DIRT Blog

When I'm asked "Why do journals?" (because it's the hardest thing to pull-off in youth ministry), my response is that if you don't then I guarantee no one will ever benefit.  BUT, if you do, then some will "get it" and grow spiritually because you introduced them to spending a daily quiet time with God!  

What Happened Wednesday night is Another Great Reason...
So we started the new "Spiritual Journey" 4 week journals in January. On the following Wednesday night I began our first review allowing students to freely talk and ask questions about the journals. I did not know what to expect but was thrilled to see how many were already engaged!

A Very Interesting Question...
As we discussed the journals, one student asked, "Do we have to do the testimony pages in the back?" She went on to express that she accepted Christ at a very early age and could not even remember it. Then she asked if her salvation "...could simply be a growing process that she would fully realize one day?"  Wow, do you see what the journals have accomplished? This student may have never questioned her salvation had she not see that testimony template outlining the different parts of a person's testimony!

A Powerful Teaching Opportunity!
My response to her was that she had asked a very important question that we should address so everyone could better understand how we are saved. The next Sunday morning I did address her question using this outline - click to download PDF. The outline walks through the five parts of the testimony template which will allow me to share with our students how a person is saved according to God's Word.

I am sharing this with you (both the story and outline), to encourage you to promote the "55 Plan" (5 minutes in the Word & 5 minutes in prayer every day) as one of your highest discipling priorities. Remember if you don't, no one benefits - Guaranteed!  The journals are simply a tool that helps students to stay focused on a daily quiet time with God. By the way we have just redesigned them better than ever with some cool new features (click here to see how they look). Let me know if you need to order new ones. If you have old unused journals I will swap them out for new ones!

Keep Loving Students for His Name's Sake!

Matthew (my teen son) and I have decided we need an International Word Consortium. The world has been communicating long enough to realize some words just do not fit where they are being used. We need to do some word swapping here and there to clean things up a bit.

We decided to start by swapping "Pygmy" for "Papaya". Think about it, "Pygmy" does not sound very nice when referring to people. But "Papaya" now that's a great sounding word that rolls sweetly off the tongue. "We are taking the Gospel to the Papayas" sound so much nicer than, "We're taking the Gospel to the Pygmies." On the other hand, "Pygmy" is the perfect name for a fruit. "Get your pygmy fruit, low in calories and high in anitoxidents!" No offence there at all.

So ask yourself, what words in your vocabulary need to be swapped when you are talking about students in your youth group? Maybe you say he's a "troublemaker" when a better word might be "energetic". Full of energy to do something, so give him something to do before he gets in trouble doing something! Maybe you call her a "flirt" when a better term might be "outgoing". Put her in charge of your social networking and watch the youth group grow.

Make this down: However you see them greatly impacts reality because you are an influencer to those around you. If you want to go deeper read this from last October - "Students Need the Bar High".

I just got home from our NCHS freshman football game (they won 20-7). Ever watch football at the freshman level? They fumble, throw interceptions, miss tackles and get lots of penalties. It is not very pretty....

Youth Ministry will not be pretty if you are doing it right. Instead of being managers (managing to make everything work out right), youth leaders should be coaches. The coach is confined to the sidelines and the players are expected to be on the field making the plays. A lot of youth leaders get it backward. They make themselves the stars and expect all the players to watch the game from the bleachers. Try that at your next football game and see who wins.

Coach, put the players in the game! Let the students lead everything. Let them make the plays. Put your ministry in their hands. Yes it will be ugly -- for a while -- but soon your freshmen get better and move to junior varsity and then to varsity. They get better and better! So give them the reins and the reps so they can become star players. You stand on the sidelines coaching and watch what happens. A lot of your players will develop into champions!

By: Bryan Fox Youth Pastor, Northwest Church
“And they continued stedfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers.”  Acts 2:42 KJV

Have you ever watched students when you announce Circles of Prayer? A few jump right into groups ready to go, some quickly form a group with their friends over in the corner and a few just kind of stand there wandering what is going on.

Circles of Prayer can be a difficult activity for students not used to praying in a group and for visiting students not used to anything “Christian”. It can also seem like a lot of work to the leaders when we begin implementing it into our group. We end up spending the entire time helping students find groups, splitting up the one or two massive groups, making sure visitors understand what is happening and reminding the talkers to relax and be respectful.

Over time though, the regularly attending students begin to grasp the concept and help others form groups, explain to visitors what to do and calm down interruptions. You still may need to help the lone student find a group or split up the massive one but eventually Circles of Prayer becomes an integral part of the student meetings.

This is when Circles of Prayer becomes alive and vital to the group. It provides a place for students to pray and ask for prayer in a safe environment, it builds confidence in students as they pray out loud to God in front of their peers, it brings the entire group together in prayer and it creates a habit of joining together in prayer.

This habit of prayer becomes a huge blessing to the students. I witnessed this in action a few days ago. A student received a call saying one of their friends was having family difficulties. After the call, he shared his concern for his friend with some other students. They immediately joined together in a small circle to pray for his friend. They didn’t need to discuss how to pray, should they pray or who was going to pray. They just joined hands and began praying. These students were in the “habit of praying” . I’m certain having Circles of Prayer a part of their regular meetings had a lot to do with that.

If you aren’t doing Circles of Prayer in your meetings, I challenge you to begin. If you are, keep it up. Even those students who may seem completely oblivious and uninterested to what is going on will be blessed by being part of a group of God’s children calling out to their father. Eventually they will develop a “habit of prayer”.

Have you ever heard of the “Pygmalion Effect”?
I must credit my pastor for the inspiration behind today’s thought. Several weeks ago in a sermon he mentioned a term that has not crossed my mind since I was a student, “Pygmalion”.

Plenty of research and books are available on the subject and I will not do it justice here, but with a broad stroke, I just need to make a point about how we impact students.  The Pygmalion effect basically refers to situations in which some students perform better than other students simply because they are expected to do so.

In one notable study, teachers were given information that certain students were brighter than others. The purpose of the experiment was to support the hypothesis that students can be influenced by the expectations of their teachers.

The study showed that if teachers were led to expect better performance from some children, then those children did indeed show marked improvement. In some cases, the improvement was about twice that shown by other children in the same class. The improvement was not because of a particular curriculum, but was in fact attributed to the expectation of the teacher.

I have had the privilege of observing youth ministries of all shapes, sizes and cultures. Every time I have found a productive and vibrant group of students, it is inevitable that the leader(s) of the group(s) have a high level of expectation for their students. They believe in them and in their potential for great things (as did Christ for His Disciples).

Unfortunately, what I see most often, are youth leaders who do not believe their students would ever want to share their faith, or have a love for God’s Word, or want to “love their neighbor” by serving them. It breaks my heart to see such low expectations put before one of the most dynamic generations of students to ever live!

Why Youth Leaders Have Low Expectations
Whenever I have questioned leaders with low expectations, if the truth is revealed, they do not want to live by such high standards themselves. I have yet to experience a group of students unwilling to respond to a “Love God, Love People, Share the Gospel” challenge, but I have met many leaders who have literally argued against it.

Jesus’ theme throughout His ministry was to “Love God, Love People, Share the Gospel”. We call it the Great Commandment and the Great Commission. Why should we expect less of our students than Christ expects of them? I want to challenge you, weather using the D.I.R.T. Crew identity or your own design, create an expectation of discipleship in the hearts of your students. They will clear the bar no matter how high you place it!

I have a wonderful idea to share with you that can easily and inexpensively be incorporated in your student ministry and should produce an immediate impact. I call it "Worship Stations" and this idea is growing rapidly in popularity. The first time I heard of worship stations was from one of our youth pastors who had just returned from a ski retreat at Snowbird Wilderness Outfitters. I have also experienced the use of stations in church services, on college campus, and this last summer we setup worship stations at our D.I.R.T. Camps.

At Snowbird they have a prayer chapel (a rustic cabin up on a hill) that is a great example of worship stations. Inside the candle lit cabin you will find an altar for prayer and several composition notebooks for writing prayers on and around the altar. Next you might notice a sand garden that is about a foot and a half wide and three to four feet long. This is for a person to write their sin in the sand as an expression of confession and then wipe it away as a picture of forgiveness. They also had a world map laminated on one wall where the focus was missions. You could use a dry erase marker to circle the area of the world that you prayed for. They had a station to pray for our troops and write them a letter. They also had a cork board for writing praises on note cards and more. The cabin was opened throughout the week for students to visit and by all accounts they loved the experience.

A great benefit of worship stations is the opportunity you give students to respond to God, especially at the conclusion of a message. Think about it, every week (hopefully) you are presenting a Christ honoring message in some form to students that you hope will generate a heart-felt response. In the typical scenario we find ourselves giving an "altar call" (which I have done many times) or making some closing statement that says we hope they will respond somewhere, sometime. Now how unfair is that? With your message you bring them to a place where God may be speaking to them but you never lead them into an opportunity to respond?

Worship Stations have become an anchor in our D.I.R.T. Camps. It is impossible to fully express the spiritual impact they have. At the end of each night's message being able to offer something much richer that the standard invitation. Of course we invite students who wanted to receive Christ to speak with a counselor, but we are also able to say, "If you have a friend who is not a Christian there is a cross where you can write their name and pray for their salvation. If you want to praise God there are some clear plastic sheets that I want you to write your words of praise on and then place them on the over head projector for all to see...." We had a communion table setup and we has several areas where students could pray. We had a prayer journal to write in and there were counselors stationed around the auditorium that students could talk to about spiritual needs.

At our camps each night 90 percent or more of the students engage in some form of response during the invitation time. Each night this time of worshipping God goes on for 30 minutes or more. It is powerful and amazing. As some students would return to their seats we would join in praise and worship while others continue in their response. Only God knows all the decisions, prayers and life transformations that take place during a week of camp. I can tell you it is one of the most dynamic times of worship I have ever experienced.  

I want to encourage you to find some space in your youth area to experiment with worship stations. Be creative and prayerful about it. Ask God to show you how to incorporate worship stations in ways that fit your world. I believe you will be amazed!

I just want to say, "THANK YOU!" for the many sacrifices you make to minister to students. Sacrifices of your time, your money and your sanity (smile). I know first hand that the labor often goes without notice or appreciation. Your countless hours surrendered to (and surrounded by) students. The late nights and all nights on hard bunks in some far away place. Always giving, always pouring yourself out. You are awesome!

Knowing the sacrifices you make for students, be sure you are investing in the best practices. Be sure you are maximizing your investment. Over the past decade I have had the privilege of observing many youth ministries. Sadly, I often see many working hard, sacrificing, investing but without a good return. Youth budgets are strained and youth leaders are taxed while heads are scratched because the work and the money does not equate to lives changed. When it's all said and done, students are still leaving their faith on the church house steps (why?).

The common denominator I see in almost all high investment/low yield student ministries there is a misconception that we must entertain students. The mistake of thinking we must have the "WOW" factor to get them committed to God. Big events (WOW), big days (WOW), big camps with big names and big budgets (WOW, WOW, WOW)!  All that "WOW" and now let's be honest. Look at your students and tell me, do they display a consistent growth in their faith? Do they desire the things of God? Can they share their faith with passion? Are they making a difference in their realm of influence?

Building youth ministry on entertainment is a recipe for long term failure. Entertainment is like a sugar high that tastes very good but wears off quickly. Entertainment also demands an escalating value. In other words, it must keep getting better to maintain interest. and it produces a very low yield in spiritual growth of students. Now here is the clincher; you will never out-entertain the world. The world's entertainment is more powerful and impacting. Anything you do cannot compete. Have you ever been disappointed when a student found something better to do then come to your "Event"?

I like Romans 12:2 that tells us to not conform to the world but be transformed... So why not transform your student ministry! Don't compete with the world. Instead, give students what the world can't offer. Offer your students the journey of a lifetime as disciples of Jesus Christ! Stop entertaining students and start engaging them. Offer them the adventure of changing the world! The secret formula? "Love God, Love People, Share Christ! It's a philosophy that is God honoring, easy to implement, cost effective, rewarding and will have a lasting impact!