Election Talk

It doesn't matter if you are a Mitt Romney supporter or a Barrack Obama supporter, a republican or a democrat, a debate watcher or a debate sleeper, one thing remains... the election is everywhere.

Every person over 40 is posting something about the election on their Facebook timeline and every person under 20 is posting something on their Twitter page making fun of the over 40 crowd on Facebook.

So why not take this election and turn it into a teaching moment for your youth group. I have developed a sermon (with 2 more coming) called Just the Issues. It doesn't deal with any candidates, controversial debate topics or even any jokes about battleships or binders full of women. It merely takes this election season and asks the simple question...

What if Jesus ran for office?

It uses the I AM statements of Christ as a platform for Him to run on. Check it out and use the hot issue of the day to teach about the person of Jesus Christ.

And the best part about it is... it is absolutely free! Click on the sermon graphic below to download it from www.youth-sermons.com

A Bad Night at Youth Group.

I step up to the stage and grab the microphone to the applause of a roomful of adoring teenagers. As I look out into the crowd I see many familiar faces waiting desperately with their Bibles open and pens ready to hear the message that I have been preparing for all week. Next to all of these familiar faces are first time guests who are staring at me with curious anticipation waiting for the chance to accept Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Savior.

In the back of the room are more adults than we could ever find a job for. Professionals, moms, deacons... everyone wants to volunteer in my youth ministry, but I only pick the best of the best. As I begin to make my points, each adult nods their heads with spiritual enthusiasm at the nuggets of Biblical wisdom that are coming their way. The respect that they have for me is enormous.

Every time I tell a joke to lighten the mood or to illustrate a point, everyone laughs like the audience at Showtime at the Apollo. When I get to the end of my message and try to end with a patented Louie Giglio left hook, I see everyone crying. The familiar faces have their arms wrapped around the shoulders of the visitor they brought, adults have made their way to voluntarily start ministering to multitude of students that are anxiously waiting to commit or recommit their lives to Jesus.

It is such a good night that not only do 15 first time visitors get saved, but so do 5 familiar faces and the deacon in the back.

This turned out to be a really good night in our youth group.... or at least that is how it went in my head.

Here is how it really turned out:

5 minutes before youth group was to begin, I had one adult to help me.

I had middle school boys wrestling down the hallway. One had on a Mexican wrestling mask. (No joke)

There was a tension in the building like all of the students were upset they had to be at church instead of watching "Here Comes Honey Boo Boo."

Once youth group finally began, there were noticeable empty chairs all over the room. And yet none of our adults sat in them.

Three boys got up in the middle of worship because they to do a skit for AWANA. Apparently these 3 boys  are such thespians that only they were qualified to handle such a Shakespear-ian task.

When I got up to deliver the message I had been preparing all week, it felt like I was interrupting something else that was going on.

Every joke I told hit the ground like a lead balloon.

Every truth that I spoke floated over their heads like a hot-air balloon.

And for some reason, it was National Tell Your Kid to Walk Out of Youth Group Early Night. Because I literally had six kids get up at different times and leave because their parents wanted them so desperately to get home fifteen minutes earlier that to interrupt a 3/4 full room of already distracted teenagers was necessary collateral damage.

So where do I go from here?

1. Like the inaudible man in Waterboy slurred to Adam Sandler "Live to fight another day."
2. Remember all of the good nights of youth group to balance out this not so good one.
3. Isaiah 55 says that His Word will not return void.
4. Get it out of my system and start cheerfully working on next week's youth group experience.
5. Do something different. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Change is a comin'.

Have you ever had a bad youth group night?

Please share.

13. Scare Tactics

My blogging hero, Jon Acuff wrote a great post today about scaring people to Jesus.

Since I have made it a regular habit to steal things from him, I will do the same with this post.

He talked about a children's program that had a service where it looked like a guy was getting sawed in half with a chainsaw and "God" was metaphorically removing all the junk from this person. (TV, radio, etc.)

How does anybody think that this might be a good idea? This must be one of those churches where there are no staff meetings or this dude was trying to get fired. My guess is he already had his resume loaded at www.churchstaffing.com. Although he probably didn't reference his Nightmare on Elm Street approach to evangelism on it.

Children are so impressionable and I think we do a number of wrong things that give them a skewed Christology.

Take Zacchaeus for example. We teach little children this song about him being a wee little man, and a wee little man was he. Children love this song, because they love singing and they love saying "wee." But when we get to the part where Jesus sees Zacchaeus we teach them a hand motion that has Jesus wagging his finger at the vertically challenged man and telling him, "You come down..."

Where do we get this idea that Jesus was a "finger wagging Jesus?" I don't believe He wagged His finger at all, because if He did then Luke 19:6 would be different. It says, referring to Zacchaeus, "6 So he quickly came down and welcomed Him joyfully."
Let me tell you something, if somebody wagged their finger at me and embarrassed me in front of all of those people after I put myself out there by climbing a Sycamore, I might come down and I might even come down quickly. But I am not welcoming Him "joyfully." That is for sure.

When we teach that to children, we should put a big smile on our face and welcome Zacchaeus down with open arms. Then we should show them the chainsaw thing just for fun... just kidding.

12. Blogs about the 80%

There is an obvious divide in youth circles that separate the old school from the new school. This doesn't even necessarily have anything to do with age. In fact, age really isn't a determining factor.

When I talk about old school vs. new school I am talking about the optimist versus the pessimist. I am definitely a youth group optimist. I believe that this is a generation of change, a generation that will make a definitive impact on the world and on the landscape of Christianity.

But maybe I am an optimist because I have only seen successful youth programs. The youth group I came through and got saved in now has well over 10 people in full-time Christian ministry and in keeping up with the old crew on Facebook we have about 80% who have STAYED strong in their faith.

The same is true of my current church. The foundation was set with a strong leadership program and a serviceable college program and we as well have about an 80% success rate. So when I hear other guys bashing youth groups and youth pastors, especially a fellow one, I am baffled.

This is what happened when I ran across a blog post from a guy named Andy Gill at www.youthmin.org where their slogan is "Everyday Youth Pastors being Everyday Extraordinary."

Here is the link .

This man apparently has had different experiences than I have, because even the title is hostile and inappropriate. My youth pastor didn't fail me, and I am not failing my kids. And I know of a multitude of imperfect men being empty vessels for the Lord as youth pastors who are also not failing. But I guess he is old school.

Here are some of the statements he made that are why "we are failing."

When the deepest books we read as youth pastors are “Crazy Love” by Francis Chan or “Sex God” by Rob Bell (which are written at 4th grade reading levels)

I have never read anywhere in the Bible where Jesus told His disciples that they had to have a reading level above 4th grade in order to follow Him. I believe whole-heartedly that "Leaders are readers" but this has nothing to do with our college freshman leaving the church.

Side note: My book "Can I get Baptized in Fruit Punch" was written at a 5th grade level, so you should be okay.

When the top blog hits are “5 Epic Youth Group Games”

This is so misguided because there is no way to know if a youth pastor was the reader of the blog. I have never been a game guy, but when we have a game, one of my volunteers or one of my students pick it out and they run it.

On a separate note, so what?

When we purchase our sermons off line instead of digging into the word ourselves and soaking in scripture and allowing God to speak through that.

This one is highly offensive. As the owner/operator of www.youth-sermons.com this is bad for business. :)

On a serious note, I have been running youth sermon sites for more than 5 years and here is my customer make-up.

1. Bi-vocational youth pastors: Some states have up to 50% of their pastors as bi-vocational. Try to find time to work a 40 hour a week job, be a father and husband, and a good youth pastor, and write quality sermons every week. Our company unapologetically assists these people.

2. Good shepherds: Some guys are great youth pastors because they know how to minister to their group, but they can't write a sermon to save their life. That is where we come in.

There is nothing wrong with getting inspiration from someone else's sermons. It is equivalent to reading a commentary on the text.

When 50% of youth group consists of “chubby bunny” and youtube videos

I am a double failure for this one. When we play "chubby bunny" we put it directly on youtube.


What do you think of Mr. Gill's assessments?

11. Youth Group Pranks Vol. 2

Well I seemed to have caused quite a stir last week on www.youthpastor.com 's Facebook page. We were 14 comments strong, and just like Facebook arguments have the tendency to do, the argument go escalated and sensationalized. To the point where not reprimanding a kid who broke a salt shaker indirectly became "exactly why teens in youth are not staying in church".

I made a blog post trying to brighten someone's day and it became an argument. I believe that is more likely "exactly why teens in youth are not staying in church" than pranks.

So in an effort to try and brighten someone's day again, here is one of the best prank stories I know. I was speaking at a retreat in upstate New York. These kids were from Long Island and were hardcore New Yorkers. The youth pastor was one of my best friends growing up, (By the way, we played pranks in our youth group and we are both in full-time ministry now, so maybe that's not exactly why teens in youth are not staying in church) and so we roomed together.

Anyhow, one of the kids came to me and asked me to be in on a prank with them. I said yes, intending the entire time to double-cross him... because YPs have to stick together. The plan was that I was to unlock the window and let them know when their YP (Greg) got in bed, and they would open the window and throw snowballs at him.

So I told Greg and we decided that he should wait outside in the bushes with his own snowballs and when they opened the window that Greg could pelt them in the back of the head with his own snowy creations. So this is exactly what happened, except that Greg never went through with it. They threw snowballs at an empty bed and then I got hit by a few for the obvious double-cross, but nobody (including me) knew where Greg went.

Turns out that he slipped, fell down, and dropped all of his snowballs when trying to make his move. So he improvised. He climbed in the open windows of the rooms the kids came out of, locked their doors, and took all of their pillows, blankets, and suitcases and threw them out in the snow. This was straight coldblooded, but awesome.

By the way, three kids got saved and God was glorified during this retreat.

Do you have any awesome prank stories?

10. Youth Group Pranks

Alright, so here is the scenario... I am hanging out with some kids from church at a local fast food chain. Am I still responsible for the actions and behaviors of these students even though we are not at a church function? Am I ever responsible for the actions and behaviors of these students?

Let me expound a little bit more. Somebody at our large table (some of these kids didn't even go to church, btw) played the quarter under the salt shaker prank. Youth veterans know this one. You spin a quarter and pound the salt shaker down on it, breaking the shaker and leaving the next person to pick up the shaker covered in salt. They get a"salt"ed.

The problem is that the next person to pick it up worked there and was related to someone key in our church. I then had to listen to a 10 minute speech on representing the church well. (As though, I hadn't preached that sermon before.)

So the question of the day is: How can I hang out with kids outside of church and build a trusted relationship with them if I am also expected to act as there parent at such a time?

Here is how different YPs would handle it:

Just out of college YP would go to the counter and get change for a twenty (all in quarters) so that they could do it to every salt shaker.

Over spiritual YP would use it as a teaching opportunity to tell them that we are to be the salt of the world and the quarter represents Satan trying to steal, kill, and destroy us.

Pentecostal YP would stand up and sing a song about repentance and a Holy Ghost revival would break out in that place.

Wishes he was a Head Pastor YP would shake his head and pull up www.churchstaffing.com on his phone and by the premium package.

These are all just jokes of course, we ARE the salt of the earth.

Where do you stand on this topic?

9. Playing the numbers game.

Typical youth pastor conversation.

YP1: So where are you a youth pastor at?
YP2: Jo Mamma Community Church.
YP1: Cool... So whatcha runnin'?

Typical youth pastor conversation #2.

Random Person: So what do you do for a living?
YP: I'm a Youth Pastor.
RP: Oh cool... So how big's your youth group?

Thus is the life of a typical youth pastor. There is no place to go to escape the numbers game. But there are so many problems with it.

1. The amount of students you have has no reflection on the health of the youth group.
2. It makes some youth pastors feel wrongly inferior and some to feel wrongly superior.
3. Every youth pastor lies when answering this question.

Let me make some honest proclamations here. I normally answer the toxic question with a snide remark, "3,000" or "Just me." But when I do answer I say, "I have had as many as 104." You see, this helps me to look good without lying or being misleading.

So where did this start? Blame Senior Pastors. (Why not?) Most churches look at youth groups with a bottom line mentality. The senior pastor only knows 2 things, 1. The amount of students on your attendance report and 2. Do your kids behave on Sunday mornings? This creates an atmosphere where you do whatever you can to bring a boatload of kids to your Wednesday night service, but you don't work as hard to bring the non-churched kids to Sunday morning worship. Thus creating a system where fun and games become the most important thing on Wednesday nights and the bridge never gets built to the general church population, and when your students graduate from high school they leave because they have made no connections outside of the fun and games number generator.

Do you see why the numbers game is so poisonous?

Here is what you do.

1. Have a legitimate conversation with your senior pastor about this topic and his expectations. This doesn't let you off the hook with trying to reach students, it's just the methods and the pressure you are under that are in question.

2. If someone asks you how many youth you have, judge their intentions. If they are trying to play the numbers game with you, don't take the bait. A family isn't healthy because they have a lot of people in it, they are healthy because they love each other.

3. Pray earnestly and ask God this question, "Are my methods producing fully functioning Christian adults or just people for a head count to make me look good." And then pray for a plan.

The numbers game is deadly and it is more dangerous than water polo... don't play it.



Check out my sermons at www.youth-sermons.com and my book at www.baptizedinfruitpunch.com

8. Lock-Ins

I have been at my current church for less than a year now. A few months ago I responded to several requests for a lock-in with an affirmative response. I was trying to gain some cool points with the teenagers and I thought it would be a way to move the relationship building part of the job into warp speed.

I made this statement to them, "I will do a lock-in once, if you invite friends and people show up then we might do it again." They rose to that challenge and my sleep cycle has never been the same since. We planned for 40 students (this is where you compare your youth group in size to mine... blog post on that topic tomorrow) and in the mass chaos of the events that transpired we were only able to count heads and ended up with 98 people. We had to re-plan everything in 5 minutes.

So this past weekend was my second endeavor into the world of overnight torture and we borrowed a second bus, giving us room for 80 students. But to be honest with you, I thought we would regress back to 50 or so. This past weekend we had 104 students and so we still had to re-plan everything in five minutes. But the gospel was presented, lives were changed, and some students that have never stepped foot in a church before showed up and put 13 hours in at one.

Here are some observations from our lock-in:

1. When you are dealing with unchurched kids, don't leave your cell phone lying around. One of our adults made this mistake and it took us 9 hours before we got any intell on who the culprit was. Turns out it was a kid who left "sick" at 3 in the morning. He was real sick when we showed up at his house to retrieve the missing Droid, waking up his mom in the process.

2. People will always complain about the state the church was left in after the fact... always. We have a giant sanctuary building with a lot of surrounding rooms and our college students led the biggest game of Underground Church in the history of Middle Georgia. I was very nervous about what could be broken and what ramifications this game could have on my job security and overall reputation in my church. At 4 in the morning, the game fizzled out and my team worked very hard to get the church back as we found it. (Including cleaning up after someone who thought you were supposed to pee next to the toilet) And yet the next day there were rumblings that people were upset because a tablecloth was moved and a bracelet with a skull on it was found on the floor... people will always complain.

3. McDonald's is an awkward place. We had selected four fast food restaurants that the kids could sign up for on a first come, first serve basis. So the kids who are regulars knew this and all signed up to go to the popular places, leaving me and half a bus full of strangers to eat at McDonald's. This is cool because I had the chance to get to know students I had never met before. This is uncool because I had no idea what to talk about. Once the first french fry went in the air and the "Respect the youth pastor" death stare didn't work, I knew it was time to get out of there. We should have went to Chick-Fil-A. Taking that group to the Kiss-In should have been a lot of fun. :)

Do you have any lock-in stories?

Check out some sermons at www.youth-sermons.com and check out a great book at www.baptizedinfruitpunch.com

7. Chick-Fil-A

I was born in the south, raised in the south, and live in the south. And because of this there is one thing that all of us southerners love... Chick-Fil-A. As this song from Tim Hawkins will show.
But now, for some unfathomable reason people are really upset that the head of Chick-Fil-A Dan Cathy said that he supports the Biblical view of marriage. This is something he said before and something that should have been assumed that he believed anyhow, based on his obvious Christian stands.

People are now boycotting Chick-Fil-A because, all of a sudden, they realize that their viewpoints on homosexuality outweighs the deliciousness of an original chicken sandwich and waffle fries. They have just as much right to do this as Dan Cathy has to express his views on marriage, so I am not upset by this at all.

I do want to offer some advice to the boycotters from a guy who been a Southern Baptist for almost 20 years... they don't work. When I first got saved we were at the beginning of a Southern Baptist boycott of Disney. This came as a result of Disney organizers planning "Gay Day" as it were on the same night as "Night of Joy." This was a misguided boycott and one that just kind of puttered out.

So let me be the guy to bring the two sides together. Here are a list of things we should all boycott.

1. Axe Body Spray. It smells awful, and due to the commercials showing that girls gravitate toward it, middle school boys bathe in it. BOYCOTT

2. Burger King Bacon Sundae. I love bacon and I love sundaes, but this does not work. I am convinced that if we all eat this breakfast dessert that we will create a rip in the space/time continuum and everything will be out of whack. Not to mention the salty-sweet lab experiment gone wrong clocks in at 510 calories, 18 grams of fat and 61 grams of sugar. BOYCOTT

3. Accepting Friend Requests from your elderly family members on Facebook. Some get it, they really do. However, a lot of them just don't understand. They like every status, even if it says, "I had a bad day." They constantly remind you of things in your childhood when you are trying to be cool. And they keep a tally of inappropriate things they saw and you get in trouble at Thanksgiving... even though you are 30. BOYCOTT

4. Guys in Tank Tops. There are occasions when tank tops might be appropriate: on your way to the beach, at a water park, playing sports outside. Then there are times when it is not appropriate: A fancy restaurant, public transportation, and weddings. I say, that since the men of this country can't figure this out, we just do a complete boycott of male tank tops. BOYCOTT

5. Boycotting places. It doesn't work and it creates a greater divide between two sides. Let's all get together and have genuine conversation of the differing viewpoints. Honest dialogue won't change anyone's opinions, but it will help us see the other side not as an issue or as a stand, but as real people... real people that Jesus loves. BOYCOTT BOYCOTTS

What else can you think of that the two sides can boycott together?

Check out my book at www.baptizedinfruitpunch.com

6. Distractions during service

Today my Pastor told me a humorous story about one time when he was preaching a revival service. Just as he got to the altar call he saw a frog hopping down the aisle. The head Pastor of that church nodded to deacon, Mafia style,  to take care of that frog. But instead of just picking it up and throwing it out the back door, the deacon walked all the way down to the front to get a bulletin to shoo the frog away so he wouldn't have to touch it. At this point everyone saw what happened and the moment was ruined.

This got me to thinking about some of my favorite distraction moments that I have experienced or heard about. Let's do this David Letterman top-ten style.

10. I was frustrated when someone walked it the room and started whispering. Turned out they were getting my wife because my son peed his pants. Pastor's kids.

9. My friend had a homosexual girl who would come to his service and sit in the front row just to mess with him, with a shirt on that said "I love [a certain part of the female anatomy]"

8. A guy in South Carolina brought noise canceling headphones to put on when the "contemporary music" was being played.

7. An elderly lady in Tampa would bring a newspaper and open it up in the front row if the Pastor ever started to bore her.

6. Three words:  Silent but Deadly

5. While running Easy Worship in the main service I accidentally minimized it and the desktop picture of a guy getting hit in the head with a dodgeball was on display for all to see.

4. At a mega church in Florida a guy came down the aisle to talk to the preacher but he had a knife tucked away in his Bible. His deacons handled the knife guy better than the guy who had to deal with the frog, I promise you that.

3. While using a curriculum purchased from www.youth-sermons.com a youth pastor didn't read the memo about editing out portions of the Karate Kid movie due to some bad language. His Pastor walked in the room as Daniel unloaded on Mr. Miagi... Now that's distracting.

2. While teaching preschool children during chapel, an elderly teacher's aid would always shout out answers to questions obviously intended for children. "Who is God's son." "Jesus... I've know that for 70 years. Ask a tough one!"

1. And my number one distracting moment came during a youth camp I put on. As the speaker was giving his morning lesson a kid turned around and threw up his scrambled eggs. What could I do? I got down on my hands and knees and picked it all up before the smell got too bad. I didn't eat eggs for a year.

What was your most distracting moment?

Check out my book at www.baptizedinfruitpunch.com

5. Dress Code Debates

With the Summer Olympics upon us we are filled with a sense of patriotism and excitement for our country to do well. One team that we have high hopes for is our women's beach volleyball team of Misty May and Kerri Walsh. They have won the last two gold medals and have never even lost a set in Olympic play. It is truly amazing. But as a youth pastor and a normal guy I find it a bit easier to root for them this year, because they are playing at night in London and tend to wear more clothes than usual.

This bring up an interesting topic in youth ministry circles that is a big two piece wearing elephant in the room every summer: how do you determine what kind of bathing suit your girls should wear at church functions?

I was asked yesterday why it is that in 2012 our church hasn't changed it's policies to allow bikinis to be worn at church functions. My answer was a very practical answer, while we are making a lot of changes to keep up with a changining culture, these changes are mostly being implemented by men. And I do not plan on being the creepy guy who stands up at a church business meeting to address my concern for the fact that we don't allow teenage girls to wear bikinis at a pool or at the beach.

Here are a couple of issues with this. Every girl in our youth group has a church bathing suit and a regular bathing suit. So are we teaching our students to live a double life?

Is this something we will look back on as one of the silly things we used to "in the olden days"? After all it wasn't long ago when girls and boys weren't even allowed to swim it the same pool together at church functions.

Are we "causing our boys to stumble?" This is often quoted as a reason to not allow girls to wear bikinis. We are talking about teenage boys here... the girls could wear a parka to the beach and it would cause the boys to stumble. Such is the life of a teenage boy. I don't think one or two piece makes a difference on this point.

And finally someone suggested that it is just easier to keep things the way they are because then when we have to get specific about what kind of bikini is permissible. But, what if we just made our own church bikinis that were within regulations, thus creating no further confusion?

What would this look like?

1. While the first inclination would be to make it out of fig leaves, I would vote against that.

2. Maybe it could made of flannel graph to appease the home school moms.

3. We could build in speakers that plays nothing but the pastors message from the previous Sunday.

4. Maybe to clear this idea past the deacons it should have a website address on it to advertise online tithing to the church.

5. But I think my favorite idea would be to have Biblical passages on every bikini bottom, my suggestion: Matthew 5:39 "Turn the other cheek."



Where do you stand on the bikini debate?

Check out sermons at www.youth-sermons.com and buy a book at www.baptizedinfruitpunch.com.

4. Super Hero Volunteers

Summer time for me is super hero time. I look forward to watching all of the super hero movies, and besides and awful verion of the Incredible Hulk made in 2003 I tend to like all super hero movies. But now I have a 3-year old who is just as obssessed with super heroes as I am. But as we all know, it doesn't take a cape or getting bit by a spider to be a super hero.

We are surrounded by super heroes in our ministry, we just may not have realized it. Here are a few that I have in my ministry: 

1. The Green Driver. This is a man who can drive a bus anywhere I plan a trip. He also has an unbelievable ability to stay awake when everyone is sleeping and also can stay focused when the minions are being evil.

2. The Organizer. Most youth pastors are visionaries and we can come up with some great ideas. But the Robin to our Batman is the person we can tell the idea to and watch as the superhuman wheels in their brain starts spinning. Somehow there always seems to be enough napkins and extra snacks in the back, just in case.

3. Registration Lady. When the world is in need of registering there is one lady who can save the day... registration lady! She can hold 16 conversations at one time, tell parents when to come back, collect money, put on wristbands, and she does it all with a great first-impression smile.

4. Crazy Middle School Guy. This is the guy who always has a game up his sleeve. He can wrestle 14 6th graders in his super hero clutch. He knows how to be stern enough to keep their respect, fun enough to keep their attention, and he lost all sense of smell in a chemical accident leaving him with the super human ability to sleep in the same room as those smelly, smelly villains.

5. Super Wife. And the greatest super hero of all is the youth pastor's wife. She can lead small groups, host sleepovers, organize luncheons all while juggling being a wife and a mother. She knows that being in ministry is a great privilege, "And with great privilege comes great resposibilty." She is the glue that holds the youth ministry (and the youth minister) together.

What other super heroes do you have in your ministry?

 Check out www.youth-sermons.com for some great youth sermons and www.baptizedinfritpunch.com for a great book.

3. Freaking out public schools.

We just got back from doing a Teacher Appreciation Luncheon at a local middle school. As a youth pastor I am always trying to find a way to build bridges with the public schools. However, when I walk into a school and let them know that our church wants to fix lunch for over 100 employees and we don't want anything back, and we don't to preach at them, we just want to serve them... well, every principal looks at me like I  have three heads.

So this got me thinking... if I really were trying to freak out people at the public schools what would I do?

1. I could charm a snake out of a pot of baked beans.

2. I could sneak a prayer handkerchief into every other napkin.

3. I could put a big sign over the water that says, "Living Water" and we could have "Living Sweet Tea" too.

4. I could have one of my volunteers fake an injury and heal them by slapping them in the forehead.

5. I could have everyone hum Amazing Grace under their breath and let it get louder and louder until revival breaks out at a faculty meeting.

6. I could walk over to certain people and ask them if they new they would go to Heaven if they died of complications of high cholesterol due to the four pieces of fried chicken they just annihilated.

7. Or I could obey the laws of the land, provide a hearty meal and a genuine thank you for all they do to educate our students. Then when I got back home I would log on to www.youth-sermons.com for a good sermon and www.baptizedinfruitpunch.com for a good book.




How else could you freak out public schools?

2. Staying engaged at staff meetings.

Staff meetings are a necessary part of every healthy church. But most youth pastors have a hard time staying engaged in them when they take too long. One reason is that we tend to have short attention spans and high energy levels. And second is because only a small part of the whole meeting has to do with our area of ministry, and let's be honest things are a lot more fun when they are about us.

 So how can you stay engaged in a staff meeting when it runs longer than you can handle.

 1. Have a running inner-monologue of jokes based on everything that is said. This will keep you smiling and your Head Pastor will think that you are such a positive person. Caution: Don't get your inner monolgue and outer monologue confused, youth pastors have been fired for that.

 2. Act like you are taking judicious notes, when in fact you are writing down ideas for a blog post entitled, "How to stay engaged during a staff meeting"

 3. Picture everyone in the meeting in their underwear. Wait a minute, that is bad advice.

 4. Take a 5 Hour Energy before it starts. Leave the empty bottle on the table as a hint to everyone that you only have so long before you crash.

 5. Do what my intern did today. Doodle pictures based on church campaigns that are being discussed. This one is based on a campaign we are running called #ANewTomorrow

 6. And finally, you could always search for awesome sermon ideas on www.youth-sermons.com or buy a new book at www.baptizedinfruitpunch.com



How else can you stay engaged during long staff meetings?

1. Blatant Christian Rip-Offs

I am starting this blog with high hopes and ambition, the same way I did when I started every other blog that was supposed to revolutionize the Christian industry. First I started one with just my name at jamesblewett.com in some hope that I will have purchased the domain name that everybody wanted and someone would offer me a million dollars to buy the domain. However, I already decided before this imaginary event would happen that I would not sell out to the man and my name is not for sale. Then I decided to start a blog about Christianity in the news. The Koran burning idiot from a few years ago gave me a couple easy posts but then I realized I would have to watch the 700 club to continue so I didn't do that.

So what makes this blog different from my previous blogging experiences? Well for starters, I am trying desperately to drive traffic to my website www.youth-sermons.com and subsequently to my book website www.baptizedinfruitpunch.com. But the main reason that this will be different is because I am blatantly and unapologetically ripping off a brilliant man by the name of Jon Acuff (www.jonacuff.com) who has a brilliant blog entitled Stuff Christians Like. But the beauty of this is that Acuff actually started his blog as a ripoff of a brilliant blog entitled Stuff White People Like (www.stuffwhitepeoplelike.com)

This got me to thinking, how else can we rip these people off? Here are some of my favorite ideas:

1. Stuff Worship Leaders Like

A blog dedicated to who has the lowest v-neck and who can dress the most ironically.

2. Stuff Home School Moms Like

Most of it discusses the life lessons from Anne of Green Gables, but there is a great post about how to teach sex ed with a flannel graph

3. Stuff Elderly People Like

Doesn't matter what is on this because the only site elderly people get on is Facebook.

4. Stuff Middle School Boys Like

Sponsored by Axe body spray and a total state of confusion.

5. Stuff Deacon's Like

It's a blank page.



What other blatant Christian rip-offs can you think of?