This week my co-leader taught on Luke 7:36-50 – The woman pours oil on Jesus’ feet. We assume, possibly incorrectly, that this woman was a prostitute. Based on the verses, however, that is a good educated guess. If this is true, then an expensive alabaster jar of perfume would have been likely a “tool of [...]

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Each Easter Saddleback Church takes a survey of attendees at its service. I thought it would be a good idea to also do one for The Landing. We got some great information out of it that helps us know our crowd a lot better and where they are spiritually. Click here to download the survey [...]

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Congratulations to Steven and Matt on launching a brand new blog for their Generation to Generation posts. It’s GenToGenYM.com This blog is the first spinoff of what I hope will be more blogs getting their start by contributing to VolunteerYouthMinstry.com. If you would like to become a contributor to VolunteerYouthMinistry.com, please let me know by [...]

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At The Landing once a month we have an activity we do as our opener. Students write questions on cards and hand them to their table leader to censor (we don’t tell them it’s so they can be censored). The leader chooses a few of the questions to ask one student at the table. Now [...]

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Thanks Matt and Steven for all of your contributions to youth ministry and VolunteerYouthMinistry.com! Good luck with your new blog! Today’s post is a bittersweet one. Today we announced on our Twitter that we are going to be launching our very own youth ministry blog this Monday, April 25, at GenToGenYM.com. While this is an [...]

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If you’re using The Landing program at your church, you may be interested in this handout I made for lesson 14. Click here to download it as a PDF document

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Steven: For some reason, this time of year seems to be so busy. Some times of the year like Christmas we expect to be busy and to be constantly on the move, but this period before Easter and close to everyone’s Spring Break always seems to be busy. I’ve noticed over the past couple of [...]

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Last week we did a night where students owned The Landing. It was a praise and worship night with student poetry and testimonies mixed in between the songs. Students also ran the games, etc. We did not do our regular lesson. The adults did the same thing for large group time. We will pick up [...]

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This was a short game we put together for The Landing last Friday. It’s not an original idea, but it was a fun way to get the students involved. Students ran the entire service. The setup for this game was that the computer was playing with the students. The student on stage was kind of [...]

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I started a new ministry to recently to help troubled students. It’s going great! In fact, it’s almost “too” great. We’ve got an overabundance of volunteers. The ratio is something any ministry leader would salivate over. However, with volunteers comes the occasional turmoil. Here are a few nuggets I’ve implemented while working through occasional blow [...]

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