We had our first night of small group tonight. When I got home, I had this note on my Facebook page. I’ll put this in the trophy case. It’s important to celebrate the tokens of appreciation our students shoot our way.

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My friend Josh Griffin just came out with his first book 99 Thoughts for Youth Workers. I read though this book and have some very good things to say about it. It didn’t hurt that he wrote the nice inscription (below) inside the book. I think a better title for this book is The Best [...]

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I’ve been asked to share some tips for small group leaders this week in our training meeting. I only have 3 or 4 minutes. Since it’s directed toward rookie leaders, I thought I’d share 2 helpful thoughts about leading a small group. One is for the leader’s sanity and longevity. The other is for bonding [...]

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I got permission from our youth ministry team to conduct volunteer round table discussions. We’ve done these in training meetings years ago. They were some of the best trainings we’ve had because we’re discussing youth ministry concepts with others who also volunteer youth workers. I’m very excited to see the training that comes out of [...]

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Today our high school ministry served a mission organization called Feed My Starving Children. By packaging small bags with rice, soy and dried veggies, we were able to provide food to feed 57 children for a year. I highly recommend this as a service opportunity for students in your ministry. They’ll even come to your [...]

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I love leaving students with some kind of a memory they can tie to a lesson. At this weekend’s services, our high school students are writing “heal” and “real” on their arms to remind them that in order to experience healing, they need to get real with God. It’s a great visual that will remind [...]

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Tonight we baptized students after the high school service. I shot a video to share the event. Tonight was more of a celebration than normal. However, I think it would be great if this became normal. So much fun and affirming of the student being baptized! This never gets old. I love it!

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Thanks to Kyle for sending this to me today. Fellow iPhone users will be interested. If you’re a regular reader, you’ll know I believe smart phones are an incredibly useful tool for youth ministry. This update will make the iPhone even more useful for that. ___ Date: September 25, 2009 6:21:28 PM GMT+01:00 Subject: AT&T [...]

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SimplyYouthMinistry.com puts free training in its weekly newsletter. Many times it is specific to volunteering in youth ministry. They also have specials on their products. I recommend subscribing to this weekly bundle of joy. Sometimes you’ll even see material from VolunteerYouthMinistry.com make its way into the newsletter. Don’t hold that against them, though. If you [...]

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This is part 4 of a 4-part interview with Tom and Marla. In this segment, Tom and Marla talk about some pain in their family and how they used it to help other families seeking help to recover from issues of addiction. At the end of this video I mention Celebrate Recovery and Life Hurts/God [...]

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