From Sampler to Sower

I was talking with a friend of mine recently, about his challenges in getting a new youth ministry off the ground.  He knew what to do, it was just that there were obstacles at every turn.  It reminded me of how hard starting out can really be.  And it got me thinking about how we started out here.

When I first moved to Middletown, over six years ago now, I took things slow.  We moved in the first of October and I immediately started at the church.  However, we did not hold our first youth service until three months later, when school started back up in January after Christmas vacation.  And we didn’t launch our grand opening promoting the service to the general public until March.  During those first several months, I focused on building a core volunteer team and laying the ground work for the youth service we would eventually call Water’s Edge.  Our praise team met weekly to practice.  Our leadership council began planning and preparing.  But we didn’t have any youth services other than our weekly Sunday School classes on Sunday morning.  What I understood then was that for a youth ministry to succeed, it had to have a backbone.

What is a “backbone” program?

According to Todd Capin’s Youthworker Journal article from 1998, now available online from Youth Specialities website, a backbone meeting is “the ministry time around which all other youth group ministries and meetings revolve and function.”  He goes on to give this sound advice: “In fact, until a student ministry has established a backbone, all other facets to the group should be put on hold (or at least pared back) until a solid, regular, backbone meeting is established.”  (more…)

I’m stealing an idea from Josh Griffin at morethandodgeball.com.  Here’s a brief rundown of what went down last week at Water’s Edge.  I always find Josh’s interesting.  Maybe you’ll find ours the same:

Weekend Teaching Series: Write them On My Heart (A series on the 10 Commandments)

Message Title: Word Four: You will pay careful attention to the Sabbath

Sermon in a Sentence: God instituted the idea of a Sabbath rest to challenge the way we understand our place in the world.

Text(s): Deuteronomy 5:12-15

Weekend Scale of Difficulty: 5of 10, The message pretty much wrote itself, and the music wasn’t a challenge, but there were multiple video clips to challenge the tech crew.

Message Summary: We flipped the service again this week.  Sermon first, music afterward.  Began by using the Highway Video’s Identity video to ask the question “Where do you find your identity?” Then we talked about how we see ourselves.  Used several “About Me” sections from students’ facebook pages to look at the words we use to describe ourselves.  From there we transitioned into the categories the world uses to identify us.  Here we played a clip from Baraka (a great movie you’ve probably never heard of) to provide visuals while I spoke from the back of the room.

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