Part of the Glue

“EXAMEN.me is a simple-to-use web site that fosters your personal interaction with God. This modern approach to ancient devotional practices guides you to examen your life as you meditate on scripture, pray, and journal all of your reflections.”

After first hearing about this from a friend I signed up and started using the service to see what it was all about.  What’s great about this online tool is that it really forces you to stop and think and respond.  There are about 5 steps for each devotion and you can spend as short as 7 minutes or as long as an hour to go through it.  After you complete an examen it saves all your information so you can look at that particular devotion in the future.

Working and volunteering with teenagers, a common spiritual hurdle I have often noticed is one of spending regular focused time with God.  Teenagers today are bombarded by so many noises that their ability to really be still and quiet is in constant competition with their cell phone, tv, internet and nearest friend.  What’s great about examen is that it tells you exactly what to do and allows you to really process what you have read.   I can remember reading the bible all the way through in high school and reading it just to read it.  I wasn’t able to process what I read because I didn’t know what kinds of questions I needed to ask myself and I was trying to read too much…

I plan to use this site with my middle school guys small group and really challenge them to complete X number of examens by a certain date where we will share what they  have learned and what God is teaching them.

I hope you encourage the teens in your ministry to utilize this tool. Consider putting a link on your youth website or on your facebook fan page.  Students will most likely not find this site on their own, however they may respond positively from a spiritual mature adult who honestly cares about their devotional life and can head them in the right direction.

More often than not a certain degree of clarity is often missing between people that create media for the church and people that lead and pastor the church.  I have run into this predicament on more than one occasion and have found that one of the reasons this happens is that both parties unintentionally fail to be painfully clear before the production of a media project.  I recently heard Bill Hybels speak on this issue of clarity in which he mentioned the line “just to be clear” when talking with others on exactly what is going to be done.  I’m slowly in the process of using this line “just to be clear” after discussing a project.  After discussing a project I am about to create I will say “just to be clear” I am going to do this and create that and it will help you accomplish your specific goal by doing this.

Social Networks have been around in popularity since rougly 2002.  First myspace was the craze then facebook and now twitter.   There are definately pros and cons to using social networks and services like twitter, however the question we must ask ourselves is which one to use as a youth group hub.  I honestly think that youth groups should use all three.  Consider using myspace to connect with middle school students, facebook to connect with high school students and twitter to connect with leaders and parents.  There may be some overlap here and there, but choosing only one network may limit your ability to broadcast to a wider audience.

Recently I noticed we didn’t have a myspace page for our youth group and I didn’t have time to create one.  A girl in our media team enjoyed designing myspace layouts and volunteered to head up our youth group myspace page.  Doing this allowed her to take ownership and feel a part of our team and allow me the freedom to not have to worry about updating a third social network.

Consider finding a couple students or adults who are very social media savvy and ask them to help maintain and update your twitter status, facebook fan page or myspace page.  Having multiple people do this will increase the chance that these networks will be more successful in broadcasting information and connecting students to your ministry.

Recently I had the chance to sit in on a breakout session with Lilly Lewin at the Shift conference. Lewin co-authored a book with Dan Kimball called Creating Sacred Space A Hands-On Guide to Creating Multisensory Worship Experiences for Youth Ministry. Lewin shared with us one of the problems we face in today’s societies especially amoung teeanagers is the difficulty to be still and quiet before God. We preach about this all the time, however we rarely give students an opportunity to actually do this.  Lewin suggested creating opportunities maybe quarterly where you would setup prayer stations in your youth center. These “prayer stations” are described more in detail in her book with pictures and instructions, however the overall premise is to connect with God through multiple senses.  One example is a prayer station where you would read about the cup in the bible and then proceed to actually washing a cup both the inside and outside with soap and water.  Another station you might eat some goldfish or swedish fish and read about the feeding of the five thousand.  Lewin also suggested displaying art or even student art from photography to video to paintings.

This does get pretty complicated the larget the audience, however after experiencing the prayer stations myself I was really intrigued on what an impact something like this could really have when used on an occasional basis.

When it comes to the spiritual development of teenagers often times we think about certain doctrines and spiritual disciplines. We ask ourself what do they need to know? Like schools, churches often have a curriculum set in place for students to learn that is often broken down into oral teaching subjects. The problem with some of this is that a large part of this curriculum if not most of it is often designed for oral learners.  The truth is students learn and grow spiritually when they go on mission/service trips.  Students learn and grow spiritually when they attend a Christian concert or in our case a Christian movie. When you think about watching movies you rarely think about learning, however watching movies enables the viewer to gain a certain type of intelligence called “emotional intelligence” where the viewer is actually learning emotionally.  I’m not suggesting that youth leaders replace sermons with movies, however creating occasional movie watching experiences that emphasize positive Christian values can really help students process and learn spiritually something they may have never learned sitting in a lecture type enviornment. One of the best ways you can increase the EQ (emotional intelligence) in your students is to expose them to certain types of “Christian” movies on a periodic basis that they might not attend without your prompting or promoting. Students already see hundreds of movies a year, most of which are not worth their time, and so if as a youth group you encourage your students to see a certain movie every quarter you are not just suggesting a movie you are helping those students grow spiritually that learn better visually and through their EQ.
I had the priveledge to see screenings of both “the secrets of Jonathan Sperry“and “To save a life” both opening sometime this fall. Both films in my opinion are great options as you plan your curriculum and think about what movies will help students to grow spiritually.   I personally would recommend the secrets of Jonathan Sperry to a younger crowd (middle school age) and To save a life to an older crowd (high school age).

Every year thousands of teenagers will embark on a camp with their youth group to some foreign land of “camp.”  Some will experience the beach, some the mountains and some like ours will experience one of the largest mud pits you have ever seen.  The question for many youth leaders and camp directors is how exactly they can bring camp home so parents can experience a certain part of what their students will experience during that week. Below are 7 ways you can bring camp home and let parents feel a part of what is going on.

1. live stream your services using ustream or mogulus.
2. twitter your camp #youthgroupcamp and tell students the hashtag to use when twittering
3. blog daily with pictures and articles for parents to see
4. setup computers with internet access for students to update their facebook and twitter profiles
5. have a parent day or night where parents are invited to attend a certain part of the service
6. consider coming back early and inviting all parents to attend the last session with their students at church
7. produce a highlight video of the week and show at a special post-camp service where parents are invited