eZine 07.01.2009

In the last few days, Jonathan’s Blog took a peek at some new youth ministry resources, Transformers II, and youth ministry in a place you?d least expect it… Iraq!

“I use your site all the time!”

That’s what I always hear from youth workers when I see them face to face. But it’s interesting, so many of these youth workers only seem to know about a few of our free resources. They might use our games or our Movie Clip Discussions… but they never knew we had a podcast. Or they listen to the podcast and read the Youth Culture Window articles, but they never even know about all our free curriculum and all our various forms of discussion jumpstarters.

I’m surprised how many youth workers don’t even know what the front page of our web site offers each week.

For example: look at the front page of our web site this week: www.TheSource4YM.com It highlights six brand new resources of all shapes and sizes…

Another Transformers Disappointment
Posted on Saturday, June 27, 2009 9:14 AM

This last week our movie guy Todd reviewed the new Transformers film. Like most critics, he thought the film stunk. But I thought you’d be curious of some of the reasoning behind Todd’s assessment.

Let me back way up. A year and a half ago Todd and I did our first annual Special Movie Review Podcast, a special episode where the two of us talked about movies from the perspective of two youth workers. We reviewed some films, talked about the best “clean” films that you could actually show at youth group, etc. It was a fun podcast.

One of the memorable moments of the podcasts was when we disagreed about the first Transformers film. He loved it, and I didn’t have much good to say about it. My main concern was the subtle messages that degraded women…

Youth Ministry in Iraq
Posted on Thursday, June 25, 2009 1:14 PM

Yesterday I received a pretty encouraging email from a fellow “youth worker” ministering in a distant land. He’s a chaplain in Iraq!

Over the last decade we’ve seen www.TheSource4YM.com used by youth workers all over the the English speaking world. I get emails from across the pond, down under, Africa and Asia. It’s amazing to see how many people use our free resources and training. But yesterday’s email was particularly encouraging coming from our troops in the desert.

Below is the email I received from Captain Dave Christensen who just listened to our free podcast for youth workers (basically, a free “radio show” for youth workers- this particular episode answering a bunch of questions from the field). Dave liked one of the suggestions we gave to youth workers, a suggestion to “debrief” as leaders after each ministry gathering, to evaluate and improve.

I’ll let his words tell the rest of the story:

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Wow! The inbox at The Source for Youth Ministry was so full that we decided to do a special podcast dedicated to answering all of the recent ASK THE SOURCE email questions. Join Jonathan and David as they discuss everything from summer camps to skate parks to a brand new – and of course, totally free – training resource for youth workers. This podcast pretty much has all you need…cause it’s based on your questions!

Listen to it now for free on iTunes! (CLICK HERE) Or, if you don’t have iTunes already… jump on Apple’s web page for a free download, then click on our podcast page.

Jonathan: The next question I have here is from Millie in Central New Jersey. And this is an interesting question. “How does one evaluate a program at the end of the year? In forms? Questions? Etc. I want to have a conversation with the youth about their experience during the past year and as we come to the end of our program year. Any help is appreciated.” So basically, what Millie here is asking is, it’s the end of her school year and she’s looking back on – she calls it her program. It’s funny; program is such a bad word in youth ministry right now.

David: Yeah.

Jonathan: But no fault of Millie’s. It’s on the cover of one of my books here and it’s almost boycotted because people are feeling, “program is bad.” But what she’s saying is, if you look back at her ministry through the year, is there something that we can do or ask the kids for feedback on what we did throughout the year? David, what’s your gut feeling on that one?

David: Well the first thing I’d tell Millie is, “Don’t just evaluate your ministry or your ministry programs one time a year.” Evaluate your ministry programs every time you do a ministry program. Our leaders – we had a great group of task force and we actually called them Levites – they all had a specific function to do and we just…every single time we were done with a ministry event, even if was just our regular Wednesday night worship thing, or our Friday night where we took over the Krispy Kreme and had a couple or three hundred high schools crawling all over the campus, man, our leaders knew that at midnight, when all the kids are gone, they still owed us about twelve minutes. We’re just gonna get together. “Hey, who’d you talk to?” “Hey, what did you see tonight?” “What went well?” “What didn’t go so well?” “Were there any problems?” “Which kids did you talk to, and what did they have to say?” I think, Millie, if you get those points of contact with the students and the adult leaders in February, and in April, and in September, you’re not having to cram it all in…

Jonathan: “Hey it’s May! Let’s review.”

David: “What did we do in August?” No no no.

Jonathan:* So, you’re saying debriefing is a normal…

David: Debriefing is a part of the program. I mean, all the kids are gone, or they’re outside if you’ve got a couple parents on your task force leadership, you know. But get that feedback.

Jonathan: Now, is this your adult team? Cause Millie asked, “What do I do,” wait let me quote her exactly. She says, “…in conversation with the youth about their experience.” OK, so do you ever involve students in that feedback?

David: Yeah. We had student leadership teams in our youth ministry. Of course, that wasn’t the entire youth ministry; it was just the cream of the crop so to speak.

Jonathan: So your leadership kids?

David: Absolutely.

Jonathan: So you got feedback from them?

David: Absolutely. Definitely. Because what we think is cool is not necessarily cool from the adult world down to the student world…