FaithEngineer

Over the past 14 years, I have been to numerous conference for students. I’ve taken groups to all of the major conferences, but there is one that stands out as my favorite. I have seen how a weekend spent in the Bible can totally change a teenager’s life.  I started attending the PlanetWisdom Student conference when it was organized by Shepherd Ministries with Dawson McAllister teaching and Al Denson leading the worship (yeah, I’m getting old)  Mark Matlock has done the teaching for a while now, but one thing has remained the same.  While bands have changed (Dutton, Addison Road, Plumb, and Mercy Me), the quality of the conference is top notch year after year. You can expect great teaching from the Bible, great worship, and some times of great fun orchestrated by the Skit Guys.

I was really disappointed to see that the conference was cutting back this year and not coming to Charlotte. But when we found out they were offering the weekend as a simulcast, we immediately signed up. Tonight we are hosting this conference and are expecting teens from many different local churches to attend. I think it is a great idea to bring local teensagers together to worship and learn together.

It’s not too late to attend. The cost is only $15 at the door for the entire weekend. We open the doors at Cornerstone tonight at 6pm for pizza ($3 per student) and worship will kick off at 7:30. Our Sunday night worship team will be kicking things off. The conference will go to about 11:30pm tonight and start back up at 9am tomorrow morning. Everything will wrap up around 5:30 tomorrow night. For more information, visit the PlanetWisdom website, watch the video below, or contact me. Help us spread the word and get local teenagers to attend!

This is what happens when we cancel church services! The youth ended up at our house and had some fun on Sunday. Add in hot chocolate, fresh homemade cookies, and snow cream, and you can tell we had a great time. Thanks to Ben for taping and editing the video.  I didn’t make the video, but when you’re my size, you gain some serious speed and get some serious air over the bumps. I’m still feeling it.

I’m not a huge fan of curriculum for youth.  I’ve seen far too many lessons that were long and culturally irrelevant, and most of the time they didn’t even make sense. If I see another youth lesson where they ask people to dress up in Biblical costumes I think I will drop kick the writer into the 21st century!  For the most part, over the last thirteen years of working with youth, I have written my own lessons.  I like getting ideas from others, but I couldn’t find the right mix of Biblical teaching and conversational questions that fit my teaching style.  With our recent changes to our youth ministry at Cornerstone, I knew I needed to come up with a plan for equipping and preparing our different youth leaders.

We have made the change from one large youth meeting each week to multiple smaller groups meeting at the same time.  We all meet together for announcements and some activities, but then we split up into different age groups.  I did want all the groups studying the same thing each week, so I started looking at several different options.  I really liked the content and messages from the XP3 curriculum by the reThink group, but it is geared for one teacher to teach a large group and then break up into smaller discussion groups.  We have tried that before and it is tough to teach a lesson that connects with a large group of students ranging from 6th to 12th grades. The lessons were also very long.  I looked at some others that I won’t mention here that seemed like they came straight out of 1980, and then I finally found what we we’re looking for. Simply Youth Ministry just recently released a curriculum for small groups called the Live Curriculum.  I talked with another youth pastor who was using it, and we made up our mind to jump in.  So far it’s been great.

The lessons are easy to customize and share.  It is online based, so I can login, make any specific changes that I feel are necessary, and then share with the rest of our leaders.  They can then customize the lessons for their group and teaching style, and print out the lessons and student sheets, all from their homes.  The lessons are intended to create discussion, and there are even text message questions and parent emails you can send during the week.  You can also choose the order in which you teach the lessons.  The cost sounds a little high ($499), but you are buying into a four-year plan so it really becomes cheaper than all the other options that I have seen.  I’m not easily impressed, but I think this will really help our youth ministry and save some valuable time for our leaders.

When choosing a curriculum, don’t choose something because everyone else is using it.  You have to evaluate your ministry and style, and then find something that will be a good fit.  In many cases, you may have to write your own, but don’t rule out looking at all curriculum.

I was honored today to officiate a wedding for a former student.  It’s something that I really enjoy doing and today was no exception.  It’s great seeing old friends and seeing them take a huge step of faith.  Since Jennifer and I have been married for 14 years now, I also feel like I can share some advice on what it takes to have a great marriage.

I think all marriages should be celebrations and I could tell everyone had a good time this evening. Two funny things stood out.  First, the best man acted like he couldn’t find the ring.  He asked the next groomsman and it went all the way down the line until the last guy pulled it out of his pocket.  I knew they were going to do something, but you should have seen the look on the faces of all the parents and the bridesmaids. The second thing that I am still laughing about is a conversation I had with the groom before the wedding.  I had given him a copy of Joe Sangl’s book, I Was Broke, Now I’m Not, so I asked him if he had read through it yet.  He was excited about it and told me that he was taking it on his honeymoon for his bride to read as well.   He couldn’t wait to share what he had learned about budgeting and financial responsibility.  It struck me funny that he was taking it on his honeymoon.  I know Joe’s book is good, but it must be seriously awesome to take on the honeymoon.

Congrats to the newly married Brian and Meghan Norris.   May God Bless your marriage. In honor of your wedding today, I present to you three of my favorite youtube wedding moments.  Be sure to watch all three videos in the youtube playlist below.

On our youth retreat, I gave our students a survey.  One of the questions was “Do your parents engage you in conversations about spiritual matters?”  Here are their answers …

• Never - 9.5% of students
• Infrequently - 43% of students
• Regularly - 47.5% of students

The numbers are actually higher than I expected.  What may be surprising to parents is that there is a very strong correlation between spiritual growth and parental involvement.   In other words, what happens at home is far more important than what happens at church.  Our job in ministry is not just to teach our youth, but to equip and encourage their parents to do the same.

Have you seen this in your ministry? What are your thoughts about equipping and training parents?

We’re taking the next two days to spend time with the youth.  We’ll be having fun, but I will also be teaching during the retreat. Our retreat will be in Charlotte, where we will be going to the National Whitewater Center and Carowinds.  We are planning on making some changes to the way we do youth ministry and this retreat will help nail down some of those changes. Pray for us that we will have a safe trip and that God will use this time to shape our ministry into what He wants it to be.

Here’s where we will be on Tuesday

Here’s where we will be on Wednesday

Sounds fun, doesn’t it?