Life in Student Ministry

Lessons from my 3 year anniversary at Alexandria Covenant Church

tim@schmoyer.net (Tim Schmoyer) — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 06:53:58 +0000

Last month, February 18 to be exact, was my 3 year anniversary at Alexandria Covenant Church. Not long, I know, but still significant. I’ve grown and learned a lot through my time here so far. Here are some of the learning points for me. Most of them are things we all know already, but it’s one thing to know it, another thing to experience it.

1. Anything that’s instant and fast is rarely as good as something that takes time. That’s certainly true with food and it definitely applies to relationships, as well.

2. I can’t have a relationship with every kid in the youth group. With a group of around 200 active students every week, that’s obviously unrealistic, but I’d like to think I can at least have a casual relationship with most of them. Unfortunately, there are some who won’t even make eye contact with me or, if I try to initiate a conversation, it’s like sitting down to talk with a fire hydrant. Kinda disappointing, even hurts a little, but I guess that’s why it’s so important to have such a great team of adult leaders who can connect with the students who avoid me.

3. Sometimes doing the right thing means doing the very unpopular thing. I cash in chips of credibility in order to do what’s best for people when they don’t even know it or like it.

4. People’s perceptions of me usually translate into their perception of the ministry, both the good and the bad. So I try to just be myself and stay true to my values in ministry and hope that it rubs off.

5. I really need to spend more of my time focusing on what I’m good at and be more intentional about delegating everything else, or be content to let a some things slip by.

6. It’s always great to have open and honest communication with your sr. pastor. I definitely value that about my relationship with John, and the mutual respect and trust we share.

7. Not every good idea someone has is a good idea for our ministry. That’s especially true for all the church companies who are competing for our budget dollars, but it’s also true internally regarding ideas from parents, teens, and youth leaders. Sometimes I must be the guardian of the vision to keep us on course. Saying no to a good thing is often very necessary.

8. The pressure to perform and run growing programs is always there, even when no one puts it on you. It’s self-inflicted, probably based on insecurity. I have to be intentional about reminding myself that the focus should be on growing people, not programs, which is often a much slower process. See #1.

An amazing opportunity to partner with a Haitian church

tim@schmoyer.net (Tim Schmoyer) — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 05:50:20 +0000

One of the main objectives for our trip to Haiti last month was to meet with local pastors, build connections and explore the possibility of coordinating an effort for American churches to partner with them. (My pictures of one such meeting here, here and here.) Thankfully, that objective is now coming to fruition due to Adventures In Missions’s leadership in Haiti.

There’s a couple reasons why I’m very excited about the opportunity for American churches to partner with churches in Haiti.

Compassion International, World Vision, and many other organizations have already proven that these kinds of partnerships can be mutually edifying for the body of Christ, both for churches in America and in other countries.
Relief efforts could go to a lot of different organizations in Haiti, but this is an opportunity for relief to go through the body of Christ in Haiti, directly to the people from people who are already known and trusted in their communities.
Every single pastor I met in Haiti is a rock-solid spiritual leader. In fact, this man is probably the wisest pastor I’ve ever met. Just sitting near him, listening to him speak and pray left all of us on the team with a sense of awe. These men are tremendous spiritual leaders who are well respected.
Through Adventures In Missions, you can visit your Haitian partnership church, both in the short-term and in the future.
The need is so great in Haiti right now, especially as the rainy season is upon them with very few shelters. Our support can help the Haitian churches rise up and be both a spiritual and physical shelter in their communities.
The average Haitian lives on an average of $400/year, so small amounts of money can make a very significant impact. That means American churches of any size, of any financial status, can make a huge difference.

Here’s a video from our trip about the Haiti Church to Church Partnership.

MORE INFO: If you’re interested in learning more about partnering with a church in Haiti, read more about the Haiti Church to Church partnership on Adventures In Missions’ website. An AIM representative will be happy to contact you personally about the partnership opportunities and talk through it with you, as well. Just use the contact form on their site.

Then come back here and post in the comments below if make a commitment to a Haitian church. I’d love to hear about it!

5 reminders for communicating news with teens and parents

tim@schmoyer.net (Tim Schmoyer) — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 04:25:32 +0000

Last year I shared with you some of the ways my youth ministry communicates with teens and parents throughout the week, and last week I posted the entire video of my seminar on the subject, too.

If you watched the seminar video, these points will sound familiar to you. Here are five things to remember about your youth group announcements and how you communicate them.

1. Communication is a fine art that always seems to be morphing.

Each year when I present the seminar, “Communicating with teens and parents throughout the week,” at the Simply Youth Ministry Conference and I have to significantly update the content. It’s shocking how quickly it becomes outdated! Communication methods change so quickly as technology changes, new tools are introduced, and existing tools evolve.

It’s easy to look at communication over the span of decades and see how the printed word transitioned to the telegraph, which transitioned to the telephone and now how the Internet and social media play a role in all that, but we often fail to see the small subtle shifts that happen between them from year to year that slowly outdate our communication methods and morph into new or enhanced methods.

Because it’s always changing, the next tip is cruicial.

2. We must always evaluate our communication methods.

I’ll confess I’ve only been evaluating our ministry’s communication methods for a couple years now. I used to just take other people’s successful ideas and copy them in my own ministry expecting the same outstanding results, but that rarely happens because culture varies from one part of the country to another, even from church to church in the same community.

When I worked at a church in Texas, email worked perfect for us because almost everyone had Blackberrys. If I sent a message out, I had responses back from almost all my leaders within an hour. But when I moved to Minnesota, not only did most people not have smartphones, but they only checked email about once a week. Some people didn’t use email at all.

So I started tracking what works and doesn’t work in my youth group and came up with some very surprising results.

3. On some level, your audience must take some initiative.

You can be the best communicator in the world, but at some point your audience has the responsibility to receive your message. You can’t embed your youth group announcements into someone’s brain, or make the updated event information somehow post itself on everyone’s refrigerator.

While I know many of our churches expect us to spoon-feed them all the information they want in the way they want it, that’s an unrealistic expectation, especially as your group grows. So, relieve yourself of that expectation right now. It’s unrealistic.

You can and should do everything you can to make the information readily available in a format that easy for them to consume, but they still need to take the initiative to get the information and put it on their own calendars.

I serve a group of about 200 weekly active teenagers and every once in a while I get a parent who says, “We prefer if you could just call us each week and update Johnny about what’s going on with the youth group.” My response is always, “No.” All the information is readily available in multiple formats. Pick which one works best for you and go with that.

Which leads to the fourth tip:

4. Communication methods may take some training.

This is especially true if you’ve done some evaluating and determined that you need to eliminate one of your communication methods in place for something else.

For example, maybe the amount of time you were putting into postcard mailings just wasn’t worth the time and expense anymore, but you have three very vocal families in your ministry who demand that you continue the postcards. Maybe you continue the postcards for a pre-defined period of time while transitioning to bulletin inserts. Then you cut off the postcards because they’re just not working like they used to. You have to start training people to look to the bulletins instead. Sometimes that takes time, but training is a very necessary part of communicating well.

Communicating well includes three things:

You must continually reinforce where people can find information. Repeat it over and over again, especially when you change something about how you communicate mid-week information.
Be consistent with where you put information. You can’t publish it on Facebook one week, in the bulletin the next, and on your blog another week. Don’t make people play a guessing game.
Publish information on a regular schedule so people learn when to expect it. I try to get all our youth group’s information published on Tuesdays so they know when to check the website, email, and Facebook for news and announcements. It becomes a part of their weekly routine.

5. Communication is credibility.

This is perhaps the most important part of why good communication is so essential to youth ministries. Way too many ministries miss this.

A youth worker can be a great person, loved by all the kids and teach God’s Word effectively, but if he communicates poorly with the parents and other church staff members throughout the week, there’s an unspoken level of weak credibility because no one’s quite sure what’s going on. When people feel lost and disconnected, they tend to loose trust in their leader.

Conversely, a youth leader may not be a hero to the students and maybe just an average teacher, but if he/she communicates effectively and consistently with parents and church staff throughout the week, there’s a greater level of perceived credibility and trust just because people feel like they’re included and know what’s going on.

Whether you like it or not, how well you communicate really does impact the perceived level of credibility people have of you and your ministry.

What else?

What other tips and reminders have you found to be true for your ministry? Let’s dialog about them in the comments below.

Time Out: The race to burn out in ministry

tim@schmoyer.net (Tim Schmoyer) — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 16:01:12 +0000

Time Out (by Jerry Schmoyer)

The race of ministry

Two paddle boats, both powered by coal, left Memphis about the same time, traveling down the Mississippi River to New Orleans. As they traveled side-by-side, sailors from one vessel made some critical remarks and jokes about the snail’s pace of the other boat. Heated words were exchanged between the men on the two boats. Challenges were made. So the race began. The competition was hot and heavy as the two boats roared through the Deep South. Eventually, one boat began falling behind. The problem: it didn’t have enough fuel. There had been plenty of coal for the trip, but not enough for the race. As the boat dropped back, an enterprising young sailor took some of the ship’s cargo and tossed it into the boat’s ovens. When his fellow sailors saw that the supplies burned as well as coal, they fueled their boat with the material they had been assigned to transport. Guess what? They ended up winning the race, but they burned their cargo!

Sometimes the price of being the fastest is too high. Many people don’t realize that until they are on their death beds. Then it is too late. It’s not how fast we go through life that counts, but how we enjoy the trip along the way. We are stewards for God. That means we are captains of His ship, delivering His cargo for Him. He doesn’t reward us for speed but for faithfulness in the things He wants us to do.

Many of us in ministry today are guilty of trying to do too much in too little time. We keep expecting more and more of ourselves. Others seem to have unrealistic expectations of us as well. Thus we need to work faster, harder and longer to try to attain these unreachable goals. We want our ministries to be “successful” and therefore feel if we do more and more success will come. However all this usually causes is more and more stress.

Stress causes adrenaline to be dumped into the blood stream to prepare the body for a special challenge. If there is no special challenge to burn up the adrenaline it just hangs out there, causing us to run in overdrive. This uses physical, mental and spiritual energy and drains our system of reserves. Burnout soon results.

It’s not hard to tell if you are burn out. Is your enthusiasm and motivation low? Do you find yourself developing a negative attitude to people and events? Have you lost the joy and satisfaction you once found in ministry? Do you find you have a hard time focusing, concentrating and remembering things? Is it getting harder and harder to make simple decisions? Are you starting to avoid people and ministry opportunities? Do you have a hard time being patient with your mate and close friends? Do you feel exhausted but can’t seem to sleep well. Are you feeling bored, helpless and aimless? Then you’re probably burnt out.

The Solution

The only solution is to get your energy level back. Recharging your battery takes awhile. In fact, it takes longer to recharge it fully again than it did to discharge it in the first place. Seldom do we give ourselves enough time to recharge, so we find ourselves back in burn out again and again. We switch ministry positions or drop out entirely, but that isn’t the solution. That just deals with the symptom, not the problem.

The first step in the cure to stress-causing burnout isn’t found in changing circumstances but in changing how we respond to them. We must admit that our present patterns aren’t healthy and God-pleasing. We must recognize a problem with unrealistic expectations and a wrong response to stress. Anti-denial is the first step.

The second step, then, is to rest. Overworking ourselves, stressing ourselves out, often comes from insecurity. We feel we must perform in order for others to accept ourselves, or in order to accept ourselves. Thus we heap more and more stress upon ourselves. We strive to be more and more busy, to produce more, to be more effective. We try to reach the unrealistic expectations which we place on ourselves and which others place on us as well. But God calls us to rest (Heb 4:10; Isa 26:3; 30:15; Rom 8:6). Make sure you take a full 24-hour day totally off from responsibility and stress to just relax and recharge. At first it will be hard for all the extra adrenaline flowing in your body will demand you do something to burn it up. The problem is that working to burn it up just keeps causing our bodies to produce more and more. So go for a long walk or a run instead.

The third step, one that goes along with rest, is developing intimacy with God. That’s why we have been created. God didn’t make us to work for Him but to fellowship with Him. That’s what He needs and what we need. We also need to develop intimacy with those around us. Work often substitutes for intimacy. When we are so busy we don’t feel we have to genuinely relate to those closest to us. This is all wrong.

Thus true intimacy with God and others really meets our inner needs for acceptance and security. Overwork is a poor substitute for these and will never meet our inner needs. That’s why when we start down the path of doing more and more to win approval we never dome to an end of that path. It’s like drinking salt water to quench our thirst – it just can’t do the job!

Reflect

How can you tell when you are burning out?
What can you do to stop it?
What can you do to prevent it?
What stress most drives you to push too hard?
What motivates you to keep pushing yourself more and more?
What makes it hard for you to stop?

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Jerry Schmoyer has been a minister in Pennsylvania for over 25 years and has worked with teenagers for 15 years, ever since I became one myself. He authors the weekly Time Out series here at Life in Student Ministry in hopes to spiritually refresh your soul as you continually pour so much of yourself into students. God bless!

Tips to simplify your life and ministry [guest post]

tim@schmoyer.net (Tim Schmoyer) — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 14:12:53 +0000

This is a guest post by Ashley Engleford. If you’d like to submit a guest post for LISM, read this.

Being a youth leader is very time consuming. For many of us the more time and energy we give to the ministry, the more crazy our home life becomes. To be successful as a youth Leader and to keep from completely losing yourself, streamlining and organization go a long way. Below I have listed the top six steps you can take to keep from burning out, going crazy, or getting lost in the day to day tasks necessary of a youth leader.

The first tip is to become a list maker. We can’t rely on our fallible memory to remember every appointment, meeting, ballgame, and task. Now I am not talking about having post its on every inch of your desk. Purchase 3 notebooks or notepads and label each one with one of the following titles: Quick Notes, Appt’s/Meetings, and To-Do. If you think of another title then buy another notebook. You should always have a notepad and pen on you. Prioritize your to-do list and write a number beside each task. Stick to the order! Don’t do #5 first because you dread #2. Do first things first. Every morning and evening review your notebooks so it will be fresh in your mind. As you complete a task through out the day, mark it off.

The 2nd tip is Delegation. No one person can do everything. God has provided you with an amazing team of leaders who have a wide variety of interests and gifts that are to be used in your ministry. People do not volunteer in Youth Ministry to only be crowd control or to hand out snacks. They have ideas that need to be heard and potentially introduced into the ministry. Be willing to relinquish control and become a team. Ask what gifts they believe they have and together, decide how they can develop and deploy that gift(s) in the ministry. You will reach more students and the ministry will work much better.

The next tip goes right along with the previous tip. One of our responsibilities as a Youth Leader is to equip the next generation to serve God. Help your teens discover, develop, and deploy their spiritual gifts. Youth ministry should be the launching pad for the remainder of our kids lives.

Print and handout a spiritual gifts test from www.goingthedistance.org. The test is tailored to teens. Send it home with them and have them bring it back to the following service. Before moving forward, take them home with you and review them, making note of who would excel where. (If you have a large group, delegate this task to your youth leaders.) Find a way for every student to serve on a regular basis and be creative. If you have a large group, come up with a schedule where teens rotate serving, insuring that they each serve at least once a month. Reevaluate every few months, asking the teens what they like and don’t like about the position in which they have been serving and make changes as needed.

The fourth tip is to keep a file on each student. Each file should consist of all contact information, any permission slips, allergies, spiritual gifts, serving positions, problems, concerns, family life, and so forth. Every few months you and your youth leaders should do a little file housekeeping to make sure things stay in order. A student’s file can be invaluable.

Our fifth tip is to become a collector. A collector is someone who clips headlines and news stories, prints articles, visits the best tips and resources blogs/websites, writes down a clever illustration heard on the radio, and so forth. Develop a filing system and tuck the item away until you need it. If something fits into more than one category make the appropriate number of copies and put one in each file it fits under. When you use one of these items mark the date on the back so you don’t use the same item too close together.

Last but not least to set up a youth ministry email and cell phone/pager. Use the name of your ministry as your email address in some fashion so it is easily remembered. Check it every day, several times a day (morning, afternoon, and evening). Let teens know your “schedule” of checking the ministries email so they know how quickly to expect a reply. This is another task that can be delegated out, even having each person take a week at a time and rotate throughout the group.

Secondly, if finances (and your Sr. Pastor) allow, get a cell phone or pager (I know they are old school) teens can use for emergency situations or where talking is preferred. Allow your leaders to take turns as this is another hands on experience for them.

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Ashley Engleford is a youth leader, as well as a freelance speaker and writer. She lived the first 27 years of her life traveling down every sinful road possible, eventually hitting rock bottom as her addiction to pain pills took over. After accepting an invitation to services at a local church and attending for around 3 months, Ashley accepted Christ and He has dramatically changed her life since that fateful day. He has called her to share her journey to Christ with teens everywhere, encouraging them to follow Jesus.

Freebie Friday #167: Seminar, “Communicating with teens and parents throughout the week”

tim@schmoyer.net (Tim Schmoyer) — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 20:39:24 +0000

Last weekend at the Simply Youth Ministry Conference I was scheduled to present the same seminar I lead at conference the year before, “Communicating youth group news with teens and parents throughout the week,” except as I was going through my old notes, I was surprised how outdated a lot of it was already. It’s crazy how quickly communication methods can change. So, I updated a lot of my old content, revised many of my points, and added a whole bunch of new stuff.

Thankfully, Simply gave me permission to record a video of the seminar and share it here with you all.

Here’s the link I mention in the beginning of the seminar that contains links to many of the tools, articles, tutorials, and resources discussed throughout the seminar.

You can either watch the seminar in it’s entirety on YouTube in high quality or download it in iTunes in iPod/mobile quality.

Subscribe to LISM media content in iTunes

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This Monday, March 8, we will discuss some of the recent questions and debates from MinistryQuestions.com. Join us and give your input to answering other youth worker’s ministry questions. The live conversation starts at 2:00 PM eastern time! See our LIVE YM Talk page for details.

SYMC is great, but hopefully it will get better

tim@schmoyer.net (Tim Schmoyer) — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 18:24:35 +0000

I spent last weekend with 2,500 other youth workers at the Simply Youth Ministry Conference. It’s really no secret that I’m a big fan of the conference and everything it stands for. They’re doing a lot of amazing things that no other conference is doing. For only being 4 years old, it is truly very impressive.

What’s good

Maybe the reason I think it’s so great is because Simply’s heart really vibes with mine. We’re both totally about conversations and relationships, hence the subtitle of this blog, “Conversations among those passionate for teenagers,” that fleshes out in the post comments, LIVE YM Talk, mentorships, MinistryQuestions.com, and more.

Most conferences are about the expert on stage sharing their wisdom with all the people in the crowd. While that certainly has it’s place, I look at the crowd and think, “There is infinitely more wisdom and experience in this crowd collectively than there is in the mind of just that one person on stage.” I want to find ways to harness all the crowd’s experience and pool it together so we can mutually learn from each other, not just follow the hierarchal “top down” kind of learning.

Simply wants to do the same thing. In fact, when they contract their speakers, they don’t contract them just for a speaking gig, they contract them to be available for ministry throughout the entire weekend. They want everyone to be accessible to each other for the duration of the conference. I love that!

The environment they create really lends itself to those connections and relationships with sack chairs laying all over the place for easy conversation. In fact, I wasn’t able to attend any seminars because, when I wasn’t speaking, I was watching my little daughter so my wife could attend seminars. But yet I left having learned just as much as I would’ve from seminars because I spent all that time meeting and talking with youth workers out in the hallways. In fact, Mark Riddle basically gave me a one-on-one personalized seminar for a couple hours himself. I took notes and everything! (Thanks, Mark!)

I also appreciate that I’m not inundated with marking, vendors, and organizations who are all making bids my limited budget dollars. Note to pushy venders out there, “Don’t call me, I’ll call you. I know how to use Google and the telephone.” Thankfully, at the Simply Youth Ministry Conference most of that noise is limited so I can focus on people. The marketing that is there doesn’t feel obtrusive at all.

What could use improvement

There really is a lot to like about the Simply Youth Ministry Conference, but there’s definitely room to improve, as well.

Conversations
The biggest improvement I’d like to see is that, while the conference is very conversational, especially compared to other conferences, it’s probably only 40% of the way to a truly relational conference. Seminars with circle tables and discussion questions are good, but listening to a speaker, turning to your table to talk through some pre-determined discussion questions for 5 minutes, and then turning back to the speaker isn’t very relational. When the seminar is over, the chances are pretty low that the people at the table will stay in touch or continue the discussion later. It’s more of a conference with conversation than it is a conference of conversation.

This is also reflective in the affinity groups, the conference’s small groups that gather once or twice a day to talk about issues surrounding an area of youth ministry. If everyone at the conference committed to an affinity group, the discussions would be amazing. But instead, I heard that only about 30% of the participants attend an affinity group and, based on my own observation, most of those people were not consistant in attending the group at the same time. Each time an affinity group met, there was a different group of people in it. The discussions were very engaging and I learned a lot from the people there, but did we build relationships and form a connection? Is that really happening? I’m not so sure.

The conference is going in the right direction with the connections, networking, and mutual edification, and it’s doing it better than any other conference out there, but it still has a lot of room for improvement.

Content
A couple quick thoughts here.

First, I feel like we’ve been saying the same thing in youth ministry for the past couple years [ POLL ]. Last year’s schedule and speaker lineup looked very similar to this year’s schedule. We’re hearing the updated versions of the same content that speakers and authors have been sharing for years. The seminars I attended back in the late 90s as a college student are still the same seminars being offered now. Fortunately, a lot of that information is very important and foundational for youth ministry, but still… I’m not saying there hasn’t been anything new, just overall, generally speaking, it feels like it’s a lot of revised and updated material of what I’ve basically been hearing for a long time.

Second, let’s be careful with the sr. pastor jokes. I understand that a lot of youth workers have horrible experiences with their pastors and many of the stereotypes are true, but let’s not reinforce the stereotypes. Instead, let’s respect the pastors who are probably doing their best to serve the Lord but have just as many personal and ministry issues as the rest of us.

Last, the Simply Youth Ministry Conference has something incredible on their hands. Several participants told me that they wonder how long the conference can continue to improve like this until it plateaus and starts to dip. I’ve thought the same thing. At their current pace, I’ll give them a couple more years before it starts to plateau. The only way to avoid this is if they continue to do what they’re doing now — always try new things, risk failure, continually reinvent themselves, and never come to a place where they feel like they’ve “arrived” or have the conference thing figured out.

As Seth Godin talks about so much, the Simply Youth Ministry Conference must continue to be remarkable. So far, they are and I’m looking forward to even more remarkable things from them in the future.

Keep up the good work Kami, Matty, Andy, Chris, Doug, Rick, Sherri and everyone else at Group/Simply Youth Ministry! Thanks for a great weekend of connections, learning, and personal growth.

Youth Pastor is more than a title

tim@schmoyer.net (Tim Schmoyer) — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 20:47:08 +0000

Two weeks ago Adam McLane and I were in Haiti sitting with one of our Haitian translators. The translator asked me, “Are you a youth pastor?” I replied that I am. He turned to Adam and asked the same thing. Adam explained that he used to be a youth pastor, but now he works for Youth Specialties. Our translator pushed back and said that Adam is still a youth pastor even if he doesn’t work at a church. Adam didn’t really agree with him and, without missing a beat, our translator shot back, “You are always a pastor because being a pastor is your spiritual gift, not your title. Even if you don’t work at a church, you are still a pastor.”

The conversation quickly turned to my last name and how I’m a Nazi like Hitler because I have a German last name (don’t ask lol), but I’ve been thinking about what he said. Being a pastor is not just a title we’re assigned because we’re on paid staff at a church — it’s our spiritual gift. There are numerous implications of this perspective.

First, I went to school for 7 years to learn how to use my spiritual gift of pastor/shepherd, but most of the things I spend my time doing each day fall into administrative tasks and organizing details, a gift I don’t have. Hmm… I would much rather be doing pastoral care for teens.

Second, and more importantly, this means that there are probably a lot more pastors in my church than I think, including teenagers! This puts a whole new spin on the term, “youth pastor.” Right now, I am not intentionally using the youth pastors in my ministry, nor training them to do pastoral care in their schools and future work environments.

I think this is will be part of the process of correcting the way I’m doing youth ministry all wrong, but I’m still thinking and praying through it. I greatly appreciate and welcome all your insights. The comments below are open.

Time Out: Dealing with the stress of ministry

tim@schmoyer.net (Tim Schmoyer) — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 04:56:54 +0000

Time Out (by Jerry Schmoyer)

When is the last time you felt stressed out by your ministry? How many times a week does the stress get so high it impacts your moods and performance? It seems like stress goes with the territory, that it is an occupational hazard. But does it need to be that way?

Stress and stress-related diseases are in epidemic proportions today. Studies show that almost 70% of those who visit their doctor do so because of stress-related symptoms. The best-selling drugs in this country are all to help people handle stress. Stress is a growing problem among those in ministry, as well. We aren’t immune. In fact, we often suffer more from it than others in the general population.

Stress simply means we feel under pressure. Some times that pressure comes from within, what we demand of ourselves. Other times it comes from without, what we feel (real or imagined) that others look for us to produce. We are to follow Jesus and live as He lived.

Some stress is inevitable. Not all stress is bad. It can serve to motivate us in times of special need. Good stress brings out the best in us. Bad stress actually makes us less productive. Good stress we control, bad stress controls us and we can’t stop. We become driven. Impatience and anger become our daily companions. Peace and joy flee. Little things become big things and big things fade to lesser priorities. Our work list takes priority over our relationships.

Symptoms of stress include always being in a hurry, not having patience for others, trying to make every moment count (often by doing two or more things at the same time), inability to relax and enjoy, becoming irritated by things that don’t go right and sensing a loss of intimacy in your relationships, including your relationship with God.

When you recognize a symptom, see it as a warning light on the dashboard of your life. It means your battery is being drained too quickly and is getting dangerously low. It calls you back to the throne for “repairs.” Where are you failing to listen or obey or trust?

How can we overcome stress? Know your Plimsoll mark and honor it. Ships once were required to have a line painted on the hull that would remain above water only if the vessel were not overloaded. Most people know where their line is, but neglect its warnings. Don’t drown yourself into obligations or take on more than you can handle. You’ll sink. Jesus knew how to say no to things, we need to learn that as well. Strive for balance. In Eccl. 3:1-8, Solomon lists things that all have a place in every life. A good life has enough time for every worthwhile activity under heaven, including leisure. Regularly do something that is nonproductive and “fun.”

Pursue peace. It’s not a by-product of wealth or good health; it’s an end in itself. You can find peace in any circumstances, even when it makes no earthly sense to have it. Peace brings contentment and long life (Phil. 4:11, Ps. 34:12). God gives peace to those who ask Him for it and then are willing to make the necessary changes in their life so they can recognize and enjoy it.

Learn to enjoy. Many successful people feel a sense of accomplishment, but no enjoyment of their work or talents. The ability to enjoy yourself is a gift from God (Eccl. 5:19). He has given us all things to enjoy freely (1 Tim. 6:17). Ask Him to help you stop striving and accept His blessing.

Perhaps expecting to have a totally stress-free life and ministry isn’t a realistic expectation, but certainly for all of us there is plenty of room for improvement. Jesus certainly experienced stress, but it wasn’t from overwork or too high expectations. He didn’t start more than He could finish, He knew how to say “no” and He certainly paced Himself. You can, too.

Reflect

When do you experience the most stress in your week?
If Jesus were in your place, what would He do to prevent or remove the stress?
What can you do this week to cut back on stress in your life? (If you can’t change the circumstances, you can change your reaction to them.)

Freebie Friday #166: Matthew 19 bible study discussion guide

tim@schmoyer.net (Tim Schmoyer) — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 04:34:40 +0000

Brian McNarry, a youth worker in Manitoba, Canada, contributes this week’s Freebie Friday. Thanks, Brian!

It’s a Bible study discussion guide about Jesus’ encounter with the rich young man in Matthew 19:16-23. It starts with some, “Would you rather,” questions and ends by asking the question, “What are you living your life for?” Brian said he’s used it well with both jr high and sr high students in a small group setting.

Download the Matthew 19 Bible study discussion guide

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There is no LIVE YM Talk on Monday, March 1, due to me being at the Simply Youth Ministry Conference, so our next discussion in on March 8 when we talk about some of the recent questions and debates from MinistryQuestions.com. Join us and give your input to answering other youth worker’s ministry questions. The live conversation starts at 2:00 PM eastern time! See our LIVE YM Talk page for details.

Special podcast: The YMATH team talks about their trip to Haiti

tim@schmoyer.net (Tim Schmoyer) — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 01:53:30 +0000

Today was a special episode of LIVE YM Talk. Some of us on the “Youth Ministry Advance Team: Haiti” talked publicly about our trip. Joining the conversation was myself, Clint Bokleman, Seth Barnes, Adam McLane, Jeremy Zach, and Ian Robertson.

Some of the things we talked about:

Stories of what we’ve been processing since returning to the States
Addressed common questions, excuses, and criticisms of going to Haiti
How teenagers can make a difference in Haiti
What God is doing in Haiti and how it’s impacting us
And a whole lot more…

You can listen to the whole conversation below or grab it in iTunes.

Play this episode

Subscribe to LIVE YM Conversations in iTunes

Next LIVE YM Talk in 2 weeks

March 8: There is no LIVE YM Talk on Monday due to me being at the Simply Youth Ministry Conference, so our next discussion in on March 8 when we talk about some of the recent questions and debates from MinistryQuestions.com. Join us and give your input to answering other youth worker’s ministry questions.

Join our next LIVE Youth Ministry Conversation!

Schmoyer baby #2 is on the way!

tim@schmoyer.net (Tim Schmoyer) — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 01:16:21 +0000

The news has been out for a couple weeks now, but I wanted to officially announce on LISM that Schmoyer baby #2 is on the way! Hannah is only 6 months old right now and with the next baby due in September, the two kids will be about 14 months apart, which is cool. Unlike Hannah, we’ll find out what the gender is with the next ultrasound. It was fun to be surprised the first time, but we’re kinda over that now.

Last year at the Simply Youth Ministry Conference Dana was pregnant with Hannah. This year she’s still pregnant at the conference again, except with a different child. Will she be able to go next year pregnant-free? We shall see. :)

By the way, if you’re going to be at the Simply Youth Ministry Conference this weekend, be sure to say HI. I’m leading a couple seminars, which should be an easy place to find me. Or follow me on Twitter and Foursquare.

Haiti videos, pictures, interviews, podcasts you gotta check out

tim@schmoyer.net (Tim Schmoyer) — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 20:39:54 +0000

[ See my other recent posts about my trip to Haiti ]

I’ve been generating a lot of media content about my trip to Haiti. Here are a couple things I definitely encourage you to check out. Even if you’re not considering a trip there yourself, at least listen to the amazing stories of what God is doing in Haiti. This is unprecedented revival for our lifetime!

Special LIVE YM Talk with the Haiti team

This Wednesday, February 24, most of the “Youth Ministry Advance Team: Haiti” team members will gather together for a special LIVE YM Talk discussion. We’ll share stories, experiences, and what we’ve been processing since the trip. We’ll also talk about implications for your youth group.

– Join us at 2:00 PM eastern time this Wednesday for the YMATH discussion!

All my daily video blogs from Haiti are on YouTube

Here’s the YouTube playlist of all my daily video blogs from while I was in Haiti last week. I basically walked around with my video camera the whole time and tried to capture snapshots throughout the entire trip, including some of my own processing of what I was experiencing each day. There’s about an hour and 45 minutes of footage, making it a good full-length film, eh?

I promise you, the stories you’ll see in my videos are not what the news media is covering here in the US, which blows my mind because I don’t know how they can ignore something like this.

– Watch the YouTube playlist of my daily Haiti video blogs

Haiti trip interview on YouthHacks Podcast

Adam McLane and I were interviewed together by Josh Cook and the YouthHacks Podcast team. It was a really good discussion about our trip. We shared a lot of stories, lessons, and how the trip has affected us. Definitely listen to the recording, even if you just play it in the background while you work.

– Listen to our YouthHacks Podcast interview about Haiti experiences

Pictures from Haiti

I got the rest of my pictures from the trip uploaded to this blog’s Facebook page, too.

– Check out my pictures from Haiti

– Here are Adam McLane’s pictures on Flickr

I talk with Bill Scott briefly about what God taught me in Haiti

Tonight I joined my good friend, Bill Scott, on his first online talk radio show and discussed what I saw in Haiti and what God taught me. I actually called in twice between other callers. You can grab the 11 minute audio clip in iTunes. Or, listen here.

– Download the brief discussion in iTunes

Podcast: Q&A with Tic Long about the future of Youth Specialties

tim@schmoyer.net (Tim Schmoyer) — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 06:35:50 +0000

Today we had a special treat. Tic Long, the new Executive Director of Youth Specialties, joined us to talk about what’s been going on with the organization over the past couple months and what lies ahead. It was fun! There’s a lot of be excited about.

Some of the things we talked about:

Who YouthWorks is and what they bring to YS
What’s in store for the NYWC, One Day, Planet Wisdom, DCLA, and other events
How they will serve a theologically diverse community of youth workers
The 10-year big picture vision for YS
And a whole lot more…

You can listen to the whole conversation below or grab it in iTunes.

Play this episode

Subscribe to LIVE YM Conversations in iTunes

Special YMATH show this Wednesday

February 24: Now that we’ve been home from Haiti for a couple days and have had some time to process it a bit, most of the YMATH team will be joining me to talk about our recent experiences in Haiti. We’ll also discuss what it could mean for you and your youth ministry.

Join our next LIVE Youth Ministry Conversation!

I’m struggling with re-entry into America after being in Haiti

tim@schmoyer.net (Tim Schmoyer) — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 21:37:41 +0000

[ See my other recent posts about my trip to Haiti ]

I’m struggling on so many different levels. It’s hard to know where to even start with all the tension I feel about myself, the American church, and the state of spirituality among Christians here. I’m doing my best not to look down on American believers and the church with any sort of arrogance because, honestly, the attitude of my heart is really just brokenness for what I see. Jeremy Zach and I talked about this on a little walk we took before leaving the Dominican Republic: until I can share with more grace, my response right now is to keep my deepest thoughts to myself to avoid becoming overly-critical in a way that shuts down communication.

A couple times before we left Haiti, I actually thought, from a spiritual standpoint, that it would be cool to never return to America and just stay with the Haitians, except I knew that would definitely be throwing the baby out with the bathwater. There’s a lot to be thankful here in America and a lot that is very positive — there’s no doubt that God has blessed us extravagantly and that our response of materialism and consumerism have affected us in ways I never even noticed until I was removed from it for a brief time. Maybe these things are so glaring to me now because I’m still hyper-sensitive having just come off the trip a couple days ago, but I know my heart for my own American people will never be the same as a result of my experiences in Haiti. We are so blessed, yet so poor.

America and Haiti are complete opposites right now. Haiti has such an overwhelming need for basic necessities and we have such an overwhelming need for revival. I want to be used by God to be a catalyst for revival here, but that task seems exponentially more daunting than the physical tasks that lie before Haiti right now. Cleaning up a collapsed city and providing life-sustaining supplies to hundreds of thousands of homeless people sounds much easier.

So, for now, I’m still processing, thinking, and praying with an intensity unlike I’ve never known before.

If you’re even slightly thinking about going to Haiti sometime soon to serve, you must go now! All your excuses are completely invalid: it’s very safe, you can absolutely afford it, you have the time, and you can make a big difference.

Do it. Now. Stop over-thinking it. Get off your butt and go. Seriously. Go.

Time Out: How God can speak and reveal Himself to us

tim@schmoyer.net (Tim Schmoyer) — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 16:00:57 +0000

Time Out (by Jerry Schmoyer)

God speaks to us in a quiet voice. He speaks enlightened thoughts to our mind or burring to our heart. When He speaks He speaks words of conviction of sin, information and guidance, encouragement and peace, enablement for ministry or revelation of Himself.

The final form His communication may take is that of revelation of Himself. Often it will just seem to ‘hit’ us how wonderful, powerful or majestic God is. This is Him revealing Himself to us by His Holy Spirit. He does this so we will respond in praise and worship.

That happens to me when I listen to my son Dan play the piano or when I listen to Southern Gospel Music. It can happen when I hear a testimony or read about something about Jesus. God’s Spirit speaks to me showing me show great Jesus is so I respond in worship and praise. If He didn’t reveal Himself or His Son to me I wouldn’t see His greatness on my own.

Sometimes we can be so overwhelmed with God’s love in our soul that we find ourselves enraptured in an immense feeling of being loved deeply, of God telling us how much He loves us. Our natural response is to worship, to love Him back. Other times it can be sitting quietly in His presence, just enjoying sweet fellowship by being in His presence. Or it can be a new or deeper understanding and appreciation about an aspect of God or Jesus that brings awe and wonder to our hearts.

Understand it’s not our intelligence that figures out those things about God. It is His voice speaking these truths to us so we respond in worship. One of the chief functions of the Holy Spirit is to reveal God to us. He does this by speaking to us of the greatness and wonder of God the Father and the Son.

This is how God communicates His love to us as well. He overwhelms our soul with His love for us – we can find ourselves enraptured in an immense feeling of being loved deeply with our soul. This can be God telling us how much He loves us.

Reflect
Take time right now to sit quietly and let God speak His love to you. Let Him reveal His great love for you and His care of you to your heart. Focus on Him as He speaks of His greatness. Respond in love and worship to Him. Using some of your favorite Christian music can help with this as well.

YouTube playlist of my daily Haiti videos

tim@schmoyer.net (Tim Schmoyer) — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 07:08:15 +0000

Freebie Friday #165: “How To Get The Word Out” event check-list

tim@schmoyer.net (Tim Schmoyer) — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 22:55:17 +0000

Here’s another great resource from Paul Turner. It’s a check list to help you get the word out about your youth group events. It includes a lot of ideas for promotion and helps you cover all your bases when you really want to make it as easy as possible for people to find out about your event and help you spread the news.

Of course, nothing can replace vision and passion as you communicate your events, but the ideas in Paul’s list can help you find new ways to share that with the people around you. Check it out.

DOWNLOAD: How To Get The Word Out event check-list

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Join us for LIVE YM Talk this Monday, February 22, for a conversation with Tic Long and “The future of Youth Specialties and a Q&A time.” We’d love to have you join us! The live conversation starts at 2:00 PM eastern time! See our LIVE YM Talk page for details.

Haiti is teaching me about prayer and worship

tim@schmoyer.net (Tim Schmoyer) — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 02:36:25 +0000

[ See my other recent posts about my trip to Haiti ]

This morning I read from Psalm 114:7, “Tremble, O earth, at the presence of the Lord, at the presence of the God of Jacob.” That’s exactly what’s happening here in Haiti. The earth trembled at the presence of the Lord that is so obviously moving here in Haiti. I don’t know if it’s being covered by the media back in the US, but it should be because I’m not sure what else there is to report — everything we see here in Haiti is consumed by praise, worship, preaching, and a massive revival outbreak. Sure, there’s tanks and military people walking around with big guns. And many buildings are flat, but that’s just on the surface. The real news is that the hearts of these people are passionately worshipping God everywhere almost non-stop. It’s incredible.

When I get back to the US and can upload the daily video blogs I’ve been shooting all day every day, you’ll see more of this. I have talked to many, many random Haitians over the past several days and every single one of them talks about Jesus within the first 5 minutes of the conversation, even if you don’t bring Him up. When I ask if they are upset with God or questioning Him for the tragedy, not a single one says yes. In fact, it’s just the opposite — they appear shocked that I could even suggest such a thing. They are all worshipping Him for sparing their lives and for sending the earthquake to soften their hearts and deliver them from Santeria. There is literally dancing in the streets!

This whole experience continues to break my heart for the current state of the American church. We are so apathetic, so self-centered, so lethargic and focusing on all the wrong things. In some ways, I want to see an earthquake to hit our country, totally devastate us, strip us of everything but Jesus, and pray that our churches will pave the way for hope and rival in our nation instead of enabling the spiritual rut.

In America, when I sit in a small group and ask for prayer requests, first there’s silence while people try to think of something, and then 95% of the prayer requests will be for physical needs of themselves or someone they know. Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with that, but here in Haiti, the physical needs are overwhelming — they live under bedsheets strung up by sticks and wire, have only the clothes on their back, and struggle to find food and water. Yet as I pray with Haitians, many of them do not ask me to pray for those needs, they ask me to pray for their spiritual needs. Just this morning several Haitians said to me, “Ask God to transform my heart,” and, “Pray God will make me a mighty man of prayer,” and, “I want you to pray that God will teach me the Bible more.” I don’t even know when I’ve ever heard prayer requests like that… or when I’ve even asked of those things for myself. So I pray for them, and they in-turn pray for me with a passion that makes my prayers feel so weak and insignificant.

I can’t wait to show you some of the video footage and stories we’ve been hearing in Haiti. Look for them later this week or early next week when I’m back on my own Internet connection and can upload them. Here in Haiti it takes 50+ hours to upload a mobile version of a video over wifi. 2K upload = fail. That’s why I only have two videos posted: Day 1 and Day 2.

Check out today’s photos

Again, I posted some of today’s Haiti pictures on my Facebook page. Check ‘em out!

Also keep your eye on the official “Youth Ministry Advance Team: Haiti” Facebook page and the official YMATH Twitter account for updates from the rest of the team members.

Today is our last day here in Haiti. Tomorrow we start the long drive back to Santo Domingo before we fly back to the US on Wednesday morning.

Also follow my Haiti updates here:

Day 3: Report from Haiti YMATH Missions Trip

tim@schmoyer.net (Tim Schmoyer) — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 05:20:25 +0000

[ See my other recent posts about my trip to Haiti ]

I think I absorbed more today than I ever have before in a single day. The video summary I put together for “day 3″ (and will try to post at YouTube when our slow Internet connection will allow it) explains a bit more, but to summarize:

Thousands of Haitians are coming to know Christ. The past three days were the country’s first National Day of Prayer. People were praying everywhere — in the streets, on the sidewalks, in buildings, in tent communities, everywhere. Sometimes they were groups of 20, sometimes groups up 30,000! I’ve never seen a country come together to worship and praise God like this. Even in our conversations with people, one of the first things they start telling you about is Jesus and how He saved them. Incredible.
Everything you’ve seen about the destruction is true. It’s massive. I have no idea how it could ever be cleaned up. It will definitely take years before their old spaces are livable again. In the meantime, their only option is to live in massive tent communities in fields, streets, and anywhere else they can find.
We talked with several Haitian pastors about how American churches can partner with them and their congregations. It’s a bit tricky because we want to make sure we don’t get set them up for dependency, but yet we want to come behind them, support them, and enable them to be both the heros and spiritual leaders their country needs.
The way these people pray is amazing. It’s so full of passion, faith, and trust. It’s like, when they pray they believe God hears it and will respond. I know us Americans believe that, too, but I’m not sure we really believe it.
One of the things that has stood out to me the most is a passage I read this morning in Psalm 104:32, “The earth trembles at his glance.” It seems like the Lord is looking favorably upon Haiti and it literally shook. I don’t want to go too far with that passage, but God is definitely working here and it is such a huge blessing to be able to have a small glimpse into His obvious spiritual transformation of this country.

There’s a lot more going through my mind, but it’s late and I need to get to bed. Can’t wait to get these daily video blogs uploaded for you all sometime soon so you can see what I’m talking about.

Check out today’s photos

Again, I posted some of today’s Haiti pictures on my Facebook page. Check ‘em out!

Also follow my Haiti updates here:

Day 2: Report from Haiti YMATH Missions Trip

tim@schmoyer.net (Tim Schmoyer) — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 04:43:03 +0000

Unfortunately, the bandwidth here isn’t allowing me to post my daily video blogs right now, so I’m going to have to add those later. Sorry. I was planning to share most of my thoughts about the trip through video so I could personally show you things like I did in my last update, but after 30+ hours of waiting for my “day 2″ video to upload, it obviously was not going to work. Maybe I can find another wifi spot somewhere in the city that will have a more realistic upload speed.

Yesterday was my second day here with the Youth Ministry Advance Team: Haiti and it’s been both a blast and challenging. Fortunately, I think we’re being eased into the shock I’m sure will ensue tomorrow because we’re gradually making our way to ground zero, making many stops along the way, hearing people’s stories, and gradually seeing buildings that are first shaken, then leaning, then half-way crumbled.

We met a lady who lost her twins in the earthquake when a building collapsed on them. Both 6-month olds were killed instantly, and one of them was stolen from her arms by a man who thought she was holding his child. Furthermore, her left leg is severely broken and she has no more feeling in it. While she and her husband are doing whatever they can just to cope, when we prayed for them her husband cried out in the most agonizing sobs, “Why, Jesus? Why?”

There are stories like this all over Haiti. Some have lost all hope, but the vast majority of Haitians are very hopeful and looking to Jesus to save them.

Tomorrow we head into epicenter of the quake and I’m sure the destruction we’ll witness there will be unbelievable. Hopefully I’m mentally, spiritually and emotionally prepared.

Media to check out

Besides my video blogging above, I posted a little photo album on my Facebook page of day 2 here in Haiti.

Also check out this video of a Haitian named Rudy who sang to us while laid up on a hospital bed. Very moving.

[ See my other recent posts about my trip to Haiti ]

Also follow my updates here:

Video report from Haiti YMATH Missions Trip: Day 1

tim@schmoyer.net (Tim Schmoyer) — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 03:48:54 +0000

[ See my other recent posts about my trip to Haiti ]

Here’s my first video blog about my trip to Haiti with the Youth Ministry Advance Team: Haiti. All in all, a great day, but super slow internet. It took over two hours to upload the video from the Dominican Republic hotel. Hopefully bandwidth will be more favorable in Haiti tomorrow, but if it’s not, I may be difficult to upload them on a daily basis. Just FYI.

We’re having a great time this first day, but it’s been mostly travel. Tomorrow we head into Port au Prince and prepare for culture shock.

Also follow my Haiti updates here:

Freebie Friday #164: Lesson series, “Is Christianity really the only way to God?”

tim@schmoyer.net (Tim Schmoyer) — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 02:47:56 +0000

Brett Hetherington has contributed more to our Freebie Fridays over the past couple years than anyone else. The best part is, his stuff is always quality material. Besides serving as one of the Youth Ministry Mentors, he’s contributed eight other youth teaching series’ and resources here in the past, and today’s series is no different. Visit his site and let him know how much you appreciate his generosity in equipping your ministry with great resources time and time again!

This question is a very basic one that many of us hear all the time. Often it comes with a condescending attitude or a disbelieving scoff. Many times we assume things that other people believe without asking them.

FAITH: is a series aimed at teaching what some of the basics of a handful of other world faith systems believe. But even deeper than that, it will help Christians understand how we should respond to and interact with others who believe differently than we do.

Included in this series you will find:

WORD and PDF Lesson Masters
WORD and PDF Student Handouts
Lesson PowerPoints
PDF versions of Lesson PowerPoints
FAITH: Images
WMV and Quicktime Series Bumps
WMV and Quictime Editable Series advertising video
PUB and JPEG Lesson Images
7 Fonts used in PowerPoints
WMV and Quicktime interviews with Tina, a former Jehovah’s Witness

I used this series in early 2010. In an effort to help our students retain the most from this series, we established pages on our church website with most of this information for download, and streaming videos of each lesson in full, as well as smaller, topic-centered videos for each lesson. These pages can be accessed by visiting our site.

[ Download the series, "Is Christianity really the only way to God?" ]

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There is no LIVE YM Talk this Monday due to being in Haiti right now. Join us for LIVE YM Talk next Monday, February 15 for a conversation with Tic Long and “The future of Youth Specialties and a Q&A time.” We’d love to have you join us! The live conversation starts at 2:00 PM eastern time! See our LIVE YM Talk page for details.

Youth Ministry Mentorship now open to both SYMC attenders and non-attenders

tim@schmoyer.net (Tim Schmoyer) — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 17:03:50 +0000

Last month I shared that the Youth Ministry Mentorship Program is taking its conversations to the next level by partnering with the Simply Youth Ministry Conference to bring mentoring face-to-face instead of just over the phone. Past mentees have mentioned how valuable the mentoring has been for themselves personally and their ministries and asked if there could be a way they could actually meet their mentor and talk face-to-face. While this has indeed happened in the past, it can happen for everyone now at the Simply Conference.

If you’ve been in youth ministry for 2 years or fewer and will be at the Simply Youth Ministry Conference from February 26 to March 1, 2010, there are still some available slots! In fact, if you’re accepted into the mentorship program, than Doug Field’s pre-conference seminar, “Your First Two Years In Youth Ministry,” is FREE for you, complements of Simply Youth Ministry!

However, if you’d like to be considered for the mentorship but are not planning to be at the Simply Youth Ministry Conference, we are now accepting your applications, as well! If you’ve been in youth ministry as a volunteer, part-time, or full-time worker, you can now read more about the Youth Ministry Mentorship and apply here.

VIDEO: This video explains a bit more about the mentorship, including a story from one of the past mentees who has gone through the program.

Whether you’ll be at the Simply Conference or not, check out the Youth Ministry Mentoring site, look through the expectations, goals, and other parts of the mentorship and decide if this is for you or not. If you’re up for the 10-week journey with a personal youth ministry mentor, fill out the application and if you’re selected by a mentor, I will be in touch with you via email.

[ Youth Ministry Mentorship ]

The “Youth Ministry Advance Team: Haiti” discusses their upcoming trip

tim@schmoyer.net (Tim Schmoyer) — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 23:47:58 +0000

Today was a unique show. Instead of the normal round-table discussion we usually have, a couple members from the Youth Ministry Advance Team: Haiti joined me to talk about our upcoming missions trip to Haiti.

In the discussion was myself, Adam McLane, Jeremy Zach, Anne Jackson, and Jeff Goins.

You can follow us on Twitter and Facebook throughout the trip!

Some of the things we talked about:

Why we’re each agreed to go to Haiti
What we’re expecting on the trip
What we’ll be doing there and why it will make a difference
How other groups can help Haiti both financially and by visiting
And a whole lot more…

You can listen to the whole conversation below or grab it in iTunes.

Play this episode

Subscribe to LIVE YM Conversations in iTunes

Next Monday’s discussion

No Talk on February 15: I’ll be in Haiti, so there will be no LIVE YM Talk next week. However, the week after that, February 22, Tic Long will join us to talk about The future of Youth Specialties and Q&A. See our LIVE YM Talk page for details.

Join our next LIVE Youth Ministry Conversation!

Podcast: The need for theological questioning in youth ministry

tim@schmoyer.net (Tim Schmoyer) — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 04:52:26 +0000

Last Monday we talked about the need for theological questioning in youth ministry. Our featured guest was Jake Bouma, a youth pastor who even named his cat after a theologian!

The discussion we had was one that every youth worker needs to recognize and consider because the implications can run very deep for the teens in our ministries.

Some of the things we talked about:

Why it’s important to help kids wrestle through their theological questions
Common questions our youth group kids are asking
How to help teenagers process through the questions
The balance between spewing answers and encouraging the self-discovery process
And a whole lot more…

You can listen to the whole conversation below or grab it in iTunes.

Play this episode

Subscribe to LIVE YM Conversations in iTunes

Next Monday’s discussion

February 8: Join us for LIVE YM Talk again this Monday! The “Youth Ministry Advance Team: Haiti” members discuss their upcoming missions work. We will have several guests, including Adam McLane, Jeremy Zach, Anne Jackson, Jeff Goins, and others. We’d love to have you join us! The live conversation starts at 2:00 PM eastern time! See our LIVE YM Talk page for details.

Join our next LIVE Youth Ministry Conversation!

Interview with Marko about his new YM Coaching Program

tim@schmoyer.net (Tim Schmoyer) — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 21:00:44 +0000

Earlier this week Marko launched his Youth Ministry Coaching Program, a 1-year 360 coaching cohort, focused on whole-life development and youth ministry issues.

While some have compared it to the Youth Ministry Mentorship Program here at Life In Student Ministry, there really are some clear distinctions that allow the two programs to complement each other quite nicely.

I had the opportunity to talk with Marko about his program.

You can listen to us talk about the coaching and mentoring programs in iTunes, or use the link below to listen to it directly in your browser.

Play: Interview with Marko about his new YM Coaching Program

Freebie Friday #163: Movie sound clips trivia game

tim@schmoyer.net (Tim Schmoyer) — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 05:46:21 +0000

Two years ago I gave away a game I made combining audio clips from different movies. The idea is to have youth group kids pair up with a piece of paper and pencil and, as a team, try to correctly identify as many movies as they can. The winning team get some candy or a cheap prize.

I created another one and played it with our youth group last week. Apparently it’s a bit harder than I thought it would be.

First, here’s the answer key:

1. Napoleon Dynamite
2. Incredibles
3. Finding Nemo
4. Shrek 2
5. 50 first dates
6. Night at the museum
7. Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
8. Toy Story
9. Ice Age
10. Madagascar
11. Elf
12. Mrs. Doubtfire
13. Nacho Libre
14. Prince of Egypt
15. Wizard of Oz
16. Transformers: revenge of the fallen
17. Up
18. Star Trek
19. Open Season 2
20. Kung Fu Panda
21. Bolt
22. The Dark Knight
23. Wall-E
24. Cars
25. Lord of the Rings: Two Towers
26. National Treasure 2
27. Indiana Jones: Temple of Doom
28. Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End
29. Spiderman 3
30. Robots

There’s two options for downloading the audio file. You can download it in iTunes or download the mp3 directly below:

Play: Movie sound clips trivia

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Join us for LIVE YM Talk this Monday, February 8! The “The “Youth Ministry Advance Team: Haiti” members will discuss their upcoming missions work.” Our guests will include Adam McLane, Anne Jackson, Jeremy Zach, Jeff Goins, and others. We’d love to have you join us! The live conversation starts at 2:00 PM eastern time! See our LIVE YM Talk page for details.

A note that reminds me, “Youth ministry is worth it.”

tim@schmoyer.net (Tim Schmoyer) — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 03:42:09 +0000

Last weekend I received this Facebook message from a girl I haven’t been in touch with for about a decade. For the sake of her privacy, I edited out some of the details and have permission to share it with you.

I share this to encourage you as you work with teenagers. Some of you feel like your investment into teens is worthless — you’re seeing absolutely no growth. Some of you are frustrated, tired, struggling, and wondering, “Is all this time, energy and emotion worth it?”

Not every teenager will come back and thank you. In fact, just like the 10 lepers, most won’t, but the ones who do will make it all worth it. You may never know the influence you have on a student just by being present in their life.

Be encouraged — it’s worth it!

Tim, you knew me 10 years ago by my maiden name. I’m not sure if you remember me. I just wanted to say thank you. Thank you for being my friend! Most of all, thank you for striving to truly live your faith and not being ashamed to do so. You lived your life in a distinctly different manner from all my other friends, and it made an impression on me. Adolescence was a rough season of my life. There were a couple of people in my life during that time who were “Jesus with skin on,” and you were one of them. I’m sure you’ve continued to be a blessing to teens through your ministry and life. Now I’m a pastor’s wife (whoa!); my husband was ordained last year and we are blessed with two little boys, ages 2 years and 4 months. Anyhow, when I stumbled upon your website a few months ago while helping my husband look up info on youth groups, I realized how God had blessed me through you, and I wanted you to know.

I think I’m doing youth ministry all wrong

tim@schmoyer.net (Tim Schmoyer) — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 05:59:13 +0000

Despite knowing otherwise in my head, the way I actually lead my church’s youth ministry is mostly from the mentality that our youth ministry is a program or service we provide to families. It’s almost like I’m unintentionally feeding the consumeristic perspective by sometimes using language like, “We offer small groups…” and, “We provide connection points for your teens…” Since when was ministry ever supposed to be about what a paid staff member and a couple adult volunteers are expected to spiritually provide for teens and families?

Youth ministry should not be about how the church can serve the youth or even how we can provide programs that help them grow spiritually. That’s the parents’ responsibility. In fact, I don’t think youth ministry should even accidentally enable parents to outsource their God-given responsibility to us, something I know my ministry is all too guilty of. Support parents, yes, but enable them to outsource? No.

The Greek word for “church” is literally “ekklesia,” a community of believers who are “called out” to serve and edify each other and the people around them.

Instead of fueling the consumerism mentality of what a church “offers” or “provides” and which church in town does it best, youth ministry should probably be about helping teens use their God-given gifts to serve the body. It should teach families that youth ministry isn’t just about what the church does for them, but that they are “called out” to think beyond themselves with a servant’s heart. I bet teen church drop-outs would decrease if they actually served as a valuable and essential part of the local body of Christ.

Youth ministry should be less about us doing youth ministry and more about youth doing ministry.

I said that two years ago, but it’s just now starting to really sink in for me. It demands a pretty radical shift, one that I’m not sure I have the vision nor the guts to really carry out yet.

Our programs program people to consume from the church, and I’m programmed to just run programs.

Please note, I’m not necessarily anti-program — I just think that too often we end up serving the programs instead of using them as very dispensable tools to equip teen believers to serve the body of Christ.

What do you think? Should youth ministry be more about providing a service or creating servants? What if focusing on the latter causes all those with the consumeristic mentality of the former to leave the group? Is it okay for your youth group to shrink numerically if it’s for the right reasons?

All the emotions surrounding my trip to Haiti

tim@schmoyer.net (Tim Schmoyer) — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 05:54:32 +0000

[ Catch up with previous posts about my trip to Haiti ]

Wow. I leave for Haiti in only one and a half weeks! And I’m starting to freak out a bit!

As the time continues to draw closer, my mind has almost become totally consumed with the trip:

What will I see? How will I feel when I see it?
Will I be able to handle my emotions or will I default to “tough guy” mode? Will I be the only one on the team who will struggle with that?
Why does the government put an expiration date on my passport that’s dated for 6 months after when it really expires?
How will my worldview be shattered? How will that impact my theology? My ministry?
I’ve never felt called nor prompted to adopt, but what if that changes once I’m there? Will I come back with some Haitian children? Is that even possible?
Will I really be able to make a difference there in only one week?
Will I feel called to return to Haiti on a regular basis, taking others with me to serve the people there?
How will I respond if I pull a body from the rubble or see dead people laying around?
Do I have all of the equipment I’ll need?
What if I say or do something stupid that offends their culture? What if I make matters worse?
Will the Haitians perceive me to be just another tourist or as someone who truly wants to help make things better?

Compared to the amount of pressure I feel when taking a group of teenagers overseas, this is about 10x more than that. Seriously. And I’m not even in charge of the trip! For once I’m able to just go along and let someone else take care of the details, yet I’m still freakin’ out a bit.

The organization

Thankfully, the organization I’m going with, Adventures In Missions, has been amazing so far. They don’t know it, but their detailed reporting about the plans and environment for the trip have done a lot to ease my tensions. They are so thorough, so considerate, and so obviously experienced. Despite my breif relationship with them so far, I honestly trust them so much and am confident that our time in Haiti will be maximized to its fullest potential.

The team

Another thing that contributes to my sense of security is the rock-solid team of people I’ll be with. Not only will Seth Barnes be traveling with us, the founder of Adventures In Missions, but so will a few other people:

Anne Jackson: blog | twitter | facebook
Tim Schmoyer: blog | twitter | facebook | youtube
Adam McLane: blog | twitter | facebook
Mark Oestreicher: blog
Seth Barnes: blog | twitter
Jeremy Zach: blog | twitter
Lars Rood: blog | twitter
Ian Robertson: video guy
Rhett Smith: blog | twitter
Clint Bokelman: blog

We’ll all be using our social media accounts to share what’s happening on the trip, so be sure to check them all out if you want to hear all sides of the stories. I, too, will be blogging during the trip, as well as using my Twitter account, Facebook page, and YouTube channel to post updates, pictures, and videos while we’re there, so be sure to subscribe to each of them.

Official team Twitter list
Perhaps the easiest way to follow the “Youth Ministry Advance Team: Haiti” on Twitter is to subscribe to the YMATH Twitter List.

Officially on Facebook and Twitter
In addition to using our own social media channels, Adam McLane set up a unique twitter account and Facebook page specificly for this trip. The big highlights of the trip, including videos, pictures, blog post links, and updates will be posted at those places throughout the trip.

Donate and win a $50 gift certificate to C28.com

In my last blog post about Haiti I mentioned I have several big expenses to cover, about $660 worth of shots, passport renewal, and equipment. Several of you responded with generous donations. Thank you!

C28 Christian Shirts stepped up, as well, and donated a $50 gift certificate for me to give away to a random donor, which is amazing! It doesn’t matter how much you give, whether it’s $1 or $100, use the ChipIn widget to donate securely via PayPal. Any funds that are donated beyond my needs for the trip will be donated to Adventures In Missions and their Haiti relief efforts.

Next Tuesday, February 9, I’ll randomly select a donor to receive the $50 gift certificate for C28 Christian Shirts. In the meantime, check out their website because they have some of the most unique and non-cheesy Christian appearal I’ve seen in a long time.

[ Donate here ]

How 30 seconds could drastically change your life

Adventures In Missions put together a great video about the relief work that’s needed in Haiti. I’m so honored I get to be part of a team that actually goes to serve. February 11 to 17, baby! (Yikes!)

Time Out: How God enables you in ministry

tim@schmoyer.net (Tim Schmoyer) — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 17:56:18 +0000

Time Out (by Jerry Schmoyer)

The last thing in life I ever wanted to do was speak before people. I never raised my hand in class. I always sat in the very back. I never even liked answering the phone. Talking in front of people always scared me. Anything more than a couple of good friends and I would clam up and just listen. So when God put it in my heart to enter the ministry it seemed all wrong. His Spirit gave me a great burning desire to help others grow spiritually. I was given a very strong inner compulsion to help believers learn the Bible and grow. But how could I do that if I couldn’t speak in front of people?

When God called me to speak for Him He also enabled me to speak in front of others. It is His Spirit that gives me the confidence to do so and the words to speak. I can’t take any credit for that. It still isn’t easy and I continue to find it hard to do at times, but I know if He wants me to do something He will have to enable me to do it for I can’t on my own.

Recently I have been traveling to India to minister to pastors there. God put that desire in my heart as well. He then enabled me to carry out the ministry to which He called me. That’s one of the ways God speaks to us today. He speaks enablement and ability to minister in the way in which He calls us.

Have you ever found yourself in a spiritual conversation with someone and the right words and answers just kept coming out of your mouth? You knew God wanted you to say those things, but you recognized they were beyond your ability to communicate in such a great way. That is God enabling you to minister for Him.

You see, God doesn’t call the gifted, He gifts the called. If He calls you to share a testimony, speak to a friend, sing in church, help with the youth, take a turn in the nursery – whatever it is He promises to speak guidance and enablement to you. All He requires of us is to be available. He doesn’t need out ability. He can give or take that as He chooses. He wants our availability, not our ability. He then provides the ability we need. His voice calls people into ministry (I Timothy 1:12; 2:6-7) and then tells those whom He has called what to say. Moses is an example of this (Exodus 4:10-12).

When I teach and preach or when I counsel I depend on God to give me the right things to say. That’s why I always pray before I start, asking Him to give me His words to speak and that everyone would hear Him and not me. I need to listen to Him and you need to be hearing from Him as you hear me.

Scripture
1 Timothy 1:12, “I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who has given me strength, that he considered me faithful, appointing me to his service.”

1 Timothy 2:6-7, “…who gave himself as a ransom for all men — the testimony given in its proper time. And for this purpose I was appointed a herald and an apostle — I am telling the truth, I am not lying — and a teacher of the true faith to the Gentiles.”

Exodus 4:10-12, “Moses said to the Lord, ‘O Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since you have spoken to your servant. I am slow of speech and tongue.’ The Lord said to him, ‘Who gave man his mouth? Who makes him deaf or mute? Who gives him sight or makes him blind? Is it not I, the Lord? Now go; I will help you speak and will teach you what to say.’”

Reflect
Think of some times God has given you words to speak or in some other way helped you to minister for Him. Thank Him for that. Ask Him to help you in ways He now wants you to serve Him. Listen to Him speak enablement to you to carry out what He wants you do to. If there is anything He wants you to do but you are hesitating because you don’t feel competent for it, confess that and commit to doing it with His help. He will speak enablement to you when you need it.

Podcast: How to connect God’s Word with students who appear disconnected, apathetic, and distracted

tim@schmoyer.net (Tim Schmoyer) — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 04:49:34 +0000

Last Monday we talked about how to connect God’s Word with students who appear disconnected, apathetic, and distracted. Our featured guests was E.J. Swanson, a speaker who travels the country speaking to teens at camps, retreats, and conferences. His wisdom and experience where very helpful for speaking into this issue.

Some of the things we talked about:

How passion subconsciously teaches kids
What NOT to share from your personal life when teaching
Creating community around your teaching
Number of kids a full-time youth worker can adequately invest into
Having your voice heard among many negative voices
And a whole lot more…

You can listen to the whole conversation below or grab it in iTunes.

Play this episode

Subscribe to LIVE YM Conversations in iTunes

Next Monday’s discussion

February 1: Join us for LIVE YM Talk again this Monday! We’re discussing, “The need for theological questioning in youth ministry.” Our guest will be Jake Bouma. We’d love to have you join us! The live conversation starts at 2:00 PM eastern time! See our LIVE YM Talk page for details.

Join our next LIVE Youth Ministry Conversation!

Freebie Friday #162: Free music video DVD and Bible studies for Owl City music

tim@schmoyer.net (Tim Schmoyer) — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 18:48:38 +0000

The folks at interlinc have been able to cultivate a very cool relationship with Adam from the band Owl City (if you haven’t heard of them, your students have – he was #1 on iTunes for weeks). I’m told Adam is a wonderful believer and is letting his music communicate his faith.

Free Bible study for Owl City music

Interlinc wants to share their digital introduction to Owl City (a letter from Adam to youth leaders and some song explanations) and a two-session Bible study guide to go along with two of Owl City’s songs, including “Fireflies” (you can listen to the song at the bottom of the page here).

Free music video DVD loop

Interlinc would also love to give you a copy of their Music Video Loop 68 DVD. It contains a ton of music videos and extras. They’ll send you the DVD completely free – no strings attached – they just want you to try and see what playing some good Christian music for you student can do. Just call 1-800-725-3300 and say “I want the free Music Video Loop 68 DVD.”

Check out the DVD contents here. It includes videos from Flyleaf, Skillet, Switchfoot, Britt Nicole, Hawk Nelson, KJ-52, and a lot more.

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Join us for LIVE YM Talk this Monday, February 1! We’re discussing, “The need for theological questioning in youth ministry.” Our guest will be Jake Bouma. We’d love to have you join us! The live conversation starts at 2:00 PM eastern time! See our LIVE YM Talk page for details.

The Online Missions Trip starts THIS SUNDAY!

tim@schmoyer.net (Tim Schmoyer) — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 21:14:14 +0000

Just a quick reminder that that Online Missions Trip starts this Sunday! Greg Stier reminded us about it this morning, too.

If you’re not familiar with the Online Missions Trip, it’s a 2-week campaign to encourage students to engage in spiritual conversations with their unsaved/unchurched friends through mediums where they’re already communicating, like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Xbox Live, World of Warcraft, etc.

To learn more about this trip, visit OnlineMissionsTrip.com. There are many ideas, free resources and tools, a 24/7 Prayer Room, and more. It also has a video of me explaining the trip in more detail. This blog post summarizes it, as well.

And while you’re there, become a fan of the Online Missions Trip on Facebook and meet some of the other teens and youth leaders who will be attending this missions trip starting on Sunday.

Also, you have to see this video about this video, which underscores why this outreach campaign comes at such a key moment in history.

[ Visit OnlineMissionsTrip.com ]

8 tips for maximizing your mission trip’s impact

tim@schmoyer.net (Tim Schmoyer) — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 02:58:19 +0000

I’m going to Haiti in 16 days!

tim@schmoyer.net (Tim Schmoyer) — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 14:29:17 +0000

Those of you who follow me on Twitter or are a fan of the Life In Student Ministry Facebook Page already know this because I announced it last Friday with this post on my personal blog at timschmoyer.me.

To hear the story of this opportunity, I strongly encourage you to go read that post first. It tells the story of how I responded initially to the opportunity, how the Lord convicted me about my self-centeredness, and changed my response.

The short version is this: Early last week I was asked if I was interested in a trip to Haiti. Since it was during time I had already scheduled to be in Texas on a family vacation, my wife and I mostly declined, but as I thought about it throughout the rest of the week I felt very convicted. “Tim, how can you go kick-back in Texas and relax when there’s so many people in Haiti who are literally suffering! And you have an opportunity to help!” Matthew 25:40 and James 4:17 kept kicking my butt all week long until I got the email, “Tim, the trip is officially on. Are you in or out?” Apparently my wife had a change of heart, too, because when I approached her about it again, she said I needed to go even before I said I was actually thinking about doing it.

So, here I go! I’m scared, nervous, excited, and unqualified, all at the same time. I’m going with the expectation that God will just wreck me, that He’ll shatter my perspective of the world and of life. It will be hard, I’m sure… harder than I can imagine. I’m so comfortable in my tiny, self-centered, narrowly-focused, perfect American world.

There’s more about that in my original post, so let me use the rest of this post to fill in some details that are missing from it and answer some common questions I’ve received so far.

Common questions about the trip

First of all, this is definitely, absolutely, 100% a serving trip. I am not going just to be a tourist and see the sights. If that were the case, I would much rather go somewhere cleaner and safer than Haiti. I’m going to serve water and food in a community where currently no other relief is present except a small team from the organization I’ll be joining. The cool thing about this team is that they are serving along-side of Haitians instead of just taking over and doing it on their own. They’re partnering with local churches, drenching the ministry in prayer, and have a lot of experience in relief efforts, including Katrina.

I know people are being told not to come to Haiti unless you’re an expert, like a doctor or a dentist or something, but they’re mostly speaking to people without a plan, who just show up at the airport without a ride or a place to go. I am traveling to Haiti invited by people who are already there, who have a plan for me and our ministry time together. Reports from the people they’ve helped on the ground are, “Please come help us! We’ve been left homeless and without anything, and we are desperate.” Advance teams from this organization are being met with great gratitude. Furthermore, it doesn’t take an expert to clean up debris, hand out food and water, or just be present to give hope to people by showing them, “Hey, you’re not alone! We’re here for you.”

Follow my trip in Haiti

Depending on wifi availability, you can be sure I’ll do my best to keep you all in the loop with what’s happening while I’m there, including pictures, videos, tweets, and blog posts. I’m not sure what the Internet access will be like, nor do I know a lot of other details yet, but hopefully by next week I can update you all again with how everything is coming together. In the meantime, make sure you subscribe to my following channels for my videos, pictures, and updates from Haiti:

I need some financial help

It’s no secret that a missions trip costs a lot of money. Fortunately, most of it will be paid for by a very generous donor! (Thank you!!) There are some expenses I have to cover myself, however, most notably are the necessary immunizations and some gear, like decent hiking shoes and mosquito netting. I don’t have final prices on all the shots and immunizations yet, but it sounds like they’ll easily add up to several hundred dollars.

If you feel compelled to partner with me financially to help cover some of these expenses, I would greatly appreciate it. Any funds that come in above and beyond my necessary expenses I will donate to the Haiti relief work of the organization I’ll be joining. The dates for the trip are February 11 to 17. Please use this chip-in widget to donate money to my PayPal account. Thank you!

Time Out: Learning to listen for God’s encouraging peace

tim@schmoyer.net (Tim Schmoyer) — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 06:12:10 +0000

Time Out (by Jerry Schmoyer)

Have you ever had a time in your life when things were going badly and you could have really fallen apart, but you prayed about it and God gave you this awesome sense of peace? That has happened to me by the side of a highway with a broken-down car that contained four very upset children. It also happened when our church lost several important members at once, when things were not going well for us financially and we didn’t know how we’d be able to cover out expenses. Have those kinds of things ever happened to you? What is it? It’s God’s Spirit speaking peace to our spirit.

God doesn’t just speak information to us; quite often He speaks words of encouragement, peace, comfort and strength. “Peace I leave with you; My peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid” (John 14:27). “And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:6-7). God speaks peace to us.

He also speaks encouragement as well. Our church has gone through some very difficult times when attendance and giving was way, way down. Still, God spoke encouragement to me to keep moving ahead and to keep my eyes on Him. I can’t take credit for those thoughts didn’t originate within me. I know it was God speaking to me to keep me going. I’ve seen Him do it to people whose marriage was falling apart, to those who had lost a job or a loved one, and in all manner of situations.

Unfortunately we don’t always recognize that it is His voice speaking to us at such times. When we don’t then we don’t thank Him and give Him the credit that is due Him. When we do recognize this comes from Him we are better able to recognize and listen to His voice next time we need peace or encouragement. Instead of shutting that voice off we must know it is from God so we listen to it.

This peace and encouragement comes when we turn to God in difficult situations. It can be in response to prayer, Bible reading, singing or anything that focuses our attention onto God.

Charles Stanley explains it this way:

As you pray and read, trust the Holy Spirit to quicken your spirit to His truth. You may feel this as a warmth inside, or you may feel a great sense of absoluteness about a particular verse. Sometimes the words on the page of your Bible may seem to stand out to you as if they were written in bold headlines. Sometimes you may not be able to get away from a particular passage. It comes repeatedly to your mind, and you can’t seem to shake it from memory.

Spend time now letting God fill you with His peace and encouragement. Ask Him for it in areas where it is needed and listen to His voice speaking that to your spirit. Thank Him for it.

Podcast: What every youth worker can learn from urban youth ministry

tim@schmoyer.net (Tim Schmoyer) — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 19:25:56 +0000

Last Monday we spent Martin Luther King Jr. holiday talking about urban youth ministry, diversity, and what the rest of the youth ministry world can learn from those working with inner-city teenagers. Our featured guests were Adam McLane and Eric Iverson. Eric has been doing youth ministry in an urban context for decades and brought a lot of good reminders to the table about what the rest of us can learn from it.

Some of the things we talked about:

The importance of building trust quickly and how to do it
Good versus bad reasons for doing youth ministry
How contextual ministry morphs our view of theology
Handling ministry events with low-income and no budget
And a whole lot more…

You can listen to the whole conversation below or grab it in iTunes.

Play this episode

Subscribe to LIVE YM Conversations in iTunes

Next Monday’s discussion

January 25: Join us for LIVE YM Talk again this Monday! We’re discussing, “How to connect God’s Word with students who appear disconnected, apathetic, and distracted.” Our guest will be E.J. Swanson, a national speaker at teen conferences, camps, and retreats. We’d love to have you join us! The live conversation starts at 2:00 PM eastern time! See our LIVE YM Talk page for details.

Join our next LIVE Youth Ministry Conversation!

“To Save A Life” movie review for youth groups

tim@schmoyer.net (Tim Schmoyer) — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 21:38:18 +0000

Two weeks ago I had the privilege to watch an advanced screening of the movie, To Save A Life. They have a pretty agressive marketing campaign among the Christian community, so you’ve no-doubt heard of it and either dismissed it because it’s a “Christian film” and thought, “Please, no more Kirk Cameron!,” or, like me, you just put it on a back burner due to all the other demands of your time. Here are my thoughts after watching the film:

Plot

The story starts at the grave side of a high school student who committed suicide. A few of his family and friends are present, including Jake Taylor, the high school senior the movie shadows for the next two hours. For a number of reasons, Jake is devastated by the tragedy and, through his search for answers, he meets a youth pastor, Chris, who becomes a trusted friend. As Jake wrestles through issues like popularity, cutting, abortion, sex, divorce, drugs and relationships, his life eventually hits rock bottom. One might expect that this is the point when he turns to Christ, but the story is thankfully a bit more real than that. The truth is, Jake decided to give God a try early in the film and because of that, combined with the consequences of his past mistakes, he hits bottom, thinking that God was supposed to make everything better.

The plot is very heavy for two hours straight and has almost no comic relief. I was craving a break in the tension after about an hour or so, but none came, leaving me pretty emotionally worn out by the end, but fortunately it has a positive ending. A normal Christian film might try to wrap up all the teen issues with an over-simplistic and unbiblical, “Jesus can make your life happy and perfect!” but instead To Save A Life ends with the more realistic, “Life is hard, there are no simple answers, and a relationship with Christ is the only way to navigate it all.”

Quality

The film is surprisingly very well done. I was expecting a lot of cheesy moments from poor acting and churchiness, but the cheese-factor was kept to a minimum. In fact, there’s only one or two places that make you roll your eyes a bit, but even then it’s not big enough to make you laugh or grin.

Overall, the acting was a solid performance. They hired people who have experience in various other films and TV shows, which was probably a good move, regardless of if most of them are unbelievers. In my opinion, a movie that’s professionally done and credible trumps whether or not the actors on the screen actually know Christ or not. Hopefully this film is one that brings them one step closer in that direction!

My only gripe with the acting is that the main character, played by Randy Wayne, had this, “I’m deep in thought” look on his face for the first three-quarters of the movie. Granted, he was thinking through a lot of issues in the film, but a slightly different “deep in thought” face would’ve been nice. After a while, it kinda looked like his face was stuck like that.

His girlfriend in the movie, played by Deja Kreutzberg, did an outstanding job, though. I was thoroughly impressed with her performance despite her more limited film career.

Content

True to it’s marketing hype, the film discusses many teen issues like cutting, suicide, school shootings, abortion, divorce, cliques, drinking, peer pressure, dating, sex, and a lot more. Impressively, none of these issues feel forced into the story — they all feel like a natural part of Jake Taylor’s life and experiences.

However, I would opt to change some of the wording I read in other reviews and promotional pieces: the film doesn’t “deal” with all of these issues as much as it just highlights them and brings attention to how they’re often all integrated. That said, it does give more treatment to some of the issues than others, especially cliques and peer pressure, but I’m not sure I’d say it deals with every issue.

You should also be aware that, although it is a Christian film, it is not overtly so. My impression is that the producer wanted to demonstrate the power of a changed life through Christ without getting too churchy, which is good, but I would’ve liked to see the gospel communicated more clearly at the end. If there was ever a film to pull it off without being weird or tacky about it, this film could’ve done it very successfully. Instead, we just see a glimpse into what a changed life looks like.

The other thing about not being an overtly Christian film is that there is some swearing, an implied sex scene, and some of the normal graphic footage you might expect to see in a film that contains cutting and alcohol. It’s probably nothing “worse” than what you’d normally see on network TV, though. I wasn’t offended by it at all. In fact, it almost gave the film more credibility in the sense that we should never expect unbelievers to act like believers, and most of the characters in the film are definitely unbelievers. They’re just living the way they know how, and that transparency is communicated on the screen.

Bottom Line

So the million dollar question: Should you take your church’s youth group to see this film? For high school students, absolutely! For jr. high students, probably. The only reason I hesitate with jr. highers is because of the power of suggestion for them. Most, if not all, high school students have had first- or second-hand experience with the issues that are visually highlighted in the film. Some jr. highers, on the other hand, have a chance of still being a little more innocent (albiet, a small chance). They definitely need to be exposed to these issues around this age and doing it within the safety and wisdom of adults in a faith-based context is the best place to do it, but it is an emotionally taxing movie. I’d advise that you take a couple weeks to talk through these teen issues with jr. highers first, then go see the movie together. With sr. high, I’d probably do just the reverse: see the movie together first, then discuss it.

To Save A Life has youth group curriculum to accompany the movie, which you can purchase for $59.99 right now. I haven’t used it yet, but will probably pick it up soon for some of the high school small groups in my church after some further input from the adult and student leaders.

Trailer

Here’s the official trailer on YouTube.

More information

The movie is playing in theaters starting TODAY! Check out ToSaveALifeMovie.com for more information about the movie and to find a theater near you.

Win a free “To Save A Life” fan pack!

The people at To Save A Life have graciously given me 1 fan pack of schwag to give away for FREE to a lucky random person! The fan pack contains:

Limited Edition Hoodie
Printed novel
A slap bracelet
Pens
and other fun movie stuff

All you have to do is use the Twitter or Facebook Share buttons at the top of this page to help spread the word about this film and review! Next Friday, January 29, I will select one person at random and award them with the fan pack. (Note: you may tweet and post this review multiple times if you want, but doing so will not increase your chances of winning.) Enjoy!

UPDATE: This contest is over. See a video of the drawing for the fan pack giveaway here. Did you win it?

Freebie Friday #161: 3D “punched out” font

tim@schmoyer.net (Tim Schmoyer) — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 17:58:17 +0000

This is probably one of those things you never knew you needed until you saw it, and as soon as you saw it, you thought of a 100 ways to use it.

This font gives you cut-outs that let you build 3D pixel style letters, perfect for creating a sign to display upright on a table, gluing to a poster, or to give to students to spell different words for a game or lesson opener.

Type the letters you want in a document
Print it out. Cardstock probably works best.
Cut along the solid lines
Fold along the dotted lines
Put some glue on the shaded flaps
Stick them together and there you go!

Download “Punched Out” font

If you’re unsure how to install a font, here’s how to do it on Windows and here’s how to do it on Mac.

[ ht churchrelevance.com ]

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Join us for LIVE YM Talk this Monday, January 19! We’re discussing, “How to connect God’s Word with students who appear disconnected, apathetic, and distracted.” Our guest will be E.J. Swanson, a national speaker at teen conferences, camps, and retreats. We’d love to have you join us! The live conversation starts at 2:00 PM eastern time! See our LIVE YM Talk page for details.

The future of LISM based on your feedback (2 of 2)

tim@schmoyer.net (Tim Schmoyer) — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 04:13:27 +0000

Yesterday I posted the general results from the survey I did of this site’s readership, which was really helpful in sharpening the focus of this site for 2010. However, almost everyone left comments and questions in the survey, too.

Since the survey was anonymous, I have no way of responding directly to people, let alone knowing who they are. Here are a couple questions and feedback that was asked by several people and my answers. NOTE: I edited and summarized a lot of this feedback for the sake of brevity.)

I’d like to see more product reviews. We know what saves a young person, but what is the right camera to buy? What is the right program or mac to purchase? This is something that would be helpful and also a good use of God’s money.

While I’m glad to hear you’re like me and like to research products before you buy them, I doubt this will be an area I’ll dive into anytime soon. I’m happy to mention the electronics I’ve purchased for my ministry and make recommendations accordingly, but there are many other websites that do a much better job of offering reviews and advice in this area than I can. I usually use sites like Amazon.com and Epinions.com to check out user-reviews of products.

Of course, you can always ask for recommendations and input on a product at MinistryQuestions.com before you buy something, too. There’s usually a youth worker or two out there who can give great advice on just about anything.

Please carefully proofread your writing. I think the frequent errors detract from the professionalism that you promote otherwise.

YES! I know! It bugs me, too! lol I type about 87 words per minute, but that’s still not fast enough to keep up with my thought process. I notice I often skip entire words as I type because my mind is already several words ahead of what I’m typing. Thanks for this reminder, though. I do need to do this more.

Unfortunately, I’ve watched very few of your videos. When I skim through my emails, I can read text very quickly. When I encounter a video, I don’t know how much time you’ll be taking away from me. If I can’t tell how long the video it, I’ll just skip it.

Great input! Just thought I’d point out that you can see how long each video is ahead of time by looking at the bottom-right corner of the YouTube video. The time duration is there. Hope that helps!

I listened to one episode of ministryquestions.com and I’m sorry to say that I wasn’t very impressed. A significant chunk of the time was taken up by introductions. I suppose that makes sense at the moment but it is tedious and unnecessary for the archive version.

Hmm… yeah, that makes sense. The reason I include the introductions is because I like LIVE YM Talk to be a place where youth leaders can connect with each other, even if it’s just by knowing someone’s name and having a frame of reference for their input throughout the recorded discussion.

I’m interested to hear what everyone else thinks about this. QUESTION: Should I include introductions in the podcast recording of LIVE YM Talk or not?

I’ll admit, the current website/theme is getting a bit old and is appearing “stale.” All my love to you, but after seeing some of your videos, video bumpers, etc. maybe an upgrade is in order?

I definitely agree. I’ve been discontent with it for a long time now. Since this site has kinda evolved on me, a lot of it needs to change. For example, when I made the logo of me in the goofy pose with the yellow lei around my hat, I just thought it was funny and didn’t expect too may other people to visit the site and see it. But now I know the branding of this site is very inconsistent and the design, while functional, is cluttered and busy.

None of the premium pay-for themes out there really fit what I have in mind, so just last week I finally finished saving up enough cash for a custom design and mailed in a check for the first deposit to a designer I hired. Within the next month or two, LISM will undergo the second phase of my site’s relaunch with new a new design and branding. (The first phase was moving to StudentMinistry.org, the final phase will be to upgrade some things with the videos and LIVE YM Talk recordings, but it all costs money, so it’ll take a while.)

Maybe giving away free tech gear, iPhones, or Wii’s? ;)

If someone wants to donate some gear to give away on my site, I’m totally up for that! In the meantime, I’ve showed you how to get those items and more for free, just like I have multiple times.

I appreciate not having to sort through the ads.

Yeah, this is a delicate balance. On one hand, I need to generate an income through the site so I can not only maintain it, but also improve it and upgrade it to keep up with growth. Plus, I love launching new projects like MinistryQuestions.com, which was not only costly to pull off, but is spendy to keep online due to the integrated video recording and streaming. It’s not even close to supporting itself, so I keep it online and maintained with the surplus funds from LISM advertising revenues.

But I also am firmly in your camp where I hate lots of advertising on a site. It annoys me to no end when I see it on other websites. I hate having to sift through the ads to find the content I want. Often I just leave a site altogether and never bother with it again if it’s cluttered with ads. While it’s necessary that this site generates an income, I plan on experimenting with fewer ads and charging more for them when the new design launches in a month or two. Not sure if that’ll work or not, but it’s worth a shot.

I really liked your “big rocks” video post. I have thought of four or five similar videos I would like to make but just haven’t had the time. Do you plan on adding more of these maybe for a small fee or even for free?

Yeah, the “big rocks” video was fun to do! It’s the only video I’ve done like that and, while it’s cool and all, personally I enjoy talking with other youth workers even more. As I mentioned yesterday, the tagline for LISM is, “Conversations among those who are passionate for teenagers.” The interview/discussion format of my videos is more enjoyable for me and fits the direction I’m going with this site better than the inspirational reminders. That said, however, I’m sure I’ll end up doing more videos like “big rocks” again in the future, because they still are fun to do from time to time.

Sometimes when I ask a question on MinistryQuestions.com, after a few answers come in, I’d like the chance to interact with the answers, which I don’t believe is possible right now.

I’ve wrestled back and forth with this question a lot. On one hand, I really do value the interaction and dialog that can take place from something like that, but on the other hand, I don’t want MinistryQuestions.com to just turn into another youth ministry forum. I want MQ to be distinctly unique. Sometime in the future I may pay the developers to build a feature that lets the question owner ask only one follow-up question to each response, but for now the best solution is to send a private message to the person who answered your question, as I talked about on the MinistryQuestions.com blog.

I don’t have the time to listen to all of the podcasts, but there are often topics discussed that I would love to learn more about. Is there anyway to get a text copy of the conversation or a summary of them?

Many people ask for this and, unfortunately, there is no easy way to do it at this point. Transcribing the each conversation would take hours and hours and does not sound even remotely fun. Maybe there’s someone else who would be up for doing that, or even writing a solid summary post about the discussion, but it’s definitely not me. Sorry! There may be some services out there that could do it, but I haven’t looked into them. My guess is that they won’t be too accurate with transcribing anyway.

Anyone else up for doing it?

Other general comments

Technology posts: There were a lot of comments about how you appreciate the articles about using technology in youth ministry, which makes sense, I guess — if you subscribe to a blog you’re probably more technologically inclined and interested about those kinds of things. Since I also enjoy technology, I don’t think writing more about this will be a problem. :)

My transparency: There were also many comments about how you all appreciate my transparency and authenticity on the site. Personally, I don’t think I’m being transparent enough! In 2010 I’m looking forward to sharing even more about my own life and ministry, lessons I’m learning and struggling through.

Networking with LISM readers: Another popular request was something I had never thought of before: a map of the US for LISM readers to use to find other LISM readers in their area. Apparently a lot of you want to connect with other readers of this site on a more personal level than what MinistryQuestions.com or LIVE YM Talk can provide. My initial thought is to refer you all to the National Network of Youth Ministers. They do an excellent job at forming local youth pastor networks and connecting youth workers together in face-to-face communities. But for those who want to connect specifically with other LISM readers, let me give more thought to that and see where it goes. Good idea!

QUESTION: How many other people would be interested in a LISM networking too like this?

The future of LISM based on your feedback (1 of 2)

tim@schmoyer.net (Tim Schmoyer) — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 04:29:57 +0000

On New Year’s Eve I asked how I can make LISM more valuable for you in 2010 and I’m glad I did because 70 of you gave me a lot of very helpful feedback!

Here’s an overview of some of your input, my responses, and reader demographics on this site. I would love to hear your response to all of these items in the comments below!

Overview

I asked this question to see if there were any trends in how questions were answered among newer subscribers as opposed to those who have been around for a while. The answers and comments were all pretty diverse, so nothing really to report there. The number of newer people who responded to the survey compared to the number of long-time subscribers is pretty reflective on how the site has grown over the past several years (i.e. there weren’t many subscribers 2 and 3 years ago).

Both of these surprised me! The main demographic of youth workers I have in mind when I generate content is the new youth worker (2 years or less) who is the main volunteer at a church with no paid youth worker. The secondary demographic I have in mind are paid youth workers who are new to youth ministry. To see that 64% of you are paid full-time and that 65% of you have been in youth ministry for 6 years or more makes me scratch my head a bit. I wasn’t writing for you! lol I feel like my content is a bit remedial for people who have been serving in that kind of a capacity for that long.

But regardless of what I had in mind, it is what it is. QUESTION: Should I start gearing my content more for you youth ministry veterans who have been doing this for 10+ years? I’m humbled you would even consider this site worth reading! Wow.

This site has a lot of international visitors thanks to some decent Google rankings, so I was curious to know if I should start focusing more on youth ministry from a global perspective. To be honest, I’m glad the large majority of readers are from the US because I know almost nothing about international youth ministry. How to work with teens in India, Africa and the Philippines is something I’d definitely have to outsource to someone more knowledgeable than myself.

This chart shows me that, while I have a decent amount of international traffic, almost none of it converts into subscribers, probably because the content is geared solely toward American teens? While it would be cool to help our international brothers and sisters in youth ministry, I feel that mixing international content in with the normal LISM stuff would dilute the focus here too much, but doing a separate youth ministry blog that focuses on that un-resourced demographic would be cool, maybe as a subdomain here or something. QUESTION: Anyone know someone abroad who would be excited and qualified to blog here about international youth ministry?

Aww man, I was hoping video would be much higher because it’s so much fun! Plus, I don’t have to worry about spelling, grammer, punctuation, and all that crud. Oh well. Good ol’ text it is, then… for now.

Freebie Friday and my normal blog posts are out front pretty strong together, twice as far as everything else, which are all somewhat close. It appears that there is value in it all, but that I should focus more on writing content than continuing the different features and series here. My tension is that I try to limit my posts to one a day, which only leaves 2, sometimes 3, days to publish unique “featured” posts.

Right now I have 56 blog drafts waiting to be published eventually. Some of them have been there for over a year and are probably out of date and irrelevant by now. QUESTION: I have enough that I could publish two posts a day for a while, which would be fine for you RSS subscribers, but might feel like spam for you email subscribers. What do you think?

Looks like I could write about anything and someone somewhere would be happy. I appreciate the flexibility! Although, I definitely am more excited about guest posts here at LISM than the rest of you are. I’m probably gonna push that direction a bit more than you guys indicated just because I really value having other voices and perspectives on this site. The tagline for LISM is, “Conversations among those passionate for teenagers,” hence LIVE YM Talk and the youth ministry mentorships. Guest blog posts fit right in with that focus. (If you’re interested in being a guest blogger, check out my guidelines and tips for how to make that happen.)

Tomorrow, answers to your questions and comments

There were several common questions that you all asked in the comments section of the survey. Tomorrow I’ll do my best to respond to a lot of your anonymous feedback and the future of Life In Student Ministry.

How mobile location-based games will impact the future of youth ministry

tim@schmoyer.net (Tim Schmoyer) — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 04:30:06 +0000

Just as many of us are becoming familiar with social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, here come two more big contenders that some tech sites are claiming will be the next big wave of social interaction. In fact, CNN calls them “next year’s Twitter.” True to my prediction about why teens will leave Facebook within the next two years, both of these services fall under the categories I suggested would characterize what’s next in the social media industry: It will not be tethered to a computer, and it will still enhance and lead to face-to-face socializing.

About the games

Imagine that the entire world is a giant game board. As you travel from place to place around town or around the world, you receive points via your GPS enabled cell phone for the places you visit and how you interact there. At some venues, you can pick up virtual items left there by other players, leave one of your own items behind for others who visit in the future, and view a log of how each item was picked up and passed along from place to place around the world, like a virtual geocache. If you visit a venue more than anyone else, you could become mayor of that place and earn a reputation with everyone else who visits it in the future as long as you retain your mayorship. (Some restaurants and stores now offer perks to the mayors of their venue, such as free drinks or special coupons.) Race to earn the most points among your friends, see their last location and choose to join them (no more calling everyone to see where they are, just check your friends list and drive over), and also race to earn both a local and global reputation as you travel your community and the rest of the world. There are leaderboards to climb, fun badges to earn, pins to unlock, collectable items to find, new venues to be the first to discover, and so much more. You can also leave notes for other visitors who check-in at that spot later (i.e. “I definitely recommend the chicken sandwich”) or leave notes for yourself that pop-up the next time you visit that venue (i.e. “Try the house salad next time instead of the caesar salad”). It’s a local game combined with a global game with both your friends and everyone else in the world.

The game names

The two big services in this mobile location-based game market are Foursquare and Gowalla. I’ve been playing both of their games for a couple weeks with my Motorola Droid and love it! As a guy who loves role-playing video games, the idea of being able to unlock badges, find items, rank up, and interact with other locals as I do my normal every-day activities around town is quite addicting.

GPS enabled phones with data plans are becoming more and more mainstream (Blackberry, iPhone, Android-based phones, etc.), which will lead to see a rise in the popularity of these mobile location-based games, first with the young-professionals 20-somethings, but then with teenagers. Within the next year or two, the mobile social networking games will become more robust, more competitive, more social and much more helpful and valuable as you travel to new places.

These services are still very new and there’s not much on the web that explains what they are or how they work in really simplistic terms. Foursquare as a half-decent explanation on their site, but Gowalla doesn’t have an explanation save for a brief video on the front page of their website that really doesn’t do it justice. This YouTube video is the best I could find if you want another (better) explanation of the two services side-by-side.

To see Foursquare and Gowalla compared, Mashable has a slightly out-dated chart of the two since Foursquare recently changed the game to be both global and local instead of just local. Now you play not only with your friends, but you’re also ranked again people who are within a 25 mile radius of you.

Another big player in the location-based mobile gaming industry is MyTown. It looks really sweet because it allows users to earn virtual currency, buy venues they frequently visit and charge rent to other players who check-in there, kinda like a big monopoly game in real-life. Unfortunately, I can’t play because it’s limited to the iPhone. Grrr…

Yelp.com recently got in the action by adding location-based gaming to their existing user-review community, and it’s only a matter of time until Facebook gets in the game, taking their millions of users with them to immediately dominate the industry (thereby somewhat negating my previous prediction).

The implications for the future of youth ministry are numerous

At a glance on your phone, see where your youth group kids are all hanging out and go join them.
Not familiar with the venue the teens are at? Check with the mayor, or read some of the notes posted about it.
Know who your youth group kids are spending time with every day.
Running some errands? Make your trail available so a kid can catch you if you’re nearby.
Notice that a new visitor who checked in to your church’s venue last Sunday is working at the check-out lane in the grocery store. Go do some shopping there and make sure you check-out on their isle to introduce yourself.
Leave virtual notes for kids at a venue for the next time they visit. (“Hey John, I talked with the store manager and I already pre-paid your next coffee here. Surprise! This one’s on me. Love ya, man!” Or, “Welcome to school today! Praying for your test, Jill!”)
Track attendance at youth group. If someone’s missing, see where they are. Notice the youth group guy is with a girl, probably on a date? Take the entire youth group over there and crash it!
Become mayor of your church to interact with guests, visitors, and even regulars who check in.
Thinking about grabbing dinner at Taco Bell, but see a couple kids just checked in at Subway across the street? Eat over there instead. (Plus, it’s healthier for you.)
A visitor comes to church and you notice they’re the mayor of a local bar. Great piece of info and background as you spark a conversations. Or maybe you notice that this person checked into 5 different churches each Sunday for the past 5 weeks. Again, helpful info. Maybe they’re searching for a church home. Drop a cool virtual item for them to take as a souvenir of their visit along with a note.

The list could go on and on, but you get the picture. Some of these location-based features aren’t available yet, like leaving private notes at a venue for a friend, but given some time I’m sure we’ll see this soon. (Remember The Milk already does location-based personal notes and “to do” reminders for GPS enabled phones. Walk into a grocery store and your phone automatically detects where you are and pops up your reminder, “Hey, remember to get cereal while you’re here.” Or, walk into church and your church “to do” list automatically comes up on your phone.)

My take

Personally, I like Foursquare the best because it has a native app for my Droid, the game is easy to learn, and it feels more social than the others. Plus, Foursquare seems to be pioneering the market more aggressively than the competition, which is still pretty limited. However, I really like Gowalla’s “virtual geocaching,” so I’ll probably play them both for now and see what happens.

Feel free to add me as a friend both on Gowalla and Foursquare. If you see that I just checked in somewhere close by you, come over and say HI! This will be especially fun to play with all of you at the Simply Youth Ministry Conference next month!

[ Tim Schmoyer on Foursquare ]

[ Tim Schmoyer on Gowalla ]

Note that there’s no gameplay on the site – you have to be on a GPS-enabled mobile phone for the actual game.

Preempting your criticisms

Before anyone gets too critical about the dangers of location-based services, let me remind you of the cycle of youth culture: everything from Elvis to MySpace is first met with criticism from the older generations before it’s eventually adopted as commonplace just as the new generation is moving on to something else. Since the fastest growing demographic on Facebook is women over the age of 55, I’d say it’s about time to see the cycle start to repeat itself again very soon. Maybe mobile location-based networking will be where criticism comes next before everyone is eventually doing it, maybe not, but I’m guessing it is.

Yeah, there will be some crazy stalker stories surrounding the games of making your exact location known, and most of us (myself included) still feel a little uncomfortable about giving away that kind of information on a regular basis, but I remember feeling the same way about Twitter and letting everyone know, “What are you doing?” all the time. Now it’s normal. I remember way back when it was a privacy concern to post a picture of yourself online! Given some time and wider acceptance, I expect the same will happen with location-aware social networks, too.

What do you think?

Do you think mobile location based services will catch on? How do you see it impacting youth ministry?

Time Out: Hearing God through information and guidance

tim@schmoyer.net (Tim Schmoyer) — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 05:05:25 +0000

Time Out (by Jerry Schmoyer)

Twenty eight years ago I was between churches and seeking where God would have me minister. A church in western Pennsylvania invited us to come speak and apply so we did. We weren’t sure if God wanted us to go there or not, but they went ahead with their procedure and voted on us. The vote was 100% – unanimous. I remember agonizing over the decision, awaiting their final call to see if we were coming or not. When the phone rang I still wasn’t sure, but as I talked I knew God was telling me to turn it down. I really wanted to get back to pastoring. I hadn’t ever heard of Main Street Baptist Church in Doylestown. Six months later God led us here, and the church vote was 51% in our favor. Denominational leaders urged us to turn down what was then a hot-bed of conflict and strife, but I knew God was leading us to come here so we did.

That’s why it’s so important to be listening to God and letting Him guide and direct. God speaks conviction to our spirit. A second type of content God speaks to us is information and guidance.

Jesus said, “But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on His own; He will speak only what He hears, and He will tell you what is yet to come” (John 16:13).

The Bible abounds with examples of this. Paul said the Holy Spirit warned him of what was to come when he went to Jerusalem (Acts 20:22-23). He reminded the church in Corinth that they had the “mind of Christ” (2:16). Joseph heard of Pharaoh’s dream and God told Him the contents and their meaning. Daniel heard Nebuchadnezzar’s dream and God gave him the interpretation. Jacob (Genesis 46:2) and Samuel (2 Samuel 23:2) both said God spoke His guidance to them. Simeon was moved by the Spirit to find Jesus with His parents in the temple (Luke 2:25-28). Several times the Bible tells us that God guided Him by directing His spirit (Mark 2:8; John 13:21). God spoke to Ananias and told him to go to blind Paul (Acts 9:11-15).

An analogy I like which explains this is the shepherd-sheep illustration. He said that His sheep hear His voice and follow Him (John 10:4, 16, 27). Jesus’ definition of a disciple is one who follows Him, who hears His voice and responds.

St. Augustine tells of a time God’s voice guided him. “I heard from a neighboring house a voice, as of a boy or girl, I know not, changing, and oft repeating, ‘Take up and read. Take up and read.’ I could remember no child’s game with these words. So, checking the torrent of my tears, I arose; interpreting it to be no other than a command from God, to open the book, and read the first chapter I should find.” Thus he came upon Romans 13:13-14 which led to his salvation and transformation.

A very remarkable illustration of this concerns Peter Marshall, the Scot who in the middle of the twentieth century became one of America’s most widely acclaimed ministers. Through his outstanding qualities as a man and a minister, he brought the office of the chaplain of the United States Senate to a new level of prominence.

Back in Britain, on one foggy, pitch-black Northumerland night, he was taking a shortcut across the moors in an area where there was a deep, deserted limestone quarry. As he plodded blindly forward, an urgent voice called out, “Peter!” He stopped and answered, “Yes, who is it? What do you want?” But there was no response.

Thinking he was mistaken, he took a few more steps. The voice came again, even more urgently, “Peter!” At this he stopped again and, trying to peer into the darkness, stumbled forward and fell to his knees. Putting down his hand to brace himself, he found nothing there. As he felt around in a semicircle he discovered that he was right on the brink of the abandoned quarry, where one step more would certainly have killed him.

It’s not just the big things, but little things He leads us with as well. Many times I’ve not been able to find my keys or something I’ve misplaced. After frantically looking everywhere I finally stop and pray, and then soon after that their location pops right into my mind!

Charles Stanley adds excellent counsel to this: “In the Old Testament when men such as King David inquired of the Lord, the question was nearly always put to the Lord in such a way that the answer was yes or no. I believe this is the foremost way that the Holy Spirit speaks to us hour by hour as we walk through our particular set of circumstances. We can never ask too many times of the Holy Spirit, ‘Should I do this – yes or no?’ We will sense in our spirits His word of reply to us. Generally, it will be a sense of enthusiasm and eager desire marked with great joy and freedom, or it will be a sense of foreboding, danger, caution, or need for silence. I find that it is much easier to receive the direction of the Holy Spirit by asking for yes-or-no counsel than to say to Him in general terms, ‘What do you want me to do?’”

Take a few moments now to ask God for information or guidance you need for something you are currently involved in. Listen to His Spirit as He speaks. Keep listening all day, for God often speaks slowly and little by little.

Podcast: Answering questions and debates from MinistryQuestions.com #2

tim@schmoyer.net (Tim Schmoyer) — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 18:34:05 +0000

We had a great discussion last Monday answering some of the recent questions and debates that were posted to MinistryQuestions.com. Unfortunately, the service we use to hold the conversations, TalkShoe, was plagued with issues once again, forcing us to switch to Blog Talk Radio for next week’s talk.

Nonetheless, the phone part worked without many hitches, so we were able to discuss a couple topics before our time ran out.

Some of the things we talked about:

You can listen to the whole conversation below or grab it in iTunes.

Play this episode

Subscribe to LIVE YM Conversations in iTunes

Next Monday’s discussion

January 19: Join us for LIVE YM Talk again this Monday! We’re discussing, “What every youth worker can learn from urban youth ministry.” Our guest will be Eric Iverson, the Multi-Cultural Integrity Director for YouthWorks. We’d love to have you join us! The live conversation starts at 2:00 PM eastern time! See our LIVE YM Talk page for details.

Join our next LIVE Youth Ministry Conversation!

Freebie Friday #160: Campus prayer walk guide

tim@schmoyer.net (Tim Schmoyer) — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 18:38:13 +0000

Leave it to Paul Turner to again contribute a great resource for Freebie Friday! I think he’s starting to get close to rivaling Brett Hetherington for the most Freebie Friday contributions! Thanks, Paul!

Paul sent this to me with the following note:

Made this the other day for our campus Bible club. We divided the group into four and started them in different locations. Worked out very well. We met back together at the end and for testimonies and group prayer.

Download the Campus Prayer Walk Gude

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Join us for LIVE YM Talk this Monday, January 19! We’re discussing, “What every youth worker can learn from urban youth ministry.” Our guest will be Eric Iverson, the Multi-Cultural Integrity Director for YouthWorks. We’d love to have you join us! The live conversation starts at 2:00 PM eastern time! See our LIVE YM Talk page for details.

Quick Note: LIVE YM Talk is moving to BlogTalkRadio.com

tim@schmoyer.net (Tim Schmoyer) — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 06:00:32 +0000

Just a quick note to notify everyone that LIVE YM Talk will now be hosted at BlogTalkRadio.com.

In 2008 LIVE YM Talk was hosted on Skype before we quickly switched to Talkshoe.com, which worked great for a year and a half because it was free and served our needs perfectly. In fact, it still is the perfect solution for LIVE YM Talk, except that a couple months ago it started having a lot of issues with crashing people’s browsers, software incompatibilities, down-time, and more. I’ve been in touch with Talkshoe’s head support rep and, unfortunately, they don’t seem too eager to fix anything, so it’s time for us to move on.

Try joining us again

If you’ve joined us in the past but stopped because of all the technical difficulties with TalkShoe, I’d like to invite you to come back and join us again. Although BlogTalkRadio.com is missing some of the key features we loved at TalkShoe, at least it should be functional — it’d better anyway, I’m paying $39 a month for it!

Each week’s show link will be posted at it’s normal place on the LIVE YM Talk page here at LISM, so check that each Monday for a direct link to listen to the conversation online and access the chat room. We also now have a direct phone number: (646) 721-9140. Or, during the show you can just click a button and connect directly using your computer microphone with no software to install.

Some big upcoming shows!

We have a great lineup of discussions scheduled, including a live conversation and Q&A with Tic Long, the new Executive Director of Youth Specialties, in a couple weeks!

This Monday we’re talking with Eric Iverson, the Multi-Cultural Integrity Director for YouthWorks. He’ll lead us in a discussion about, “What every youth worker can learn from urban youth ministry.”

The Monday after that, on January 25, E.J. Swanson is going to join the conversation about, “How to connect God’s Word with students who appear disconnected, apathetic, and distracted.”

Check out the schedule of other upcoming discussions on the LIVE YM Talk page and join our conversation every Monday at 2:00 PM eastern time!

Outcomes of youth groups who serve their community

tim@schmoyer.net (Tim Schmoyer) — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 06:10:43 +0000

Next round of youth ministry mentoring starts at SYMC!

tim@schmoyer.net (Tim Schmoyer) — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 05:32:56 +0000

Almost two years ago I started doing some one-on-one youth ministry mentoring through this site and since then it’s grown into a full-blown team of mentors who have served over 100 brand new youth workers. We’ve taken a wholistic approach to mentoring by focusing on three main areas that all intertwine with each other: a mentee’s personal life, spiritual life, and ministry life. The response by new youth workers who have gone through the program has been extremely positive, so we’re glad we’re on the right track with this. We tend to do two 10-week one-on-one rounds each year, one in the spring and one in the fall, and this year will be no different.

However, this spring round of mentoring will be especially unique because we have the tremendous opportunity to partner with the Simply Youth Ministry Conference and start it face-to-face with you. Most of the mentors will be at the conference, myself included, and are pumped to take mentoring to the next level with a couple one-on-one lunch conversations. It’s advice and wisdom for your youth ministry, your personal walk with Christ, and your personal life that starts face-to-face and continues to weekly telephone conversations from there!

If you’ve been in youth ministry for 2 years or fewer and will be at the Simply Youth Ministry Conference from February 26 to March 1, 2010, then this youth ministry mentorship is for you! The video below explains a bit more about it, including a story from one of the past mentees who has gone through the program.

Traditionally the mentorship has been absolutely free, but because we want to start investing more into the mentors and into the program, the 10-week mentorship now costs $99 (books included). We realize that some youth workers who really need this mentoring can’t afford that, though, so there are some scholarship funds available.

If you have been in youth ministry for 2 years or fewer and you’re planning to be at the Simply Youth Ministry Conference next month, this is simply an opportunity I promise you cannot miss! Seriously. I don’t say that about many things. Check out the Youth Ministry Mentoring part of this site, look through the expectations, goals, and other parts of the mentorship and decide for yourself. If you’re up for the 10-week journey with a personal youth ministry mentor, fill out the application and if you’re selected by a mentor, I will be in touch with you via email to give you payment information and put you in touch with the mentor.

For those of you who want to be mentored but will not be at the Simply Youth Ministry Conference, you may also fill out the application to be considered for the mentorship. The mentors who are unable to attend the conference will be considering your applications.

I’m so pumped about this partnership! Seriously people, you new youth workers out there cannot believe how blessed you will be by both the conference and this mentorship, especially when they’re combined together like this. Check it out!

[ Youth Ministry Mentorship ]

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How can I make Life In Student Ministry more valuable for you in 2010? Here is a survey that could give me some valuable insights into you, your ministry, your needs, and thoughts about this site. It should only take about 3-4 minutes to complete. Thanks!

Podcast: Designing a vision for your student ministry

tim@schmoyer.net (Tim Schmoyer) — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 21:46:39 +0000

Due to a little miscommunication, the guest for today’s show wasn’t able to make it, so those of us who were on the call decided to go ahead with the topic ourselves. It actually morphed into the topic you see above, which was great. We’ll talk more about it with Todd Perkins when we reschedule him for another time, but will go more with the direction of “communicating the vision to the church and community” since we didn’t discuss that much in last week’s LIVE YM Talk.

Some of the things we talked about:

What is a vision?
How does it different from mission/purpose/values/goals/etc.?
Why is it important?
How a vision directs a ministry
And a lot more…

You can listen to the whole conversation below or grab it in iTunes.

Play this episode

Subscribe to LIVE YM Conversations in iTunes

Next Monday’s discussion

January 18: We’re working on getting Todd or someone else scheduled for this coming Monday, so keep an eye on the LIVE YM Talk page this week for updates about next week’s conversation.

Join our next LIVE Youth Ministry Conversation!

Time Out: How we hear God speak

tim@schmoyer.net (Tim Schmoyer) — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 17:46:12 +0000

Time Out (by Jerry Schmoyer)

Sometimes I’m guilty of not listening when my wife speaks. I may be looking at here and pretend to be paying attention, but my mind is elsewhere and I don’t really hear her. I’m sure most husbands have been caught in that one time or another. It’s embarrassing and painful (for both of us). How much more so, though, when God speaks and we don’t her.

Some Christians say they never hear God speaking to them, but if you are a Christian, you have heard God speak to you. It has definitely happened or you wouldn’t be a Christian. And you were paying attention as well. For most of us, the first time we heard God speak to us He was convicting us of sin, showing us our need of salvation. Jesus said, “When the Holy Spirit comes, He will convict the world of guilt in regard to sin and righteousness and judgment: in regard to sin, because men do not believe in me” (John 16:7-11). I Thessalonians 1:4-5 says the gospel comes to us with the Holy Spirit and with deep conviction.

To Ezekiel God complained that “these people have ears to hear but they never hear, eyes to see but they never see” (12:2). Jesus repeated this complaint several times as well.

When we look at these occurrences we see they can be grouped into five areas of revelation. God spoke conviction, information, encouragement, enablement in ministry, and revelation of Himself.

Of course we all know that how we respond that that conviction is a free will choice each will need to make.

In the 1640s George Fox, founder of the Friends, or Quaker, movement, wandered the fields and lanes of the English countryside, seeking someone who could show him the way to peace with God. He finally became convinced that “there was none among them all that could speak to my condition. And when all my hopes in them and in all men were gone, so that I had nothing outwardly to help me, nor could I tell what to do; then, oh! Then I heard a voice which said, ‘here is one, even Jesus Christ, that can speak to thy condition’; and when I heard it, my heart did leap for joy. Then the Lord did let me see why there was none upon the earth that could speak to my condition, namely, that I might give him all the glory.”

One way in which God speaks to us is to show us the sin in our life. He does this before salvation so we will see our need of Him. He also does this in the lives of those who have freely received His free gift of salvation. He shows us sin so we can confess and remove it.

Charles Stanley wrote: “As we read God’s Word, we nearly always come to what I call a ‘gulp point.’ Something we read challenges us to change something in our lives, to gulp and say, ‘Wow! That really hit me. I need to do something about that.’ Sometimes it’s a conviction about sin in our lives. Sometimes it’s a correction in the way we have been taught or the way in which we act toward others. Sometimes it’s a clear call to engage in a new discipline or area of ministry.”

The problem is that we have a tendency to only listen to what we want to hear. A doctor can give us good advice about diet changes or needed exercise, but it’s very easy to ignore his counsel if it means changes we don’t want to make.

I’ve learned to recognize God’s Spirit when He convicts me of sin. He warns me ahead of time through my conscience. He also censures me after I have sinned. While we may not want to hear these things from Him, we can thank Him for faithfully bringing sin to our attention. Suppose He didn’t?

Scripture
John 16:7-11, “When he comes, he will convict the world of guilt in regard to sin and righteousness and judgment: in regard to sin, because men do not believe in me…”

1 Thessalonians 1:4-5, “For we know, brothers loved by God, that he has chosen you, because our gospel came to you not simply with words, but also with power, with the Holy Spirit and with deep conviction.”

Reflect
Thank God for speaking to you to show you your need of His salvation. Then ask Him to show you any sin in your life that you need to confess. Listen to what His Spirit says and confess that sin. Learn to recognize God’s voice speaking in that way so whenever there is sin to be removed you do so.

Freebie Friday #159: A variety of free resources from Break Free Youth Ministry

tim@schmoyer.net (Tim Schmoyer) — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 21:00:54 +0000

I don’t remember who pointed me to today’s Freebie Friday — I think it was in a chat conversation with someone on Skype actually. Sorry for not giving credit to whoever deserves it!

Someone passed this link along to me. It’s a guy’s website with lots of his youth ministry resources available for free. He has Bible studies, PowerPoint games, special event stuff, videos that can be used as teaching illustrations or just for fun, and more. Looks like there could be some valuable time-saver resources here. Of course, be sure to use his Share page to contribute any of your own resources, too.

Break Free Youth Ministry

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Join us for LIVE YM Talk this Monday, January 11! We’re doing another show of answering recent questions and debates from MinistryQuestions.com. We’d love to have you participate by giving your input, answers, and advice for people’s questions during the live conversation at 2:00 PM eastern time! See our LIVE YM Talk page for details.

My interview with the new Youth Specialties Executive Director: Tic Long

tim@schmoyer.net (Tim Schmoyer) — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 13:19:32 +0000

Today Youth Specialties makes a huge announcement and reveals its new Executive Director, Tic Long. Youth Specialties has been through a lot of major transitions throughout the past couple years, so welcoming back a familiar face like Tic is undoubedly a comfort and relief for many. Personally, I’m stoked! I appreciate Tic’s ability to appreciate the rich history of Youth Specialities’ past while still embracing the changes and risks that will always be necessary for the future.

It’s great to feel a sense of stability at Youth Specialties again now that the YouthWorks deal is finished and Tic is back on board (and, of course, that Adam McLane is still around). I’m looking forward to exciting new developments in the the field of youth ministry from YS for a long time to come.

I had the privilege of interviewing Tic in anticipation for this announcement. Here’s our discussion:

TIM: First of all, welcome back to YS! What’s been going through your mind, soul and heart during the time off?

TIC: To tell you the truth Tim the first couple months I was trying to get YS out of my system. After 32 years I had to relearn about life outside of YS. I tried to not really think too much or too soon about what was next but to enjoy my family, friends and God in a more leisurely manner. I spent a month Backpacking which did wonders for my Soul.

TIM: You could’ve taken a lot of different opportunities from a lot of different organizations. What drew you back to YS?

TIC: It was really a couple things. First I was actually surprised by that fact that in the end I had some really cool opportunities to choose from. Others said that would be the case but it still surprised me. In my time away I wrestled with the question was it time to leave youth ministry. In the end there was just nothing else that excited me as much. I think some of us are just lifers. We might be a sick group but it is home to me. There is nothing else that I am as passionate about. I wasn’t expecting this so it took a while to get my emotions around it. First I really fell in love with the YouthWorks folks. I went to Minneapolis to their HQ which is kind of dumpy. It reminded me of the early YS offices. They have had the money to build big fancy offices but to do that would mean they would not be able to give away as much money. They give serious money away to the communities they do mission trips in and that really spoke to me. They are serious about being the church to folks. There is a lot more to this part of the story but I really felt they were the perfect home for YS after I sniffed it out. I think the other thing is deep down I am just a YS guy. I love YS and I think this home can return us closer to what I dream we can be. In the end I just could not say no to YS.

TIM: Based on Youth Specialties’ past that has brought it to where it is today with YouthWorks and Zondervan, where do you see God taking YS in the future? What’s vision has God laid on your heart for YS?

TIC: It is still a little early to speak to this to a great extent extent as I just said yes to returning December 27 and have just spent a couple days with the folks here in Minneapolis and have yet to even be in the YS office since coming back. What I am feeling most strongly is returning our focus to loving, training and resourcing youth workers. These last couple seasons at YS we have had so many internal issues and financial pressures we had to focus more on ourselves than youth workers and that hindered us. YS at it’s best is playful, prophetic, inclusive, grounded, willing to take risk to help youth workers engage culture and equip their students to follow Jesus. I think our calling is to be an advocate and safe haven for those working with students, our events a place where youth workers are nourished spiritually and encouraged and at the same time challenged to take chances to meet God on the outer edge of their faith and not play it safe, go for it for the kingdom of God…. Sorry I’m rambling.

TIM: What are the biggest obstacles for YS to overcome to get there?

TIC: Being better listeners to not only what God is calling us to but to what youth workers are asking for. We have been at this for a while and have lots of ideas and approaches with many peers. We need to make sure we make room for new voices and not just stay in our own comfort zone. We need to provide platforms for the new voices God is calling to speak into the youth ministry community. It is much easier to go just with those we know well but we just can’t do that. Someone gave Yaconelli a chance, We gave Duffy Robbins, Chap Clark, Doug Fields, Les Christie and many others a platform to speak to the youth ministry community with what God placed on their heart. We need to keep doing that, to keep presenting new voices.

TIM: NYWC has been the Mecca of youth ministry conventions for decades, but recently many youth workers have become increasingly disinterested in it for a number of reasons. What changes can we look forward to specifically at NYWC?

TIC: I think the above applies here. The convention is not about us but about youth workers. I think we refine what we do best in response to what we hear from the trenches. I actually think Youth Ministry is better served with the SYM convention, Orange and others on the scene rather than the NYWC being the only game in town. It makes harder for us but better for the kingdom. I think as all our events fine tune and respond to each other and the youth ministry community the church wins.

TIM: What is your relationship with Marko? I know you were at one time the President of YS, but what makes you think you are the person to do it again?

TIC: I don’t really know how to answer that but let me start with this point because I think there is some misinformation out there. Marko and I are good, we have always been good. We are friends and had a good working relationship. We have not blamed each other or had any big weirdness throughout this wild ride. We will continue to be friends and speak into each others lives. I am not worried about my ability to lead YS (other than the fact that there is always some fear in me when handling something I think God has places in front of me). It is is my giftedness and skill set. I know YS, I know youth workers but I am not doing it alone, as always we will have a team. We have always seen YS as a gift, a sacred trust and not something we owned. I am once again a caretaker of that trust and that is humbling. I am excited and humbled at the same time, does that make sense?

TIM: What does YS need from youth workers during this transitionary time? How can we support you all?

TIC: Give us some time to catch our breath, your prayers and your voice.

TIM: Any chance you’ll be moving to my backyard here in Minnesota to be closer to YouthWorks? :-)

TIC: Ummmmmmm………NO. That would take a burning bush.

Read the official announcement about Tic’s position at YouthSpecialties.com, including this teaser video on YouTube.

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If you’ve been in youth ministry for 2 years or fewer, there’s a solid team of experienced Life In Student Ministry youth workers who want to support you and invest into your ministry on a one-on-one basis! Read more on our Youth Ministry Mentors page.

Why the Online Missions Trip happens at a pivotal moment in history

tim@schmoyer.net (Tim Schmoyer) — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 02:19:38 +0000

You have to see this video about the social media revolution. It underscores why the Online Missions Trip outreach campaign comes at such a pivotal moment in history.

REMINDER: Online Missions Trip starts January 31!

tim@schmoyer.net (Tim Schmoyer) — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 01:36:20 +0000

This past September I announced the dates for the 2010 Online Missions Trip, along with some detailed information about what it is, how it works, and how your youth group can join my groups and thousands of other teens around the world in sharing Christ through social media online.

If you’re not familiar with the Online Missions Trip, here’s what it’s all about:

The Internet has never made it so easy to share Christ with those all over the world! Teenagers spend a crazy amount of hours talking with friends on Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, World of Warcraft and other such social hangouts online. As youth workers, let’s train them to share their faith and encourage them to do it online. The Online Missions Trip is a 2-week campaign to empower them to use social media to share Christ with their friends who don’t yet know Him.

The structure looks like this:

January 10-30, 2010

Pre-trip training. Use youth group meetings to train kids how to share their faith, think through the Online Missions Trip concept, and start praying for unsaved friends.

January 31 to February 13, 2010

Online Missions Trip! During these two weeks teens and youth leaders are engaging in spiritual conversations with unsaved friends online. They’re uploading videos, photos, posting links, using status updates to share what God’s doing in their lives, writing notes, sending messages, posting on blogs, creating event invites to youth group, and anything else that will bring God up in a conversation that starts online and hopefully spreads to a face-to-face discussion.

February 14, 2010

Outreach event/series and new-believer follow-up starts. Follow-up on this missions trip with a series that helps the new teens in your ministry either investigate Christianity a bit closer or start growing in their new faith. Be sure to follow-up one-on-one with new converts, as well.

To learn more about this trip, visit OnlineMissionsTrip.com. There are many ideas, free resources and tools, a 24/7 Prayer Room that will open in 2010, and more. It also has a video of me explaining the trip in more detail.

While you’re there, become a fan of The OnlineMissionsTrip.com Facebook Page and meet some of the other teens and youth leaders who will be attending this missions trip with you next year as part of fulfilling THE Cause.

[ Visit OnlineMissionsTrip.com ]

Time Out: God speaks through a burning heart

tim@schmoyer.net (Tim Schmoyer) — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 04:58:11 +0000

Time Out (by Jerry Schmoyer)

In the dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral there is what is known as the Whispering Gallery. Through the peculiar construction of the dome a whisper by a person at one side travels round and can be distinctly heard by another person standing at the other.

An even more remarkable whispering gallery is that known as the Ear of Dionysius at Syracuse in Sicily. This is a vast cave, which externally bears a resemblance to a human ear. Entering by a low doorway, the visitor finds himself in a huge cavern. High up, concealed in the roof, is a chamber, which can only be entered by a concealed path at the top. The faintest whisper uttered below is distinctly heard by those concealed above. In this chamber the tyrant Dionysius used to sit listening to his slaves working or to his captives imprisoned below. All their plots against him were thus, to them, mysteriously discovered and circumvented. From this historical fact the cave has received the name of the Ear of Dionysius.

We, too, can learn to hear everything God says – if we know how to listen. God really does speak to us today. He desires communication with us and we desire communication with Him. Hearing from God is probable, possible and even very necessary. How does God speak and what does He say?

God speaks to us today through His Holy Spirit. We can hear His voice. It’s not a sound, it’s a voice. It’s not something you hear with your ears but in your mind. Once you learn to recognize and respond to this voice you’ll recognize it often. It’s a gentle whisper, not a shout. God speaks rich and enlightening thoughts to our spirit by His Spirit. Often this still, small voice speaks rich and enlightening thoughts by causing a burning within my heart.

The disciples who talked with Jesus on the road to Emmaus that first Resurrection Sunday experienced this. Luke 24:32 says, “They asked each other, ‘were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?’”

Psalm 39:1-3 talks about this as well. “My heart grew hot within me, and as I meditated, the fire burned.”

One of the more familiar quotes about this comes from the journal of John Wesley for May 14, 1738. “In the evening I went very unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate-Street, where one was reading Luther’s preface to the Epistle to the Romans. About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation: And an assurance was given me, that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.”

Haven’t you found yourself moved by something you sense in your spirit? Perhaps it happens during a song or sermon, when listening to a testimony or out in nature? This stirring is God speaking to our hearts through His Holy Spirit, putting His fire within us to highlight something of importance.

Charles Stanley writes: “As you pray and read, trust the Holy Spirit to quicken your spirit to His truth. You may feel this as warmth inside, or you may feel a great sense of absoluteness about a particular verse. Sometimes the words on the page of your Bible may seem to stand out to you as if they were written in bold headlines. Sometimes you may not be able to get away from a particular passage. It comes repeatedly to your mind, and you can’t seem to shake it from memory.”

So we see that this still, small voice speaks rich and enlightening thoughts by causing a burning within our hearts. How He speaks is by a gentle, quiet whisper. Where He speaks is to our thoughts and to our hearts. He touches our rational mental capacity (enlightened thoughts) as well as our emotional feelings (burning hearts).

Scripture
Luke 24:32, “They asked each other, ‘Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?’”

Psalm 39:1-3, “I said, ‘I will watch my ways and keep my tongue from sin; I will put a muzzle on my mouth as long as the wicked are in my presence.’ But when I was silent and still, not even saying anything good, my anguish increased. My heart grew hot within me, and as I meditated, the fire burned; then I spoke with my tongue: ‘Ask God to make you sensitive to the ‘burning’ He puts in your heart, the desires and emotions He creates in you to speak His truth to you.’”

Freebie Friday #158: Youth group “Twilight” curriculum and a whole lot more!

tim@schmoyer.net (Tim Schmoyer) — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 21:04:57 +0000

One of the Youth Ministry Mentors, John Byrne, runs a site called YM Theology. It features a lot of youth ministry videos, podcasts and blog posts surrounding youth ministry and theology, but John also has a page of youth ministry content he’s created that he’s willing to just give away for free. The page includes

Description of a Discipled Person
Discipline
Event Prep Worksheet
Internship Proposal
KRA-s
Intern Job Description
Small Group Training
SWOP
Worship Team Application
Youth ministry leader app
Christmas Trivia

Also on his page is a 4-week youth group curriculum series called “Twilight” that’s based on the story of Ruth. You can download all 4 weeks of the discussion questions for the series plus everything else mentioned above right here:

Free Youth Ministry Stuff from YMTheology.com

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For LIVE YM Talk this Monday, January 4, Todd Perkins is our featured guest. He will lead us in a discussion about designing and communicating the student ministry’s vision to the church and community. We’d love to have you join us for the live conversation at 2:00 PM eastern time! See our LIVE YM Talk page for details.

How can I make LISM more valuable for you in 2010?

tim@schmoyer.net (Tim Schmoyer) — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 21:18:07 +0000

As we enter into 2010, I’ve been thinking a lot about Life In Student Ministry and it’s direction for the future. I’ve been tremendously blessed to create much of the content here, sometimes with you in mind, sometimes just rambling out loud about my own issues and struggles in youth ministry. I presume much of that will stay the same in 2010, but I also want to make some changes that will continue to bless you and your ministry. As you know, evaluation is critically important in preventing something from becoming stale and stagnant, so would you help me with that?

Linked below is a survey that could give me some valuable insights into you, your ministry, your needs, and thoughts about this site. It 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 2010 with LISM ]

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

I pour a lot of time and energy into Life In Student Ministry and the projects that surround it, so criticism can be a little difficult to hear sometimes. However, I think it’s vital to hear it all if this site is going to continue to be a valuable resource for you and your ministry.

I appreciate if you could complete the survey above, but also feel free to leave comments below that could be helpful for LISM in 2010. Give me feedback about topics, types of posts, posting frequency, the site’s design, blog features, MinistryQuestions.com, tools and services, frustrations, ideas, etc. Thank you!

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

Time Out: God speaks rich and enlightening thoughts

tim@schmoyer.net (Tim Schmoyer) — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 03:04:57 +0000

Time Out (by Jerry Schmoyer)

Writer Charles Swindoll once found himself with too many commitments in too few days. He got nervous and tense about it. “I was snapping at my wife and our children, choking down my food at mealtimes, and feeling irritated at those unexpected interruptions through the day,” he recalled in his book, Stress Fractures. “Before long, things around our home started reflecting the pattern of my hurry-up style. It was become unbearable.

“I distinctly remember after supper one evening, the words of our younger daughter, Colleen. She wanted to tell me something important that had happened to her at school that day. She began hurriedly, ‘Daddy, I wanna tell you somethin’ and I’ll tell you really fast.’ Suddenly realizing her frustration, I answered, ‘Honey, you can tell me — and you don’t have to tell me really fast. Say it slowly.’ I’ll never forget her answer: ‘Then listen slowly.’”

That’s good advice for all of us. Listen slowly; listen intently, for His voice is often a gentle whisper, a still, small voice. When we learn to listen for it we recognize that He speaks rich and enlightened thoughts to our spirits.

God can put a new idea directly and immediately into our mind. He can give us a new perspective in which to view something. He can put new desires into our hearts. He can stimulate certain memories stored within our mind just when they are most needed.

Martin Luther wrote: “If the Holy Spirit should come when these thoughts are in your mind and begin to preach to your heart, giving you rich and enlightened thoughts, then give Him the honor, let your preconceived ideas go, be quiet and listen to Him Who can talk better than you; and note what He proclaims and write it down.”

James Dobson has given some of the best practical advice I have ever heard on how someone who really wants the will of God and who has a basically correct understanding of it should proceed. Describing how he does it himself, he says, “I get down on my knees and say, ‘Lord, I need to know what you want me to do, and I am listening. Please speak to me through my friends, books, magazines I pick up and read, and through circumstances.’”

Often God’s still, small voice takes the form of thoughts that are our thoughts, though they are not from us.

When God speaks in your heart it doesn’t matter where your mind has been going; He blocks and overrides all circuits. You are captivated by His voice speaking to you. He commands your undivided attention. There is absolute certainty in what He says. What He says is right. His word has perfect balance and proportion. Everything He shows us fits together seamlessly. The word He gives us is complete. Everything He says compliments everything He’s been showing us.

It’s true that Satan can counterfeit this, but that just proves that God does speak to us in this way. A little later we’ll have a whole message on how to tell God’s voice from Satan’s counterfeit leading.

When I study, when I prepare sermons and lessons, I try to be very aware of the rich and enlightening thoughts that God sends me by means of His Spirit. When I counsel I always try to be sensitive to His leading and direction. When we are involved in spiritual warfare it is essential to be in tune to hear what thoughts God gives me. God speaks to you in the same way. You need to learn to take time to recognize His voice.

Scripture
John 2:22, “After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said. Then they believed the Scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken.”

John 14:26, “But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.”

Reflect
Spend time quietly listening to God. Have a paper and pencil with you to start writing down some of the things that come to mind. It may be a reminder of something to do or an idea about how to solve a problem. It could be just a sense of peace and wellbeing. But first you must listen.

Freebie Friday #157: Custom countdown timer video on a green-screen

tim@schmoyer.net (Tim Schmoyer) — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 03:36:50 +0000

Troy Young created and donated this year’s Christmas Freebie Friday! Thanks, Troy!

If your youth ministry uses countdown timers, here’s a simple 5-minute timer on a green screen. You can put your latest youth ministry video of an event, a motion background, or even your youth group logo in front of the green screen. iMovie ‘09 makes it dead simple to use a green screen, so if you’re on a Mac, this should be simple.

Download 5-minute green-screen countdown timer*

*You may have to right-click on the link and select, “Save Target As” or “Save Link As” in order to download the video file.

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There is no LIVE YM Talk this week. Our next talk is on Monday, January 4, 2010, were we will talk about designing and communicating the student ministry’s vision to the church and community. Our guest will be Todd Perkins of Youth Ministry Consultants, Inc.. Join us then for LIVE YM Talk.

Time Out: How to hear God speak in a gentle whisper

tim@schmoyer.net (Tim Schmoyer) — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 16:49:12 +0000

Time Out (by Jerry Schmoyer)

There is an old story about two men walking down a busy, loud New York City street. Horns honked, engines roared, PA systems blasted advertisements. All of a sudden one of the men, who had been an outdoorsmen all his life, stopped and said, “What’s that?” The other man couldn’t imagine what he was talking about with all the noise and confusion all around. The first man went over to the side of a building and picked up a cricket he had heard. The friend was amazed that the outdoorsman had even heard it, but his ears were attuned to that sound and could pick it out of the din around them.

That’s how our spiritual hearing needs to be. We need to be able to pick God’s voice out of all the other voices clamoring for out attention. Hopefully this post will help you to be able to do that.

First we’ll look at what God’s voice sounds like, and then we’ll talk about some of the things He says. The first clue we have to what God’s voice sounds like is in I Kings 19 where we see it is a still, small voice – a gentle whisper.

Kings 19:11-13, “The LORD said, ‘Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the LORD, for the LORD is about to pass by.’ Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave. Then a voice said to him, ‘What are you doing here, Elijah?’”

In the still, small voice of God we are given a message that bears the stamp of His personality quite clearly and in a way we will learn to recognize.

There is a speaker system at the Ontario Motor Speedway in California that has an out put of 30,800 watts connected to 355 speakers and able to communicate to 230,000 people above the noise of the car races. God could outdo that, but instead chooses to speak quietly. Therefore if we want to hear Him we can’t wait for Him to shout over the noise in our life but we need to learn to be quiet and listen for His still, quiet voice.

I remember several years ago I was marrying a couple that I had known for a long time and had been coming to church and Bible studies for quite some time. They had some major “issues” it seemed that had worked through, but the day before the wedding the groom did something that was part of his old pattern. I clearly heard God’s voice in my spirit telling me not to marry them, so I didn’t. The bride and both families really put a lot of pressure on me to go ahead with the wedding but I knew that God had spoken.

Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones writes: “God sometimes answers directly in our spirit. The prophet said, ‘I will watch and see what He will say in me.’ God speaks to me by speaking in me. He can so lie something upon the mind that we are certain of the answer. He can impress something upon our spirits in an unmistakable manner. We find ourselves unable to get away from an impression that is on our mind or heart; we try to rid ourselves of it, but back it comes.”

Remember, this is not a verbal voice, a sensation or an emotional experience. In fact, it can be very easy to overlook His voice or just think it’s a thought of our own.

Try an experiment: Be as still and silent as you possibly can for the next 30 seconds or so. Listen as intently as you can, noticing the sounds you hear. How many sounds? What are they? Close your eyes and begin to listen. Pause: Did you hear 1 sound? 2? 3? 4? 5? Did you hear the ticking of the clock? Heater noise? Birds? Traffic? Voices? Your own breath? Your heartbeat? Ringing in your ears?

We are seldom still enough to hear the subtle sounds. Most of us suffer from a steady dose of noise pollution: TV, radio, conversation. Constant sound bombards us until the naturalness of silence sounds foreign, unnatural, threatening, and we’ll do just about anything to cover it up. In a significant way, we are in fact addicted to noise. The constant blaring of the TV is for many an electronic companion whose presence we take for granted; Muzak fills the elevator; we jump in the car and switch on the radio to fill the uncomfortable void; even a lapse in social conversation is viewed with alarm, and someone has to rescue the moment by talking. Even in church, if a few moments of silence are called for in worship, most church members have this internal response: “When will this be over?”

We need to learn to hear God’s still voice as He speaks to us. I can think back on times He told me to talk to someone about Him and I didn’t. Those still haunt me. Better memories are the times when God put it on my heart to speak to someone and I obeyed.

I hope you’ve been learning to listen to Him this past week. Have you taken time to let Him speak and to sit and listen? Have you become more aware of when and how He speaks to you? I hope so.

Podcast: Issues surrounding separate jr. and sr. high youth ministries

tim@schmoyer.net (Tim Schmoyer) — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 02:15:28 +0000

John Mulholland recently separated his youth group into jr. high and sr. high ministries. He joined us to talk about some of the issues that surround splitting the ministries and, together with a group of other youth workers who joined us on the call and in the adjoining chat room, we had a pretty lively discussion. Apparently this is an issue that’s much more controversial than I anticipated, with many different perspectives and opinions.

Some of the things we talked about:

Reasons to separate jr. and sr. high ministries.
Reasons to keep the ministries together.
What separating can unintentionally teach teens about the body of Christ.
If your ministry should split or stay together.
And a lot more…

You can listen to the whole conversation below or grab it in iTunes.

Play this episode

Subscribe to LIVE YM Conversations in iTunes

Next Monday’s discussion

January 4: There is no LIVE YM Talk this week nor next week. Our next talk is on Monday, January 4, 2010, were we will talk about designing and communicating the student ministry’s vision to the church and community. Our guest will be Todd Perkins of Youth Ministry Consultants, Inc.. Join us then for LIVE YM Talk.

Join our next LIVE Youth Ministry Conversation!

Freebie Friday #156: The Nativity 3-Session Resource Guide

tim@schmoyer.net (Tim Schmoyer) — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 05:14:16 +0000

Although you no longer have 3 more weeks to do a Christmas lesson series with your youth group, you could tuck this away for next year, cram it in this year, or even continue to talk about Christ’s birth after Christmas (imagine that!).

This freebie from Interlinc includes a couple articles and three free Christmas youth group lesson plans.

Article: The Humbling Starts Here
Article: A Righteous Dude
Article: Really, A Virgin?
Session One: Unplanned Pregnancies
Session Two: A Trip At The Worst Time
Session Three: A Child Is Born

View and download the Nativity 3-Session Resource Guide

As a bonus, here’s a PDF quiz of Christmas carols that is print-ready for 8.5×11 paper and produces two quizes per page. The answer sheet is printable as well. We used it with our youth group last week and had a lot of fun with it!

Christmas Carol Game PDF

———————————————————————-
There is no LIVE YM Talk this week nor next week. Our next talk is on Monday, January 4, 2010, were we will talk about designing and communicating the student ministry’s vision to the church and community. Our guest will be Todd Perkins of Youth Ministry Consultants, Inc.. Join us then for LIVE YM Talk.

A youth group game using Google Voice

tim@schmoyer.net (Tim Schmoyer) — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 05:13:11 +0000

Since I’m on a roll with the whole “technology in ministry thing” after this week’s post on how new technology develops into a ministry tool and how we used Google Wave at youth group, I figured I might as well continue the trend with a game we did at our jr. high youth meeting tonight using Google Voice.

It’s actually based on the game, Sound Effects, from TheSource4YM.com that calls for a blank tape and tape recorder for every team. You give them 15 minutes to record all the sound effects on a list and then come back together and have judges determine a winner for each effect category.

Since I don’t think I know anyone that still has a tape recorder, nor did I want to go out and buy recorders for each team, here’s what I did:

I split our jr. high large group into teams based on their existing small groups. They sat in a circle and placed one of their cell phones in the middle of the group. Then I had each team punch in my Google Voice phone number and call my voicemail, which was set with a pre-recorded message of me saying, “Hey guys, record your sound effect after the beep. Have fun!” (Set your Google Voice account to “Do Not Disturb” so all calls are sent straight to voicemail.) Teams then recorded their sound effects on my Google Voice voicemail, which allowed me to immediately and easily play back their recordings from my laptop (logged in to Google Voice) through our sound system almost as soon as they hung up. I simply identified teams by the phone number that left the voicemail and we played back each team’s effect for everyone to hear (and laugh at!).

Here’s a list of some of the sound effects I asked for:

Herd of mooing cows
Cat in a dog kennel
TV Show theme song
Lovesick Coyotes on a moonlit night
Sing a Christmas carol
Room full of babies
Traffic

We had a high school student leader act as the judge who awarded points to the jr. high teams with the best sound effect for each category. The team with the most points won a bag of candy for their small group that night.

Two quick tips: Require that teams record sound effects that are shorter than 10 seconds but no longer than 15, especially if you have a lot of teams you have to listen to; and require that every person on the team must contribute to the sound effect.

Since Google Voice allows me to embed my voicemail messages into websites, here’s a couple of my favorite sound effects from tonight.

[ NOTE: If you're reading this in an RSS reader or email, you may have to visit the original post to hear the following recordings. ]

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