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