Youth Ministry Planning Archives - Page 11 of 17 - Jonathan's Blog From The Source

California Gurls Hottest Song in 17 Years

Posted on: 06/28/10 4:11 PM | by Jonathan McKee

Katy Perry’s #1 song California Gurls just broke a 17-year record for the most plays in one week.

So what is this song about and how do we talk to our kids about its message? Glad you asked.

If you haven’t heard Katy Perry’s song California Gurls featuring Snoop Dog, then maybe you haven’t been outside your house. 🙂 Because if you’ve walked into a Wal Mart, a Target, a Best Buy, or taken your kids to swim practice… anywhere where they’re playing secular music… then you’ve heard the song.

Billboard reports:

A week after reaching the chart’s summit, Katy Perry’s “California Gurls,” featuring Snoop Dogg, rewrites the mark for most weekly plays in the 17-year history of Billboard’s Pop Songs radio airplay chart.

“California Gurls” logged 11,816 plays among the survey’s 132 panelists, an average of 90 plays per station, in the chart’s tracking week of June 21-27, according to Nielsen BDS. The song passes the 11,224 plays tallied by previous record-holder Ke$ha’s “TiK ToK” on the chart dated Feb. 6, 2010.

What is this song about? Watch the music video (with her lying naked face down in a cloud) and you’ll easily discover what Katy Perry’s intention is– I talked about that a little in this blog last week. But one of our ministry’s writers Dave Urbanski goes a little deeper with a brand new piece of curriculum he wrote using this catchy little song to jumpstart a discussion about where we get fulfillment. In this discussion piece, Dave provokes teenagers to ask the sincere question: To what extent have we considered the message this very, very catchy and supremely popular tune is communicating?

I encourage you to take a peek at that free resource for a great discussion, including scripture and discussion questions.

Posted in Entertainment Media, Music, Parenting, Youth Culture, Youth Ministry Planning | | Leave A Comment

This October

Posted on: 06/10/10 8:29 AM | by Jonathan McKee

For those of you in the youth ministry world (I realize that my blog goes out to both parents and youth workers), most of you are familiar with Youth Specialties’ National Youth Workers Convention… or as as lazy folks call it, the NYWC.

This year I’ll be teaching again at the NYWC in San Diego. They have a brand new promo video for it. Interesting approach. Check it out.

Here’s the link to the video.

I’ll be teaching two workshops at the NYWC this year:

– Seminar Series 4 – Sunday, Oct. 3 – 2:00pm-3:30pm– Using 10-Minute Talks: Speaking to Generations with Short Attention Spans

Wouldn’t it be nice if all of us could communicate the Scriptures like Francis Chan or speak with the clarity of Andy Stanley? Francis goes about 45 minutes… Andy averages about 40 minutes… I should do the same, right? Newsflash: We aren’t them! So stop trying to talk as long as them! That coupled with the fact that students’ attention spans are growing shorter brings up a critical question: How can we communicate truth in a way that teenagers will truly remember? In this seminar you’ll learn the power and effectiveness of the 10-Minute Talk, a method of storytelling that’s laser focused and impactful.

– Seminar Series 5 – Sunday, Oct. 3 – 4:00pm-5:30pm– Ministry by Teenagers: Developing Leaders from Within

You may be sitting on an untapped gold mine of leadership for your youth group—the teenagers! Millions of teenagers are apathetic about their faith, and their indifference greatly reveals itself each year when many teenagers graduate high school…and exit their faith altogether. It’s a problem that every youth worker in every denomination acknowledges. Could it be that today’s youth ministries are too focused on offering ministry TO teenagers instead of leading ministry BY teenagers? Teenagers must get opportunities to serve and use their gifts in ministry prior to high school graduation, taking full ownership of their faith development. This seminar will highlight key strategies for developing spiritual growth in students and giving them opportunities to serve in their ministries.

Here’s the link. Hope to see some of you there!

Posted in Youth Ministry Philosophy, Youth Ministry Planning | | Leave A Comment

What Connecting Looks Like

Posted on: 05/27/10 9:39 AM | by Jonathan McKee

Jason’s adult leaders didn’t realize how “stagnant” many of their kids were… until they saw it on a giant whiteboard right in front of their face!

It’s fun to get emails from youth workers and adult mentors who are connecting with kids. I’ve been getting a lot of these lately– people who have read my book, CONNECT, or have seen our free CONNECT video, and are using the principles to not only start conversations with teenagers, but using the principles out of chapter 14 to do the sticky notes exercise, taking a spiritual inventory of their group.

Jason, a youth worker from New York just took his entire adult leadership team through the sticky notes exercise using a giant whiteboard. Here’s his results (I blurred the names for anonymity). Notice the “trends” of where the names landed.

Does that look like your group? (I’ve done a lot of these trainings- and a TON of them look just like this!)

A lot of stagnant kids, huh? Jason noticed this and sees how connecting might really make a difference. Here’s what Jason wrote me this morning:

I should’ve emailed you sooner to let you know how much that book has meant to this ministry so far. I did the sticky note exercise last month and it has really shook up the leader’s view of their roles. I have a great group of adults that really love serving the teens, but I do not think they totally understood what kind of an impact they have, or could have, until they saw that board. I attached the picture of it for you to see. As you will see, we have a pretty stagnant group. The leaders have responded in force to change that! They realize now more than ever how important it is to be creating one on one relationships that will give them the ability to help a teen take that next step towards Christ and a more devoted relationship with Him.

I also changed our team expectations. I have now added that they need to be having a one on one with a teen at least once a month. For the ones that still didn’t get it I broke it down like this: We have 14 leaders and 50 teens attending regularly on Sunday nights. If each leader took a different teen out once a month that equals 168 teens a year. This means each teen will be able to have a one on one conversation with an adult 3 times a year! So if we look at it like that it also impacts us to realize that even twice a month isn’t a stretch. That doubles the amount of one on ones and infinitely multiplies the amount of influence an adult can have on a teen!

Thanks again for all you do for youth ministries!

Jason

It’s fun to see how Jason is making sure that no kid is missed! Wouldn’t you love it if you knew that your own son or daughter had a place where they were loved and cared for… a place where everyone knew their name, and where a positive adult role model actually hung out with them and mentored them?!

Thanks for CONNECTING Jason!

Posted in Youth Ministry Philosophy, Youth Ministry Planning | | Leave A Comment

Another of Our Brand New FREE Training Videos

Posted on: 04/6/10 12:25 AM | by Jonathan McKee

About 10 days ago I tested one of our brand new short training videos on a group of several hundred youth workers in my training workshop at a conference on the East Coast. The video lays out little cartoon drawings of my “Six Types of Kids” on a whiteboard, unveiling a little bit about each kid. Fun stuff! The response we received was amazing. They all asked me where they could get the video.

I was happy to tell that group of youth workers that we’d be offering that video soon as another one of the free resources on our website.

And I wasn’t lying. Now it’s up!

The video is a tool I use in my CONNECT training workshop, helping youth leaders set the stage for connecting with the wide spectrum of teenagers they’ll encounter in youth ministry today. The video really fleshes out the six types of kids I introduce in chapter four of my new book, CONNECT.

Take a peek… and then feel free to chime in with your comments below.

Posted in Books, Church, Evangelism, Faith, Youth Culture, Youth Ministry Planning | | Leave A Comment

Speaking and Training

Posted on: 03/8/10 7:27 AM | by Jonathan McKee

Tis the season to train our leaders, I guess. Because that’s what I’m spending most of my time doing lately.

I just got back from a rewarding weekend in Oskaloosa, Iowa where my dad and I did our NEW BREED training workshop together for pastors, youth workers and volunteer managers in the greater Iowa area. Great people! It was a blast spending a whole day helping these leaders think strategically about mobilizing the 21st Century Volunteer. We got some great feedback from the group; they seemed to walk away with a ton of great ideas for recruiting, managing and training volunteers.

I really enjoy training pastors and youth leaders. I get to turn around in a couple of weeks and do my CONNECT workshop at a huge Youth for Christ conference near the coast of Maryland. Then I’ll do my parenting workshop a couple weeks later at a church in South Bend, IN, and again a month later in NJ.

Here’s a peek at my speaking/training schedule so far for this year:

Jonathan will be speaking or training
at the following locations:

January 8-9, 2010 (Nashville, TN)

CONNECT Training Workshop, Our Savior Lutheran Church

January 16-17, 2010 (Beckley, WV)

Youth Ski Conference, CTI Group Adventures

February 5-7, 2010 (Dallas, PA)

Junior High Winterblast, Camp Orchard Hill

February 26- 28, 2010 (East Troy, WI)

Timberlee, WinterXtreme

March 6, 2010 (Oskaloosa, IA)

Volunteer Power Workshop

March 26-28, 2010 (Baltimore, MD)

Keynote Speaker, Impact 2010

April 10, 2010 (South Bend, IN)

Preach/Parent Workshop, Trinity EV FREE Church

April 17, 2010 (Saint Louis, MO)

Faithfest 2010, St. Louis network of churches

May 15-16, 2010 (Jackson, NJ)

Youth Rally, Preach, Parent/Youth Worker Workshop

July 11-16, 2010 (Hordville, NE)

Covenant Cedars Bible Camp, Summer Camp

October 2-4, 2010 (San Diego, CA)

Training Workshops, Youth Specialties National Youth Workers Convention

I’m still booking summer and fall speaking/training dates. Feel free to contact me if you’d like to bring me out for speaking or doing any of these workshops for your group.

Posted in Youth Ministry Planning | | Leave A Comment

Super Bowl Resources

Posted on: 02/4/10 5:59 PM | by Jonathan McKee

Sunday is the big game… and I’m on a plane during the entire thing! (Second year in a row that this happened. I’ll be flying back from speaking at a camp again!)

Well, even though I’m not going to see the game myself, let me leave you with a handful of free resources and articles that you might want to use for Sunday:

THE SUPER BOWL QUIZ:
Every year we provide a “Ready-made Super Bowl Party” complete with our annual Super Bowl Quiz. This is a blast- it’s a quiz that you hand people as they show up at your Super Bowl Party, then you tally the scores during the game- because the quiz asks them questions predicting what will happen during the game (i.e. Who will catch the first pass?, Will Pepsi or Coke have the first commercial? Who will win? etc.) Great fun. We released our Ready-made Party and Quiz in this week’s EZINE here.

KURT WARNER DISCUSSION:
This is a great talk with discussion questions that you can use during half time or anytime this weekend about a true hero of our faith, Kurt Warner, the famed MVP and Super Bowl champion quarterback.

ARTICLE ABOUT THE TIM TEBOW ABORTION AD:
It’s been all over the news. But in case you missed it… here’s the skinny from USA TODAY:

CBS, already likely to score an epic Super Bowl rating given the NFL’s season-long surge in viewership, has picked up new momentum: It will have the most controversial TV ad — perhaps the only really controversial ad — to ever air during America’s biggest TV show.

The 30-second spot comes from the Christian advocacy group Focus on the Family. It features Tim Tebow, who quarterbacked Florida to two college football titles and won the Heisman Trophy and now becomes the rare athlete who goes anywhere near associating with a controversial issue outside sports.

Click here for the entire article.

Enjoy the game! (and save me some hot wings!)

Posted in TV, Youth Ministry Planning | | Leave A Comment

A Video of My Sticky-notes Training

Posted on: 02/2/10 5:54 PM | by Jonathan McKee

Many of you already own my new book Connect or have heard the buzz about my sticky-notes training exercise, helping youth ministry leaders not only take the spiritual pulse of their students, but also keep accountable to reaching them and helping them grow spiritually. Now we have an online video available where you can see me do this training.

We’ll be posting this video for our subscribers next week… I wanted to give you guys the first peek!

This entire exercise and detailed descriptions of the “Six Types of Kids” are laid out in my book Connect (and we actually provide you with the Powerpoint you see me using in this video when you buy the book from us).

Posted in Books, Youth Ministry Philosophy, Youth Ministry Planning | | Leave A Comment

The Writer of TO SAVE A LIFE responds…

Posted on: 01/19/10 3:52 PM | by Jonathan McKee

It’s funny how diverse believers can be in their reactions to different types of media. One person will love a movie and see it as a great tool for outreach; another will be totally offended.

Last year I screened the movie To Save a Life, opening in theatres this Friday. I really enjoyed the film- It’s going to be a great tool that youth leaders use for discussion. (We’ve already wrote up a peice of curriculum using a cliip from the film- check it out here, and gave away some of their youth curriculum kits here)

I blogged about it last September, giving a pretty detailed synopsis, and I received some fun comments in reply. But I also received this comment:

Where was Jesus mentioned once in this movie? And 3 curse words, one used twice. It is watered down, diluted faith and I can’t believe youth pastors are all thinking this is great. I took my 17 year old daughter to the movie and she thinks they went to far with the language and sensuality as well. Implied would have worked. Would you eat a 9×13 inch pan of delicious looking and smelling brownies if I told you it had 95% pure ingredients (finest chocolate, flour, an sugar you could buy) but had 5% dog poop in it? I would not eat it and I will not take my teens to see this movie!

Hmmmmm. (The brownie illustration again? Really?)

I commented back… then he replied, I commented again… the bantar was rather humorous (for me, anyway). I won’t paste our bantar- but you might want to check it out in the comment section of that blog.

Then I couldn’t help myself. I emailed Jim Britts, the screenwriter of the film and asked him to address the comment. Here’s Jim’s reply:

From the beginning we never set out to make a “Christian” movie that would cater to just a “church kid” audience. This film was made for the millions of teens that are not going to set foot in a church and for the courageous Christian teens who have a passion for reaching their friends with the love of Christ. The top two things unchurched young people think when they hear the word “Christian” are hypocrites and they just want to convert me. We intentionally made this film real (which meant including a couple cuss words-which I prayed over repeatedly) in order to earn the attention of teenagers and lower their guard against just being converted. The whole reason we did this is so they will be open to a conversation with a Christian friend about the issues they related with from the film and how God could help them like He did in Jake’s life.

The film does not present the gospel because that’s our job. My prayer that it’s much less the youth pastor’s job and much more our students. Our ministry is preparing every student in how to lead their friends to Christ using the film and our prayer is they’ll be equipped and empowered to have more spiritual conversations this next spring because of this film than they’ve ever had before. What if we didn’t see this film as a threat to our Christian kids holiness (I bet they’ve already seen 10 times worse already) but instead an opportunity to challenge them to be more bold in their faith.

Jim Britts

Youth pastor, and screenwriter of To Save a Life

There you have it. No need to add to that.

I encourage you to go see the film this weekend and take a look for yourself. I think you’ll find it a very effective tool for Outreach.

Posted in Evangelism, Movies, Youth Ministry Planning | | Leave A Comment

10 Years of Free Resources

Posted on: 01/18/10 2:28 AM | by Jonathan McKee

I can hardly believe it, but 10 years ago today I sent out my first resource “EZINE” newsletter from my little website, back then, called JonathansResources.com

I used Alexa.com’s “Wayback” machine to look back at what our site looked like 10 years ago (pretty cool little tool). Here’s what it looked like:

Pretty cool huh?

You can actually get on that page and click around here. I love the little pics on the front page, the game page, etc. Wow… I hardly remember those.

Tomorrow I’m going to send out a “retro” EZINE to our subscribers… I’ll be sending them a copy of the first EZINE we ever sent. You can actually still see all those old EZINES on our ARTICLE ARCHIVES page from the ARTICLES & FREE TRAINING drop down menu of our current site at www.TheSource4YM.com … just get on that archives page and scroll to the bottom to our first article on January 18th 2000.

For those of you new to us, back in 2000 I worked for Youth for Christ and volunteered at my church. I started JonathansResources.com as a fun little hobby simply because I noticed that hardly anyone was providing truly free youth ministry resources on the internet for free. Some people had websites with a few freebies… but no sites dedicated to totally free youth minsitry resources. So I gave it a shot.

It grew to be such a hit, and at the same time my speaking and training was taking off, so in 2003 we started TheSource4YM.com and went full time speaking, training, and providing free resources on the net.

The rest is history!

Posted in Internet, Personal, Youth Ministry Planning | | Leave A Comment

A Quick Interview With Tic… Because He’s Back

Posted on: 01/7/10 8:33 AM | by Jonathan McKee

The news is starting to buzz this Thursday morning. Yes, Tic is back. So I grabbed him and asked him a few questions that we’re all wondering.

I’m talking about Youth Specialties(YS). After some crazy transitions over the last few years (even months!), the new YS just made a very smart move… they brought back Tic Long.

YS is a household name to those of us in the youth ministry world. In the 70’s, youth workers couldn’t get enough of their “IDEA” books. My dad was a youth minister in the 60’s and 70’s, so I was introduced to YS’s stuff as a kid. My brother and I used to do YS skits for my parents for fun. Mike Yak and Wayne Rice– the founders- were heroes to most youth ministers because they had the guts to talk about the elephants in the room, and then provide us with some resources to help us along the way.

After navigating the youth ministry world for a few years, my friend Ray Johnston introduced me to Tic Long, one of the head guys at YS at the time (in the 90’s). Tic was the guy who gave me a shot at training at the National Youth Workers Convention. I’ve been teaching there since, and they have published many of my books.

In the last few years YS has had some major drawbacks. My buddy Mike A. of Mikey’s Funnies was let go. Mike Yak tragically died. Tic was let go. Zondervan took over. Financial upset. Marko was let go and now this company that many of us don’t know, “YouthWorks,” bought Zondervan out. Many of us have been sitting around and saying, “Is YS even YS anymore?” Their publishing house wasn’t rocked that hard… but their events???

So I was pretty excited when I heard Tic was back. If you’re like me… you’ve got questions. That’s why I contacted Tic and asked him myself. Listen in:

JONATHAN: Hey Tic… so good to hear that you’ll be back with YS. That’s going to be great news for so many. A few quick questions about this transition: First, what are you most excited about now that you’ve rejoined the YS team?

TIC: That I still get to serve youth workers at a place I love.

JONATHAN: Very cool. Now, many of us don’t know these “YouthWorks” guys that just took over YS. They seem like nice enough guys, and they have an impressive history of putting on good events. Do you have any personal experiences with these guys that you can share with us? Throw us a bone here!

TIC: I didn’t know them well but when I got to know them I got really excited. They were one of the main reasons I came back. They walk the talk. Like the fact they give away about a million dollars a year back into the communities they serve. I love their humble spirit. I love how they love youth workers.

JONATHAN: It was already a transition doing YS without Yak. What will it be like without Marko?

TIC: Nothing is as hard as losing Yac. YS has had some hard transitions not only when Mike died but going from this small little independent ministry to be part of the corporate world in which Zondervan lives in, when I left, when the 11 people left when I did, Marko’s leaving, then another sale….Yikes that’s just a lot to work through. It will be hard without Marko but I think it will be way easier for YS with me coming back instead of somebody completely new because I carry the YS DNA and know so many of the YS family of friends.

JONATHAN: What is the first thing on your “To Do” list?

TIC: Hug everybody at YS. I have not even been back at the office yet. I decided to come back after Christmas and the first week of Jan. have been at YouthWorks HQ. I get into the office Friday.

JONATHAN: Cool. Give Adam McLane a big kiss for me. Uh… did I just say that outloud? Moving on! What’s the scariest part of this new job?

TIC: Making sure I keep balance in my life. It is really easy for me to think about YS 24/7 and that is not healthy. I love what we do so much that in the past I was not good at setting boundaries. I hope to be better at it this time around. To hold it a little more loosely. To actually live like I am trusting God that YS is his and not just say that.

JONATHAN: That’s it! Thanks for taking some time with me! Welcome back bro.

Posted in News, Youth Ministry Planning | | Leave A Comment