Life In Student Ministry

Claiming to welcome outsiders impacts first-time visitors [2 of 3]

Tim Schmoyer — Wed, 16 May 2012 11:00:26 +0000

Yesterday I kicked off a three-part series based on the experiences my wife and I have had in visiting churches here in the Cincinnati area. Having always been on the church leadership side of welcoming first-time visitors, it’s interesting for me to see it from the other side now. My wife and I have been learning a lot, especially in regard to the impact a church’s website can have as a first impression before we even arrive.

But after we arrive, we’re subconsciously checking out a lot of things, too, not in, “I wonder if this church is any good or not” kind of way, but in a way that just takes everything in.

We’ve noticed that pretty much every church claims to be a very welcoming church. But here’s the key: if a church publicly claims to be a welcoming church they’d better make pretty darn sure it’s an accurate statement. And furthermore, churches don’t get to decide if they’re welcoming or not — the visitors do.

I wonder if some church think they’re welcoming because they feel welcomed by their friends when they arrive. If a church talks about how welcoming and friendly they are and the first-time visitor doesn’t really feel welcomed, that church has just lost some credibility. It’s better not to talk about being a welcoming place at all than it is to talk about it and have an unwelcomed person site in the audience thinking, “No one’s taken any time to express interest in me. What happened in my case?” That’s definitely a credibility hit.

Besides, statistically speaking, not every church can be as welcoming as they think they are. Only 50% of the churches in your area can be more welcoming than all the other churches in your area. That means half of all churches are probably not as welcoming as they think they are. Instead of telling guests how welcoming you are, it’s probably better to just them experience it.

A couple weeks ago we visited a church where the pastor talked for about 15 minutes about how welcoming the church is (seriously) while we were sitting there having only shook the greeter’s hand to get a bulletin. Last Sunday, however, the church never said a thing about being a welcoming place, but I think over half the church talked to us, not just to welcome us, but they talked in a way that made us feel like they were genuinely interested in us as people.

But all that aside, for me personally I’m not too concerned whether a church is overly welcoming to us or not. Honestly, I feel comfortable enough in church environments that I don’t think I really need that right off the bat. After Dana and I decide that we’ll settle in a certain church based on some other factors, I have no problem taking initiative to introduce myself and get involved.

I know most of this shouldn’t matter and that it may sound somewhat petty, and I agree with you, but for some church visitors this is their experience whether we think it’s valid or not.

QUESTION: How does your church make a guest truly feel welcomed and not just acknowledged?

Your church website impacts first-time visitors [1 of 3]

Tim Schmoyer — Tue, 15 May 2012 11:00:24 +0000

Since settling in the Cincinnati area a few weeks ago, my wife and I have had a couple of reoccurring experiences while visiting churches.

Being a first-time church visitor is a bit different for me because I’ve always been in the role of the church leader, not the visitor. When I was the leader, I did my best to try to see the first-timer’s experience as they would see it, but now I know that some things are a bigger deal than I thought they were and other things that I thought were a big deal really don’t matter much at all.

There are three main things we’ve noticed as first-time visitors that hopefully will be helpful for you and the church you serve. Admittedly, how important these things are depends on the individual who’s visiting and what your church values, but I hope some of this still helps you and your ministries have a better perspective of your church as an outsider based on my very limited experience.

1. Your website makes a big impact

After we attended some churches with friends, we struck out on our own and naturally went to Google Maps to see what was around us. We checked out the websites of several churches and, surprisingly, many of them were unhelpful and unattractive. Having built several church websites in the past, I’ve always known that good design equals perceived credibility and that providing helpful information can make a big difference in whether a site visitor checks out the church on Sunday or not. But being on the other side of that now, I realize just how true it really is. The first impression many people will have of your church is not the building nor if someone greets them at the door. It actually starts long before they even decide to drive to the building in the first place: your website.

If your church website is weak, you may be a great faith community, but I may not visit on Sunday if a different church has a website that’s attractive and helpful. It’s not that I’m judging you or anything, it’s just that, as a completely neutral party who knows nothing about your church other than what you’ve presented to me, I feel like attending the other church is less of a shot in the dark. I feel that church cares about their message and who they are. I’m not saying your website has to be super-slick and state-of-the-art, it just has to be helpful, easy-to-navigate, and look presentable.

Four tips I noticed regarding church websites:

1. Be intentional about communicating who you are and what makes you different. If the website tells me that you’re a church that loves God, loves each other, and loves the world, that’s not very helpful because I just read basically the same thing on five other church sites in the area. Your distinctives in what you value, who you are, where you’re going, what you do, what you believe, etc., are very helpful and help me be excited about who you guys are.

2. A short little welcome video goes a long way in establishing credibility and giving me a flavor of what your church is like. Again, this is one of those things that I already knew and have even helped other churches produce simple welcome videos for their website, but man, it really does make a big difference. It humanizes your church, makes your pastor feel personable, makes the community feel real, and helps communicate the vibe of Sunday mornings in ways written text never can.

The videos worked on me and my wife, anyway. Two Sundays ago we attended a new church plant not because the website was that great, but because their pastor shared a clear and compelling vision in a pretty amateur video on their website that was probably shot with an iPhone.

3. Having a mobile-friendly version of your church’s website is actually more important that I thought. Twice my wife and I were driving to a church and had question we wanted to look up about the church or something on the website we wanted to re-read. But viewing and navigating those church’s websites on our phone in the car was cumbersome at best.

4. And a very helpful little touch on any church website is to link your address to it’s pin-drop on Google Maps. While we’re driving and needing some quick directions, being able to easily find your location by simply tapping your address is very helpful. On most mobile devices, it will open your address in Google Maps and allow us to get quick and easy directions to your church from our location on the road.

Your ideas

I asked on the LISM Facebook Page and Twitter what elements you guys think a church website should have for perspective visitors, and here are some other good things to consider.

Terry Goodwin: “Clear programming (time and place). Defined vision for the church. Clear directions to the building. NO CLUTTER! Get rid of stuff that isn’t a priority.”

Kerensa Huffman: “Talk in terms of expecting them to visit. Pics of staff with short, honest descriptions of what they do/like. Remove Christianese lingo. Terminology can be scary. Remove all the extras, if it’s for the perspective visitor they don’t need all the additional stuff that’s geared toward your church fam.”

Dave Libbon: “Simple welcome page… way to much clutter and inside language a visitor needs to sort through.”

Rob Johnston: “1) real pictures of real members doing real things. 2) real stories of real members sharing real failures (and successes)”

QUESTION: What have you noticed is important for visitors on a church website?

Father’s Day video honoring the lessons we’ve learned from them [Freebie Friday]

Tim Schmoyer — Fri, 11 May 2012 11:00:24 +0000

Our Weekly Freebie Friday: #280

I know Mother’s Day is coming up and Father’s Day is still several weeks off, but I thought I’d share this video for those of you who plan further in advance.

This video is a short film by the friend of a co-worker of mine at Epipheo Studios. The artist’s name is Thomas Torrey from Charlotte, NC. He just started at INSP as an original content producer and he’s going to be directing more of these videos with similar themes.

This video could work perfectly for so many things in your ministries. Obviously, you could show it during a church service to honor the dads. Or, you could use it with your youth group around that same time to spark a discussion about dads, respect, and lessons we’ve learned from them.

Watch, “My Dad Was Just A Barber (A Moment of Truth)” on YouTube

What happens to 3 out of 4 girls after leafing through a fashion mag for 3 minutes?

Tim Schmoyer — Tue, 08 May 2012 11:00:13 +0000

I saw this video and thought it was worth passing along for the first part of the video. The second part seems to go in a weird direction by equating the lack of women in leadership roles to a lack of ambition that the media creates by causing girls to have a low self-esteem. Not quite sure I’d quite jump to that same conclusion about women in leadership based on media consumption, but it’s interesting nonetheless.

What do you think? Is there a correlation between media, low self-esteems, and leadership by women?

The Golden Rule is not just about being nice to people [Time Out]

Adam Wormann — Mon, 07 May 2012 11:00:08 +0000

Time Out: Weekly quiet times for the youth worker’s soul.
by Adam Wormann

I still remember 5th grade gym class. You know, the year that you have to start changing for gym and it’s incredibly awkward. In the gym itself, Mr. Thompson had a little sign up that said, “The Golden Rule: Treat everyone like you want to be treated.” I always wished other kids would look at that a little bit more. I don’t think I gave as much thought as to whether or not I was doing it myself. I think that’s usually the way it is.

It’s said that a lot of religions had this principle before Jesus, and just about every major religion contains it. That’s okay, it’s a good principle, and there are some teachings in other religions that overlap and are good principles. If you look at how Jesus says this one though, he does differentiate it a bit. Take a look at what Jesus says in Luke 6:31.

Typically we think, just be nice to people like you want them to be to you. Look at this passage though. Jesus isn’t just saying to be nice to people. He’s going to a much bigger extreme. He’s saying be generous to those who would hurt you. The ones who treat you unfairly – treat them well. Help them. Go out of your way for them. This isn’t just, “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.” No, this is far bigger. This is, “If you don’t have anything nice to say, find something and say it. Then do something nice for them.” Much bigger than the gym class rule.

Jesus puts a huge twist on things, as he normally does. He uses a common teaching, and expands it to a degree that seems incomprehensible. Then, fulfills it on the cross.

I’m sure that there’s people in your life that need grace. Beyond grace, they need extensive kindness, love, and generosity as Jesus teaches. But that’s hard to do. I know it is for me, and I don’t do such a great job of it all the time. It’s what God calls us to though. Think about who in your life has done you wrong. What do you need to do for them. There’s no room for exceptions.

Youth teaching lesson on sex, purity, love, and marriage [Freebie Friday]

Tim Schmoyer — Fri, 04 May 2012 11:00:48 +0000

Our Weekly Freebie Friday: #279

Josh Evans, the youth pastor at Union Grove Baptist Church in Lexington, NC. He sent me a teaching lesson he wrote on sexual purity, love, and marriage that he wrote and was willing to share with you all!

Thanks to Josh, he’s making it totally free for you guys to download and use. Better yet, he’s sharing the Word document so you can easily edit and modify it to fit your group better.

Thank Josh on his blog at joshhevans.wordpress.com if you use it and find it helpful. You can also connect with him on Twitter to say thanks.

Download Josh Evans’ youth lesson on sexual purity, love, and marriage

FREE ebook today only on entitlement in an age of consumerism

Tim Schmoyer — Thu, 03 May 2012 12:18:35 +0000

A thought leader who I really respect, Mark Riddle, just wrote an ebook a few weeks ago titled, “Redeeming Leadership: Shoulder Pads.” If you’ve ever sat in one of Mark’s seminars at a youth ministry conference and vibed with what he taught, then you’ll really appreciate this ebook. In fact, I heard Mark’s voice in my head the whole time while reading it. (Yeah, kinda freaky, but also kinda cool.)

What’s the book about? Here’s the Amazon review I wrote back in March:

Most church leaders deal with the issue of congregation members who expect the paid staff to serve them, provide services, and direct programs. For the most part, the congregation members are involved, but they’re serving the youth pastor in his ministry or the children’s director in her ministry rather than taking responsibility for THEIR ministry. Things like this happen because somewhere along the line the team player removed his or her shoulder pads and placed them on the paid staff member. Unfortunately, the staff member accepts them because “this is what I get paid to do” and before long, it’s a church of people with unrealistic expectations who also share no ownership in the outcomes.

Mark’s little book addresses issues like this and more as he talks about how we can discover our role in misplacing responsibility because church staff members do it, too. He also addresses how we can begin to give back misplaced responsibility that’s been delegated to us.

Mark also provides discussion questions, both for each of us personally to wrestle through and for us a church staff to discuss together as a group. The questions are great for helping us contextualize Mark’s concepts and principles, but I’m hoping for a part 2 of this book where some of these principles are expounded on in more detail, especially as it relates to helping our churches make the shift from consumerism and entitlement to ownership and empowerment.

Definitely worth reading!

For today only, you can download Mark’s ebook on Amazon totally FREE! Hopefully you read this in time to snag it! It’s a quick, short little ebook that will only take you an hour or two to read, but it packs a lot of punch.

If you’re like me and don’t have a Kindle, you can do what I did and download the Kindle app for your phone or computer and read it there.

Read it, then comment below and let me know what you think. A lot of what Mark shares really resonates with me and I’m sure it will with you, too.

2 free family ministry audio trainings from D6! [Freebie Friday]

Tim Schmoyer — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 11:00:47 +0000

Our Weekly Freebie Friday: #278

One of the things I appreciate about the D6 Conference is the diversity in thought, approaches, and philosophies that are represented. Many conferences are attended by people who all somewhat gravitate toward a similar approach to ministry, but where else other than the D6 Conference can you hear Doug Fields and Voddie Baucham on the same stage? Love it.

D6 sells audio recordings of the sessions after the conference is over, but for this week only they’re giving away two recordings to Life In Student Ministry readers. Those two sessions are:

Transforming Youth and Children’s Ministry – Rob Rienow shares about why he had to repent of the way he ministered to families.
Challenge from an Atheist – Apologist Sean McDowell acts as an atheist, empowering listeners how to discuss issues from an intellectual standpoint.

Download the audio recordings below of these two sessions and do it now because next Friday this download link expires. This download is only available for the next 7 days!

~~Download the audio recordings of Rob Rienow and Sean McDowell’s sessions~~ (download expired)

[Full Disclosure: The D6 Conference is currently a sponsor of Life In Student Ministry.]

How strength and laziness effect your ministry [Time Out]

Adam Wormann — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 12:36:35 +0000

Time Out: Weekly quiet times for the youth worker’s soul.
by Adam Wormann

When I was in middle school, I was in my Metallica/Black Sabbath phase and really wanted long hair. My mother always threatened that she would cut it off in the middle of the night if I tried, so it really never happened. When I started going to church in high school, and I heard that there was a guy who got his strength from his hair, I was pretty much hooked. That was the Bible guy for me.

Many years later, I’m teaching the same story of Samson to my kids from Judges 16. It looks a lot different to me now. Though I understood the basic story long ago, the story of faithfulness hits me harder and harder every time. It was never really the hair that did it (contrary to what my friend Chris says, who is also convinced that his hair gives him strength). The hair was simply an outward expression of an inward commitment. What was the problem? Giving up the “secret” was basically giving up on the promise to God. Delilah had tried several times to trap him. He had to know there was a good chance it would come again. He basically gave up the sign of his commitment. He gave in to nagging (among other things). The promise meant less to him. That is why God left him, he had given up his commitment.

Youth workers are usually very committed (really, it’s not the high pay and praise that keep people in ministry). Here’s one of the things that happens though – we get a little sloppy. Though we’re committed to ministry, our commitment to Christ starts to take a back seat. We confuse our ministry with our spiritual life. Quite frankly, this was something very difficult for me.

It’s not that I didn’t love Jesus or turn to sin. I just would be lax about things. That’s one of the big things that got Samson in trouble. When we’re not paying attention, our guard goes down. This is one of the most opportune times for the enemy, and something we just can’t allow to happen. I’m not going to get into the theological implications of “can God leave us,” but I will say that when we aren’t keeping our guard spiritually and making God our first priority, we are setting ourselves up for failure.

Take some time to just evaluate your spiritual life. How’s it going? If you’re totally blunt with yourself, are you doing well? What may you have to put in place to safeguard yourself?

Take every caution you can not to pull a “Samson.” Make your relationship with God primary. That is where your strength comes from.

50 freebies from LeaderTreks bundled together! [Freebie Friday]

Tim Schmoyer — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 11:00:37 +0000

Our Weekly Freebie Friday: #277

I’m a pretty big fan of LeaderTreks and all they’re doing to help youth ministries raise students to be leaders. So when they decide to bundle 50 free youth ministry resources together as a free download, how can I not share that?

I snagged the bundle myself and the breakdown of what they’re including is this:

15 activities
5 assessments
5 Bible studies
15 illustrations
10 initatives

To download the bundle, you’ll have to part with some contact information. Unfortunately they don’t say what they’re going to do with that info, but knowing LeaderTreks it won’t be anything bad. They’re seriously nice people over there. :)

Get LeaderTreks’ 50 New YM Freebies!

Two essential questions to ask when using technology in ministry [video]

Tim Schmoyer — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 11:00:09 +0000

Earlier this week I posted a video on the Life In Student Ministry YouTube Channel for a fellow youth pastor’s ministry network meeting. He asked me to shoot a quick video for them talking about technology in youth ministry. I encouraged youth workers to remember that technology is literally a tool and not just a “cool factor” for ministry. I also offered a couple questions we should ask in evaluating the technology tools we use in ministry.

Check out the video and comment below with your own thoughts.

The TED-style talk I reference in this video can be viewed here, “Leveraging Social Media for Discipleship and Evangelism.”

Revealing truth in a way that changes people’s lives

Tim Schmoyer — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 11:00:26 +0000

For 12 years in vocational youth ministry my job was to reveal truth in a way that changed people’s lives. My everyday youth ministry tasks all revolved around revealing truth with the intention that it was going to change someone’s life: teaching scripture, planning events, training leaders, listening to a parent’s family struggle, even staff meetings were intended to help us all reveal truth more effectively as a team.

One of the reasons why I’m excited about my new role at Epipheo Studios is because my job remains what it was before: to reveal truth in a way that change people’s lives. In fact, that’s Epipheo’s slogan, word-for-word.

Last week I started drafting a year’s worth of weekly video content for their YouTube channel that is intended to do just that. If you’ve ever mapped out a year’s worth of messages for youth group, then you know how this feels. It’s exciting because it leaves you with a sense of vision, direction, and destination all in one exercise!

The difference is that I know how to map out several years worth of truth-revealing content for a youth group — that’s no problem — but doing so for a YouTube channel to a global audience that is primarily non-Christian is totally different. How do you do that in a way that keeps everyone engaged across all religions, philosophies, cultures, and languages? Yikes.

Thankfully I’ve learned a little about this over the past year of Youth Questions, which actually turns 1 year old this month! Woo hoo!

(Parenthetically, I am so excited about the response to the Youth Questions YouTube channel over the past year! Our videos have been viewed over 34,000 times and this graph reflects our subscriber growth. It looks like we’re heading in the right direction! It is revealing truth in a way that’s definitely changing people’s lives. I wish I could tell you stories…)

But anyway, all that to say this: please pray for me over the next few months as I being to reveal truth in a way that changes people’s lives, both on YouTube and in our local community with neighbors and in a church. Some very formative weeks are ahead. Thank you!

Quit reading the Bible. You’re smart enough. [Time Out]

Adam Wormann — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 11:00:30 +0000

Time Out: Weekly quiet times for the youth worker’s soul.
by Adam Wormann

I think one of the biggest problems we have as Christians is that we know the Bible too well. Well, I guess you really can’t know the Bible too well, but what we do is study it to know it. Not necessarily to know God, but to know what the Bible says. I know that this happens all too often in the tradition I came from. We treat the Bible more as an end than as a means. We miss the point.

Every night before my kids go to bed, I read a passage from the Bible with them and discuss it. (See, I’m really not against reading the Bible). We changed it up a little bit tonight, though. A few minutes before bed, my oldest son (6 years old) went downstairs and did something for my wife that was totally unprompted, caring, thoughtful, and selfless. It was a beautiful thing to see. I told him that we weren’t going to pick up with where we left off last night, that we were going to do something different. We went on to talk about what James says about looking in a mirror.

Read James 1.

Often, our devotions are based almost exclusively around reading, with maybe a little prayer at the end. How much time do we really spend in reflection? Is it that we really need to know more, or that we need to reflect more on what we do and what we need to change? I’ve met very few Christians, especially those involved specifically in ministry, that are clueless about what the Bible says. That’s not our struggle. Our struggle is making it actionable. Our struggle is doing what it says.

Reflect

What is it in your life that you know from Scripture that needs to be applied?
Be honest, what are you not doing right now? How are you going to change that?

Youth ministry handbook for youth leaders [Freebie Friday]

Tim Schmoyer — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 11:00:16 +0000

Our Weekly Freebie Friday: #276

Russ Cantu is the youth pastor at Prescott Evangelical Church in Modesto, CA, and sent me his very thorough Student Ministries Manual to share with you all. And thankfully, he’s giving all of you the Word and Pages documents so you can edit and tweak this to work for your own ministry. What a great guy that Russ is, eh? :)

This is a document you would use with new youth workers to help aclimate them to the standards you hold in your youth ministry as well as how to start the process of joining the team of adult leaders.

The table of contents includes:

A Word from Student Ministries
Vision and Values of Prescott Church
Statement of Faith
Qualifications for Leadership
Volunteer Commitment
Volunteer Application
Volunteer Reference Form
Ministry Path of Travel
Ministry Path of Travel, Illustrated
Ministry Path of Travel, The Look and Feel
Small Group’s Leader Walk-Through
Small Group Participant List
Small Group Covenant
Spiritual Assessment for Individual Students
Worship Component
Registration Component
Games Component
Ministry Resources Checklist
Child Abuse Prevention

If you don’t have a youth ministry leader’s handbook in place already, consider checking this out and taking the parts that apply to your youth ministry and adapting them for your use. One word of caution, though: although it makes you look really good to have something like this available in your ministry, only do so if you’re actually adopting what it says as part of your ministry. Otherwise, there’s no need to introduce layers of complexity and then not follow them in practice, ya know?

Download Russ’ Youth Ministry Handbook

Vote for us to win a trip to LA! [video]

Tim Schmoyer — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 11:00:31 +0000

Last week my wife entered Everday Health’s video contest. If she wins, we both get flown out to L.A. to shoot an episode of Everday Health and receive personalized nutrition training for our family (potentially by Jillian Michaels!).

We’d both really love to win this and we think we have a pretty good shot at it if we can get enough votes.

Here’s my wife’s video entry sharing some of our story. Find her video on this page and please give her 5 stars!

VOTE HERE: Find her video on this page and please give her 5 stars! (Note: Voting does not seem to work from mobile devices, such as phones and tablets.)

If you think of it, you can vote everyday in April, so go back every day this month and give her another 5 stars. If you’d like a reminder to vote once in a while, you can join my wife’s Facebook event for the contest. Please, and thank you!!

Two free video announcement intros [Freebie Friday]

Tim Schmoyer — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 11:00:27 +0000

Our Weekly Freebie Friday: #275

I know a lot of you guys like it when I make little video assets you can use for your youth group announcement videos. So, here’s another one for you.

Below is a preview of two different color schemes for the same video. This video preview includes my logo and some background music, but the video files you download do NOT include these. Obviously you don’t want my logo in it for use with your youth group, and I don’t have the rights for the audio track to redistribute it. However, the audio track is only $6 and you can buy it here (affiliate link) if you want to use the same music track I am. Otherwise, feel free to add your own.

Why use an intro for your videos? It grabs viewers’ attention and helps them focus during the first few seconds so when the announcements are shared in the rest of the video, people are already paying attention and watching for what’s about to be shared.

What other kinds of assets could I make for you guys and your youth group videos? Let me know in the comments below and I’ll see what I can do!

Download the two video announcement intros

The Afterthought: Junior High Ministry [Guest Post]

Guest Author — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 11:00:48 +0000

The following is a guest post by Terry Goodwin, a junior high youth worker for 12 years.

Our goal as Student Ministers is to help students and their families grow in their relationship with Jesus Christ. I know from my own experience that this is can be easier to judge in High School students. Many times if a High School student is not growing in their relationship with Jesus we can see that in their actions.

We cannot expect students to shine their light if they are not growing. It is interesting though that we want our High School students to be so mature and focused yet we don’t focus on helping them prepare to reach this level.

Most Student Ministers are not just dealing with High School students. Many times we work with Junior High and High School. Because of this we feel we have to give more attention to one area than the other, and we feel it is more important to focus on High School Students because they will be going to College soon, and we all know what happens when students go to college.

I want to challenge you today to focus on your Junior High ministry. If you want a youth group that is well grounded in Scripture, then you need to build that foundation with your Junior High Students. Do you want students that have morals? Teach them about morals in Junior High. Students are learning and making choices in Junior High that will shape their life. If we have the opportunity with students in Junior High we need to take advantage of it. For more info on this check out my post called, “Junior High Ministry: Who cares?”

Many students build habits in Junior High that they do their entire life. We must try to help them focus on Jesus. In Luke 9:23 Jesus says, “If any of you wants to be my follower, you must turn from your selfish ways, take up your cross daily, and follow me.” Junior High students can understand this. They can make this choice now that will shape their High School years and beyond.

I encourage you to think about how we do ministry. Where is our focus? Where should our focus be? If you want a group of High School students that can live the life of a follower of Jesus, then a good start would be to spend some time focusing on what our students are learning in Junior High. We have to try to present the Gospel to them, so they can actively seek life change. If you are at a church where you only work with High School students, then you should make sure that you are still aware of what is happening in Junior High ministry. This is only going to help you in your ministry to High School students.

————————————————-
Terry Goodwin has worked in Junior High Ministry for 12 years. He is also the creator of juniorhighministry.org.

Helping teens not give up on sharing Christ with friends [video]

Tim Schmoyer — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 11:00:30 +0000

Several months ago Jonathan McKee of TheSource4YM.com sent me a really long Word document and said, “Hey Tim, here’s the transcript for a new evangelism curriculum DVD series I’m doing for Youth Specialties. Check it out and give me your feedback.” I did so and had an opportunity to watch one of the DVD sessions of what is now, “Real Conversations: Sharing your faith without being pushy.”

His evangelism DVD curriculum series will release next month and, in light of that, I asked Jonathan a few questions related to evangelism and youth ministry

How can we help kids bring up their faith in day to day conversations?
How can we help kids not give up after their first or second attempt to share Christ?
Why should we talk about evangelism and how do we get started?

Below is the video of both Jonathan and I giving our thoughts and responses to those questions.

If you see this before April 13, 2012, you can also enter Jonathan’s contest to win a FREE copy of this DVD series! Check out the contest of the Youth Specialties blog.

What did you do wrong? [Time Out]

Adam Wormann — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 11:00:14 +0000

Time Out: Weekly quiet times for the youth worker’s soul.
by Adam Wormann

I have two young sons who are great, but have a tendency to get into fights as young boys often do (I have a daughter too, but she’s not usually in on this…). Whenever there’s a problem between the two, the stories that come out are always interesting. The amazing thing is that it’s always the other person’s fault. I don’t think I’ve ever heard something like, “It’s my fault, I pushed him and I shouldn’t have.” It’s almost always, “I pushed him because he was sticking his tongue out at me,” or, “He was annoying me!” There’s always a reason, it’s always someone else’s fault. It probably has something to do with not wanting to get in trouble, something to do with wanting to be justified, and part to do with our nature. It’s been there all the way from the beginning.

Take a look at Genesis 3. It’s a passage that’s very familiar. It’s familiar because it’s a story we’re taught beginning early in life, and we see it played out constantly. It’s a story of sin, and a story of not taking the blame.

It doesn’t just happen when we’re young. It’s our story, even now.

Look at Eve’s reaction. She couldn’t say, “I messed up.” She had to look for someone else who did what was wrong.

Look at Adam’s reaction. He couldn’t say, “I was wrong.” He blamed someone else.

Sure, someone else really did do something wrong in this case. They were correct in what they said. The problem is, God didn’t ask them what someone else did, he asked what they did. He asks us the same question.

When we do something wrong, it hurts to take the blame and say we were wrong. The temptation is always there to justify what we’ve done. There’s always a reason “why” we’re not to blame. There’s always a way that we can say something isn’t our fault. The reality is, we’re not perfect, and we’re often to blame. We need to be honest with ourselves and say, “Is this my fault?”

Don’t look at what other people are doing. Make your first response be, “What can I do better?”

Reflect

Do I typically take the blame for things I may be responsible for?
Do I look for my part in what’s wrong, or what someone else did
Where is there tension or wrongdoing in my life right now? Am I owning up to it or am I looking for someone else to do it

Leadership style assessment tool [Freebie Friday]

Tim Schmoyer — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 11:00:15 +0000

Our Weekly Freebie Friday: #274

My friends over at LeaderTreks have developed a free leadership style assessment tool for youth workers. Answer some questions and get a helpful report about your leadership style and some of the implications that go along with it.

I asked LeaderTreks’ founder and President, Doug Franklin, a few questions about this tool and leadership styles among youth workers.

TIM: One of the things you guys do very well at LeaderTreks is helping youth workers develop students into leaders. What have you learned over the years about leadership styles that caused you to create this free tool?

DOUG: After partnering with youth workers for a number of years, several things became apparent regarding youth workers’ views on teaching their students leadership. The first is that many youth workers wanted to teach their students about leadership, but didn’t feel like they knew enough about the subject in order to properly teach it. The second is that youth workers often didn’t feel like they themselves were properly equipped to be leaders, or had no real idea how they led. This lack of knowledge created a lot of frustration for them and it presented us with a real opportunity to help fill a need. That’s a lot of the idea behind why we created our seven different leadership assessments.

TIM: Why is it important that a youth worker know what their leadership style is? What difference will that make in our personal life and in our ministry?

DOUG: Self-awareness in leadership is key. When we know how we operate and we lead, we can be so much more effective. Knowing the style in which we lead is crucial because it allows us to lead in our strengths, while at the same time remembering to compensate for our weaknesses. If we know we put tasks ahead of relationships, we need to work on how we communicate and care for others. If we know we put relationships ahead of tasks, we need to work on challenging ourselves and our followers to get the job done and do it well. Knowing our leadership style is essential, but it’s the application of this knowledge that will actually improve our leadership.

TIM: What will the information that this leadership assessment provides actually help us as youth workers do or become?

DOUG: That’s a great question Tim, but to be honest, this assessment in itself won’t do anything for youth workers; only the application of this information matters. If we take this assessment, get our results and learn our leadership style, then get up from the computer and walk out the door not changing anything in our leadership, then the time you put in to taking it is useless. This assessment is an amazing catalyst to change if we take our action steps seriously. Share your results with your spouse, your friends, your senior pastor, your mentor, and let them help you come up with a plan for moving forward. If we take this plan seriously, we can become more balanced leaders who value deeply the mission in front of us and the people alongside of us. And that is an amazing thing.

NOTE: After completing the assessment, you’ll have to part with some limited personal information and your email address to have the results sent to you.

Take LeaderTreks,’ Leadership Style Assessment Tool

Replacing vs. Partnering with parents

Tim Schmoyer — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 11:00:48 +0000

The more I read youth ministry blog posts, it feels like there’s a growing dichotomy between how we work with parents in our youth ministries.

The first approach doesn’t come right out and say this, but to me it feels like we’re essentially replacing parents by assuming the roles and responsibilities scripture gives to parents. That includes things like:

assuming responsibility for teenagers’ spiritual growth
preparing them for the future
building a spiritual foundation for them
teaching good morals
helping them make right choices and establish good habits
keeping their focus on Jesus
and more.

If the primary goal of our youth ministry is to accomplish these things without parents (even in practice if not in theory), I think we think too highly of ourselves than we ought.

The second approach looks at this list and knows that it’s not their place to be the primary caregiver in these areas, so instead they say, “Let’s figure out how we can enable parents to be effective in these roles.” The key is that these youth ministries do not primarily attempt to fill these roles, but proactively look for ways to help parents succeed in them and link arms however they can.

Is there overlap between the two? Of course. But there’s a subtle, yet distinct, difference that is essential to partnering with parents instead of just replacing them, and then wondering why parents aren’t stepping up to do their part.

QUESTION: Do you see a difference between replacing and partnering with parents? What effects does each have on our youth ministries and teenagers?

Free Easter Bible study lesson [Freebie Friday]

Tim Schmoyer — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 11:00:32 +0000

Our Weekly Freebie Friday: #273

The guys at ym360 are giving away a free Easter Bible study lesson that helps students look back through Scripture, tracing a thread of God’s love from Creation to Jesus’ death and resurrection. It helps students grasp the importance of the Easter narrative by putting it in the context of the big picture of God’s story.

The download comes with a Leader’s Guide, PowerPoint, and a Student Guide. Check it out here at the link below.

NOTE: You’ll have to part with some personal information and answer a few questions on YM360′s site to gain access to the download.

Download, The Thread of Love Bible Study

Using Facebook ads to connect with your community

Tim Schmoyer — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 11:00:52 +0000

A few weeks ago two of my brothers and I were sitting around a table with my father-in-law. My brothers attend a church plant together in their area and were talking about things their church was trying to reach new people in their community. My father-in-law, a life-long pastor in Texas, shared that the most effective mass communication tool they’ve found to introduce their church to new people was Facebook.

He shared that they used to do things like buy print ads, produce radio spots, and hang flyers posted around town, but the number of people who actually responded to those mediums was very, very low. Facebook ads, however, has proven to be very effective because, as he shared, they can be very specifically targeted to exactly the audience you want to reach.

For example, they do a Pumpkin Festival every fall where they sell pumpkins, have areas setup for families to take pictures with pumpkins, do pumpkin carvings, and even let people pick pumpkins from a pumpkin patch. To promote this event, they run Facebook ads targeted specifically to moms and dads in their town who have young children. The ads are only a few pennies per click and provide hundreds of thousands of page impressions where people see their church’s name and event even if they don’t click the ad.

The response? Hundreds of new families come to their Pumpkin Festival each year as a direct result of the Facebook ad.

When I asked about the retention of those new families who come to the event, my father-in-law said that not many come back to church the next Sunday, but it allows them to shake hands they otherwise would not have had the opportunity to shake. Later, when that family experiences some sort of crisis or life circumstance that drives them to seek spiritual direction, they turn to their church giving the church the opportunity to introduce them to the Lord and their faith community.

Personally, I’ve never run a Facebook ad for an event that our church or youth ministry has hosted, but it would be interesting to hear from some of you all who have. Did you have a experience a similar result by using Facebook ads to connect with unchurched people in your community? Any tips and suggestions for how to run those ads to have maximum impact? Do you promote a landing page on your church’s website or the Facebook event page?

How are we the problem in youth ministry?

Tim Schmoyer — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 11:00:24 +0000

Last week I posted a somewhat provokative statement on the LISM Facebook Page where we had a pretty lively discussion:

AGREE OR DISAGREE: The main reason you have a job is because parents aren’t doing theirs.

How we respond to that reveals a lot about the assumptions we hold about ministry, parents, the church, and even ourselves.

Some of us took this conversation to a live Google+ Hangout where we could discuss some of this more in-depth in a face-to-face kind of way, which was awesome! Thanks to everyone who joined and contributed so many different viewpoints and perspectives!

One of the points that came up in our Google+ Hangout is that youth ministry seems to be good at identifying all the problems we have and quickly pointing the finger elsewhere. Often that includes placing blame on parents, sr. pastors, board members, schools, sports, and sometimes the teenagers themselves. But, personally, I find it hard to believe we, as youth workers, are completely innocent in contributing to the problems and issues youth ministry faces. Thankfully, no one in the Google+ Hangout disagreed, so we discussed a bit of how we think we contribute to the issues we struggle with.

QUESTION: Regarding this specific issue of some parents being spiritually disengaged from their kids, what role do we play in unintentionally contributing to that problem?

Sometimes we complain about things in youth ministry, but then turn around and enable the very things we say we don’t like.

I’d love to hear how you guys would answer that question because the implications of what we identify here are potentially huge! Comment below and let’s discuss.

And if you’d like to jump in on future live random youth ministry conversations, be sure to follow me on Twitter or like the LISM Facebook Page. I’ve already got another question stirring in my head that I’d love to discuss live with you all sometime soon!

Applying even Leviticus to your walk with Christ [Time Out]

Adam Wormann — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 11:00:35 +0000

Time Out: Weekly quiet times for the youth worker’s soul.
by Adam Wormann

Everyone who’s ever tried to read the Bible from cover to cover has always struggled somewhere between Leviticus and Numbers. I’ve never seen a study done, but I’ll bet if you graph it out, it’s almost comical the number of people that drop off their cover-to-cover reading program that drop off between books 3 and 4. I know I have on more than one occasion.

It’s not that we have too short of an attention span or don’t love God enough to read the Bible. It’s just that there’s all of these laws that most Christians today agree don’t apply in the present day. There’s only so much you can read about cleansing after pregnancy, menstruation, and emissions before you start to feel like “come on, what’s the point?” Sure, there’s some things (like dietary restrictions) that were important for the health and safety of the people of the day, even though they didn’t always know it. But instructions for what to do if an axe head flies off and kills someone accidentally? Really?

Sure, they were important back in the day. They have something profound to teach us now too, though. We hit that in Leviticus 19:

And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, “Speak to all the congregation of the people of Israel and say to them, ‘You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.’” (Lev. 19:1-2)

We often forget how holy God is. We miss how different He is from us. We continually miss the mark, we are unclean, and God calls us to be holy.

Take some time to reflect on that. Think about God and his holiness. Rather than reading more, spend your time this morning simply doing 3 things:

Take some time to think about God and his holiness. Take serious reflection on that.
Think about how you’re falling short. Take serious inventory and seek forgiveness.
Take an extended period of time for worship. Pray. Sing. Whatever it is that you do that helps you to truly connect with God, do it. Don’t worry about prayer requests or things like that. Just take some time to worship a God who is truly holy.

KONY 2012 talksheet [Freebie Friday]

Tim Schmoyer — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 13:00:19 +0000

Our Weekly Freebie Friday: #272

In case your Internet’s been disconnected for the past couple weeks, the KONY 2012 video has been spreading like wildfire and currently sits at almost 80 million views in less than two weeks.

It’s an interesting video on a number of different levels, some of which I wrote about on my personal blog at timschmoyer.com.

The video provides a foundation that could launch several different conversations for our youth group. Graham Baldock actually put together a discussion talksheet for a non-Christian setting, but sent it to me so share with you guys so you could take his work and build off it for your groups. You can start with his questions and the direction he provides and move it into scripture on your own.

Download the KONY 2012 talksheet

How the biblical family and the western family collide

Tim Schmoyer — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 04:33:38 +0000

Last year my new boss at Epipheo Studios taught in the Sunday morning services at a church here in Cincinnati. His message was on a topic he’s very passionate about and genuinely lives out publicly for me and others: a biblical philosophy of “family.”

If you’re like me, you’ve probably just accepted the normal idea of family as we’ve become accustomed to here in America and in Western society in general. I actually have never thought anything of it because, honestly, it’s all I know and I’ve never had a reason to challenge it. However, Jeremy Pryor looks at what the biblical idea of family is within the context of Hebrew culture and compares it to our modern idea of family. It’s quite fascinating!

If you get some time to watch his message, I highly encourage you to do so. You could even do what I did and have it playing in the background while doing some other work in the room.

I’d love to hear your thoughts and reactions to Jeremy’s message. Please comment below!

If you really want to dive in deep, Jeremy has a blog post about this titled, “ReFamily: The Bible’s Blueprint.” In it he freely shares a document he’s been working on that shares the same title and man, it is in-depth!

Do you really understand your own family philosophy? Have you ever considered if you define family biblically? Whether you truly understand what the Bible means by family? Whether you believe in God’s design for the family? This blueprint exposes the fact that the West has a totally different view of family than Scripture describes. We take readers back in time to understand the way family was understood classically and how the Bible challenges, critiques and ultimate redeems this view of family through the Gospel and the vision of family as a multi-generational team.

There are some pretty major implications here not only for our own families, but in how we do ministry to families and reach the family unit as a whole instead of as individuals.

Watch his video! I’m itching to discuss it in the comments with you all!

Some of us are proud of our crap [Time Out]

Guest Author — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 13:29:45 +0000

Time Out: Weekly quiet times for the youth worker’s soul.
(by Benjer McVeigh)

What are you proud of?

Before you answer, know that I’m not looking for a surface-level, feel-good answer such as “my kids” or “my country.” I’m talking the deep-down, I-stake-my-identity-on-it kind of pride. The kind of pride that makes you feel just a little better than your neighbor, spouse, or co-workers. It might be your work ethic, your intelligence, or the fact that your youth ministry is bigger than the one at the church down the street. You might never have said what you’re proud of out loud, but it’s there, and if you sit quietly long enough, God will bring it to mind.

So, let me ask you again: What are you proud of?

It’s very likely that you gain a lot of confidence from what you’re proud of. In fact, I’d be willing to bet that somewhere deep inside, you derive your worth from what you’re proud of. Whatever accomplishment, talent, or character trait you are proud of, chances are you believe that it somehow makes you a better person, or perhaps you even believe that you have a better standing before God because of it.

That’s a bunch of crap. Literally.

Before you denounce me for just another youth pastor that uses a foul mouth to “stay relevant,” hear what Paul has to say about having confidence in our accomplishments, talents, and good morals:

“If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless. But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith—that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.”
– Philippians 3:4-11, ESV

The word most English versions of the Bible translate as “rubbish” seems to actually be a very crass word. Daniel Wallace of Dallas Theological Seminary writes, “The term conveys both revulsion and worthlessness in this context. In hellenistic Greek it seems to stand somewhere between “crap” and “s**t.” Paul didn’t want to communicate that his own efforts to please God were worthless; he wanted to communicate that they were repulsive.

And so I ask again: what are you proud of? If you’re like me, you tend to judge how much you’re worth by how well you perform, both personally and publicly. Many leaders struggle with this sort of thing, and youth workers are not immune. I’m not saying that we should not strive to be the best youth workers we can be, or that we shouldn’t try to lead top-notch youth ministries that helps teenagers be transformed by Jesus. What I’m saying is that no matter what gains we have as youth workers, we ought to count it all as a loss “because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.”

Yes, youth ministry is wonderful, and yes, to devote yourself to the task of telling teenagers about Jesus — whether as a volunteer or a full-time youth worker — is a wonderful thing. But compared to knowing Jesus, it is all one big pile of dung. I don’t say that to discourage you from youth ministry. I say that to urge you on toward the cross, where you “may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible…attain the resurrection from the dead.”

Reflect

What are things that you rely on (or have relied on) to boost your standing with God?
As a youth worker, has a part of you ever felt like you were owed anything because of your sacrifice?
Have you ever experienced failure and wondered if God still loves you? If so, what do Paul’s words in Philippians 3:8-11 tell you about where you derive your righteousness?
How would it change the way you work with teenagers if you really believed that good thing we do is repulsive compared to knowing Jesus?)

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________
Benjer McVeigh is a youth pastor in Ogden, UT, where he works with students in grades 9-12 and their families at Washington Heights Church. You can read more from Benjer at www.benjermcveigh.com or follow him on twitter.

My next book, FREE to you! [Freebie Friday]

Tim Schmoyer — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 13:00:46 +0000

Our Weekly Freebie Friday: #271

In 2007 I released a little ebook I wrote titled, “130 Youth Ministry Tips & Ideas.” Since then it’s received well over 300,000 downloads and continues to grow and circulate all on its own.

When it reached the quarter million mark I thought to myself, “Hmm… I should probably do that again sometime.” And so I did, except this time Group Publishing/Simply Youth Ministry teamed up with me and published it as a part of their brand new line of digital and print-on-demand books called, “Everyday Youth Ministry,” which is a series I’m honestly very excited about. Definitely check it out!

This new ebook is a continuation of my first ebook and contains “254 Ways to Fill Your Soul and Fuel Your Ministry.” Much of it is based on content that’s been published here at Life In Student Ministry, but a lot of it is also brand new content I’ve never shared anywhere else.

Part of the success of the first ebook was that I made it completely free and took a very hands-off approach to how people used it, distributed it, read it, etc. Simply Youth Ministry agreed to take that same approach with this ebook and is doing the same thing — making it completely free for you with no strings attached.

The download includes:

PDF file
epub file for iPad
mobi file for Kindle

Soon we’ll have the book available in the different app stores to make it easier for people to download to their devices, but in the meantime you can download the source files and either load them straight to your e-reader or read the PDF on your computer.

Download, “Youth Ministry Tips & Ideas: 254 Ways to Fill Your Soul and Fuel Your Ministry”

5 reasons why social media is important for your church

Guest Author — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 13:00:40 +0000

The following guest post is written by Matt Brown, an evangelist who utilizes social media for his non-profit ministry.
—————————————-

I am becoming an increasing believer in the power and opportunity available through social media. I was not an early bird to jump on this social wagon. My brother Jon, a Youth Pastor in Chicago had to convince me and set up my first social media account years ago. As most people are, I was quickly hooked.

Social media can become a wonderful tool in the hands of local churches. Many accounts I see lay far too dormant. With just a little help, I believe your church can become great at using these platforms. Here are several thoughts on why I think it is so important that you do what it takes to learn:

1. Discipleship needs more than a weekly service

We cannot expect that a one hour service each week will fill people’s spiritual tanks for the other 167 hours. Discipleship means being in people’s lives beyond the weekly service and special events. Social media provides this platform. It allows us encourage congregants in their faith while they are sitting on their couch in their pajama’s eating breakfast.

2. Social media allows us to reinforce what God is saying

Not only can we disciple and encourage those in our church, but we can also continue the theme of what is preached during the weekly service. Andy Stanley has done a great job in his book, “Seven Practices of Effective Ministry”, of stating the importance of not overloading our people with too many messages at once. Instead he encourages churches to state one point well and focus on application in the following week. We still face the problem of forgetting what was preached (even preachers forget what they preached).

Social media provides a great platform to reinforce the key points and application from the past weekend throughout the week. Pastors should pass on their sermon notes to whoever is in charge of posting on the social media accounts. As key Scriptures and quotes are posted, the Holy Spirit uses those to remind people and reinforce the stickiness and lasting impact of the message. I schedule posts on Mondays on Hootsuite for our local church in Minneapolis.

3. Social media keeps you on your toes

Experts have said that social media can cause jealousy as we see the exciting things others are doing. In the same vein, it can inspire you to consider new possibilities for your ministry. I loved watching recent posts for Steven Furtick’s Code Orange Revival in Charlotte, North Carolina. It revived something in my heart – a desire for extended, special services to hear from special guest preachers and set apart time to seek God’s work in our lives.

4. Social media allows you to reach outside your church

Social media provides an incredibly targeted way to promote what God is doing in your church body. With Facebook ads, you can target exact age ranges within miles of your city, and with a minimal budget grow your church page by an average of 3 new fans times whatever dollar amount you spend. On Twitter, you can follow and engage with others in your surrounding communities at no cost, by looking through followers of twitter accounts in your local area.

5. Social media gives your church a broader platform

Your ministry reach becomes more than your weekend attendance or membership classes. You are now in people’s lives on a daily basis. Sure, some of your posts are about upcoming events, but hopefully you are taking time to engage, post valuable content and encourage people in their walk with Christ. You never know how God could use a simple post to change the trajectory of a life that could impact thousands of others.

Matt Brown is an evangelist and founder of Think Eternity, an evangelistic nonprofit. He and his wife minister to over a hundred thousand people on several social media accounts on a near-daily basis. You can follow Matt and Think Eternity on Twitter.

I loved the Simply Youth Ministry Conference last weekend!

Tim Schmoyer — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 06:42:33 +0000

What a great weekend at the Simply Youth Ministry Conference! Wow. Every year Group/Simply Youth Ministry and the Inside Track Team of youth workers pull off an incredible experience, but this year was by far the best. I’m not sure exactly what made the difference, but others seemed to agree saying things to me like, “Tim, this conference far exceeded all expectations,” and even, “This is my first time here and somehow I already feel like family.”

Maybe it’s just because of the place I’m in with life. Or maybe it’s because the conference is learning more and more how to live out their values of authenticity, Jesus-centeredness, in-depth learning, relationships, and innovation. Maybe it’s a combination of both.

Some highlights for me were:

Leaving the conference with many more friends than I had when I came.
Connecting with several first-timers and “showing them the ropes.”
All the encouraging stories I heard from youth workers about how LISM has blessed them (I’m more fired up for LISM now than I’ve ever been!).
Hearing youth workers give so much great advice to teenagers in videos for future Youth Questions episodes.
The launch of my fourth book, published by Group/Simply Youth Ministry (more about that coming on Friday).
Hearing the story of how The Skit Guys totally punk’d my wife and Jon Acuff while they were talking.
The opportunity to encourage, serve, and train other youth workers the best way I know how in workshops and peer panels.
Being challenged by each of the general session speakers, especially the new “lesser known” Air Time speakers. I loved Air Time!
Watching my wife thrive in ministering to the “Married To A Youth Pastor Connect Group” she co-led.

The whole conference was just a very encouraging, motivating, and refreshing time. I love hanging out with so many youth workers and everything they work for.

As many of you know, my wife and I love making little family vlogs on our YouTube channel. We didn’t have time at the conference to shoot a vlog throughout each day, but we do have a few vlogs from the conference, which you can watch here if you’d like to see a little of the conference from our perspective:

If you’d like to subscribe to our family YouTube channel for future vlogs, you can do so here.

QUESTION: If you were at the Simply Youth Ministry Conference last weekend, what were the highlights for you?

Dealing with Spiritual Warfare [Time Out]

Guest Author — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 13:00:40 +0000

Time Out: Weekly quiet times for the youth worker’s soul.
(by Jerry Schmoyer)

When I started pastoring 40 years ago I never imagined I’d have a ministry in spiritual warfare. I didn’t even know what spiritual warfare was until about 25 years ago. I knew some Christians who struggled with sin and didn’t seem to have victory no matter how hard they tried or how much they trusted God. No amount of counseling helped. It seemed like something greater than themselves was controlling them.One of my own children was being influenced by something evil, as well. God in his mercy brought some men into my life who taught me about spiritual warfare and deliverance from demonizing.

Paul says “we are not ignorant of Satan’s devices” (2 Corinthians 2:5-11) but I was very ignorant. Since that time I have been ministering to those in need of spiritual warfare counseling. I have read many books and talked to lots of people. God has been teaching me and helping me learn how to help those who are attacked by Satan and his forces.

Being involved in this is very humbling but also very encouraging. Seeing God’s power at work in such a real way is simply awesome. Having a front row seat as lives are changed and people who have been defeated begin to live in victory is wonderful to see. The internet opens up many doors to minister and daily I hear from people throughout the world. I counsel them through email and a web site. I thank God for the privilege! I have no idea why He chose me to be trained and gifted in this but I’m glad He did!

As our culture moves further and further from a Biblical foundation, the powers of darkness are getting a stronger hold and becoming more bold in their actions. Still, most American Christians don’t really take Satan and demons seriously until they run into their blatant work on a mission trip somewhere.

The greatest impact this has had on me personally is to deepen my faith in God and to better appreciate the power of the cross. All hail the power of Jesus’ name!

Scripture

2 Corinthians 2:11, “…in order that Satan might not outwit us. For we are not unaware of his schemes.

Ephesians 6:10-12, “Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.

Reflect

How aware are YOU of the enemies schemes against you, your family and your ministry?
If Satan were to oppose you or your ministry, what kinds of things might he use to discourage and defeat you?
What can you do to have victory over this?
For more information on the subject of spiritual warfare contact me at jerry@schmoyer.net and I’ll send you a free copy of my Spiritual Warfare Handbook.

Family ministry resources from StuffYouCanUse.org [Freebie Friday]

Tim Schmoyer — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 13:00:56 +0000

Our Weekly Freebie Friday: #270

Almost every day I get an email from someone asking me to plug their website, but honestly, most of them are not worth sharing. They often have a single post up and it basically says, “This is my new website!” I check back a few weeks later and that single post is still sitting all alone on the site.

The history I have with those emails have obviously made me a bit leery, including the email I received from Kenny Campbell about StuffYouCanUse.org, but thankfully he’s an example that some people have a vision and will execute it regardless of if they get attention for it or not.

His new blog is designed to be a place where youth workers and Orange thinkers can share and discover free ministry resources.

Every single post features two things: 1 downloadable resource (totally free and totally editable) and 1 video interview with the creator of that resource.

At the moment, all of the published posts feature resource created by his ministry, but he’s hoping that’s only temporary. They have a line-up of people and ministries ready to share some of their materials with the rest of us for free.

The resources Kenny and his wife are giving away are well-done and high quality resources, especially the ones that focus on family ministry. And I particularly like their use of video to explain each resource and give you a “behind the scenes” look at how to use it most effectively. Check it out and be sure to contribute!

Visit StuffYouCanUse.org

New parenting video series from Jonathan McKee

Tim Schmoyer — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 06:35:26 +0000

Over the past several months I’ve had the privilege of working with Jonathan McKee to produce a video series for his new website, TheSource4Parents.com. It’s been a lot of fun to create the intro, outro, and animations in this series as well as do the general editing of the videos he shoots.

The concept of the series is quite simple. They’re asking teenagers, “What advice would you give to your parents if you knew they would actually listen?”

Jonathan and other parenting authors take the answers and discuss them for parents in a quick YouTube video. The video series, “R U Listening?”, is great place to hear a teenage perspective on parenting from guys who actually know what they’re talking about.

Check out this little “R U Listening?” trailer as a preview of what the video series is all about.

This could be a great resource not only to follow yourself, but also to share with youth group parents in email updates and Facebook. The more tools you have to equip them the better, right?

Check out “R U Listening?” on YouTube!

5 free Easter PowerPoint backgrounds [Freebie Friday]

Tim Schmoyer — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 13:43:12 +0000

Our Weekly Freebie Friday: #269

The guys over at YouthMinistry.com are giving away 5 free PowerPoint backgrounds for us to use in your presentations, worship, announcement slides, or anything else. Of course, they can just as easily be used in Keynote, Pro Presenter, MediaShout, or any other presentation software you use.

Here are my two favorites:

Download these two and other free Easter PowerPoint backgrounds from YouthMinistry.com at the link below.

Download 5 free Easter PowerPoint backgrounds from YouthMinistry.com

FREE videos and mp3 recordings from the D6 Conference!

Tim Schmoyer — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 13:00:27 +0000

D6 was influential for me

A pretty significant event for me last year was attending the D6 Conference for two reasons.

1. I’ve been moving toward a family-based approach to youth ministry for a few years, but have always struggled with how to lead that kind of movement. D6 was full of helpful stories, advice, and insights from other church leaders who are moving in that same direction and willing to share what they’ve learned.

2. Most of the time I felt like I was the only one really pursuing ministry to the family unit, but at the D6 Conference I was so encouraged to see thousands of other church leaders from across the country with the same pursuit as me.

This year the D6 Conference (based on Deuteronomy 6) is in Dallas, Texas, on September 26-28, 2012. I’ve already confirmed my registration and would love to meet with any of you guys who are going! They have several price breaks that can save you some cash. One of those is coming up on March 6. Be sure to check out their conference prices!

Watch FREE Full Video Sessions from D6!

The D6 Conference is doing something cool! Yesterday they launched D6 Days, which is a free gift from them to all churches and families.

They have:

Speakers lined up to do teaching sessions via live video streams
Free downloads of audio recordings from last year’s conference
Videos of past sessions
More coming!

They will be posting fresh video content from some of their current speakers, complete past D6 Conference video sessions, and audio lab mp3′s that can be downloaded, kept, and shared among friends, family and staff members. If you’ve ever wanted to attend D6 and have not been able to make it, this is the perfect way to capture the vision of the conference!

There are three different D6 Days in 2012: February 21, April 17, and July 24. D6 Days content will be available for up to two weeks after the listed dates. Enjoy!

For a full schedule, to watch the live stream, videos, and download recordings, visit D6Conference.com/D6Days.

[ Full Disclosure: This is a sponsored post, but as always, I only accept sponsorships from organizations that I truly believe in, like D6. ]

8 ideas for making family your primary ministry [Guest Post]

Guest Author — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 13:40:07 +0000

The following guest post is written by Brett Starr, a youth long-time youth pastor near Columbus, Ohio.

I have been in full time student ministry for almost 11 years, but the thing that remains the same is that the most important young people to whom I minister are the three who sleep across the hall from my wife and I every night at home.

Almost every day while I am at work thinking about how to make disciples of students and families within the church where I serve, I cannot escape the reality of what is going on in my own home. I constantly think about how parents could do a better job making disciples of their children, while at the same time evaluating those same things in my own life with my own kids.

Ephesians 6:4 says, “Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.”

I realize that this will happen differently in each home and there is no set or standard way to get this done, but the one thing we cannot ignore is that God has given parents, and fathers in particular, the wonderful opportunity to minister to their own children.

My wife and I have come up with some ways that work in our family, and to be honest, some days they don’t work or we forget or the kids are bouncing off the walls or we don’t get home until 10 or 11 at night and everyone just wants to get to bed. The key for us to keep at it is the thought that we only have these beautiful, wonderful, wacky and awesome kids for probably less than 20 years and we realize that God has given us the job to bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.

So here are a few things that we do which you might be able to incorporate into your family.

1. We are making our way through the back/extras section of the ESV children’s Bible and we also read portions of Scripture each night except for Wednesday and Sunday. On those days we ask our kids to share with us what they learned that day at church and we talk about that. Also, maybe your kids have their own Bibles they would like to read one of those nights. Imagine your older kids reading God’s word to and teaching your younger ones.

2. We got our 9 year old son the Action Bible, and although it is not even close to a translation, the illustrations are A+ comic book material and the Bible stories are accurate. He read it through in about a month and has continued to read it all the time. I recommend it, so long as it is explained to your son or daughter what type of genre the Bible falls into and that it is not a substitute for a more accurate translation.

3. Last year we decided that when we take our kids to school, on the car ride there we would pray for one classmate and his/her day at school, family life, and future salvation. This year we, mom and dad, would pray those prayers in the car, but after Christmas break we have started having the 2 kids pray on their own and they have taken that on. We have to change things up a bit so it is not useless repetition just throwing a different name in the blank every day, but it is getting them thinking outside themselves, hopefully. :) We also pray at the table and so do they. We also have a dinner discussion time that the kids really love called, “Pow and Wow!!” A “pow” is the not so good thing that happened in the day that punched you in the gut so to speak. The “wow” is the good thing you want others to share in your joy over. Soon we are going to add a third component to the mix, “Pow, Wow and Holy Cow!!” “Holy Cow” will be how you saw God at work in your life today or this week.

4. Once a month we take our kids, ages 4, 7 and 9, into the main worship service to worship with us. We feel that for our kids and kids in general, sometimes more is caught than taught and we want our kids to see us, in the context of the body of believers, opening a Bible, singing to Jesus, praying for others, taking notes from the sermon, being prayed for, etc. When was the last time your kids saw you do any of those things?

5. We, mom and dad, have really been challenged to challenge the heart of our kids in discipline situations and not just seek out simply behavioral change. We attempt to ask them why they do something instead of just punishing the action right away. Lots of times they have no clue, so we have to tell them or lead them to the heart issue. It is tough to not only say to them what they did wrong, but point out their selfishness or greed or whatever the heart issue may be. We feel horrible at times, but it usually brings a more understanding heart from our kids. In the same vein of thought, we try to use the, “Who am I?” “Daddy.” “Does Daddy love you?” “Yes.” “Do you love daddy?” “Yes.” “The way you show daddy that you love him is not only saying that you love him but also obeying what he tells you to do. Can you obey daddy right now?” “Yes.” And we take that straight from God/Jesus who told us that we show we love him through obedience to him as a Father.

6. We want to make our home now and in the future the place where our kids want to bring their friends and not the place they want to get away from. We attempt to engage their friends in conversation and show them that we are truly interested in who they are as a person. Hopefully this is showing them a love that they maybe have never seen and we want them to feel important when they are around. These conversations and times spent with our kids and their friends will also maybe lead to conversations about our faith in Christ.

7. We volunteer in our children’s school reading with kids, practicing math, and planning holiday parties. No matter what age groups we like or don’t like, God has given us kids at that age and he will give us the grace to enjoy and work with kids that age.

8. Also, some of the sweetest times of instructing our kids in the Lord are those ordinary things throughout the day where we can relate God and His word to them. Imagine seeing the sun and talking about the Son, or playing the board game Sorry and talking about forgiveness, or watching UFC with your boys and talk about Jacob wrestling with God or the spiritual battle we are in every day.

Those are just a few things that can be done in the lives of our kids to show them that God is important, his plans and commands are important, and they themselves are important to us. Please hear me say that we never do any of the things above perfectly, and we need to always remind ourselves that it is God who saves our children and not us or a cleverly devised system. We need to do all we know to do and rely on the power of God, His word and the Gospel to do the rest.

QUESTION: How do you incorporate the things of God into your daily life with your kids?

———————————————-

Brett Starr has been in full time student ministry for nearly 11 years and currently serves at New Life Church in Gahanna, Ohio near Columbus. He received his BA in Biblical Studies from Liberty University where he met the love of his life and wife of 11 years, Tammy, and together they have three wonderful children: Jack, who is 9, Layla, who is 7, and Ben, who is 4. Follow him on Twitter or contact him on Facebook.

I am an unfaithful spouse [Time Out]

Adam Wormann — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 13:06:08 +0000

Time Out: Weekly quiet times for the youth worker’s soul.

Quick note from Adam: Hey everyone. I just wanted to start out with a quick apology. I know the Time Out Posts have been few and far between lately. About two months ago, I resigned from my church position, was unemployed, and wound up taking another position in the secular world doing online marketing. It’s been a huge transition for me and the family, and though it’s working out very well, I have been slacking here. I think we’re in a groove now, and should be good to go. So sorry about the inconsistency! -Adam (Time Out Editor)

“I married a whore.”

Just writing that for a blog like this feels really in appropriate. It doesn’t seem proper, it’s highly offensive, and just doesn’t fly in the circles many of us run in. It comes from Scripture though.

That’s what God asked Hosea to do. God told him to marry a whore. That sounds so off the wall and so out of character, I still struggle to comprehend it when reading it. But, here’s why he does it:

When the Lord first spoke through Hosea, the Lord said to Hosea, “Go, take to yourself a wife of whoredom and have children of whoredom, for the land commits great whoredom by forsaking the Lord.” (Hosea 1:2)

Wow. God tells Hosea to do this, because it’s the exact picture of what Israel was doing to Him. The claimed faithfulness, kind of did what they were supposed to in their role, but basically ran through some of the motions while their heart and a majority of their actions were somewhere else. And, God knew that the best way to paint this picture was through whoredom, and for the people to see this.

We still do that a lot today. We acknowledge God, but our relationship with Him isn’t where it should be. It’s really easy to do the Christian thing and do others things in secret.

I’m going to be really candid for a minute. I noted above that I left my position in ministry recently (everything is fine – there were financial and philosophical issues that made continuing the situation impossible). Since being out of formal ministry, I’ve learned a lot. One thing that I notice in retrospect is that often in doing ministry, my heart wasn’t close to God. I never openly rebelled and didn’t do anything that was really out of line – I just know that many times ministry became more of a job, a challenge, and a task to accomplish than it was about the heart. Even in caring for others, mine was not always seeking after God. Ministry often became a barrier to my relationship with God. I needed to pull a good gut check.

So, take a minute and just reflect on some of these things for a minute (and I encourage you to read all of Hosea 1).

Is your heart seeking after God first and foremost?
What is taking away from your faithfulness to God (if anything)?
If you treated your spouse like you treat God, what would that look like?

The Hunger and Thirst Games lesson series [Freebie Friday]

Tim Schmoyer — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 13:00:50 +0000

Our Weekly Freebie Friday: #268

The Hunger Games are a huge hit that’s come up in the wake of the Twilight Series. If you haven’t heard of it, most of your kids probably have. Ask them about it.

Paul Turner, a youth pastor in Alabama, wrote a 4-week lesson series based on the hit novels and called it, “The Hunger and Thirst Games.” The key passage is Matthew 5:6, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.”

Paul talks a bit more about the series, how they used it, the games involved, and gives several additional tips and ideas that aren’t included in the actual download below, so be sure to watch it in order to use this lesson series to it’s maximum potential.

Download, “The Hunger and Thirst Games” lesson series

My newest book from Simply Youth Ministry is FREE!

Tim Schmoyer — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 13:00:20 +0000

Five years ago I wrote a free little ebook titled, “130 Youth Ministry Tips and Ideas.” Since then it’s had over 300,000 downloads and has been featured in many places, both online and in print. It’s been so fun to take a very “hands off” approach to letting it spread around the Internet on its own!

Since the first one did so well, I figured it’s about time I write a second one, but this one is actually being electronically published by Group Publishing/Simply Youth Ministry. In fact, it’s almost ready to be released! The best part? This ebook will be completely FREE!

If you’re going to the Simply Youth Ministry Conference in a few weeks you’ll receive a little flyer on your seat at one of the general sessions to download this 82-page ebook for free before anyone else. It will be available to the general public sometime after that.

This little guy is chopped full of ideas, suggestions, and perspectives to consider for your youth ministry. Some of it is things you’ve heard me talk about here at Life In Student Ministry in the past, but a lot of it is brand new content I’ve never really written about before. It’s highly skimmable, easily digestible, and very practical — just what we all want, right?

I’ll be sure to let you guys know when it’s available for download. In the meantime, check out the cover above.

Four books down. What should my 5th book be about? Hmm…

What happens online when you die

Tim Schmoyer — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 13:00:25 +0000

We’re all going to die sometime. Do you know what happens to all your tweets, Facebook pictures, status updates, videos, and more once you pass away?

Some of the social networks actually own the rights to your content when you post them. That information can be passed along to your next of kin after you pass away if they request it. If you’re married, that means your spouse. If you’re a teenager, that means your parents.

This video reinforces the fact that what you post online, even privately, may not stay private forever. After you die, you especially lose control over that data. Don’t post anything online, even privately, that you wouldn’t want the world to know. Even if you use blocking and privacy features in social networks, they don’t always work the way they should (I’ve seen plenty online that wasn’t supposed to be accessible to me).

It’s important for our teenagers to understand this. They can create all the private Facebook accounts they want, restrict status updates from certain people, and send private messages they don’t think anyone else will ever see, but that’s just not true. They don’t control their online identity — Facebook does. And they can’t control Facebook, but they can control what information they give to Facebook. Unfortunately, many teenagers may have to learn that the hard way and many certainly have already.

(In case you’re interested, I wrote some of my thoughts on this video from a video marketing perspective at timschmoyer.com.)

(ht socialtimes)

Free discipleship volunteer training guide [Freebie Friday]

Tim Schmoyer — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 13:00:17 +0000

Our Weekly Freebie Friday: #267

Jeremy Smith is a youth worker in the Air Force Academy, as well as guy who works with Youth For Christ and other youth ministry organizations. He wrote a 20 page training guide he uses with volunteers in helping them become a “disciple-teacher” themselves.

There’s several different ways you could use this, though, besides just training new adult leaders. The guide contains several devotions and Bible studies you can use with your leaders during your trainings, meetings, or even in an email message.

Jeremy provides both the PDF and the Word document so you can modify the guide and use it freely in your ministry however it works best for you. Snag it from his website linked below.

Download the Discipleship Volunteer Training Guide

What’s going to happen to LISM now?

Tim Schmoyer — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 13:00:50 +0000

In case you missed it, last Tuesday I announced that I accepted a position at Epipheo Studios and will be moving to Cincinnati after we finish up some other travel plans. Then yesterday I shared a bit about why I didn’t go back into a church ministry position.

The question going through my mind now is, “So what’s going to happen to Life In Student Ministry now that I’m not officially in full-time vocational church youth ministry?”

LISM continues to grow!

Throughout this entire past year of not working in a paid church position LISM has continued to grow, perhaps more than any other year! My heart and passion for teenagers and their families hasn’t changed. I plan to continue writing about my experiences in youth ministry, especially from a family ministry perspective and from a volunteer perspective who knows what it’s like on the other side of youth ministry as a paid leader.

However, I may give myself the freedom to let certain features, like Freebie Friday, not be as consistent every week so I can free myself up to have the time to write and process other youth ministry content. Although, missing a week of Freebie Friday at this point would be a real shame since I haven’t missed a Friday in over 5 years! Hmm… Yeah, that would be a shame. How about this: if you have a youth ministry resource you created that you’d be willing to contribue as a free download for several thousand other youth workers to use, please feel free to pass it along! You’ll get full credit and a link, of course. That will definitely make it easier to keep Freebie Friday going. (Tracking down a new free resource every week takes more time than you might think.)

I really love the community of youth workers here! The amazing dialog we have here is so helpful to me in my own approach to youth ministry, so I look forward to our on-going discussions about creating spiritually influential ministries for teens and their families. You guys keep me on my toes! I love it!

And TimSchmoyer.com comes back to life!

Because I need a personal outlet to process other stuff I’m thinking, I decided to resurrect TimSchmoyer.com for personal blogging as I work with online video, social media, and Truth at Epipheo Studios. I’ve dubbed it,

“The intersection of Truth, storytelling, online video, social media, marketing, and technology.”

Yeah, that’s a lot of intersections, I know.

If you’re interested in following along at TimSchmoyer.com as I continue to learn how to use the web and online video to change people’s lives, subscribe to the RSS feed or subscribe to the site’s email list.

Visit the resurrected blog, TimSchmoyer.com!

Why I didn’t go back into a church ministry position

Tim Schmoyer — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 13:00:55 +0000

As I mentioned yesterday when I announced my new position at Epipheo Studios, it was very difficult for me to think of myself as doing anything other than full-time vocational youth ministry. “Church world” is all I know. I started serving in youth ministry to my peers as a high school student myself and just haven’t stopped since then.

When Epipheo contacted me about the potential opportunity there, it sounded intriguing to me, but I really saw myself more in traditional ministry because it’s where my heart, passion, skills, and connections are. But the more I talked with the CEO of Epipheo, Jeremy Pryor, about what Epipheo does and his vision for where he wants the company to go, so much of what he shared vibed with my heart and passion for ministry. I even took him up on an offer to go out to their office in Cincinnati and talk more with him and other leaders in the company. It was there that I think several things clicked with me despite my wrestling with the idea of no longer being employed by traditional youth ministry.

1. First and foremost, the owners of the company and most of its leaders are former pastors, youth pastors, and ministry leaders. Their hearts for ministry haven’t changed — their ministry is just expressed differently through their work at Epipheo. It’s been fun for me to see that in the few weeks I’ve been talking with them!

2. Perhaps by biggest frustration with serving in churches is that, as far as my experience is concerned, they tend to be very content with just maintaining their ministry. As a big-picture guy who needs a compelling vision in order just to function, nothing frustrates me more than a church that’s content with where they are. No church actually says they’re content and comfortable. In fact, they say just the opposite and sometimes they even think they really mean it, but yet most that I’ve been in contact with are unwilling to really make the deep-rooted changes that are necessary, often because doing so may be costly and uncomfortable. They like the idea of innovation and a vision that facilitates momentum, but the actual implementation may be risky. I’m hoping this starts to change, but more on that some other time.

At Epipheo I sense they operate the way I wish a church would operate. I feel like we hold similar values not only in our philosophies of ministry, but also in vision, innovation, and forward movement. Their vision of, “Revealing truth in a way that changes people’s lives,” is one that resonates with me and offers such tremendous potential, especially as we talk about how we can continue to make “truth” a capital T and tell God’s Story in engaging ways.

3. When I think about the ministry potential that Epipheo offers in revealing Truth online through video, social media, and technology, it really starts to blow my mind! I feel bad for saying this, but I feel like I can make a bigger eternal impact for the Kingdom through Epipheo than I can through a church. At Epipheo I sense like there are fewer barriers, there’s less resistance, and more potential to change people’s lives by telling God’s Story in innovative ways. I truly believe the church is the bride of Christ and is His divine plan for spreading His story on earth, but thankfully I believe the Lord will continue to use me to influence His bride while not relying on it for my full-time income.

4. Over this past year I had the tremendous privilege of volunteering in the youth ministry at our church and man, I loved it! It really played to my pastoral giftedness much better than the traditional youth pastor role as a program coordinator and event planner. Working full-time for Epipheo will provide me the opportunity to really dive in deep with a youth ministry on a volunteer basis and continue to serve in that capacity. In fact, I’ve already started talking with a church in the Cincinnati area that’s really trying to move toward a family-based approach to ministry and appears to be willing to make some of those deep-rooted changes. I’m excited about the potential of partnering with them and helping them continue to move forward however I can.

5. Let me just be honest with you guys: I’m the kind of person that tends to jump in with both feet and be totally immersed when I’m doing something I’m passionate about, almost to the detriment of my family. I’ve had poor boundaries between my ministry and my family in the past. Sometimes that’s praised in “church world” because, “It’s so clear that you are dedicated to the Lord’s work!” And to be even more honest, sometimes I think that kind of immersive ministry was not always based on passion but on insecurity. I felt like I needed the church to feel like their financial investment in me was worthwhile. It doesn’t take a genius to see how unhealthy that is on so many levels.

While no one at Epipheo asked or talked about that, in my brief time with them, they modeled something for me that was so refreshing: on Friday evening cell phones go on airplane mode until Saturday evening. That time is spent eating meals together with their family, family Bible study, games, movies, and dedicated family time with no work interruptions. I want to work at a place that not only says they value family as our primary ministry, but actually lives it out. Seeing that modeled for me will really empower me to emulate it, which I want more than anything else.

So, with all that said, our next steps are this: we’re moving out of our house in Minnesota after church this Sunday (which we were planning to do anyway) and will drive all our stuff to a storage unit in Cincinnati where Epipheo’s office is located. After spending a few days at Epipheo and scoping out different neighborhoods we’ll continue on to my parents’ house in Pennsylvania. We’ll stay there for a few weeks while I fulfill some speaking engagements on the east coast before driving to my wife’s parents’ house in Texas. We’ll be there for two months while I work remotely for Epipheo. Then, at the end of April we’ll move to Cincinnati to settle down and work closer to the office. At least that’s the plan for now.

These next few months are going to be crazy! Follow along on Facebook or Twitter!

I took a new job!

Tim Schmoyer — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 12:00:52 +0000

After 13 years of vocational youth ministry and 15 months of letting my entrepreneurial streak run loose, the Lord seems to be combining all the skills and passions I’ve developed through those experiences into the position I recently accepted at Epipheo Studios. It was definitely a challenging decision to make not only because several other attractive opportunities presented themselves around the same time as Epipheo did, but because it’s the first full-time non-church ministry job I’ve ever had. All I know is “church world.”

There are many reasons why I chose to accept the Creative Strategist position at Epipheo Studios instead of a church youth ministry position somewhere, which I’ll share tomorrow. On Thursday I’ll share some of my plans for Life In Student Ministry going forward, as well.

In the meantime, most of you guys know my wife and I are both very active on YouTube, so we made a little vlog of my conversation with the CEO of Epipheo Studios when I accepted the position last Friday. Feel free to eavesdrop on our conversation and hear a bit of our hearts for me in this position.

After I fulfill some speaking engagements on the east coast and we spend some time with my wife’s family in Texas we’ll be moving to Cincinnati, Ohio, to work at Epipho’s office. In the meantime, I’ll be working for them remotely with some travel between their Portland, OR, and Cincinnati offices.

Chances are good that you haven’t heard of Epipheo Studios (I hadn’t until they contacted me), but if you do anything on the web you’ve most likely seen some of their videos without knowing they made it. That was certainly true for me. Some of their clients include Google, Facebook, Amazon, Mashable, TV Guide, Microsoft, McAfee, AOL, and hundreds more, so if you’ve seen some of their animated videos, you may have seen Epipheo’s work.

Here’s a fun, short little video by Epipheo that explains more of what they do.

Epipheo’s slogan is, “Revealing truth in a way that changes lives.” That’s primarily been focused on communicating their clients’ stories, but all the guys who own and run the company are strong believers who want to do more to share God’s story. I’m excited to join them in turning the “truth” in their slogan into a capital T.

FREE Valentine’s Day youth group lesson [Freebie Friday]

Tim Schmoyer — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 14:49:51 +0000

Our Weekly Freebie Friday: #266

The guys at youthministry360 are giving away a FREE Valentines lesson. It’s a solid lesson that uses the story of Ruth and Boaz to talk about the God-centered love we see in the Bible versus the broken image of love the world bombards students with.

The lesson also makes the connection that the aspects of love seen in Ruth’s story are perfected in the love we see in Christ.

It features an interactive PowerPoint slideshow as well as a Leader’s Guide.

NOTE: You’ll have to part with some personal information and answer a few questions on YM360′s site to gain access to the download.

Get the FREE Valentine’s Day lesson

Make this a trend: Teach beyond behavior modification

Tim Schmoyer — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 13:00:00 +0000

If you missed the past several days of this series, I’m sharing some of the trends I see taking place in youth ministry and the implications they hold for our future. There’s been a lot of great discussion so far! Catch up with the, “Where youth ministry is going,” series with these posts:

Today I want to address something that I wish was a trend. It doesn’t appear to me to be a trend in the youth ministry world right now, but it really needs to become one.

4. What I wish was a trend: Evaluating the content we teach.

I feel like a lot of what we teach in youth ministry is ultimately behavior modification. We’re not really addressing deep, core issues as much as we’re addressing what we see on the outside. We’re teaching kids to act like better Christians more than we are helping them to fall in love with Christ.

When we teach scripture to kids, it usually revolves around questions like:

What does God want you to do?
How does God want you to live?
What does God say about sex, lying, cheating, drinking, etc.

I feel like we’re starting with the teenager’s life and trying to make scripture connect with that instead of first starting with scripture and letting it speak to teenagers and shape their life.

What if we start with a scripture and approach it asking, “What does this scripture say?” and conform our life around that instead of the other way around?

Yes, we want scripture to intersect with their everyday life, but as long as we use the Bible to address their issues, the focus is still on them. They become the foundation instead of scripture. Furthermore, teens begin to subconsciously believe that the Bible is here primarily to tell them what to do and to make their life better somehow by solving their problems. And it makes sense because the focus has always been on them and their life and trying to fit scripture into it instead of approaching scripture first and trying to wrap our lives around whatever it happens to say.

Restoring the element of mystery

Honestly, the way we teach scripture often boils God’s Word down to a three-point outline that gives basic Sunday School answers. Maybe we shouldn’t be giving answers at all, but instead leading students through the process of discovering truth for themselves. Self-discovery has the highest retention and life-transformation anyway.

We give our intro, main points, conclusion, application and kids walk away with no questions, no loose ends to ponder, and very little to wrestle with. We present scripture to them as a nice little present that’s all neatly wrapped up, packaged to look attractive with a little bow on top. We’ve totally removed the element of mystery from the scripture!

Kid want to connect with the depth that’s contained in scripture! Both church kids and non-churched kids alike are looking for that element of mystery. They don’t get it from church, so they find it in Harry Potter, Twilight and World of Warcraft instead.

Moralistic Therapeutic Deism

There’s been a lot written on this subject, but I’m going to bring it up again because it is so fitting with the problem of using God’s Word to teach behavior modification.

The National Study of Youth and Religion conducted research that’s summarized in Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton’s book, “Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers.” In it, their findings show that the 5 common religious beliefs among American youth are:

A god exists who created and ordered the world and watches over human life on earth.
God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions.
The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.
God does not need to be particularly involved in one’s life except when God is needed to resolve a problem.
Good people go to heaven when they die.

That’s what kids believe about God when they graduate. That’s what they’re taking with them to college.

Obviously, there’s a lot of influences that make up this perception, but what we teach and how we teach it are essential to combating this!

A lot of it goes back to how we teach scripture as something to address issues in their life. I’m not opposed to topical studies, but I think we need a lot more exegetical studies where we start with scripture and go through books of the Bible and pull out all the good, the bad, and the uncomfortable and face it.

Questions

How does what you teach either combat or unintentionally promote Moralistic Therapeutic Deism?
Does your approach to scripture basically address behavior modification?
How can your ministry be more intentional of starting with scripture and wrapping our lives around that instead of the other way around?

Formulating contextualized visions and philosophies

Tim Schmoyer — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 13:00:05 +0000

Here’s the third trend I see taking place in youth ministry.

3. Formulating contextualized visions and philosophies.

There was a trend for the past 15 years or so where churches just looked to the mega churches and copied whatever Saddle Creek was doing. Churches saw what was happening in their churches and thought, “Wow, we’d really love to have that happen in our church, too!” So they adopted their philosophies and strategies and microwaved a bit to call them their own, which basically meant adding their own labels to what’s essentially the same philosophy. They called it “theirs,” but it really wasn’t.

Thankfully, now I see that our churches are discovering that following the Lord’s plan for someone else’s church really isn’t translating to their community the way we hoped. Maybe we forget that the churches we look to for leadership spent years and years in prayer, deeply pursuing God for His vision for their church and thankfully God blessed those efforts. While we have a lot to learn from churches like this, I think we’re now recognizing that each church must do the same because God has a unique plan and vision for each church that’s only revealed over time through prayer and pursuit of God.

I think we’re learning that cooking someone else’s recipe with different ingredients in a different ministry context just doesn’t give you the same end result. I sense that more and more churches are now taking personal ownership over a process of discovering the Lord’s plan and vision for their specific community. I see a lot of this is starting in the youth ministry world and flowing into the rest of the church.

Formulating a vision with no evaluation

However, here’s my word of caution: there are a lot of churches and ministry organizations who are taking ownership of developing their vision, but once they have the vision somewhat solidified, they jump straight to strategy, which is fine as long as the evaluation piece is put securely in place, as well.

Otherwise,

How do you know if your strategy is even helping you truly accomplish your vision?
How do you know if you’re still heading in the same direction now as you were 5 years ago when you set that vision into motion?
Every year new kids come in to your ministry and others leave. How does your ministry morph to work with the specific kids in your ministry?
What if something you do in your ministry has very little spiritually influence? Will you know it?
How do you know what to eliminate because it’s spiritually weak? Or what to pour yourself into because it’s so powerful?

We think about questions like that, but our evaluation is often very subjective. Sometimes it just comes down to, “Let’s ask some people and see what they think,” and we end up with a team of people pooling their ignorance. Sometimes those people suggest we repeat certain events because, “We had a good turnout,” or, “Everyone seemed to have a good time!” as if those are our goals and the standards by which we evaluate the ministry.

While I’m glad churches are beginning to think for themselves, it’s almost pointless if you don’t set down rails to keep your train pointed in the right direction. Otherwise your burning a lot of fuel and making a lot of noise, but you’re ultimately not going anywhere as a ministry.

Questions

I’d love to hear your responses to some of the questions I asked earlier in this post. I really would! It will be helpful not only for us to articulate it together, but also to hear other people’s answers in the contexts of their ministry.

A resource about this

P.S. My ebook, “Focused Youth Ministry: How to discover God’s vision for your ministry, implement it, and make it sustainable,” deals with this topic directly. In fact, in it I outline a 30-step process that will lead you to not only discovering what God’s unique vision is for your group, but also how to develop a plan to move it forward as well as an evaluation system for tracking the effectiveness of its movement over time.

I actually just released a little animated promo video for the ebook. The next 100 people to pick up a copy can use coupon code “YOUTUBE” to get 50% off!

12 months of devotions for youth workers [Freebie Friday]

Tim Schmoyer — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 13:00:08 +0000

Our Weekly Freebie Friday: #265

I’m really looking forward to going to the Simply Youth Ministry Conference again this March! It’s always such a great time of networking, conversations, challenges, growth, and encouragement.

One of the things I like most is that it’s mostly organized and pulled off by full-time youth workers who are serving at churches every day just like the rest of us. That “in the trenches” feel is pretty unique at SYMC. I love it!

One of the things these youth workers wanted to do was continue the “camp high” we feel after leaving a conference like this. They wanted to help us stay encouraged and engaged with scripture, so several of them wrote a series of 12 free Bible studies that are designed specifically for the youth worker’s soul. And you can download them all completely free!

Download them to use by yourself or even with your volunteer team!

Download the, “Recharge,” Bible studies for youth workers

(ht youthworktalk.com)

A family-based approach to youth ministry

Tim Schmoyer — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 13:00:40 +0000

2. Moving toward a family-based approach to youth ministry

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, outsourcing is very prominent in our culture. It’s not always entirely bad. In fact, if people didn’t outsource different projects to me that are outside their skill set I wouldn’t have an income right now! But sometimes we become so used to outsourcing that we stop taking responsibility for the things we ought.

I mean, we outsource our kids’ athletics to a coach, their driving lessons to an instructor, education to a teacher, and in Hollywood some people make full-time jobs out of teaching celebrities’ kids how to ride a bike and go shopping!

We may all agree that that is too far, but where’s the line? What is acceptable to outsource and what isn’t? Is education too far? Is sports acceptable? Is giving youth pastors the responsibility of teenagers’ spiritual formation too far?

Most of us probably agree that the parents are supposed to be the primary spiritual developers of their kids’ faith — their faith should not be outsourced to the “paid professional” on staff at church. Yet, despite what we say, how we do youth ministry begs to differ with our words because we still enable parents to do otherwise.

Thankfully, it seems that there’s a trend of youth workers and church leaders saying, “No, we won’t enable parents to continue to place the responsibility of teenagers spiritual development on our shoulders!”

But something is missing

Most of us are probably familiar with the need to have parents be the primarily spiritual influence in a teenager’s life, but we have no idea where to start.

So we start at the wrong places. We start with doing more things:

Parent meetings
Parent newsletters
Provide discussion questions for parents based on our lessons

Doing more things is better than doing nothing, but ultimately it leads to superficial results because it fails to address the root issue.

We have to start with identity, not function. What we do should flow from who we are, never vice versa.

And that’s true for parents, too. It’s not just about what a parent does that influences their teen’s faith, it’s how a parent lives. And how they live flows out of who they are.

The invisible elements of their parents’ faith, like passion and sincerity, can’t be faked. They play such a critical role in the spiritual formation of children and teenagers, yet they flow from sharing life together more than adding another program or event for parents to our already full youth ministry calendar.

A new model of ministry to parents

We really have to care about what’s going on in the heart of the moms and dads in our churches. Not just say we care about it, but care enough to make the necessary radical shifts in our own families and ministries. If the parents in our churches are passionately sold out to the Lord, that is going to mess with their teenagers in huge ways! They’ll see it in their parents’ lives, not just hear it talked about as a compartment of their lives.

Thankfully, I hear churches talking about this shift more and more. No one quite seems to know what this looks like nor the implications it will have for their ministry if they make the vision shift on an “identity” level instead of on the “function” level, but we’re talking about it just the same. And I trust that our discussions will continue to formulate our thinking and perspectives, change our own hearts, and that conviction will give way to contagious passion. Soon we’ll become intolerant of enabling the very behavior we say we resist.

Questions

How are you starting to lead and model a family-based youth ministry in your home?
What does family-based ministry look like for your church right now?
How have you seen your personal spiritual growth affect your children and your family?

The role of the youth pastor is changing

Tim Schmoyer — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 14:34:57 +0000

If you missed the introduction to this series yesterday called, “Where youth ministry is going,” there’s been a lot of great discussion on that post about trends we see in youth ministry and where we think they’re taking us.

It’s interesting for me to see how some of your perceptions are exactly the opposite of mine. Plus, I found it interesting that many of the trends you all have observed in youth ministry tend to be negative. Again, that’s been the opposite of what I’ve been feeling. I largely love the trends I’m seeing with the exception of one that I wish I saw more of, which I’ll explain at the end of this series next week.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this first trend I’m seeing in youth ministry. Comment below even if you only skim all of this.

1. The role of the YP changing in the larger church body.

In all my interviewing with churches this past year, one question that’s been very helpful for me to ask is, “So, why are you hiring a youth pastor?” Usually their response is noble and well-intentioned, but ultimately doesn’t satisfy the question. For example, “We really value teenagers,” or, “We need someone to run the ministry.” I’m glad churches value teenagers, but you don’t need a youth pastor to make teenagers feel valued. Nor do you need to hire a youth pastor to run the youth ministry. Some of the most healthy and thriving youth ministries I know of don’t even have a paid staff member.

In the past it mostly seemed to me that the role of the youth pastor was for the church to outsource that ministry to a paid professional. While every church’s heart is in the right place, ultimately what they were saying was, “We need to hire an expert to come in and do ministry to teenagers.”

The problem with that statement is that it takes responsibility away from the congregation for ministering to teenagers. It’s the church saying, “Youth ministry is your job.” They take the body’s calling to serve teenagers and place it on the shoulders of an individual who, unfortunately, accepts it and all the responsibilities and implications that go along with it.

This can look many different ways in different churches. Most commonly it’s, “We’re going to provide volunteers to support you in your ministry because we know you can’t do it by yourself.”

And sometimes we, as youth workers, actually perpetuate this perspective without even realizing it because sometimes it’s what we believe about our role, as well. Even by the way we recruit leaders, we approach potential adult leaders like we need someone to help us, someone to fill a vacant role in the youth ministry. From their perspective, they are joining us in our ministry to help us out, and sometimes we get fortunate enough to recruit someone who really loves teenagers and loves supporting us.

In some churches, that even goes a step further where they’re essentially saying, “We hired a youth pastor to do ministry to teenagers on behalf of the church so we don’t have to.”

And too many youth workers are accepting jobs like that then wondering…

why they’re burning out.
why they don’t feel the support they wish the ministry had.
why adult volunteers and students aren’t taking ownership of the ministry.
why the success and failure of the ministry rests on them.
why leaders don’t show up for trainings.
why leaders are not going to the soccer games of the kids in their small group.
why ministry feels mostly administrative.

The shift

Thankfully, some churches are starting to see this differently now.

Instead of hiring someone to “do youth ministry on our behalf,” they’re recognizing that God calls them, as a body, to minister to teenagers as much as they’re called to minister to adults, parents, children, senior citizens, and everyone else.

Some churches are now saying, “No, we value our teenagers too much to dump them on a youth pastor. We’re going to take responsibility of this ministry and corporately reach teenagers the best way we know how.”

They’ve effectively eliminated the need for a youth pastor, which is awesome!

From what I’ve seen, the churches who are thriving in their ministry to teenagers without a youth pastor are wholeheartedly taking ownership and are exponentially more effective in their spiritually intentional efforts to reach them because it’s a community of adults who serve because God has called them to do this, not because a youth pastor asked them to consider volunteering some time.

The problem they run into

Usually they cruise for several years doing amazing, awesome ministry until something happens: they hit the ceiling of what they can do. After all, these are people who aren’t trained in youth ministry – they just love teenagers and feel called to serve them.

So when they hire a youth pastor, it’s not to come in and take over the programming, planning, coordinating, and relationships with the kids – it’s to come alongside of the people who are already serving and train them to do it better.

It’s an equipping role, not an outsourcing role. It’s about coaching and modeling ministry and leading the leaders more than leading the teens. Youth ministry for the youth pastor revolves around the adult leaders more than it does around the students.

Wagon wheel vs. oil

As my friend Mark Riddle explains it, if you take the hub out of the wheel, everything stops and falls apart. Similarly if the hub of a ministry revolves around the youth pastor, the ministry will rise or fall based on that one person.

Instead of being the hub, pastors should serve as the oil between gears. The gears should turn with or without the youth pastor, but the youth pastor can help everything move more smoothly and effectively. The youth pastor gives input, helps steer the team in the right direction, provides training for each person’s role, supports and encourages, helps the team process through decisions, etc.

The role of the pastor in the church comes back to reflect Ephesians 4 a bit more accurately as an equipper of the saints.

Spiritual Gift vs. Position

Remember that being a pastor is just as much a spiritual gift as it is a position we hold.

Here’s the key: if being a pastor/shepherd is spiritual gift, then there are a lot more pastors in our church than we realize. Furthermore, there are lot more literal “youth” pastors in our own youth groups who are not even engaging on that level because the church body sees a pastor primarily as someone who is a forerunner in a paid position.

If we start to see the pastor/shepherds in our congregation and use them to be pastors to equip students, then our role is to equip and shepherd the equippers.

And thankfully I see that shift beginning to take place as churches think more critically about the youth pastor’s role and are becoming less content to give such a vital area of ministry over to a single paid individual.

Questions

How do you function in your church? More as a hub or more like oil?
Do you feel like your church primarily outsources the youth ministry to you?
How are you guys using the “youth” pastors and other pastors in your congregation?

Where youth ministry is going

Tim Schmoyer — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 12:00:00 +0000

I really don’t know exactly where youth ministry is going. There’s been a lot written on this subject, especially lately, but no one really knows for sure. It’s all tainted by our own values, experiences, and perceptions of what we see in the circles we run with.

I know this is definitely true for me. I tend to be involved with more conservative circles in youth ministry. Just like everyone else, I have a set of values that serve as a set of lenses for how I perceives shifts and decisions, too. What I share over the next several days is all based on that limited perspective and experience.

I’d love for this to be a discussion where we can talk about some of these things because I’d really love to hear what you guys are seeing out there. It’ll be interesting to see how my observations align or don’t align with your observations and vice versa.

I have 3 trends to discuss with you guys that I think are starting to take place in our approach to youth ministry, all of which really excite me! But there’s 1 trend that’s still not happening that I wish was a trend. Maybe if I rant hard enough about it in my last post of this series youth ministries will actually start doing it. We’ll see. ;)

Before we jump into the series tomorrow, I want to hear your initial thoughts on where youth ministry is going and what trends you see taking place that will shape our future. Comment below!

QUESTION: What 3 trends do you see taking place in youth ministry? What is 1 thing you wish was a trend that isn’t?

P.S. Just for kicks, read through a series I hosted back in 2006 where 25 youth leaders shared their thoughts on, “What needs to change in youth ministry?” Contributors include Marko, Adam McLane, Greg Stier, Joshua Griffin, and more. Funny to see what’s changed and hasn’t changed in youth ministry since that was written 6 years ago.

Posts in this series

Part 1: The role of the youth pastor is changing in the church body
Part 2: A family-based approach to youth ministry
Part 3: Formulating contextualized visions and philosophies
Part 4: Make this a trend: Teach beyond behavior modification

Evangelism discussion questions for Nickelback’s, “Savin’ Me” [Freebie Friday]

Tim Schmoyer — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 13:00:35 +0000

Our Weekly Freebie Friday: #264

I’ve been having a lot of fun writing the Dare2Share Blog for the past couple months. I’ve written a lot of articles for them along with Greg Stier, Jason Lamb, and others, but I think I enjoy creating the video blogs the most. I feel like I can communicate much more content in a shorter amount of time than I can with a blog post, like this one on what causes teenagers to share their faith more than anything else.

A few weeks ago I wrote a small group discussion guide for them to accompany Nickelback’s music video for, “Savin’ Me.” If you haven’t seen this music video, you really need to. Watch it here on YouTube.

The small group questions I wrote for this music video will lead you through a discussion about the message this video conveys about our time here on earth and how unbelievers may even be crying out to us to share the good news of Jesus Christ with them. As the song says, “Say it if it’s worth savin’ me!”

Visit my post on the Dare2Share blog to grab this discussion guide. And consider subscribing to them while you’re there.

Grab the, “Say it if it’s worth saving me,” discussion questions

Jesus relates to our ministry weaknesses [Time Out]

Adam Wormann — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 14:55:04 +0000

Time Out: Weekly quiet times for the youth worker’s soul.

Youth ministry has made me think about what Jesus would have been like as a teenager. I kind of wish the Bible talked about that a little bit more. Sure, teenagers were different 2,000 years ago, but it would have been really interesting to see how Jesus handled things during that whole awkward stage. All we really have is Luke 2 where Jesus was left alone for a few days and amazes people with his responses to their questions and teachings. Then we have two really powerful verses. Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man.

Think about that for a second. If Jesus grew in wisdom, does that mean that he didn’t have all wisdom already? To grow in wisdom and stature, he grew like a normal person. When he was two and figured out how to make the sounds of speech, he didn’t have a full vocabulary — he learned it.

I think sometimes we confuse sinlessness for perfection.

When the Bible talks about being perfect as Jesus was, it’s in reference to moral character, to sin. Jesus was certainly perfect in that way. But he was human too. He likely missed with a hammer and hit his hand. He fell down. He wasn’t the champion in dodge ball every single time. He probably got hit trying to make a catch and got eliminated. We often have an overly-sanitized version of Jesus that really make him seem like he lived less of a human life than he really did.

In Christianity we often emphasize Jesus divinity so much that we lose his humanity.

Here’s why that’s so important: Jesus can relate to us. Hebrews tells us that we have a high priest who can sympathize with our weakness. He’s felt temptation just like us, only even on a greater level. He’s felt shame like we have. He’s felt suffering far greater than us. Jesus is not so distant that we can’t relate to him – in fact he’s gone through this all so that he can relate.

Sometimes our sin and shortcomings keep us from Christ. In fact, they should draw us closer to him. He can understand humanity, relate to us, and loves us more than we can imagine.

Take some time to reflect on life a little bit. Is there something that you’re holding back from Jesus? Is there something that’s holding you back from Jesus? Sometimes, we don’t want to admit that these things are there. Jesus, through his life and teaching, invites to us bring them to him. Take some time in quiet reflection to think about these things.

Free church postcards, logos, slides, and more! [Freebie Friday]

Tim Schmoyer — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 13:00:35 +0000

Our Weekly Freebie Friday: #263

As a youth worker, you probably spend a fair amount of time trying to design websites, flyers, logos, handouts, PowerPoint slides, emails, postcards, and everything the rest of the church staff throws at you as the “computer guy” or “computer girl.” What everyone else doesn’t know is that we actually aren’t really that great with designing stuff, we just know where to get the good stuff online to customize.

One of those sites you can add to your arsenal if it isn’t already a part of it is CreationSwap. There’s a lot of freelance artists and church designers who publish their content there for free for anyone to download and use in their ministry. This includes:

Photos
Slides
Postcards
Bulletins
Banners
Invitation Cards
Logos
Vector Art
and more!

CreationSwap also offers some paid services, too, if you want the creator to customize a design for you. Soon you’ll also be able to order professional prints of postcards and such. Watch this video to learn more about how CreationSwap works.

If you want to look like a design whizz without any of the training, check out CreationSwap for a ton of free graphical goodness!

Visit CreationSwap.com

Huge announcement for my website business, MinistryWebsites.biz

Tim Schmoyer — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 14:00:30 +0000

Three years ago I started MinistryWebsites.biz as a response to many churches and organizations who were asking me for a drop-dead simple easy way to effectively communicate online without any technical skills. The service has done well to support many different ministries over the past several years. It’s been my joy to hear all the success stories from the churches who use the system and the ministry opportunities that present themselves as a result of being online.

Several months ago I entered into a conversation with Immerseme, a company based in Jackson, MS, that specializes in partnering with churches and non-profit organizations to establish and improve their online presences. That conversation led to what I’m excited to announce today: Immerseme has acquired MinistryWebsites.biz!

More about what this acquisition means for MinistryWebsites.biz, its clients, Immerseme, and myself personally are posted on the official MinistryWebsites.biz blog.

As virtual company, Immerseme employs the best talent available all over the United States across 4 time zones and 7 states. They truly have an incredible staff, all who love serving their clients, their ministries, and the work God is doing through them online.

Immerseme’s product portfolio includes mobile marketing, email newsletter software, website content management software, and turnkey message advancement, so if your ministry is looking for any of those solutions, I definitely recommend you check them out. They will continue to use the same drop-dead, simple, easy, website system that MinistryWebsites.biz was founded on, so even if you have little to no tech or website experience, you’ll still get the same great product from them that will allow you to create and update your website with great ease.

Crull Chambless, Co-founder and COO of Immerseme, says this, “Immerseme was founded out of a desire to help ministries be more effective in their communication. The acquisition of MinistryWebsites.biz is a natural fit to our overall goals and we’re excited to offer the same level of support and services to MinistryWebsites.biz clients as our existing clients enjoy.”

Go to Immerseme.com to learn more about them and their online products for ministries and non-profits. You can also like Immerseme on Facebook and follow Immerseme on Twitter.

5 things I love about the Simply Youth Ministry Conference

Tim Schmoyer — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 14:11:50 +0000

Let’s Connect at SYMC!

The Simply Youth Ministry Conference is coming up! Woohoo! If you’re going, I’d love to connect with you while we’re there! I’m teaching a workshop titled, “Communicating With Teens and Parents Throughout The Week,” where we look at different communication ideas and, most importantly, how to evaluate which ones work for your ministry and which ones don’t.

I’m also on a couple discussion panels, including the blogging/social media panel with Jon Acuff, Joshua Griffin, and Terrace Crawford, as well as the pornography panel with Craig Gross of XXXChurch and a few other people. Even my wife gets to serve youth workers at the conference, too, as she hosts the, “Married To A Youth Pastor” connect group. We’re both so super excited!

Yesterday my wife and I were talking about some of the things we love about the Simply Youth Ministry Conference. Here are our top 5 in no particular order.

1. Connecting

We love meeting new people! Every year we make new friends that we stay in touch with, which is awesome!

2. Conversational Tone

Perhaps the reason we end up meeting new people and making new friends is because of the intentional conversational tone to the conference. If you take the initiative to talk to new people, the sack chairs that are placed in groups all over the place certainly provide great opportunities to talk about life and ministry. Even the seminars are all focused on conversation more than on lecture.

3. Soul Care

While the conference definitely contains some of the top youth ministry training in the world, there is an equal amount of emphasis on tending to the emotional and spiritual needs of youth workers. This year there will be an emphasis on healthy marriages and sex. Plus, there’s always the great “Ministry In The Valley” team ran by my friends, Patti Gibbons and Len Evans. You don’t just leave with a few more youth ministry tools in your belt — you leave as someone who’s emotionally and spiritually more prepared to serve the Lord’s kids and their families.

4. Planned by Church Youth Workers

I love that Simply Youth Ministry provides the foundation and financial backing for this event, but the behind-the-scenes planning is all done by a team of over 100 church youth workers. Likewise, the conference workers who are pulling off the event are those same youth workers. This makes the conference a very unique experience, one that’s about linking arms and teamwork.

5. Community

Perhaps its the teamwork and community effort of youth workers pulling off this event that makes it feel like a community people who are all in this youth ministry thing together. Especially in the Connect Groups, we hear each other’s stories, support each other, provide encouragement, praise successes, bounce ideas, and so much more.

If you’re not yet registered for the Simply Youth Ministry Conference, we’d love to have you join us! It’s March 2-5 in Louisville, KY. More information at http://Conference.YouthMinistry.com.

QUESTION: If you’ve been to the SYMC, what do you love most? Comment below and share!

Ministry = My failure + God’s grace [Time Out]

Guest Author — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 13:00:38 +0000

Time Out: Weekly quiet times for the youth worker’s soul.
(by Benjer McVeigh)

When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” He said to him, “Feed my lambs.” He said to him a second time, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” He said to him, “Tend my sheep.” He said to him the third time,”Simon, son of John, do you love me?” Peter was grieved because he said to him the third time, “Do you love me?” and he said to him, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my sheep. Truly, truly, I say to you, when you were young, you used to dress yourself and walk wherever you wanted, but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will dress you and carry you where you do not want to go.” (This he said to show by what kind of death he was to glorify God.) And after saying this he said to him, “Follow me.” -John 21:15-19

Peter’s Redeemed Failure

Peter. The disciple who swore to Jesus that if it came down to it, he would rather die than turn away from his Teacher. The disciple who, only hours later, swore to strangers around him that he had never even met Jesus, let alone followed him. This is the Peter we read about in John’s gospel, talking with Jesus after breakfast. Jesus had been arrested, deserted by his friends, and executed after a brutal sham of a trial. The same trial that Peter tried to get a glimpse of, where he was recognized as a disciple of Jesus yet denied even knowing who Jesus was.

We would expect Jesus to forgive Peter. That’s just the kind of thing Jesus does. But what we often miss is that Jesus takes Peter’s failure and turns it into an invitation to serve Jesus. “Feed my lambs.” “Tend my sheep.” “Feed my sheep.” To put it simply, Peter’s failure plus God’s grace equals Peter’s ministry.

Your Redeemed Failure

Now, let’s make it personal: Your failure + God’s grace = your ministry.

I’m going to assume that you have failed in some way. In fact, I believe that most ministry leaders have at least one failure in their life that they believe somehow makes them less of a leader.

A marriage that ended in divorce… because you weren’t willing to work out your differences.

A pornography addiction… that you keep hidden because of your shame.

Drug or alcohol abuse… you’ve been clean for years, but sometimes the temptation still gnaws at you.

Or simply failing to take seriously and live out Monday through Saturday what you teach on Sunday.

It may be a public failure that everyone knows about. Or it may be a private failure that you’ve managed to keep from everyone… everyone except God.

I want to tell you something about your failure that perhaps no on has ever told you: Your failure plus God’s grace equals an invitation to ministry.

Let me be clear: this passage in John is not an invitation to cover up or ignore any moral failures in your life. If you need help, please tell someone you trust and get the help you need, even if that means stepping down from your current leadership position. But know that your failures are not the end.

Refocus Your Failure

I hope you’ll allow me some liberty as a paraphrase Jesus’ words:

“Peter, I know you feel ashamed because you denied me. But your failure is not the end. Your failure — combined with my sacrifice — will be the strength behind your service. I not only forgive you, but I will redeem what you have done in order to tell of the love and mercy of my Father. Peter, your failure is not the end. Rather, my forgiveness that you receive is just the beginning.”

This is, in essence, what Jesus said to Peter. Maybe you’re thinking to yourself, I wish Jesus could say that to me. He does. Read that paragraph again, this time inserting your name and your failure:

“______, I know you feel ashamed because you ______. But your failure is not the end. Your failure – combined with my sacrifice – will be the strength behind your service. I not only forgive you, but I will redeem what you have done in order to tell of the love and mercy of my Father. _______, your failure is not the end. Rather, my forgiveness that you receive is just the beginning.”

Your failure. God’s grace. Invitation to ministry. May you embrace that reality today, perhaps for the first time.

Reflect

In what area of your life have you failed morally and for which you need to ask God’s forgiveness and perhaps the forgiveness of others?
In what ways have you hidden any of your failures because you believe it makes you less of a pastor or leader?
In what ways have you seen God work through you despite your failings, or in what ways do you hope God will use you despite your failings?

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________

Benjer McVeigh is a youth pastor in Ogden, UT, where he works with students in grades 9-12 and their families at Washington Heights Church. You can read more from Benjer at www.benjermcveigh.com or follow him on twitter

Free activities, Bible studies, and tools from LeaderTreks! [Freebie Friday]

Tim Schmoyer — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 13:00:13 +0000

Our Weekly Freebie Friday: #262

I love the guys at LeaderTreks! Having done some work with them in the past, I’ve really grown to appreciate their hearts for partnering with youth workers to develop student leaders. The team of people there are really top-notch. Seriously.

While on their website, I noticed they’ve added a lot of new free youth ministry resources (or maybe it’s just more organized now, so it looks like more?). There’s a lot of good stuff there! Check the left sidebar for links to all their resources! Here’s some of what I found on their site, all FREE!

Help students identify a mentee
A guide for weekly youth leader meetings
A guide for helping student leaders hone in on their leadership values
Help students discover ways to share Christ’s love with their friends
How to structure a great lesson
A weekly checkup for your students as they start small group
Help your student leaders understand strategic planning
Help your students set goals for the whole year
Help your students begin to identify their mission
An interactive assessment for placing youth group volunteers by passion
An interactive study for youth workers on how to overcome conflicts in youth ministry
Understand your personality
Discovering your passion
Allowing God to lead your life
A small group study looking at how Joshua and Caleb’s character teaches us about leadership
A small group study looking at how Ruth’s character teaches us about leadership
Help your students grow in their ability to work together to accomplish a goal and communicate effectively
An initiative to help your students build unity, communication, and trust
A team building game that challenges your students focus

There’s also a couple free ebooks available for download.

Visit their freebie page at the link below. They even have a little welcome video waiting for you. Gotta love it!

Visit the LeaderTreks Free Resources Page

My values in ministry

Tim Schmoyer — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 12:00:26 +0000

Most of our churches probably have a document somewhere that lists the church’s stated core values, which is great. But what’s even more important is the list of unidentified values. Stated values are fine, but are ultimately meaningless unless the church community intentionally embodies them in every way. The unidentified values are the values that a faith community actually lives by, what influences decisions, how success is determined, and why the church goes one direction instead of another. Most churches haven’t throught through their unidentified values and any discrepancy between them and their stated values.

But that’s also true for us.

As I’ve been interviewing with churches and asking a lot of questions that try to reveal some of the unidentified values a church holds, I’ve been reflecting on some of those values for myself. Knowing what a church’s true values are doesn’t really help me much unless I know what my true values are and how they might or might not align with the church’s.

The temptation for me is to list values that I wish I held so that I would appear to be more well-rounded and balanced, but what’s more important is for me to identify what is, not just what I wish was the case.

So, here are some of the values that I have in ministry, loosely in order of importance. Sorry I don’t give a lot of detail here — I wrote this mostly for myself, but am happy to share it with you guys.

Foundation of scripture.
Prayer and listening to the Holy Spirit’s promptings.
Integrity, living upright, holy and above reproach.
Maintaining healthy ministry and personal boundaries for my family.
Personal development (both spiritual and professional).
Intentionally evaluating the ministry’s spiritual influence and implementing appropriate changes.
Casting vision.
Prayerfully taking calculated risks.
Serving from identity (doing flows from being).
Pastoral care.
Viewing parents as the teenagers’ primary spiritual leaders.
Creativity and expressing myself in ministry in new ways.
Authenticity, transparency, being who I really am.
Flexibility.
Investing into servant leaders, both adults and students.
Missions as an intense discipleship and evangelism tool.
Lifestyle of worship in both my own life and in the lives of teens.
Spiritual formation via experiences. Learning via discovering truths.
Practicing spiritual truths in my own life before I teach it and expect students to practice it.

QUESTION: What do you value most in ministry?

How can we be more valuable for you in 2012?

Tim Schmoyer — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 13:00:46 +0000

Every year I love to run a survey of all you guys because it’s always one of the most important things I do for this site and for you guys each year. The feedback and input you guys provide is absolutely invaluable in helping me write, generate content, and knowing what to focus on and what to let die.

I want to enter 2012 the same way.

The survey should only take about 3-4 minutes to complete, so when you have the time, please fill it out and help me serve you.

[ ~~SURVEY: Looking forward to 2011 with LISM~~ SURVEY CLOSED ]

All that I ask is that you be honest, courteous and constructive with your feedback. Thanks!

Thank-you gifts for 10 of you

As a thank-you, I’m giving away several books. Ten random people who complete the survey by January 10, 2012, will receive one of the following:

“Life In Student Ministry: Practical Conversations on Thriving in Youth Ministry,” by Tim Schmoyer
“Focused Youth Ministry: How To Discover God’s Vision for Your Ministry, Implement It, and Make It Sustainable,” by Tim Schmoyer (x3)
“Sifted: God’s Scandalous Response to Satan’s Outrageous Demand,” by Rick Lawrence
“The Volunteer’s Back Pocket Guide to Events and Retreats,” by Johnny Scott
“Emergency Response Handbook for Youth Ministry” (x2)
“Pure Praise for Youth: A Heart-Focused Study on Worship,” by Dwayne Moore
“Thrive: Do More Than Survive Your Faith,” by Ben Hardman

I’m looking forward to an amazing year of blessing you and your “life in student ministry!”

Money: Great Servant, Terrible Master [Time Out]

Guest Author — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 14:37:12 +0000

Time Out: Weekly quiet times for the youth worker’s soul.

Over the next year, on the first Monday of the month, we’re going to be running a series within Time Out called, “Life Lessons,” by Jerry Schmoyer (Tim’s dad). Here’s a note from Jerry:

As I approach retirement age and look back on a lifetime of ministry I realize there are some important principles I have learned. I’d like to share some of these with you. I’m sure God is teaching you these same truths and I hope that explaining them from my perspective can benefit you and your ministry.

As I come near the close this series of blogs on what I’ve learned in life I must mention money. It’s a great servant but a terrible master. I learned good financial principles from my parent’s example and that has helped me avoid a lot of financial problems. Money is great when it serves me, but if I start to serve it then it becomes a terrible master.

God has provided well for me financially. We don’t have an extravagant lifestyle and many would say we don’t earn a lot of money, but we’ve kept down our expenses and are quite content to live within our means. I thank God that misuse of money has not been one of my weaknesses. My wife and I both are frugal but still enjoy sharing generously. We find a balance that works for us between spending and saving. We have found some ways of using money that bring enjoyment to us and we thank God for this.

The danger with money is when it becomes a substitute for trust in God. Too many people evaluate themselves and their “success” in life in terms of dollars and possessions. Money does not bring security. In fact the more money God entrusts a person with the more they are accountable for their stewardship of this important resource.

We’ve established some principles concerning money which we have tried to pass on to our children. One is to not spend what you don’t have. God gives us 24 hours of time in a day and that’s all we have. It’s a limited resource and we must learn to live within it, although we often try to stretch it to its limit. Unfortunately today we can spend money we don’t have, and the temptation to do so can be great. But that will catch up with you and can cause many problems. Make sure you don’t spend money you don’t have.

A second principle we teach is that you can only spend your money once. While this might seem obvious, the truth behind it is that if you use it for the wrong thing then it won’t be there for something more important later, or maybe even what God intended it to be used for. In this country, with very few exceptions, God gives us the amount of money He knows we will need to live on plus extra to use for His Kingdom. He knows what He wants us to use it for. That’s why a budget can be a good way of discovering God’s will for the use of your money and make sure you stay within your limits. I can spend money I have (principle 1) but I must also spend it for what God intended it to be spend for (principle 2). If not I won’t have it for what I really need, nor will I properly use some of it for His Kingdom. That’s why we always remember that we can only spend our money once so we need to make sure we use it wisely.

Scripture

Philippians 4:11-13, “I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do everything through him who gives me strength.

1 Timothy 6:10, “For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.

Hebrews 13:5, “Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said, ‘Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.’”

Reflect

Are you spending money you don’t have? Why is that unwise to do?
Do you have a workable budget you stick to? If not, how can you be sure you are making the best use of the money God gives you?
If Jesus would sit down with you tonight and all your financial expenditures would be laid out before Him, what would He say? Would He make any suggestions? If so, what?
Pray and commit your finances to God. Ask Him to direct you in their correct use. Write down any changes you need to make and apply them immediately.

Free FacePlant video announcement tool [Freebie Friday]

Tim Schmoyer — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 14:55:55 +0000

Our Weekly Freebie Friday: #261

If you’re looking for a new, fun way to create video announcements for youth group, Youth Specialties and CrowdControlGames teamed up to offer a free program that automatically places your face inside different movie scenes. Grab a fun picture of your face from somewhere on your computer, copy it into their “Faces” folder, crop your face using the tool, and click on one of the available movie scenes. The movie will start playing with you as the star!

I made a sample video of myself as Neo in the movie, The Matrix, so you can get an idea of what FacePlant does. Unfortunately, there’s no video export setting that I found, so I used a screen capture program to record the video as it played on my computer monitor and then edited my own ending onto it. (More details about that here and here.) Here’s what it looks like.

For a video of how FacePlant works and the free download link, visit Youth Specialties’ blog post about it at the link below!

One side-note: I watched their intro video on the Youth Specialties’ blog post, FacePlant still wasn’t exactly intuitive for me at first. It took a bit of experimentation to figure out how to use it, but once I did, I saw that I skipped the last two paragraphs on Youth Specialties’ blog post that gave the instructions on how to use it. If I had read that first, it would’ve save me some time. haha

Download FacePlant from Youth Specialties!

Are we paid to be the Holy Spirit?

Tim Schmoyer — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 13:00:13 +0000

I’ve been looking through a lot of youth pastor job descriptions for various available positions around the country and one thing continues to stand out to me:

Do churches sometimes expect pastors to play the role of the Holy Spirit in people’s lives?

I see a lot of expectations outlined that have to do with inspiring growth, be convicting, teach dynamically, etc. But how much does that depend on us and how much of that is ultimately a work of the Holy Spirit in people’s lives?

I’m not sure I want to push this perception too far because there obviously is a lot of overlap between what we do and what the Holy Spirit does. I see it more like us doing our best to partner with the Holy Spirit’s work more than being held responsible for it.

I posted about this on the Life In Student Ministry Facebook Page yesterday and got some interesting feedback. Here are some of thoughts from other youth workers who responded to the Facebook post.

“I think most churches have job description that are unattainable.” – Jeff Greathouse
“In all honesty I would stay away from a church that communicates job ‘responsibilities’ that are the Holy Spirit’s in the first place. Not only is it unhealthy, but if for some reason the Spirit isn’t moving the way the church expects him to be, then it’s not the Holy Spirit that will get in trouble, it will be you. Find a church that desires for you to be faithful in communicating the Word to your students, and is open to allowing the Spirit to work through your faithfulness however He wants.” – David Turner
“I don’t even know if the Holy Spirit could do some things (or be some things) that churches look for.” – Adam Wormann
“Often churches don’t really know what they want or haven’t thought through a philosophy/theology of ministry so they write theological job descriptions that make no sense.” – David Lynn

There’s obviously some cynicism in some of these comments, but are they based on truth? I’d love to hear what your thoughts are.

QUESTION: What’s the balance between what we can do to help facilitate spiritual growth and people taking personal responsibility for their own spiritual growth? Do churches sometimes hold expectations for pastors that should be reserved for the Holy Spirit? Comment below!

The past will help us move forward in 2012 [Time Out]

Tim Schmoyer — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 14:51:08 +0000

Time Out: Weekly quiet times for the youth worker’s soul.

We often head into a new year with goals, plans, and a vision of what’s in store, what we’d like to accomplish, and where it’s going to take us. Looking toward the future is always a healthy thing, but let’s also look to the past and learn from what’s brought us to where we are today so we can better plan our trajectory for going forward.

Several years ago ministry was the main aspect of my life that I reflected on and evaluated in order to move forward, probably because it was the most tangible and least convicting. But I’ve since learned that evaluating ministry in isolation of my personal life and spiritual life only revealed a very small part of what was actually going on. Ministry never happens in isolation from our personal and spiritual lives. My energy for ministry is affect by what’s happening in my personal life. And my own spiritual growth with the Lord affects my perspective on both personal life and my ministry life. And, of course, ministry obviously impacts both our personal lives and spiritual lives, as well. They’re all intertwined and influence each other. Ministry is not an isolated compartment of our lives.

This week, instead of just reflecting on 2011′s ministry, combine that with your personal and spiritual life, as well, as you look at the past to plan the future.

Reflect

Overall, how would you describe 2011′s year of ministry?
Do you feel like you grew spiritually during that time? How so or why not?
How did the state of your own soul before the Lord affect what happened in ministry?
What was your personal life like this past year and how did it influence your time, energy, and focus on ministry?
In 2012, what needs to happen in your spiritual and personal lives and how do you foresee it influencing your ministry?

P.S. If you’d like a practical 30-step guide for focusing your ministry’s efforts and discovering God’s vision for your ministry in 2012, check out my new ebook, “Focused Youth Ministry.”

Icebreakers, skits and more from Youth Leader Coach [Freebie Friday]

Tim Schmoyer — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 14:57:49 +0000

Our Weekly Freebie Friday: #260

For those of you who are already familiar with Jeanne Mayo’s Youth Leader Coaching, you no doubt already know about all the incredible resources she has available on her site for a nominal fee. There’s a lot of great material there for $5.00 or less, but she also has a page of free resources that are available for download in exchange for joining their email list.

The freebie page includes:

Stories
Illustrations
Skits
Icebreakers
Monologues
and more!

Two of the skits are called, “Boy Meets Boy,” and, “Girl Meets Girl,” dealing with the issue of homosexuality at youth group, so Jeanne is definitely not afraid to tackle some tough and controversial issues with her resources. It’s definitely worth your time to check it out. Link to all the Youth Leader Coach goodness below:

Visit Youth Leader Coach’s Freebie Page!

Surprise phone call to the Christmas Fund winner!

Tim Schmoyer — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 14:57:51 +0000

Wow, this Youth Worker Christmas Fund Giveaway was so incredibly fun! It truly is better to give than to receive (Acts 20:35), and definitely way more satisfying!

The irony of this giveaway is that the idea for it stemmed out of a church who anonymously gave me and my wife a large check last year at Christmas time right when I lost my job as the youth pastor at our church. That check paid for all of my son’s delivery hospital bills right when we really needed it.

This year, the winner of the giveaway is also a youth worker who recently lost his job a few weeks before Christmas and is feeling the financial burden of a family, mortgage, and dental bills.

This was huge!

This giveaway grew to be much bigger than I ever anticipated! With 3,028 voters accounting for 4,695 total votes from across 40 different countries sending 13,150 hits to the voting page, it was definitely a crazy ride.

A huge thank you to all of you for giving to the Youth Worker Christmas Fund and thereby to with winner, Joshua Johnson. You guys purchased my ebook, Focused Youth Ministry, and bought cool watches from IWontWatch.com, growing this fund to an even $2,000.00! Suh-weet!

Also, a huge thank you to Simply Youth Ministry for sponsoring this along with IWontWatch.com! There’s no way we could’ve blessed Joshua Johnson with $2,000 without their support and contributions. Both of these organizations gave money without a second thought because they truly love youth workers.

I’m already thinking of ways to grow the fund even larger throughout the course of the year so together we can bless several youth workers in financial need next Christmas. If you have ideas for how to do this, please let me know!

My surprise phone call with Joshua Johnson

Yesterday I called the winner, Joshua Johnson, on the phone to officially let him know that he’s the winner. Listen to our conversation below. There’s some really cool things in this conversation.

How to stay hip, cool, and in touch with teens

Tim Schmoyer — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 14:55:23 +0000

While most normal people spend their free time watching sports and movies, I pretty much spend most of my media consumption time catching up on my 300+ YouTube subscriptions. I love YouTube so much more than traditional media for so many reasons.

One of the channels I subscribe to is Julian Smith who is popular for his comedy sketches that poke fun of popular cultural trends and common life experiences.

Last week as I was watching my YouTube subscriptions, I was surprised to see that he answered a youth worker’s question on his second channel and made an entire video dedicated to it.

The youth worker asked him:

…I’ve started to feel older and out of touch with the teens. Can you recommend anything to get me back in the “cool-zone?”

Here’s Jullian Smith’s response, playing one of his characters as a awkwardly abnormal, but lovable guy.

I don’t have the time for patience!!! [Time Out]

Adam Wormann — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 13:00:10 +0000

Time Out: Weekly quiet times for the youth worker’s soul.

I’m not big on patience. I’m from New Jersey (in the New York metro area), and things move quickly here… except during rush hour. Traffic is the bane of my existence. Sometimes I feel like I need a little confession booth in my car during rush hour… it’s not always good.

I also get mad at the microwave because two minutes feels like too long to wait for a Hot Pocket. And I love Netflix’s instant downloads because it takes way too long to drive all the way down the street to pick up a video rental (and forget walking!).

I’m trying to work on patience. Sometimes it goes well, sometimes it does not.

I’ve been reading through the story of Old Testmanet Joseph with my kids lately. Every night, we’ve been doing a different section of the story. This read-through, I was really intrigued by what happened when Joseph interpreted dreams while in prison. He helped the cup bearer and said “please don’t forget about me.” The cup bearer forgot him. Eventually he remembered, and it was only a chapter later. No big deal, except that next chapter comes two years later. We often forget that.

Joseph waits a week. Hears nothing. Waits two weeks. Nothing. And it goes on for two years!

There’s a great number of Youth Pastors who aren’t even in a church position for two years (I don’t know what the real stats are, but we know there’s a lot of youth workers who do fall into this camp). Sometimes there’s issues that drive us away and that we legitimately need to leave. Sometimes, we just need to be patient and we don’t like that. There are temporary rough patches, things we need to learn, and changes that take time.

In the midst of things, two years feels like forever. In the grand scheme, it’s not nearly as long.

In ministry, please be patient. I know we want to rush, and I know there’s days you just feel like giving up. Read through Joseph’s story again. God is with us, and God is faithful.

A perfect youth worker Christmas gift

Tim Schmoyer — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 14:55:12 +0000

Today and tomorrow (December 19-20, 2011), every watch that’s purchased at IWontWatch.com contributes $8.00 to the Youth Worker Christmas Fund, which is now up to almost $1,800!

If you haven’t yet today, go vote for who you want the funds to go to!

These watches are available in all sorts of colors and are the perfect youth worker Christmas gift for two reasons:

They fit the typical youth worker “style.”
Half of the $16.00 goes to a youth worker in need this Christmas, as voted on by you all!

Use these watches for your own fundraiser!

Additionally, if your ministry is looking for a good fundraiser, these watches can not only raise money for your youth group, but they serve as the perfect conversation starter to tell someone about your cause each time you get a compliment about your watch!

That’s exactly how I learned about IWontWatch.com in the first place. E.J. Swanson, who started “I Won’t Watch,” was wearing one and I really liked it. I mentioned the watch and gave him the opportunity to share his vision for “Stop Watching. Start Doing.”

I caught up on Skype with E.J. last week and we talked a bit more about “I Won’t Watch: Stop Watching. Start Doing.” and how you guys can use these as a fundraiser for your own group. Here’s a video of our conversation.

Free Christmas music, devotions, and more! [Freebie Friday]

Tim Schmoyer — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 13:00:58 +0000

Our Weekly Freebie Friday: #259

Wow, we hit the jackpot this week for Freebie Friday! We got three great Christmas resources for your youth ministry lined up for you!

1. Free Christmas Music from Interlinc

Interlinc (along with their friends at several music labels) are wishing youth leaders a Merry Christmas with 13 free Christmas songs. They have a limited number of download codes to give away, so call them at 800-725-3300 or email jerryddavis@interlinc-online.com and let them know you heard about it the music offer here to get your download code.

The free music download includes these songs:

tobyMac – The First Noel (Featuring Owl City)
Relient K – Deck The Halls
Jamie Grace – O Come, O Come Emmanuel
Holly Starr – What Child Is This
Me In Motion – Give It Away
Sara Groves – It Came Upon A Midnight Clear
Abandon Kansas – O Come, All Ye Faithful
Downhere – How Many Kings
Kimber Rising – For The First Time
Brandon Bee – Angels We Have Heard On High
House Of Heroes – Silent Night
Roger Williams & The All Mixed-Up Quartet – Christmas Bliss
Jason Bare – Have You Heard

2. Ten Days of Christmas from SYM

A freebie “snowball” melts every day, so keep checking back to get the new free download for that day! So far the giveaways include a free Christmas lesson, a video countdown, motion background templates, and more! It looks like there are future freebies and resources coming from Dare2Share and ministries, too.

Get free downloads from SYM’s 10 Days of Christmas giveaway!

3. Seven Days of Christmas Devotions

My friends at ym360 share my passion for equipping and supporting youth workers. As a way of saying thanks for the awesome job youth workers do investing into students lives, ym360 has written 7 days worth of Christmas devotions for youth workers. And, they’re giving them away free!

Each day looks at 1 specific character from the Christmas narrative. It pulls out 1 characteristic from the specific character and challenges you to consider how you might apply this characteristic in your life.

Download YM360′s 7 Days of Christmas Devotions from the Christmas Story

Using Santa app to make simple video announcements

Tim Schmoyer — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 14:58:19 +0000

A couple days ago my daughter and I were playing with the Talking Tom 2 app on my phone and used it’s recording feature to upload a little video us to Facebook.

Phillip Allen, a youth worker in Pennsylvania, commented saying that he uses the series of talking apps to record quick little youth group announcements. What a great idea! Here’s a video of one of his youth group announcements:

If you’ve ever used the app, then you know just how simple it is to record you voice as one of their characters and save the video to your phone/iPad, Facebook, or YouTube. Simply open the app, touch the video camera icon to record, and start talking. Tap the recording icon again to stop and you’ll automatically be prompted to publish or save the video. It’s as easy as that!

You can be Santa Clause, a cat, dog, parrot, mouse, giraffe, and more. If someone really want to be creative, I bet it would be fun to record two parts with different characters and then edit them together in iMovie or Windows Movie Maker, although obviously that’s more complicated.

There are both free versions and paid versions available ranging from $0.10 on Android to $2.99 for the iPad. Check them out below!

QUESTION: What other apps do you know of that would work great for making fun youth group video announcements?

What I’ve learned from being an entrepreneur this year

Tim Schmoyer — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 14:43:26 +0000

As I mentioned yesterday in my reflections on this past year of unemployment, I’ve really learned a lot from working for myself. It’s been challenging, yet very rewarding.

1. Working for yourself brings tremendous freedom and little security.
As a guy, I love the freedom part. I love exploring new things and finding creative ways to provide an income for my family in ways that I really enjoy. Having no limitations feels great! However, about half of our income is unpredictable each month. My wife craves that security part, as most women do. We’re both learning the balance of putting each other’s needs first in this area.

2. Balancing time between work and family is difficult.
Except for when I’m traveling on a speaking or consulting gig, I’m home all day every day. The good part of this is that I’m very available for my family and it provides a lot of flexibility for my wife to run out and do her errands while the kids take naps and such. The downside is that there are no real boundaries between when I work and when I don’t. Work tends to just take over because I really enjoy it, because I feel the pressure to provide, and because I feel like I’m already the family all day. But thankfully my wife reminds me that I’m really not present around the house all day.

3. Although our income is unpredictable, God’s provision is always predictable.
It’s been so good for me this year to continually see God provide over and over and over again. The more I work for myself, the more confident I feel that work and money never comes as a result of anything we do, but only because of God’s blessing. I start every month thinking, “Okay Lord, how are you going to provide for us this month?” And every month He does, often in unexpectedly way that I ultimately have no control over. It’s such an adrenaline rush! The only time we’ve had to dip into our savings account this year was to cover my son’s emergency overnight stay at the hospital a few months ago, but even then we were blessed enough to replace those funds the very next month.

Living financnially dependant on God has increased my faith in so many ways. The Lord continues to amaze me and, while we don’t have a lot of margin, we always have what we need. My trips to Haiti two summers ago really continue to influence my perspective on just how blessed we really are.

Reflecting on my first year of unemployment

Tim Schmoyer — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 13:00:02 +0000

This past year has been unlike any other year for me and my family. In November of 2010 I lost my job as the youth pastor at a church and have been “unemployed” ever since. With hardly any severance and no unemployment income, I was quickly forced to make a decision to either quickly find a job in town or to create my own job, although honestly, the former was never really an option I entertained too seriously. Even today, just the thought of working a normal mundane job in an office or store makes me cringe on so many levels. It totally is not how God wired me, not that I wouldn’t do it to provide for my family, but it was easily at the bottom of my list of options.

Since I’ve always had a strong entrepreneurial streak anyway, I naturally gravitated toward the community that’s surrounded Life In Student Ministry for the past seven years and started exploring the possibility of turning it into a full-time income. While the website itself has never really made much of an income besides some little ads here and there, the connections it provided were invaluable, especially at the beginning of the year. As the news of my unemployment spread, a lot of people generously offered me consulting gigs, bought advertising on the site, and booked me for speaking gigs. For a few months it felt like Life In Student Ministry might sustain us, but that eventually slowed down to a normal pace again and it became clear that I’d have to look for other ways to provide an income. Thankfully the Lord continued to provide through random opportunities, like an ebook I wrote that was purchased by Simply Youth Ministry shortly before I self-published it. (They’ll be publishing it soon!)

For a while I had really been gravitating toward the world of YouTube and online video, but when I suddenly had a lot of free time, I dove into it all the more. The medium of blogging is something I’m very familiar with. I know most of the ins and outs of this communication medium and how to do it well. But communicating through online video was an entirely new medium for me, a platform I had never really explored in-depth. It was all so intriguing and soon I found myself totally immersed in it, even becoming a semi-finalist in one of YouTube’s official contests for $35,000 and a promoted career and specialized training in online video. Although my audience was not large enough to earn enough votes to make it to the finals, I did make several good connections through that experience and later won a different contest that earned me free tickets to a YouTube conference in L.A. last July.

By that time I had started the YouthQuestions YouTube channel and was viewed by some as the “YouTube youth pastor,” which I proudly took as a compliment!

At the YouTube conference I expected to do a lot of networking and promotion for YouthQuestions, both of which happened, but most significantly I had dinner with Mark Robertson, the founder of ReelSEO.com, the leading blog of online video marketing. We had talked a few times previously, so it was good to finally connect in person. Out of that meeting came two ideas for a weekly video series: one that covers news in the online video world and another that gives tips and advice for online video creators. I was later contracted to produce both shows, which I’ve been doing for 17 weeks now. More recently, I’ve also been contracted to help with a lot of the behind-the-scenes projects at ReelSEO.

Is self-employment what I want to do for the rest of my life? No, I don’t think so. I feel like the Lord is providing for us while ultimately preparing me for whatever youth ministry position He has next for us. I really love working for myself and for clients along with all the blessings and challenges it presents, but my heart is for teenagers and families in a local context. Throughout this entire year my wife and I have been very active in the youth group at our new church, supporting and partnering with the youth pastor there however we can. It’s been a blast! And honestly, it’s what keeps us in the same town as our previous church.

I have learned a lot along this journey, some of which I’ll share tomorrow, but here’s why I tell you my story today: after watching 18 video stories of youth workers in financial need this Christmas, I’m reminded that there are a lot of youth workers who are struggling financially or who are even unemployed. They’re looking for an extra job or even a job and can’t find one, at least not one that works with their youth ministry hours. I share my story to encourage you to think about making your own side-job (or even full-time job, depending on your situation) that does work around your ministry. I realize not everyone gets excited at the thought of being their own boss, but if you do, take what you love to do, get creative, and find a way to “turn your play into your work so you never have to work another day of your life” (Dan Miller).

Two books I highly recommend you read:

Both are geared toward people who are in a job that they dislike. Us youth workers are already most likely passionate about what we do, but the ideas and principles in these books can help us not only tweak our current ministries to fit us better, but even help us turn our hobby into something that helps pay the bills.

QUESTION: Do you currently make an income doing something on the side? If so, what do you do and what ideas can you give to other youth workers who need to increase their income?

Vote to give $1,500+ to a youth worker!

Tim Schmoyer — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 13:00:24 +0000

Wow, selecting only 4 of you for the Youth Worker Christmas Fund Giveaway was very hard. Extremely hard! The judges (Terrace Crawford, Ryan Nielsen, Adam Wormann, E.J. Swanson) and myself received 18 stories from youth workers sharing their financial needs in a YouTube video and man, every video we received was tough to watch. Some of you even made my wife cry! But in true youth worker fashion, many of you made us laugh, despite the story of your situation.

We really struggled to narrow the 18 videos down to only 4 stories to share with you all, the Life In Student Ministry community, but we finally did it. We present to you:

Mark Cox
Joshua Johnson
Matthew Fry
Kris Howell

Go vote for 1 or 2 of them!

Now it’s your turn to vote on those final stories and pick the youth worker you all collectively feel should be given the $1,533.95 in the Youth Worker Christmas Fund. You may vote for up to two youth workers once per day until December 20, 2011, at 11:59pm. The youth worker you all give the most votes to will receive the entire the Youth Worker Christmas Fund!

Vote for a youth worker to receive $1,500+!

Help us grow the fund

Of course, we’d love to grow the fund even larger than it’s current balance of $1,533.95! All purchases of my new ebook, Focused Youth Ministry,contributes $4.97 to the fund.

Or, E.J. Swanson’s side-ministry, I Won’t Watch: Stop Watching. Do Something., will contribute $8.00 for every watch sold during this voting period. These watches are slick, too! And they make the perfect Christmas present!

Of course, if you’d like to just give directly to the fund, you can do that, as well.

Thanks to our sponsors

This fund would not be possible without the generosity of Simply Youth Ministry and I Won’t Watch.

Seriously, these are two organizations who don’t just say they love youth workers, they put their money were their mouth is without hesitation.

It would be awesome if you guys supported these two organizations! Check out their websites and follow them in their social spaces.

Go vote for a youth worker to receive $1,500+!

Christmas movie Bible studies from Interlinc [Freebie Friday]

Tim Schmoyer — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 13:00:41 +0000

Our Weekly Freebie Friday: #258

If your youth group happens to have a Christmas movie night together, Interlinc is offering two free Bible study lessons that will help you include a spiritual element that’s relevant to either of these movies:

Jim Carry’s, A Christmas Carol
Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe.

Bible study lessons for both of those Christmas movies are available as a free download from a post on Interlinc’s blog, which you’ll find linked up below.

Download two Christmas movie youth group lessons from Interlinc

Leveraging social media for discipleship and evangelism

Tim Schmoyer — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 14:55:20 +0000

Two weeks ago I spoke to a group of youth workers at SHAPE Conference, which follows a TED style of short talks with a lot of round-table and group discussion. Each speaker was asked to talk about a question (not necessarily to give answers) for 18 minutes or so and provide questions to spark discussion and further interaction.

I was asked to talk about the question, “How do we leverage online and social media for discipleship and evangelism in student ministry?” The exact description of my talk was this:

We know that 10 years from now the scope of youth ministry will look VERY different. Online and social media will be an even greater force. Thus, how do we leverage online and social media for discipleship and evangelism in student ministry? How do we mobilize social and online media without immobilizing personal interactions?

I’m glad my job was not necessarily to provide answers because that is a tough question to answer! How would you answer it? I’d love to hear in the comments below.

Here’s the video of my talk and how I addressed the question.

5 ways to improve your ministry in 2012

Tim Schmoyer — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 12:00:05 +0000

The year 2012 is right around the corner! It’s a natural time of the year to implement changes in our ministry, start new things, end old things, and re-focus on what the Lord has before us.

Here are some things you could start thinking through now in order to implement on January 1, 2012, and launch an intentional, focused youth ministry for the upcoming year.

1. Develop a focused plan for your ministry.
Instead of haphazardly going from one event and curriculum series to the next, determine where your specific youth group kids are spiritually and develop a plan to help them move to where they need to be spiritually by the time they graduate high school.

2. Measure that plan.
Having a plan is a great place to start, but if you don’t know how or if it’s actually helping you move students to where they need to be spiritually, it’s all a waste of time. Having a “yard stick” in place to help you know what’s working, what’s not, and what needs to be tweaked is essential.

3. Give away the plan.
The ministry’s vision and plan cannot rests on the shoulders of the paid youth worker. It has to be something the entire ministry embraces, takens ownership of, and works toward together. That includes volunteer youth leaders, parents, students, and especially key leadership people in your church.

4. Eliminate good things.
There are so many good things your ministry could be doing, but not all of them will equally help move your students forward spiritually. Thanks to an evaluation process that’s more than, “We had a good turnout!” or, “The kids had a good time!” you can eliminate the good things in order to make space to focus on the best things.

5. Live out your true values.
What you do in your ministry and the decisions you make will always flow out of two things: your ministry’s identity and what you your ministry truly values. If you want to change your ministry’s future trajectory, then you must take a deep, hard look at your underlining issues of identity and values first and change the filter through which everything in your ministry passes.

All of these points describe a focused youth ministry: a ministry that knows specifically what God is leading them to become in order to move His students along a unique trajectory in ways that no other youth ministry can.

How to focus your youth ministry

That’s what I discuss in my new ebook, “Focused Youth Ministry: How to Discover God’s vision for your youth ministry, implement it, and make it sustainable.” This practical “how to” ebook will walk you through a 30-step process to discovering God’s vision for your unique ministry context. The process also shows you how to implement that vision and put metrics in place to evaluate what is moving the vision forward and what isn’t. Find out more about the new ebook in the Life In Student Ministry Store.

Half of the proceeds of this ebook, up to $5,000, will go to a youth worker in need this Christmas as voted on by the Life In Student Ministry community, so pick up a copy to not only to focus your ministry’s efforts and vision, but also to support a fellow youth worker.

If you are a youth worker in need, you still have until Friday night to submit your story for consideration.

I explain more about the ebook and this giveaway in this video.

My response to an unsupportive parent meeting [Time Out]

Adam Wormann — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 13:00:24 +0000

Time Out: Weekly quiet times for the youth worker’s soul.

I still remember the first time I held a “parents meeting.” There were some things I was hearing and I wanted to address the parents, letting them know what we were doing and why. I thought that if I gave them some of my philosophy of ministry, it would help them understand what we were doing.

I guess I was wrong. For the most part, parents were really supportive. Some had very specific thoughts about how things should be done and made comments under their breath. It got really stressful pretty quick. By the end of the meeting, I had parents coming up to me trying to encourage me, writing cards, phone calls, and in tears because of how things went. I went home and found my first gray hairs. Literally. (They’ve greatly increased since then too, and I’m only in my early 30′s). By the time the day was done, I had about 75% supportive parents, 5% unhappy parents, and 20% that were so confused by what just went on.

Sure, we’re not always going to agree, and I’m fine with that. It was the tone of the meeting that I found so difficult. Then, I had a decision to make – how was I going to act.

The immediate temptation is to fight back, disregard, or further escalate things. I wanted to do all three, and probably started to do some.

But Jesus calls us to do something different. In Matthew 5, Jesus urges us to “turn the other cheek.” This is basically with regards to insults, not fists, but that’s another story. When the whole passage is viewed together (read all the way to the end of the chapter), Jesus is talking about retaliation. He’s talking about fighting back and allowing things to escalate. We can’t allow that to happen. Jesus isn’t saying don’t fight for justice or stand up for yourself, he’s talking about retaliation.

Jesus gives us a different option – go out of your way to do something for that person. Don’t let their foul treatment define what we do. Instead, go the extra mile for someone. Help them. Send them a card. Do something really nice for their kid. Anyone can simply like the people who like them. We’re called to something different.

On a side note, I know that we talked about this basic topic not too long ago. One thing that I learned is that Satan will continue to try to attack your ministry, your family, your church. One of the biggest ways he’s going to do that is with how people treat you (especially in youth ministry). We need to continually be reminded on how to deal with these things, because it is so critical not only to our ministry, but our own spiritual health.

“The (Giving) Spirit of Christmas” lesson [Freebie Friday]

Tim Schmoyer — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 13:00:08 +0000

Our Weekly Freebie Friday: #257

The folks over at youthministry360 are giving away a free Christmas Lesson. It’s a great resource and comes with both a Leader’s Guide and a Student Guide. The lesson is designed to help students understand that Christmas is more about a spirit of giving than receiving, and that this concept goes way beyond gifts.

To download this lesson, you’ll have to fill out a brief little survey and part with some personal information. If you’re cool with that, you can check it out here:

Download, “The (Giving) Spirit of Christmas” lesson

I’m on the Dare 2 Share blogging team!

Tim Schmoyer — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 13:00:00 +0000

This week Dare 2 Share officially launched their brand new blog, “Relational and Relentless Blog: Energizing a Generation to Evangelize Their World.” I’m not even sure if they’ve officially announced it yet other than on Facebook and Twitter, but it’s definitely alive and kicking.

I’m honored to be one of the contributing authors on the blog along with Greg Stier and Jason Lamb, two guys I love and know well. The three of us all share a similar heart for sharing Christ and helping teenagers do the same, so it will be fun to see how the posts we write all somehow unintentionally coincide with each other.

I’ll be writing about one post a week and so far have three posts up.

A Prayer God Will Answer Every Time, Guaranteed (one of my favorite stories)
Using Facebook Photos to Share the Gospel (part 1/3)
Using Videos to Share the Gospel on Facebook (part 2/3)

Some of my upcoming posts also cover other ways to use social media to share Christ and spark spiritual conversations online, but today I wrote two posts that are personally very convicting for me as I think back on past years of evangelism efforts. Those will be published in upcoming weeks.

Be sure to subscribe to Dare 2 Share’s blog by snagging the RSS feed.

$5,000 for a youth worker in need this Christmas

Tim Schmoyer — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 14:50:35 +0000

I am so excited to do this! I am finally releasing a brand new ebook I just finished writing. I hope it will challenge and bless many youth ministries who are just floating from one event and lesson series to the next without any clear focus or direction. Watch the video to learn more!

How to submit your story

Shoot a quick little video sharing your story and how you could use the money. ~~Submit it to me using this form~~ by December 9, 2011.
A team of judges will pick 4 entries and from December 12-20, 2011, those stories will be posted here on LISM for others to vote for who the money should go to.
On December 21, 2011, I’ll announce the winner, write the check for 50% of whatever the ebook proceeds have been, and drop it in the mail.

DETAILS: This giveaway is open only to US residents who are at least 21 years old and are currently serving in a church as a volunteer, part-time, or full-time youth worker. Half of all proceeds, up to $5,000, from this ebook between now and December 20, 2011, will be given to the most-voted youth worker video entry.

New ebook, “Focused Youth Ministry”

This practical “how to” ebook will walk you and your team through a 30-step process to discovering what God’s vision is for your unique ministry context. The process also helps your church take ownership of the vision while you implement it together and put metrics in place to evaluate what in the ministry is moving the vision forward and what isn’t.

Learn more about, “Focused Youth Ministry: How to Discover God’s Vision for your Ministry, Implement It, and Make It Sustainable,” and download a sample from the ebook.

“Tim Schmoyer’s little ebook 30 Steps to a Focused Youth Ministry is a rare treasure, because it over-delivers on its promise. Tim nails one of the embedded problems facing ministry people who are searching for vision and direction—we all too often “try to cook someone else’s recipe using completely different ingredients.” This step-by-step plan for finding, implementing, and evaluating your own God-given ministry vision will not only change your ministry’s trajectory, it has the horsepower to change your life.”
— Rick Lawrence, Executive Editor, GROUP Magazine

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