VolunteerYouthMinistry.com - Youth Ministry Blog by Dennis Beckner of Saddleback Church » Resources

Today Only: 99 Thoughts for Small Group Leaders for only $2.99!!!

Dennis Beckner — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 15:01:45 +0000

Today only (January 26, 2012), get (regularyly $6.99) for only $2.99! Click the picture below to save some cash!

GREAT Discount on Resources from SimplyYouthMinistry.com

Dennis Beckner — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 17:24:45 +0000

I am a big fan of Simply Youth Ministry’s products. I’m an even bigger fan of them when they’re on sale! Load up!!!

FREEBIE: Promo Packs for The Landing to use with Student Ministries

Dennis Beckner — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 21:45:23 +0000

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

Freebie: Journal I Created for Lesson 39 at The Landing

Dennis Beckner — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 12:39:37 +0000

I put together a journal for the journaling station at The Landing the week we did lesson 39. The lesson does not come with small group questions because the students are expected to spend the entire time doing the prayer stations. These journals also served as a source of questions small groups could work through together once they finished the stations. It’s a good idea to have students go through the stations with their small groups so they can stay on task, bond through the experience and move on to small groups as a group when they’re done.

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:

For the Journal Station, we set up a lounge so they could sit or lay down, get comfortable in a cozy environment and work through the journals I mentioned above.

For the Thankfulness Station, we attached paper banners to the wall. Each banner had a different category on it; Family, God, Friends, Other Stuff. On each banner, students wrote what they were thankful for in relation to that topic.

For the communion station, we set up a few places small groups could take communion on the stage.

Parent Handout For This Year’s Life Groups

Dennis Beckner — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 19:12:32 +0000

Download the free PDF by clicking here

Here’s the handout I gave parents at this year’s Meet & Greet for Life Groups. This year I added a requirement that students need to respect their parents to be part of my Life Group. It seems a lot of the counseling I do with families comes down to this issue. This helps parents know they have an ally partnering with them to have peace in their home and opens the door for more communication.

Download the PDF for free by clicking here

Small Group Video

Dennis Beckner — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 16:07:46 +0000

Here’s a great tongue-in-cheek video the brilliant Parker Stech did to get students to consider joining a small group.

Life Groups with Parker from HSM on Vimeo.

Secrets Opening Video and Bumper Video

Dennis Beckner — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 08:02:41 +0000

Our High School Ministry did a 2-week series on the topic of secrets. It was an EXCELLENT way to nudge students to get help with their issues and to direct them toward The Landing. This is the video they used at the beginning of the service.

I stole this video from here

Here’s the series bumper video for the Secrets series

secrets bumper from HSM on Vimeo.

I got this here

New Banners

Dennis Beckner — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 07:07:54 +0000

You can order these banners by clicking here

As part of a strong back-to-school push for our ministry, I’m ordering some banners to help students understand what our ministry is all about, how it can help them, and who should attend. Here’s a peak. They might go through some editing before I place the order in a few hours. I kinda like ‘em, though. They match our new shirts.

You can order these banners by clicking here

Your Ministry Can Accept Credit Cards

Dennis Beckner — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 22:18:47 +0000

Nobody’s paying me to say this. I just absolutely LOVE this free system we started using to take payments for shirts at our ministry, The Landing at Saddleback Church. I’ve seen this product, but never used it or even gave it much thought before we needed it.

The Pros:
- Easily accept credit card payments
- The equipment and software are completely free
- Goes straight into your church account (or whichever account you choose)
- You can download reports from the website
- You can even keep track of cash/check sales
- You can swipe or type in the credit card number

The Cons:
- You need an iPhone or Ipad (I don’t think it works on other devices, yet)
- It costs 2.75% per swipe, 3.75% if you type in the credit card instead of swipe. That’s actually super cheap considering there’s no monthly charge. However, since nobody likes to pay money, it goes in the con column
- You’ll have to figure out something else to worry about now that you don’t have to think so much about handling money for events

You can even add your items to the system so you just click on what you’re selling (camp registration, T-shirt, pizza) and it works like a register. Our volunteers even entered cash transactions so we could have everything in one report after the event.

New Name Badges for The Landing

Dennis Beckner — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 22:58:42 +0000

I made new name badges today for our leaders. They are designed to match our new shirts for The Landing. I thought I’d share the files with others in case you wanted to do the same. No need to reinvent the wheel, right?

[This is what the finished product looks like]

Here are the documents you’ll need:
Name badge file – Microsoft Word Document
Font file – The font is named One Fell Swoop and can be downloaded by clicking here