.
Here is a link to see what's currently going on in our 8th grade leadership team and click here for 7th. Please contact us for a complete list of our materials.
Volunteer Leaders
The key to reaching students is to know them. As your group grows you will no longer be able to really know your students, that is where volunteers come in. Our volunteers are essential to our mid-week program, we do our best to equip and train them for success. Please contact us for more information.
Retreats & Camps
The easiest place for students to connect to your staff, one another, and God is to get away from it all and spend a little time in some place new. We have a variety of retreat and camp options.
Summer camp is about a week long. We split by grade, 7th graders go to Forest Home, an absolutely beautiful facility. They always have great speakers, worship, games, and food. Click here to go to their website.
For our 8th graders, we run our own camp up on the beautiful Klamath River. We partner with Adventure White Water- a rafting company, that provides guides, meals and the campsite. We bring the speaker, worship, and our own brand of fun.
Winter Camp- It is great to take a weekend to get away together as a whole youth group.
Father/Son Retreat- 8th Grade sons and their dads head out to the wilderness for some awesome activities, great food and the opportunity to bond. We camp in the mountains at our own site. All activities, food, mentorship "classes" are provided by us. Chance for dad's to acknowledge their sons as men.
Mother/Daughter Retreat- We partner with The Revolve Tour to experience an awesome conference just for the ladies. Amazing worship, guest speakers, skits, musicians really help moms delve into the world of their teenage daughters.
SALT Retreat- We reward our student leadership kids for all the hard work they did all year long with this fun time in Big Bear. We stay in cabins and have fun together.
LIGHT Retreat- Our 7th grade student leadership team takes their retreat as a service project. It varies year to year but we usually have fun on Friday, work on Saturday and finish up on Sunday.
Leader Retreat- A great way to show some appreciation to our volunteer staff plus get them involved in the planning process. We camp at the beach and have plenty of chill time.
Events
Events "just for fun" are an important part of our ministry. A lot of things we do have no spiritual impact in that their goal is not to deepen kids walk with Christ. Rather these events are key to building relationships. Hanging out, playing, laughing with students is so important for you and your staff to build trust and repoire with your kiddos. If they know they can trust you, then they know they can talk to you about serious issues. There is a cool quote, and I apologize to whom ever actualy said it since I don't have the slightest idea, that says "Relationship is the bridge over which truth travels." Sometimes you need to build relationship so you can speak the truth of the Bible. People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. No matter how true something may be, people won't listen to you say it until you have earned the right to speak into their lives. Any other useful maxims I can throw at you? Nothing comes to mind:)
Here are some of the things we do "just for fun", please contact us if you would like more information:
Overnighter
Allnighter
Beach Days
Christmas Party
ignite
Beach TNL
LNT
Outreach
Tournament Series- is an outreach program that we put together to gather a whole bunch of kids from all the surrounding area. We split the group into 4 teams by schools (to encourage students to bring everyone who doesn't know Jesus from their campus) and compete against each other for a free trip to Magic Mountain. Competition lasts for 4 weeks, each week there is team time where they can strategize and have a speaker teach on some basic Christian princliples like love and forgiveness. The last week a guest speaker gives the gospel message and students are given the opportunity to make a decision about eternity. The week after, at our regular TNL program, we announce the winner. I know, it is a shameless way to bribe students to come to our regular program, our goal being to catch those kids who are still searching, but it seems to work.
Service Projects
SALT & LIGHT
Starving 2 Serve
Videos
TNL Openers
Promo
Kid centered
Games
Website
Great resource for kids parents and staff. You can use some of the free, blog-type pages out there, like easy site and blogger, but really if you want to go beyond the simple you will need to hire someone to deesign and program your site. Generally you get what you pay for. There are plenty of reputable, freelance web designers out there, just do your research. Yo will probably want to keep things very simple so that you can update your website as needed. If you have to hire someone each time you need to add or remove content, that can get esxpensive and inconveinent. There are some simple programs out there that let you modify content without having to deal with html coding, make sure your web designer knows that you want to be able to update your own website. For example, i am added this paragraph right now through Macromedia Contribute- almost as easily as using Word. Don't let technology scare you because it is a great tool to get info our to your kids and parents.
Games
Games are a great tool to connect to Junior High students. We have a wide variety of games from the kind that make you run around to powerpoint question and answer type games. Use them as a fun ice breaker or just to play. Contact us for our game list or our powerpoints.