Archive for Reviews
Simple Student Ministry // Review
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So many of us in youth ministry have been talking about how to be more effective in ministry, how to change to reach the culture, or how to be more focused in our ministry. Tim Schmoyer has had a pretty big response to some changes that he is planning on and Youth Ministry 3.0 has been reverberating through the youth ministry world for months now, it seems that a lot of us are yearning for something more simple in youth ministry.
Simple Student Ministry by Eric Geiger & Jeff Borton has come just in time for many of us! Although the majority of the info in this book is basic, youth ministry 101 type stuff, it is a reminder that is much needed, at least among many of the youth workers that I interact with. The basics of a simple student ministry are having clarity, movement, alignment, and focus in the discipleship process.
The authors move us through
- defining what a simple student ministry is
- achieving clarity in your ministry
- creating movement through the ministry
- ensuring alignment of your programs
- focus on your process
The book also includes a number of real life examples of simple student ministries from a number of settings, including large churches, parachurch ministries, and small churches.
Do yourself a favor, don’t jump to conclusions about the basic nature of this book and be honest with yourself, is your student ministry really simple? If it’s not, you need to pick up a few copies of this book and work through it with a few key members of your team. I already have two extra copies that I’m giving to my jr high directors so we can work through it!
Guys’ Weekend
Posted by: | CommentsThis past weekend I had a chance to team up with my jr. high guys ministry director for a “guys’ weekend.” We each brought a small group, one jr. high & one sr. high.
What we were really trying to do was just have some great “guy fun” and have a few engaging discussion discussions from the Bible.
So, what exactly did we do?
- 2, 2-bedroom suites at a local hotel
- a secret guy weekend “tradition” (if you really want to know, track me down on twitter)
- a couple hours a horse play in the hotel pool
- finishing off 150 wings at Buffalo Wild Wings
- a discussion on a few Bible verses on secret sin after exploding eggs in a microwave oven
- playing poker with swedish fish
- playing Mafia
- a discussion on having friends that help us avoid the “traps of life” and being a friend that helps others avoid them after “playing” with rat traps (those things can do some nice damage!)
- 3 games of laser tag
- chilling out in our youth room before getting picked up
We got the ideas for the devotions/Bible based discussions from a book called Dangerous Devotions For Guys.
I wasn’t quite sure what to think about the book at first, but then I cracked it open and found some ideas that seemed really fun for guys and some pretty easy directions to follow to pull the activities off.
As always we customized our lesson to our group of guys but the framework was great and there was plenty of info to pull from. I would highly recommend this resource to any youth worker that is thinking of doing something special like this for guys or even if you just want to throw something a little more “guy friendly” into the mix here and there.
I know we are going to be hitting this book up for more ideas in the future!
Texting
Posted by: | CommentsI have been texting students in our ministry for a while now but I have just recently found what I think is the absolute best text message service for group messaging. It’s called Tatango…
I had used a couple other services that are out there but I found that Tatango does (almost) everything that some other services do but the prices are great (starts at FREE!) and service is unbelievable. I say it does almost everything because the major flaw that I see right now is that I can’t seem to schedule messages to be sent. On the other hand, my cell phone is connected to the account so I can send from on the road which I couldn’t do before.
That is the reason that I am sharing Tatango with you! I signed up for the service since it was free but then I floated around and decided that I wasn’t going to use it because there was nowhere to import my whole list of current text message subscribers. There was no way I was going to spend my time or someone else’s transfering names & numbers manually!
Then today I got an email from out of the blue from one of the great people at Tatango explaining to me that he would import a list if I had it. All I had to do was reply to the email with the list in ANY format that I had! I liked their reasoning for not making it an option for anyone to import lists, turns out that many companies will try to import lists of collected cell #s so they can spam people with txt messages.
Thanks Tatango!
Prediction
Posted by: | CommentsI think this is my first prediction here on CoffeeWithChris.com but it is, as they say, “a lock!”
Here it is:
It isn’t going to take long for the small minded critics of U2’s latest work, No Line On The Horizon, to do an about face. These songs are so deep and solid I am sure this album will become a classic.
Refuel
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An Uncomplicated Guide To Connecting With God. That’s the subtitle of this book and that’s what this book is.
Refuel, by Doug Fields is a really simple, uncomplicated book that lays out a sort of un-formula for connecting with God. Stop, be quiet, & make a connection are the phrases that are at the core of this book and they are the “steps” that Fields suggests as the way to refuel our lives. Fields doesn’t give the slightest impression that has everything figured out or that his way is the only way to connect with God in order to refuel, he simply presents what has worked in his life.
Although Refuel is not a youth ministry book or resource it seems to me that this book could very easily be used to help teenagers in connecting with God. It is not overt and won’t get in the way of adult readers but youth ministry is obviously in Fields blood & each chapter ends with an action point and the book ends with a group study guide.
Whether you are looking for a way to refuel yourself, help some others around you to refuel, or lead some teenagers into connecting with God to refuel on a daily basis, Refuel is a great place to start.
The Prodigal God
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Timothy Keller’s latest book provides us with a deeply refreshing look into this parable of Jesus that we know all too well.
The Prodigal God presents a compelling picture of a lavishly loving God, the grace that this Father offers to us, and the responses to this grace that are available for us to act upon. Keller helps us to look into our own lives so we can understand what our current position is in the parable at hand.
This is a book that you will certainly want to read, especially if you take the time to listen to Keller’s sermon on this topic.
Shaped By The Story
Posted by: | CommentsOne of the great challenges in youth ministry is in helping students to truly engage with Scripture, to immerse themselves in the Story of God and to work through how their own life story is connected to God’s Story. Michael Novelli proposes an ancient/innovative approach to guiding students through this process in
his new book, Shaped By The Story.
Novelli begins by explaining how he came to be familiar with this idea of storying. It was fascinating to read about the effectiveness of storying in the development theology in pre-literate cultures and how that can translate into today’s post-literate culture.
The middle section of this book, the largest section of the book, Novelli explains the whys and the hows of effective storying in a youth ministry setting. There are tons of practical tips to help a youth worker that has never done anything like this before and this section is full of references to the appendices, which make up about 1/3 of the book!
The appendices are really the handbook for storying. There are set-ups, sample questions for all the different aspects of dialogging with a group about a story, sample narratives, and even a short history of storying.
The book also includes a DVD that would be a great help to any youth worker that would like to see this stuff in action and would like a tool to help in training other leaders.
Take the time to check this book out, it just might completely change the way that you look at helping your students to engage with the Bible.
You will also want to check out EchoTheStory.com – tons of help there along with sample narratives of a bunch of Bible stories.
Youth Ministry 3.0
Posted by: | CommentsMy initial reaction after reading Youth Ministry 3.0
Yes, that’s the truth because Marko (Mark Oestreicher, President of Youth Specialties) crystallized a general unrest that I had been feeling with my youth ministry over the past couple years.
Mark takes some time before getting into the guts of youth ministry 3.0 because it is important for us to get a broader understanding of where youth ministry has come from, where it has been, and where we stand today. It is crucial for youth workers to understand where youth culture and the culture in general stand today before venturing into the deep waters of attempting a complete revolution or reformation of youth ministry.
In the chapters on youth ministry 1.0 & 2.0 Mark attemps a fair and accurate portrayal of what was driving these ministries, what was good about them, and where they were lacking. As a person that has spent a large ammount of time in both a para-church ministry (former Young Life staff) and in the church I could completely connect with the descriptions of both the 1.0 and 2.0 models that Mark lays out.
Although I am not quite sure if I fully agree with all that Mark brings up in the chapter on youth ministry 3.0 & the chapter on getting to that goal of 3.0, I do have to say that there is something very attractive and freeing about this model of paradigm for youth ministry. My struggle with the model that Mark sets up is that it is ultra dependant on quality adults. Now, that in itself is not a negative, please don’t read it that way. My struggle with the model is in the decimal points, the space between youth ministry 2.0 & 3.0.
When a church is living in the youth ministry 2.0 land and the leadership of the youth ministry is consistantly being wooed toward 3.0, how does the youth ministry team find the number of Jesus-loving, teenager-caring adults that it needs to make this thing work?
If you have felt the uneasiness that comes with the feeling that your church’s youth ministry just isn’t cutting it, that there is something that is broken, or if you just want to get an overview of where youth ministry has been and where it is going, you need to get this book! Youth Ministry 3.0 should be required reading for every person that is responsible for a youth ministry. Not everyone will be called to make a jump to 3.0 right away but you do need to read this so you know about the groundswell that is coming.
How Would Jesus Vote?
Posted by: | CommentsFirst off, I really have to apologize again for my lack of posting & for the last bunch of posts being all on books. This isn’t a book blog but books are a part of my life and I have had a lack of inspiration on what else to post about. Although, Sarah did give me a bunch of great ideas in her comment on my last post!
Anyway, I had the opportunity to review How Would Jesus Vote by Dr. D. James Kennedy & Jerry Newcomb. I greatly apprecciate the opportunity to review books and I am compelled to be honest with my thoughts on them. I just hope that my thoughts do not keep me from reviewing books for publishers in the future 
I also have to say that if someone were to attempt to classify my political alignment, they would undoubtedly come to the conclusion that I am conservative on almost all of the issues that they would want to discuss, the very big issues discussed in this book.
I was expecting this book to be a challenge to think theologically about my vote in this upcoming 
election and for that matter in all elections. I was expecting to read thoughts from the authors about how we as followers of Jesus can think about the entire Story of God and how we can cast our votes in such a fashion that we in a little way can partner with God in where the Story is heading.
As I read through this book I found over and over again references to Old Testament passages that on the surface would lead someone toward what would typically be viewed as an “ultra-conservative” stand on the issues mentioned. I was very dissapointed to find that the fewest Biblical references were pulled from the Gospels. In a book that claims to answer the question on how Jesus would vote, one would think that the authors would have spent much more time in the Gospels, especially in light of the fact that Jesus claimed to be the fulfillment of the old law and was constantly calling people to move beyond the old law to an entirely different standard.
At the end of each chapter, after a surface explaination of the issue that was to be explored in the chapter, the authors then attempt to conclude the chapter in a paragraph or two by proclaiming how Jesus would vote on the issue. Everytime this happens the vote by Jesus is cast in an unashamedly “ultra-conservative” way.
I would suggest that you steer clear of this book if you value your time. The book does not stir the reader to think about the spiritual implications of their vote but instead attempts to bully the reader into into voting for a particular political agenda.
Jesus Wants To Save Christians
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I’ll get my negative point about this book out of the way right out of the chute, the writing style can be a little wearing. Every chapter is filled with short choppy sentences that do double duty as paragraphs, very much along the lines of many of Rob Bell’s sermons.
With the negetive out of the way, in Jesus Wants To Save Christians Rob Bell and Don Golden have penned a prophetic message for the Church today. Through the chapters a thread is pulled back and forth between New Testament to Old Testament to today, creating a picture of where the Church just might be today and certainly where the Church shoud be. Of course there will be many who will be quick to accuse Bell of poor theology and there will be many who will be more than ready to jump right onto the proverbial bandwagon but I think if we look through all of that “stuff” we will find a message that is at the heart of where we should be as a Church and how we should be living as individuals.
Do yourself a favor, give yourself a challenge and read this book.
