Part of the Glue

Recently I got the opportunity to create some videos for Lead222 servant leadership experiences this summer. This year’s theme was “living in 3d.” As I begin to pray and think about how I could possibly begin to conceptualize “living in 3d,” I begin to consider that maybe I was trying to hard to teach something. Sometimes when we create videos we can teach some valuable lessons and yet other times we can create something that asks a question or leaves the audience to wonder. Jesus frequently did this using parables and sometimes even left some questions uanswered. Jesus knew that if he explained everything as easily as possible that when people recieved the message it would not be there’s to discover and they would feel no ownership in discovering the meaning behind his parables. We can do the same thing Christ did and use metaphors/parables that may not scream “Christian” but may cause students to think and feel ownership of what they are being asked to understand. Below are three of the videos we created for each of the night’s sessions.

Churchkreatives.com launched earlier this month.  Church Kreatives is a multi-contributer blog by church creatives for church creatives.  In addition to posting on partoftheglue I will regularly be posting on church kreatives….so come check us out and join a community of creative christ followers

ChurchKreatives

Every summer we take hundreds of teenagers to camp and every summer we do everything imaginable to get them there.  Last year we created three camp promo videos that were based off a super bowl ad.  This year  I decided to take a comical approach that would threaten physical harm if they somehow didn’t. We wanted to create a video that students would actually want to share with their friends and perhaps use as an effective way of inviting them. Check out the video below.

Tuggle, a youth ministry management web based software now allows for paypal integration.  Tuggle boasts that they’ve created a management tool that is so fun to use, people often mistake it for one of those wildly popular social networks. Before tuggle’s system had sign ups but no way to collect payment.  Now with the simple paypal integration ministries/organizations and schools can connect their accounts to this system and allow their members to pay right there and then.

Below are some screenshots of these new features.

Every year our student ministry does an event called LYF Awards.  LYF Awards honors all the students and adults that are currently serving in our ministry and have been serving over the last year.  Each year we develop media pieces for this program. Below is a video we created to honor the seniors who had served long and hard over the last six years.

A little over a month ago at the shift conference, Kurrent (a new web portal powered by unifyer) launched to the public for the purpose of developing leaders for spiritual formation among this next generation. This is a new global youth ministry network built specifically for youth leaders, volunteers, parents, and educators. You can watch the intro video here.  This new network is great because it can allow youth leaders the ability to receive online video training, resources and ideas that before were unavailable or hard to get to. This site also allows you to create your own group and create your own content specific for your ministry.

Our youth ministry has been dealing with some difficult circumstances over the last several years in regards to awareness.  We currently have a student ministry building that is literally located across the highway from the rest of our church.  We provide shuttles on Sunday morning for students to ride over there, however we still face the issue of awareness because we are not literally connected to the other church buildings.  Over the last several months and really the last year we have been building a campaign to close the back door to our ministry.  We built a website www.lyf.net in the fall of 2008 to bring about awareness online.  Just this past weekend our ministry hosted a ministry fair inside the commons of our church. We setup different booths with giveaways, information and giant displays that hopefully yelled “yes we do have a youth ministry…come and check us out.” We started telling better stories during our worship services by creating short 2-minute videos that tell the stories of serving and leading in our ministry. Below is one of the videos we recently showed.

“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.