Personalized gift or baby name contact us

AFFIRMATION

birthday-in-a-cup

Hand-delivered birthday treats help your students mark their special day in a memorable way.

Have every young person fill out a survey that includes his or her favorite candy bar. Buy a supply of "Happy Birthday" plastic cups, napkins, balloons, and birthday favors from a party store. On each student's birthday, fill a cup with balloons, a napkin, a favor, small candies, and his or her favorite candy bar. Then show up at school to present your birthday "gift" and best wishes.

called by grace

OUTREACH

If you have a no-cell-phones rule in your youth group, you might try lifting it occasionally and letting teenagers use their phones to reach out to others.

Most likely not every student will have a cell phone, so you may need to ask church members to donate some additional phones. This cell phone ministry will probably work best on a weekend evening when adults are also meeting at church, especially if people have unlimited calls available on weekends.

During the meeting time, have teenagers call friends, family members, or classmates. They can invite people to church or to youth group, tell them about God's love, or simply offer encouragement.

HOT GAMES

pudding legs

You'll need several containers of snack-size puddings and several queen-size pantyhose for this game that's fun to watch and play.

Players each pull a pair of pantyhose over their heads, so their heads and necks are completely covered. Then each participant is given a small container of pudding that must be eaten as fast as possible through the pantyhose, with the hose serving as a "strainer." There are a couple of ways to play the game. One is to divide the group into teams of four students each, and have teams do this activity relay-style. Another way is to have teams of two, with one student eating the pudding and the other student feeding his or her partner with a spoon. It can also be played as guys against girls, with one representative from each side coming up front to play the game. The first team or person who completes the task is the winner.

As an option, pureed baby food can be used instead of pudding.

Gaming Tips

There are a number of ways to include developmentally challenged or disabled young people in your game times. Let me give you three ideas.

(1) Have an able-bodied student pair up with a disabled young person to work as a team, (2) have the challenged students be the photographers during the game time, or (3) have the challenged students serve as the referees.

The important thing is to reach out to these students, and make sure they feel a part of the group. For more information, contact Young Life at (408) 286-3207. They have a terrific ministry to disabled young people called "The Capernaum Project."

JR. HIGH MINISTRY

t.h.e. way to do junior high ministry

Stop and think for a few minutes about all that your junior high ministry does: camps, mission trips, fund-raisers, Sunday school, small groups, game nights, lock-ins, discipleship, pizza parties, outreach events, service projects, and more. A question I've asked myself quite often is "Are we doing the right stuff?" And there's an even more important follow-up question, "Are we doing the right stuff the right way?" How we do the things we do is, in the long run, more important than the things we do themselves.

So I'd like to suggest T.H.E. way to do junior high ministry...

Teamwork: By now, most of us recognize the fact that we can't do ministry alone, that it's a team effort. Unfortunately, many ministry teams don't function like a team at all. There are competing agendas, ideas, strategies, and values that often make our team approach to ministry look more like a game of Tug O' War.

Teamwork says things such as, "We're all in this together," "When you win, so do I," and "We all know our roles and responsibilities." No matter what your junior high ministry does, do it as a team.

Humility: Pride ruins things. Ministry is meant to be sacrificial, but sadly, pride often creeps in. Junior high ministry done in humility says things such as, "Everyone is valued equally," "I'll do whatever it takes," and "No job is too small." No matter what your junior high ministry does, do it in humility.

Excellence: Not to be confused with perfection, excellence simply means giving God our best effort. Too often, we give students second-rate experiences not because we can't do better, but because we procrastinate or rely on our ability to "wing it." An attitude of excellence says things such as, "God deserves my best effort," "Ministry is worth it," and "I'll plan ahead." No matter what your junior high ministry does, do it with excellence.

photographic memories

CONNECTION

Remind students of how much fun they have at youth group by sending them photo postcards.

Take wild, silly, or fun group photos, and simply use each photo as a postcard by writing the student's name and address and a quick message on the back. Be sure to include information about the next youth group event. Teenagers love seeing themselves in photos, and parents appreciate seeing their kids enjoying themselves.

Contributors: Darren McClerren, Denise Prange, Kelly Siegal, Jeff Smith, and Jaime Wilcox

JR. HIGHERS

small-group emails

If your junior highers have Internet access, they probably check their email more often than they open their Bibles, so how about Email Verse Groups?

Have kids form groups of five or seven, depending on whether they want to do this Monday through Friday or daily. Assign a day of the week to each person within a group. On his or her designated day, each person emails a verse and a thought to the other group members. All the students receive a bit of Scripture in their inboxes, and everyone is encouraged to read more of the Bible.

COMMUNICATION

shoebox connection

Set up an area of storage shelves in the youth group room where each person can have a shoebox-size container, and then use the boxes for all kinds of community-building activities.

Have students personalize and decorate their boxes, and then put a photo of each person on the front so the boxes are easily identifiable. Everyone can communicate with each other by leaving notes, special treats, or Christian CDs. Kids can draw names for Secret Pals, too, or you can assign Buddies to new or younger youth group members.

You can leave photos for students or other mementos from youth group events or drop in personalized invitations to upcoming activities. When seniors graduate from your group, add a special note about each person's time in youth group or put in a devotion book, and present the boxes at a special celebration.

GOOD NEWS ABOUT KIDS

neighbors-first ministry

For 27 years youth groups at Holmeswood Baptist Church in Kansas City, Missouri, have shared their faith by traveling around the country doing mission work and presenting a musical program. This year the students broke with tradition and stayed at home to minister in their own backyard.

The youth group's theme for the week was "Go to your neighbors first, touch them, love them, right here in your own neighborhood." During the mornings, the young people worked with 160 children, providing vacation Bible school. If not for the teenagers' help, the church would have canceled this program because of a lack of adult volunteers. In the afternoons and evenings, the students went to homeless shelters, senior citizens' homes, a children's home, and a care center for AIDS patients, where they performed a musical drama, "Your Love Is Amazing."

One of the teenagers who had been disappointed when the out-of-town plans were canceled said, "I was amazed at how something I thought would be really small could be so huge."

JESUS-STYLE YOUTH MINISTRY

new & improved?

by sonlife's Steve argue and dave livermore

Do you see your own life clearly? Most of us don't. We see our world, and all that happens to us and others, through a muddied lens. That's our worldview-the story we tell ourselves to make sense of God's unfolding drama. But if we're going to play our role in this drama well, it's crucial that we understand God's story well.

As Christian leaders, our worldviews (derived through study, life experiences, and influences) shape our theology (our view of God), which ultimately drives our theodicy (how we make sense of our world).

Some of us cringe at these concepts-"I just want to love students and show them Jesus." But what "Jesus" will you show your students? And what does "love" really look like to a teenager who's desperately wrestling with the reality of God, the pain of divorce, manic hormones, and getting cut from the team?

Robert Webber, in his book Ancient-Future Faith, reminds us that our theology of church deeply influences the way we minister with students. For example, the better we understand what it means to be a "new creation," the more we see youth ministry through a clearer lens.