eZine 04.01.2008

TheSource4YM.com
	Jonathan’s Resource Ezine

• Featured: Were the “Kids Choice Awards” Winners Actually… Clean? Jonathan Shares His 2 Cents and Asks for Yours
• What’s New: Is God Too Busy for Us? Does He Care? A New Music Discussion Using the Song, “Is God Too Busy”
• The Source Podcast: Jonathan and David Come Together From Each Coast for a Podcast with Youth Culture, Small Group Helps, and Answers to Your Questions…

The Music: “God Must Be Busy”

The Music:
Many of you don’t have to like Country music to know who Brooks and Dunn are. These two guys hit the scene way back in 1991 with their first album “Brand New Man,” and for the last 17 years, they have been “Boot Scootin’ Boogie-ing” their way up the charts and into the hearts of millions of fans on every inhabitable continent.

Any listing of Country music’s most music-defining artists would be sorely incomplete without the inclusion of this dynamic duo. Their accolades include “Entertainer of the Year,” two-time holder of Billboard Magazine’s “Country Single of the Year,” and “Country Vocal Duo of the Year” 14 of the last 17 years! Yeah, if you have any country music fans in your youth group, they know these guys.

And now, 13 albums and 20 #1 hits later, they offer the world their latest compilation called “Cowboy Town.” This disc has already landed them a bid for Country music’s “Duo Video of the Year” at the 2008 CMT Music Awards. This album also features a new song called “God Must Be Busy” that is getting a lot of play time right now.

At THE SOURCE FOR YOUTH MINISTRY we like to use pop culture references to start Biblical conversations (just like the Apostle Paul did in Acts 17). This song will provide a great way to start discussion in your group. (iTunes has the song for $0.99, and currently the video is available for viewing on “Brooks and Dunn TV,” hosted at their official website www.brooks-dunn.com.) Print off the lyrics below and give each student a copy to refer to as they listen to the song.

Introducing the Music Video:
Whether you like country or hate it, you can’t deny that the words to this song evoke emotion. The song communicates a feeling that many of us have felt. It asks a question that many of us have asked. Listen for a moment to “God Must Be Busy.”

Transition Statement:
This song describes exactly how lots of people feel when they look at the broken world we live in. Everything from natural disasters, to kidnappings, to war and terror are mentioned in this song. For most, it’s easy to see why Brooks and Dunn think God must be too busy to do anything about the problems we face. But let’s spend some time talking together about this belief and see if it’s really true. Let’s see if God really is too busy for us.

Divide into Small Groups:
Let’s go ahead and split up into our discussion groups, and then afterward we’ll come back together for a final word.

JONATHAN: Let’s do it.

DAVID: Sin #2 is “Have NO rules for small group management.”

JONATHAN: Ha ha. Another one I think we all do.

DAVID: Yeah, I mean, simple things like, “only one person talking at once,” or “respect everyone’s opinion in the room regardless of how correct or incorrect it may be.” We say, “you can’t say that’s STUPID, and we pretty much outlaw body slamming in the small groups.

We just want to kind of lay down some ground rules to get everybody on the same page so they know what the expectations are during the session together, so that it’s a positive experience for everybody.

JONATHAN: You know what? A lot of our volunteers are GEN Y, and I’m gonna pick on GEN Y for a second. GEN Y is this younger generation of college students all the way up to, I think 27, 28 years old right now. And I think a lot of GEN Y thinks, “Oh, I gotta be these kids’ friends.”

DAVID: Right.

JONATHAN: And you know what, GEN X, and Boomers… all staff do that, but especially GEN Y. I’ve noticed this out of GEN Y. They go, “Oh, I don’t want to come in here and be all ‘up in their face’ coming down on them and saying, ‘here’s the rules!'” So they want to be friends. They don’t want to enforce rules so they allow the kids to just take over the group, talk whenever they want and interrupt each other

DAVID: Yeah. Jonathan, you’re right-great observation. But that comes at a pretty high price. You know, when you got one person who is disobeying the rules or being disrespectful, it’s kind of robbing all the other students in the small group session from having a dynamic conversation with their leader.

JONATHAN: OK. Two weeks ago, I’m sitting in a small group… There’s about 6 kids sitting around and this guy’s leading the small group and he immediately throws out a question and this one kid, the one kid that answers every question, who won’t shut up, is like “yeah, blah blah blah,” and he answers it… another kid is like, “Yeah, well not me!” And these two kids are just taking over the group, arguing back and forth and the guy’s letting them. Meanwhile, all the other kids don’t say anything…

Because the small group leader doesn’t want to interrupt and say, “Come on guys, let’s bring it back.” So these kids are now taking over the group. I sat there for 20 minutes and there were 2 kids who never uttered a word.

DAVID: Yeah, and I don’t “declare” this at any point in our session, but this is kind of an unspoken rule in our small group that we run our small groups by. I want everyone in the small group to talk at least once during our sessions. It’s one of the things we did, one of the strategies we developed to kind of manage the group was…I don’t know anything about “sheeping” or “shepherding” or whatever that verb is, but…

JONATHAN: Sure. I don’t think it’s sheeping! For sure!

DAVID: Ha ha. I don’t think it is either. But you see that biblical, Old Testament passage, or picture of a shepherd that, you know, has got that crook in his hand and he’s kinda giving direction to the sheep. But then you got that sheepdog that’s kinda running around barking, making a lot of noise, kinda keeping everybody in line.

JONATHAN: Sure.

DAVID: And so, what we did at our church, Jonathan, is we said, “OK, if Jonathan is gonna be the small group leader for the day, then I’m gonna be his sheepdog.”

JONATHAN: Oh.

DAVID: So, Jonathan’s got the lesson, he’s got the Scripture, he’s got the wrap up, he’s got the small group q’s, and I’m gonna sit opposite of him and Jonathan is gonna kind of lead the discussion for the whole group, but I’m gonna sit way away from Jonathan, you know, maybe where the troublesome kids are sitting, and I’m gonna be like, “Psst! Hey! Knock it off!” You know, “Be quiet. Pay attention. Focus.”

JONATHAN: Good cop, bad cop.

DAVID: Yeah, or “bad cop, worse cop” depending on who your leaders are. But, yeah, we just called it the shepherd and the sheepdog. We just run a couple of leaders in the room.

JONATHAN: That’s cool. So you have somebody available to basically grab and mug that kid that won’t shut up.

DAVID: Absolutely! Headlocks are completely permitted as long as they’re given by adult leaders.

Episode Highlights:

• Jonathan and David give you an exclusive peek into the new hit podcast for Teenagers www.Alilbit.com
• In our YOUTH CULTURE WINDOW section of this podcast we look at bizarre new use for the Nintendo Wii
• David shares the SEVEN SINS OF LEADING SMALL GROUPS which includes:
  • understanding the function of “shepherds” and “sheep dogs”
  • how to handle the big personalities in the group
  • maximizing the effectiveness of your meeting space, no matter where it is
  • youth leaders being like a fart (yep… we really said that. More on that here.)
• Plus our HELP ME portion provides some solutions for youth pastors, including advice for those who have teens that use cell phones at all the wrong times!

NOTE: Jump on Jonathan’s Blog page and scroll to the March 25th entry to add your comments or ideas about kids’ cell phone use during youth group time, retreats or camps-as discussed in the HELP ME section of this podcast.