When I came on staff with Youth for Christ, one of the first things I learned about is that it’s not so much about preaching at people as it is sharing a story.. Over the years I’ve found different creative ways of sharing that story.
How are you sharing the story of the Gospel?
I’ve often wondered how other people in ministry, specifically youth ministry, manage their work day. With a secular job (not that there is anything wrong with secular jobs), it’s pretty easy to manage your work day.. you work from 9-5 or 8-4 or something like this, it’s not hard to figure out how to manage your day. You arrive at your job at 9am, do your job, and then at 5 you get to go home and hang out for the evening with your family.
I’ve often found this NOT to be the case in ministry. We have school meetings, evening programs, youth worship team practices, board meetings, student leadership events… and the list goes on and on. Youth Ministry is NOT a Monday-Friday 9-5 job, and if yours is, I challenge you to do a honest check of how effective your ministry is.
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I’ve been beta testing Proclaim for the past 2 or 3 months in our church, and I truly believe it is going to become the next ProPresenter. It takes all the amazing aspects of ProPresenter, but theres one catch which is awesome… it’s all “in the cloud”.. what this means is, you can give the login information to your tech guy, your worship leader, your pastor, your service leader.. anyone who would have content that they want put on the screen during a service.. they log in, add what they have to add, and then when your tech guy logs in on Sunday morning or whenever he usually preps for the service, BOOM it’s all there.. everything.. no questions asked.. put it in order, and your done.. it’s so easy. No longer will your pastor show up 10 minutes before the service with a power point presentation(do people still use that?) with the slides from his sermon.. no longer will the worship leader say “oh we decided to add THIS song”.. ok chances are he will.. but hopefully he already loaded it to the cloud.. this software truly is amazing.. and as a way of promoting Proclaim, they are giving away $25,000 in prizes. Read the info below on how to enter (it’s super easy) and do it!
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Check out the newsletter section of this site as I’ve finally gotten around to posting the Jan/Feb newsletter. Read all about the ministry we’ve been up to so far this school year!
Found this great article over at http://www.churchleaders.com/ check out their site and give them some love.
The Millennial generation is the generation that has grabbed my heart. I know that my preference is largely related to having and loving three Millennial sons and their friends. But I know that my favoritism also stems from the attitude of hope that this generation brings.
As I have shared in other writings, my son, Jess Rainer, and I just concluded writing a book about this generation with the basic title, The Millennials. The book will be released in January 2011. Our work was based on a massive research project led by LifeWay Research, where that team asked 1,200 older Millennials dozens of questions in multiple categories. The responses were fascinating.
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I’ve been in youth ministry for about 8 years now.. and I’ve worked with a LOT of teens over those years. About 2 years ago I found myself at a crux in my ministry.. I had been pouring a LOT of time and energy into students, and while it seemed like some of them were getting it, there were some that just wouldn’t go any further. I sat down with my director, and told him that I felt like I had hit a wall.. and that if the ministry in this area was going to fo any further, either the person doing it had to change, or we had to change how it was being done.
The reason I felt this way was simply because I was tired of pouring literally hundreds of hours into particular students, and them just not going any further, be it growing in their relationship with Christ, or they weren’t having a relationship with Christ at all. I asked many pastors “when do you just give up”.. many of them understood my questions.. it wasn’t that I was done with the kids, I was just tired of not seeing growth, and was ready to give up on particular students. Everyone told me the same thing.. you should never give up on a student, but, you can change your relationship with them.. but never stop praying for them.
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Striving to live like Jesus.
