I did a 5-minute promo to our High School Ministry volunteer small group leaders this week. I talked for about 5 minutes describing The Landing and why hurting students would need to go. I also explained the packet which contained the items below:

1. A snazzy envelope with our bookmark printed on it along with our church information (in case this ends up in the hands of somebody who doesn’t go to our church)
2. An outline with information about The Landing, a few stats and and some ideas for how leaders can help hurting students check out The Landing
3. A lesson they can discuss with their small groups. This lesson is designed for hurting students to see the need to go to The Landing to get the help they need
4. Enough bookmarks from The Landing to give to each student in their group (The small group lesson I wrote incorporates the bookmarks into the lesson)

As an extra tip, I suggested that volunteers take some extra bookmarks with them to work. I said many of them probably have somebody at work who struggles with hurting kids in their families. They could give a bookmark to those people and let them know there’s a program that can help their kid.

Here are the files that go along with the packet:

1. Click here for the outline (Microsoft Word)
2. Click here to download the lesson (Microsoft Word)
3. Bookmarks – Click here to see a sample of the bookmarks we use. The bookmarks are custom made with our local information on them. If you’d like them to be customized for your location, you have 3 options:
- Create some yourself
- We can put your information on our bookmark for $15 and send the camera-ready artwork to you by email
- We can setup the artwork with your information and print them for then ship them out to you
— If you’re interested in us doing the work for you, please send an email to: TheLanding@saddleback.com

You can download the journal for free by clicking the links below:

Microsoft Word
PDF

As you can see, we have a few left over. If you’d like me to mail one to you as a sample of what the finished product looks like, send your mailing information to TheLanding@saddleback.com. (Your information will not be put on any marketing lists) I’ll send 1 per church until they run out.

Here’s what our stations looked like for lesson 39:

Download the free PDF by clicking here

Download the PDF for free by clicking here

Even though I’m a volunteer, I started a tradition of meeting with parents of students who attend my small group Bible study. It’s great! Parents typically don’t contact me because they don’t want to intrude on their kid’s world. I don’t contact parents because I think they’re busy.

Since I started this last year, my contact with parents has increased immensely. I’m now partnering with them and even doing some light family counseling to help them communicate with their sons who are in my small group.

The biggest reason I held this meeting is I want to expand the influence of our small group time into the home. I want the entire family to impact our small group and I want what happens in small group to be reinforced at home. Here are two ways I’m doing this:

• Weekly e-mails to parents (Posted to this blog as Family Focus)
• Occasional meetings with parents

I’m posting the documents I used for the meeting in case they’re somehow helpful for other youth ministry leaders. Take what you want, edit it, make it your own.

• October_16_Parent_Meeting_Agenda
• Parent_Information_Cards
• Basic Life Group Information

Tonight at The Landing, we played a trivia game to illustrate the stress in our lives brought on by things we won’t admit to. It worked out pretty well.

Supplies needed:
- Random props of various sizes (we had about 50 – ranging from a straw to a huge stuffed animal to cinder blocks)
- Easily crushed small plastic cups
- Trivia questions related to stress (random stuff I found in a Google search for “stress trivia”)

How to play:
- Ask questions based on the trivia you collect
- Whichever teams have the correct answer get to stack things on the cup of an opposing team
- When a cup is crushed, that team is out of the game
- The last team without a crushed cup wins

The application:
All of the props we’re using to crush cups represents stress in our lives. We all have stuff in our lives that brings stress. When we try to hide that stuff, the stress of hiding it adds to the stress of our secrets. However, when we admit our problems and get help, we’re better off.

Key verse: James 5:16 “Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so you may be healed…”

Tonight we’re having a training for camp counselors of our upcoming high school ministry summer camp. Since I’m the director or The Landing (our recovery program for Jr High and High School students), I’ve been asked to train the counselors about:
1. Which students should attend The Landing
2. How to get to know students on a deeper level so you can know their needs
3. How to interpret cries for attention

I developed two handouts that I’ll be distributing. You’re welcome to download them and change them as needed to help train your volunteers about how to reach students.

Download 1: Promotional card for The Landing
Download 2: Instructional card to help leaders

I taught this lesson to my small group guys tonight. It seemed to hit home pretty well.

—

Subscriptions I have:
- Gym membership – a smoking great deal at $50/year
- Disneyland – $30/month
- Cell phone – $94/month

These are all subscriptions I have. I can cancel them at any time. I might have to pay a small penalty, but the companies wouldn’t care that I canceled or even miss me when I’m gone. No big deal.

There are, however, some sacrifices I make:
- Mortgage – I can’t really decide to move out of town on the spur of the moment. The bank’s going to care and I’m going to get hurt financially and credit-wise if I just abandon my mortgage responsibility.

- Marriage – If I was married, that would be a sacrifice. I wouldn’t be able to think of just myself. Every decision I made would have to involve how it would affect my wife. If I had kids, the sacrifice gets even greater. – The unfortunate thing is some people treat their marriages and children as subscriptions rather than a sacrifice.

- My job – My job is a sacrifice. I commit a lot of my time to it. I love it, but it’s a big commitment. It’s not as big of a sacrifice as a family – or at least it shouldn’t be, but some people treat it that way. They put their work ahead of their families.

- My faith – Again, some people get this all wrong. They treat their faith like a weekly subscription that comes each Sunday and maybe Wednesday during small group. Other than that, God gets placed on hold. God needs to be the biggest sacrifice we make.

[This gets pretty long. Click "Read more" to see the rest of this lesson.]

—

Let’s go around the circle and say whether our relationship with God is a subscription or a sacrifice in our own lives. A subscription means that you go to God when you need to. A sacrifice means that you intentionally make God a part of your daily life.
- Subscription
- Sacrifice
- Neither
- 1/2 and 1/2 are acceptable answers (When a student answered 1/2 and 1/2, I always asked which one they probably were more of – they know – a little nudge helps them think it through a little better)

—

Let’s look at some scripture:

Have a student read Hebrews chapter 11. Stop the reader occasionally to point out the sacrifice involved (Most of these are not in the verses, but are in the original text in the Old Testament):

- Noah took years (possibly 50-100) to build the ark. Imagine putting up with people laughing at you all that time. You’re nowhere near water and you’re building a big boat and it’s never rained before. That was a huge act of faith and sacrifice for God because he trusted God

- Abraham’s wife didn’t get pregnant until she was almost 100, but they didn’t doubt that God would provide a son. What’s crazy is when God told Abraham to sacrifice his son, Abraham was obedient. It took them 3 days to get to the spot where the sacrifice was supposed to happen. Can you imagine what Abraham was going through? But he was faithful.

You can point out other facts along the way about these stories to drive home the point that they were faithful even when stuff didn’t make sense.

—

Why were these people chosen by God? Why would he give him these assignments? What was probably true about them as people?

- They were already faithful in small things
- God knew he could count on them
- They were in tune with God
- They were not subscribed to God, but they were sacrificed to him

—

Do you know that if you become sacrificed to God, that he will be faithful to use you and direct you?

Some of you are incredibly busy. Can you be that busy and still be sacrificed to God?

The truth is you can be. What it requires is not finding time to set aside for God (while that is important), but including God in your daily life. You can do all that you do in a way that is pleasing to God. You can play volleyball in a way that represents God well. You can treat others at work in a way that God would want them to be treated. You can pray throughout your day.

These people in Hebrews chapter 11 drew near to God and God drew near to them. God will be faithful to do the same for you. What you’ll realize as you sacrifice your life to God daily (rather than just subscribing occasionally), he will use you more and more. You’ll see him directing you more and giving your more opportunities to serve him from day to day.

Our greatness is not generated by our own actions. Our greatness is in the work of God using us for his purposes. If we’ll sacrifice to him, we’ll be amazed at how he uses that.

Illustration (think of your own to use in its place):
In my own life, I’ve seen God doing amazing things as I trusted him and moved into uncomfortable situations I knew he was guiding me into. I went to college without any money. What little money I did have, $150, had to be given to my sister because she lost her wallet and all of her money the week before I left.

Every day when I returned to my dorm room, I expected to have a message waiting for me saying that I had to go home because my college bill hadn’t been paid. Every day that message didn’t come. Every day was it’s own miracle in that way. Every day was a new reason to trust God.

In college, you’re not supposed to be able to register for classes the following quarter unless your bill for the current quarter is paid in full. Somehow, it always worked out for me… God was teaching me faith and patience. My bill was never caught up until the end of my sophomore year.

These days when something seems to go wrong and appears to be hopeless, I look back to that and other miracles of God working in my life and can know that God already has a plan and it will all work out.

—

Will you guys commit to sacrificing to God rather than subscribing to him? I’ve been doing that now since I was younger than you and it’s made a huge difference in my life compared to others who haven’t. I don’t have a big house or family or high-paying job, but I wouldn’t trade what I do have for anything that isn’t in God’s plan for me. Trusting God and doing what he wants me to has given me the best life I can possibly imagine.

—

This lesson will obviously require you to put some thought into sharing parts of your own story. You’ll want to make it more conversational than rigidly structured. Don’t follow this lesson word-for-word. Just make it your goal to help your students see the need and make the personal commitment to become sacrificed to God instead of only subscribed. That’s the life God will use for great things. They might not do anything like the guys in Hebrews 11 did, but they will be used by God in a fulfilling way to do whatever it is he has set aside for them to do… and they’ll never be as happy or satisfied doing anything else.

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

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 where we left off next week.

We didn’t stop there. Students also ran the small groups. Each student got a copy of discussion options. The group got to decide which one they wanted to do.

Click here to download the file

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 a helper for the computer – not necessary, but creative and cute.

We started with a zommed in shot of an object. If the students couldn’t guess what the picture was, we would show the next picture a little zoomed out. If they still couldn’t guess it, we zoomed all the way out and nobody won that round. Then we moved onto the next set of pictures. Good times.

Click here to download the file. Use it, alter it, whatever works for you. Have fun!