Category: LifeLine

How Love Overthrew an Empire

A few weeks ago we finished up a series on influence that we called Wakes.  I loved the imagery that Al, our production coordinator used for this series.  We borrowed (with permission) footage from a friend’s wake boarding Vimeo page and added text and music to it.  The combination of Johnny Cash and wake boarding ended up being pretty boss.  I was really happy with how the entire series turned out.

Wakes Bumper from LifeLine Student Ministries on Vimeo.

 

One of my favorite teachings from this series was on love and how the early Christians essentially overthrew a repressive empire without the use of force.  Check it out:

 

Wakes – Love from LifeLine Student Ministries on Vimeo.

Small Group Fail

Do you ever feel like you totally dropped the ball as a small group leader? I don’t mean those times where you go in for the appropriate side hug and get full-frontal attacked by a student, or the times you make some awkward comment to a 9th grade girl about her boyfriend without knowing they broke up two hours earlier. I’m talking about times that you flat-out fail on your own merit.

In case you hadn’t guessed, I am no stranger to those gut wrenching evenings of small group time where nothing is accomplished and the only one to blame is yourself. For me, I particularly get caught up in the “not being prepared” vain of failure. It’s not that I don’t think preparation is important, I just run out of time (so I tell myself). Annoyingly, I’ve discovered that when I do prepare, my small group is typically inattentive, and when I don’t they’re more ready to listen then ever—and I have nothing to say. Knowing I’m responsible for dropping the ball in those cases invites a very different feeling in me than when something I try simply doesn’t work. I’m sure you are all too smart for this, but I sort of have a tendency to beat myself up when this happens—because as the leader, I’m supposed to be the holy one, right? Not the unprepared, lazy kid. It’s in these moments that I think, “Who the heck let me in here?”

Yet when I have utterly botched up small group leadership and feel I am no longer worthy to be a leader, I remind myself of a few things. If you’ve ever been there, I invite you to scan this list as well. I know you already understand that God’s bigger than your stupid moments, but it’s good to be reminded. Here is my reminder list in times of failure:

You are not finished learning

No matter how long you’ve been leading a small group—whether it’s months or decades—you will never be a perfect leader. There will inevitably be days you’re not prepared, days you say the wrong thing, and days when no one responds to your questions or jokes. As it turns out, no matter how many people tell you you’re a great leader, you’ll never be done learning what that looks like. (There’s a head shrinker for you.)

The group isn’t lost

If you’re an invested leader who tries to build relationships and speak truth to students, one bad week won’t scatter the sheep. In youth ministry, we like to remind our leaders about how little time they have with their students because it’s good for them to feel urgency with kids they often see only 30 times a year (or less). But while it’s good to be reminded of how little time we have, it’s also good to keep in mind that one bad week is still only 3% bad in a year. The rest of the year could be 97% good! Don’t beat yourself up, just strive to grow toward that new 97% goal. (I guess you could strive for extra credit and take your kids out to ice cream too, but I’m not guaranteeing you’ll get your 3% back.)

Tell ‘em: adults mess up too

It’s easy to tell our small group kids that they need to own up to their messes (because let’s be honest, many of them have obvious messes to clean up). It’s a lot harder to admit that we screw up too. Talking about past mistakes you’ve grown out of is one thing, but admitting you still mess up is another. Yet I think if we miss out on these opportunities to tell our students when we drop the ball, we miss showing them what confession looks like. Some students may not have ever seen a real apology.

You screwing up is an opportunity to:

  • model what it is to ask forgiveness, even for something small
  • model humility as a leader

You’d be surprised how much respect you can gain by admitting you’re still not perfect. I mean, don’t make it a habit or anything, but a one-time screw up could actually draw your group closer to you.

So next time you don’t prepare, or you lose your temper, or you roll your eyes when you should’ve said something supportive, remind yourself of these things. And most importantly, keep going. Our enemy would like you to give up; God’s given you the grace to move forward. If you haven’t noticed, he’s pretty good at using imperfect people to turn out epic results.

 

Guest Blogger:  Elisa Talmage has spent over six years as small group leader of kids from 4th to 9th grade.  She is now on staff as the Female Small Groups Coordinator at Ada Bible Church and is currently pursuing a Master of Arts in Counselor Education. Elisa grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, where she and her husband met in fifth grade.

 

image credited to Chuckumentary

Why Your Ministry Needs a Volunteer Retreat

Last weekend was our 17th annual volunteer retreat.  Ok, I actually have no idea how many retreats we’ve done but 17th annual has a nice ring to it.  Here’s the thing, of all the things we do in our student ministry, I believe that our volunteer retreat is in the top 3.  It’s crucial to our culture.  I can’t imagine not doing it next year and here’s why you should be putting one on too.

YOU NEED GREAT VOLUNTEERS

This year we set a new LifeLine record with 116 small groups so yes, we have a bunch of volunteers.  But here’s the thing, if you have more than 12 students, you need small groups and if you need small groups then you need volunteer leaders.  Not only do you need volunteers but you need great volunteers.  You need the kind of volunteers that you can trust to be spiritual shepherds to our students.  And, not only do you need great volunteers, you need great volunteers who will serve year after year because student ministry is a long-term investment.

So, how do you end up with great volunteers who stay engaged for the long-haul?  You invest in them.  A volunteer retreat is an incredible opportunity to invest deeply in your volunteers.  Here’s how it works.

VALUE

Here’s what I know:  volunteers who feel valued stay engaged in our ministry.  When volunteers understand, not only that we need them but that we enjoy them as people and value their individual gifting they tend to stick around.  We use our volunteer retreat to to create space for value conversations.  There is so much more that can be said on a weekend.

FUN

Volunteers who have a great time serving in student ministry tend to stay in student ministry.  If our volunteers are bored then we are seriously missing the mark.  We treat our volunteer retreat like a party.  Last weekend’s retreat included loud music, big prizes, crazy costumes, interactive games and hilarious videos.  If it isn’t fun you aren’t doing it right and your volunteers will likely go find someplace fun to serve.  Conversely, we’ve found that volunteers who have fun serving in our ministry stay engaged year after year.

SKILLZ

Nobody likes to suck at stuff.  This is a fundamental principle of humanity.  Student ministry is not an easy gig.  Leading a small group can be terribly difficult.  Volunteers who don’t feel like they are doing a good job will rarely stick around.  It’s our job as ministry leaders to equip them because volunteers who feel competent stay engaged.  We train our volunteers every other week but there is something special about getting away together on a retreat to really dig into core training concepts.

COMMUNITY

We are all hungry for community.  We believe that volunteers who have strong community make better spiritual shepherds for our students.  Some ministries require that their volunteers find a solid community, we build it right into our structure.  We have found that volunteers who connect deeply with other volunteers tend to stay engaged in our ministry for years.  For us, this is the biggest win of a volunteer retreat.  A weekend creates a ton of space for connecting.

GO AND DO

So, what’s the bottom line?  You should do a volunteer retreat!  Why?  Because we need great volunteers who stay engaged for years.  Volunteers who stay engaged feel valued, have fun, feel competent and serve in community.  A volunteer retreat is a great opportunity to invest in volunteers in each of these areas.

Tomorrow I’ll share some ideas on exactly how to pull off an epic retreat.

My Worst and Best Teaching of the Year

Last week included my worst teaching of the year and also my favorite.  The funny thing is that they were supposed to be the same content.  Sometimes you write a teaching, you think it’s going to be great and then it falls flat.  It’s worse when you are writing not only for yourself but also for other teachers on other campuses.

After teaching our high school students on Sunday night, I went back to the drawing board because, while it wasn’t a terrible teaching, it wasn’t clear or direct enough.  It took some hard work and last minute fine tuning but I and was very pleased with what came out on Wednesday night at our middle school event.

This is the second teaching of our Wakes series and it’s all about how other people influence you.  Check it out.

For me, it’s been 5 years since I’ve written curriculum and taught on a regular basis.  I’m sort of relearning the art.  Thankfully, my team and my boss have given me a lot of grace because there is a learning curve for this sort of thing.  In my transition back into teaching and writing, I’ve found this model to be helpful:

http://uthmin.net/np-communicating-to-students-1/

http://uthmin.net/np-communicating-to-students-2/

Getting Students into the Bible

For years we’ve been bothered by the reality that our students are largely Bible ignorant.  Most of them don’t read the Bible regularly or even have a strong grasp of how to navigate it’s pages.  Part of this is is due to the fact that students don’t read much of anything in our culture and part of this is probably due to the fact that we as parents and youth workers are dropping the ball.

Our student ministry team is making an effort to think creatively on how we can get students into the Bible.  Our first idea is embedded in our Wakes teaching series.

Wakes Bumper from LifeLine Student Ministries on Vimeo.

This is a four week teaching series on influence from the book of Acts.  As part of the experience we invited our volunteers and students to read through the book of Acts together.  We sent this bookmark home with each student and built this website: lifelinestudents.org/wakes. We built the website because students usually only read physical books if there is a grade dependent on it but they will often read voluntarily on their phones.

Wakes_Bookmark

 

The beautiful thing about this project is that it cost us basically nothing–only printing and shipping for the bookmarks.  Through a couple announcement videos and encouraging students to post to instagram and twitter with  #lifelinewakes we’ve created a little buzz.  So far so good.  We’d love to hear your ideas on how you are getting students into the Bible.

Wakes – Acts Reading Plan from LifeLine Student Ministries on Vimeo.

What is Worship?

Last Sunday and Wednesday night I taught on worship at LifeLine.  The question is:  What blows your mind? For me, it is the vastness of the universe.  What if God spoke it into being?  What if this incredibly powerful Being knows you and loves you.  Worship is responding to this incredible God.

Let me know what you think…

3 Levels of Belonging

Our student ministry does something that I believe is rather unique.   We call it cell family and we stole the idea wholesale from a church across town about a decade ago.  They stopped doing it years ago and we’ve been dumb enough to stick with it.  And yet, we’ve come to love it and it’s become an indispensable part of who we are as a ministry.  What exactly is cell family? I’m glad you asked.

ONE EPIC NIGHT OF AWESOMENESS

Our high school ministry meets on Sunday nights.  We built our ministry around small groups and we’re one of those student ministries that attach our small groups to our programming.  In other words, we pack everything into Sunday nights:  hang out, games, worship, teaching and small groups.  We always leave the last 30 minutes of our night to small groups.  We believe this is the best model for student ministry for a variety of reasons but we can argue about that in another post.

CELL FAMILY

What makes us unique is that every other week we meet in homes.  Instead of meeting all together with all of our students and volunteers, we meet in regional homes based on school.  We don’t add another night of programming, we do cell family in place of our regular large group programming.  Sound like a logistical nightmare?  It is.  But to us, it’s worth it.

THREE LEVELS OF CONNECTION

There are a few reasons we believe this model is strategic. First off, we believe that students need to know and be known.  Our dream is that students would know be known by ten adult volunteers (each cell family has 10 volunteers in it).  These volunteers know each student’s name and basic story.

We also want each student to experience three levels of belonging.  We want them to belong to something big.  There is something special about worshiping together with hundreds of people.  We also want our students to belong to something small.  Small groups are the place where they can be vulnerable and real.  It’s the environment in which they can be cared for and led by an invested adult.

Lastly, we believe our students need to belong to something midsize.  We believe that there is something valuable in 30 or 40 people in a house.  It feels a bit like a family reunion.  It’s a support network.  It’s a place where younger students can observe the faith of older students and where volunteers can show students what healthy relationships look like.  It’s a place for students to try out their gifts and talents and it’s a place where they can have a voice.

INTERACTIVE TEACHING

Cell family is also a response to how students learn.  We believe that students retain information best when they are able to interact with it as it is presented.  In our cell families, we teach through discussion rather than preaching.  Instead of a 20 minute presentation, we produce a 7 minute teaching video that leads into a group discussion.  We believe this model of communicating better fits how our students learn.

SERVE AS A FAMILY          

The last and perhaps most important reason we do cell family is volunteer community.  We believe that volunteers are at their best when they are serving as a family.  Each cell family is composed of 6-8 small group leaders and two volunteers that oversee the cell family.  These “coaches” as we all them have two roles:  care for their small group leaders and oversee the cell family programming.

Each time we meet in cell family, the volunteer team meets an hour early and has dinner at the cell family home.  Over time, the combination of these meals and serving together leads to fantastic volunteer community.  We want our volunteers to feel supported and together and cell family is a huge reason why we’re able to achieve this.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Introducing the LifeLine Team

I am pumped to announce that the LifeLine Team is complete.  It took us quite a while to hire everyone but the work has been worth the effort.  Our team is set and I’m confident that God has brought us the right people.  Here’s our announcement video from this past week which unveils our team.

 

Announcements / September 15 & 18 from LifeLine Student Ministries on Vimeo.

The verdict is still out on the pronunciation of “Chipotle” but if you’re curious, here is what we all do:

LifeLine @ the Kentwood Campus

  • Jon VerLee, Campus Youth Pastor
  • Jason Magnusun, Middle School

LifeLine @ the Knapp Street Campus

  • Kirk Bierens, High School
  • Steve Carigon, Middle School

LifeLine @ the Cascade Campus

  • Tom Skilling, High School Groups
  • Jake Houf, Middle School Groups
  • Elisa Talmage, Female Small Groups
  • Christian Stevens, LifeLine Weekends

LifeLine Central Support

  • Al Shepard, Production
  • Molly Rayman, LifeLine Admin
  • Jon Grunden, Middle School Director
  • Aaron Buer, High School Director