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I’ll be honest, every year we resolve to get an early jump on planning our Christmas service, and every year we wind up planning it right up until the last minute. This year is no exception. We had a meeting or two about Christmas in July but we didn’t really get anywhere. Maybe it’s just me but I struggle to “feel” Christmas in the middle of July.

Quantity, Not Quality
Usually, we start planning Christmas in earnest around the middle of November and that’s usually because someone reminds us that Christmas is only 7 weeks away at which point we all freak out. The first step in the process is what we call a brain dump. Basically, we gather all the creative teams from around the church (Kids on the Move, Oneighty) and we start throwing out anything and everything that might work. The idea isn’t to “solve” the service, it’s more about stirring the creative pot.

So many times the best ideas come when you’re not actively engaged in brainstorming, but to get your mind working on a subconscious level you have to first exercise it on a conscious level. Most of my best ideas come in the shower because in the shower I let my mind drift and wander and that’s when I find solutions. So, don’t feel like you have to solve every problem and develop every idea each time you and your team sit down to brainstorm.

Find the Feeling
Once we have a few ideas on the board we start to think about the feelings that each song/sketch will evoke. This is HUGE! We want our Christmas service to be an emotional journey, but that doesn’t just happen by chance, you have to carefully craft that experience. Here are the feelings that we aim to evoke each Christmas in no particular order:

• Beauty – Christmas is a beautiful time of year so we definitely want our service to reflect that beauty.
• Humor – Laughter is such an essential part of any gathering because there’s no better way to gain your audience than to make them laugh.
• Family – For most of us, Christmastime is family time. We always try to include songs that make the audience feel warm towards those they care about most.
• Wow / Awe – You gotta make people say “Wow!” at least one time! This could be accomplished in a million different ways, but I think it’s important for people to experience something bigger than themselves.
• Worship – This is obviously the most important part. Our whole goal is to lead people toward worship - that’s why the reading of the Christmas story is always the pinnacle of our Christmas weekend.

What Is Necessary?
After we write these feelings on our board we try and assign them to each song/sketch in the service. The reason that we do that is to make sure we’re not repeating ourselves. An example would be “I’ll Be Home For Christmas” and “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas”. Both are gorgeous songs but they evoke the same feelings – beauty & family – so it would be redundant to include them both. The goal is not to try and cram everything we can into the service, but rather to include only what is necessary.

Refine, Refine, Refine
From here we refine, refine, refine. We’ll talk through our service hundreds of times before it ever comes time to rehearse. Every song, every costume, every joke, it all gets talked through over and over and over again. It’s repititive and it’s exhausting, but it’s necessary because it’s through this process that you remove the parts of the service that aren’t working.

Remember this, the people who do the best work make it look easy, but it NEVER is! You and I see the finished product and it looks effortless but we don’t see the countless hours spent practicing in the gym/studio/office. Sometimes I think that because the work we do is primarily mental, we think we don’t have to practice in the same way we would if our jobs were physical. We all expect athletes to practice, and your mind works the same way as the rest of your body. It needs practice and refinement. These are the building blocks of a great creative work and without them, you’re toast. It would be arrogant to think that your first plan will be a home run. Don’t trust it, refine.

The goal of Oneighty is pretty simple - we want to “Bring the lost to Jesus and help Christians live like Him”. That’s what we’re all about. Because of this, we put a huge premium on doing things to give teenagers that don’t know Christ a tangible reason to attend one of our services. While they are with us we then give them a clear and creative presentation of the Gospel. Helping students understand who Jesus is, what he did for them, and how they can be in right-standing with their Creator through the person and work of Jesus Christ.

This year more than 600 teenagers have accepted Christ as their personal Savior during our weekly services at Oneighty. Even though my entire team and myself rejoice in this, we understand that our work is far from over. In fact, once a teenager accepts Jesus as their Savior, that’s when our work as a student ministry has actually begun.

God has called us as the Church of Jesus Christ to do more than get sinners saved and then somehow keep them attending our services every week. God has commissioned us as individuals and ministries to make disciples. In other words we are called to bring the lost to Jesus and then help Christians live like Him.

As I study the life of Jesus there are three words that sum up who Jesus was and how he lived. Those words are serve – grow – lead.

SERVE.
Jesus was the ultimate servant. He left Heaven and came to the Earth. He healed the sick and raised the dead. He befriended the friendless and gave hope to the hurting. During the 33 years that Christ lived on Earth there was nothing that he did for himself. Everything he did was to serve the needs of those around him.

GROW.
The scriptures record that Jesus grew in wisdom and favor with God and with man. Jesus had an insatiable desire to discover, to learn, and to grow into the person he was supposed to be.

LEAD.
Because he had a servant’s heart and a desire to grow, Jesus became the greatest leader in the history of the world. In fact today millions of people on planet Earth pledge their eternal allegiance to this man that they have never personally seen before.

As I’ve studied these things the past few months it has become very clear to me that if Jesus served, if Jesus grew, and if Jesus led, then we as his followers should do the same.

Because of this, we are launching a brand new ministry here at Oneighty that will help our Christian teenagers have tangible ways to actually live like Jesus. Our students will have the opportunity to serve in a ministry here at Oneighty, grow in a small group setting, and become the leaders that God has destined them to be.

This ministry is called UP, Oneighty’s Next-Level Leadership Program. Here is a video we showed our students last week.

I am so excited about UP, because it’s going to help teenagers look and live more like their Savior and ultimately isn’t that what youth ministry is all about?

The mission of Oneighty can be summed up in three simple words: Reach – Relate – Renew. Each week we REACH out and give teenagers in the Tulsa area a compelling reason to come to church. While they are with us, we RELATE the Word of God to them in a very personal and creative way, so they will be RENEWED spiritually, accepting Jesus Christ as their personal Savior and walking out their faith in God. With that mission in mind we created “The End is Near” movie series (all three are downloadable here on Seeds on the Video page). Here is how we leveraged the Halloween season to share the good news of Jesus Christ.

Each October we show a trailer of our “scary” movie for three weeks in a row to build up anticipation for the “World Premiere Event of THE END IS NEAR”. On the night of the World Premiere, we literally roll out the red carpet, have the students dress in their Hollywood best, have paparazzi take their photos, serve free food, give away a few prizes, and more. We do this to get teenagers excited about not only coming to Oneighty themselves, but bringing a friend or two with them.

On the night of the World Premiere, we show the movie, which has no spiritual content or meaning at all. I then get up and speak a message that ties the theme “The End is Near” to a biblical truth that will challenge them spiritually. Here’s the breakdown and message notes for each of the last three World Premier Events.

The End Is Near I//Download the message notes//Download the video

We are living in the end times. Jesus is getting ready to return. Are you ready?

The End Is Near II//Download the message notes//Download the video

All good things must come to an end. Sin is fun for a season, but in the end it leads to death.

The End Is Near III//Download the message notes//Download the video

For this message I tied my talk back to the World Premiere Event itself rather than the theme of the movie. I came out in a brand new tuxedo. I talked about how when we accept Christ as our Savior he gives us a brand new suit. We are new in him. But if we are not careful, we become religious rather than relational with Jesus and like the religious leaders of Christ’s day begin to be clean on the outside but dirty on the inside. Regardless if you know Christ or if you don’t, it is time to come clean. You can watch this message below…

We have had incredible success each year using these three movies. We would be honored if you put this trilogy to work for God’s kingdom in your area.

Today I am reminded of why I started working in youth ministry.

A month or so ago I was invited to teach “Life Skills” to the USA Junior Hockey Team here in Tulsa. If I said yes, teaching the class would require me to spend an hour every Thursday talking to young men about how to succeed in life. Also, I would have to be available to meet with them as individuals and help them through any issues they may be dealing with during the course of the year. I love talking about life and God with people, especially people I don’t know, so I jumped at the chance.

Well, it’s been a lot of fun. The guys on the team are from all over the United States and come from a variety of social and religious backgrounds. As the weeks have gone on, I have tried to step into their world and they have slowly been stepping into mine. A few weeks ago the entire team came to one of our services at Oneighty and really liked it.

This morning I received a call from one of my students on the hockey team. I have no idea what he needs, but he said he’s going through some stuff and was wondering if he could meet with me to talk through some things.

To be completely honest, when I got into the office today and received the message from my friend on the hockey team, the first thought that came to my mind was, “Dude, I’m way too busy this week. We’ve got an event tomorrow night. We’re working on a huge series in October. This is not the time to be meeting with this guy. I’m trying to do big things for God here.”

It didn’t take me long to realize what a completely absurd statement I had just made.

I’m too busy trying to do big things for God. So I don’t have time to meet with “this guy”?

This guy … is the big thing to God. This guy … is the reason I’m doing all the other things that I’m doing this week. This guy … is why I started in youth ministry in the first place.

Needless to say, I have a meeting set up with my hockey friend today and I’m looking forward to helping him anyway I can.

Lesson learned.

One hour. That’s all we get. We get one hour each week to take the principles of scripture and place them into the daily lives of our students. The truth of the matter is, we can give the greatest message of our lives each week, but if the students don’t remember the point we’re trying to make, all is lost. So every Wednesday night we strive to take the point we’re making and present it in a way our students will always remember. Here are some ways we have tried to make memorable moments for the teenagers of Tulsa.

SET UP OUR MESSAGE IN A CREATIVE WAY.
A few months ago I did a message titled “Die Already – Four ways to kill your past”. In this message, I wanted to talk about how our past is like a zombie. Much like the “walking dead”, that thing we wish we would-have-never done, keeps following us everywhere we go and no matter what we do, it never seems to go away. So how do we kill our past?

Instead of just getting up on stage and talking about this, we decided to give our students a moment they would never forget. So to open my message that night we set up a graveyard scene, complete with zombies walking around, a casket and … well take a look for yourself.

BRING OUR ILLUSTRATION TO LIFE, LITERALLY.
They call me “Pastor Prop” and for good reason. I love to use illustrations and props to bring the point of my message to life. Several months ago I wanted to talk about how sin slowly coils around us and squeezes “life” right out of us. The illustration that came to my mind is that sin is a lot like a snake. So we decided to use a 9-foot Python as my prop for that night’s message. The moment I walked out on stage with a snake wrapped around my shoulders is moment that our students will never forget. To tell you the truth, I will not forget it either.

Here is a little promo piece we ran for oneighty.com to talk about the illustration we did live on stage.

PREPARE THEIR HEART FOR A POWERFUL WORSHIP EXPERIENCE.
This summer we took an evening to talk about God’s story of Forgiveness and how through Jesus Christ and His willingness to go to the cross, we have been given a second chance. The entire message led up to a moment in the service where we would take time to simply tell God “thank you”. We captured a small part of this worship experience on video. (Click here to download the video to use in your service)

Last year, I spoke a message to our Lincoln Christian School students titled “Real World Rules”. In this message I shared that when you are a child and you’re living with your parents, having everything given to you, it’s easy to have the idea that “If I make a mistake, it’s really not that big of a deal. If I need something, someone will get it for me, and I’m the best at everything because people close to me say that I am”.

However, those things may be true when you’re a child, but when you get out in the real world you will learn very quickly - that is not how things work.

If students are ever going to become what God designed them to be, they are going to have to not only learn the real rules of this game called life, but also begin to play by them.

The same is true for us in ministry. Sometimes the reason we don’t succeed in our God-given endeavor is not because of a lack of talent, money, or a calling from God. Sometimes we don’t succeed because we are not playing by the real rules of the game.

Here are some “Real World Rules” of life and ministry.

1) Small is Big.
Someone fairly famous once said, “If you have not been faithful with little, you will not be faithful with much”. Good words to live by.

2) Your talent and 50 cents will get you a cup of coffee.

Are you talented? Great. So are 1,000’s of other people. What will set you apart from the crowd is not your ability, but your purity and passion for what God has called you to do for him.

3) A servant’s heart will take you farther than you ever dreamed.
When we give up our ego, give up our attitude, give up our agenda, and simply serve, we will get back more than we ever thought possible.

4) You “get” nothing. You “earn” everything.

In the real world, you don’t get anything handed to you. Respect, money, volunteers, and appreciation are all commodities that we have to earn. The quicker we stop waiting on people to give us what we need and start rolling up our sleeves and earning it, the better off we will be.

These are some “Real World Rules” that I have noticed over the years. What are some that you have learned? I would love to hear them.

P.S. If you haven’t heard, the Oneighty Conference is back! Get all the info and register your team HERE.

I recently had an incredibly hectic Thursday. Here is how it went.

8:00 AM//Arrive at Office

Watched the video from previous night’s Oneighty service. Made some mental and written notes on what we could have done better as a team and how I could have been more effective in my presentation.

10:00 AM//Big Event Planning Meeting

Sat down as a staff and planned out our LIVE@ONEIGHTY event that’s coming up in September. In this meeting we secured plans, gave job assignments, and set deadlines for everything it would take to have a great outreach event.

12:00 PM//Phone Call

Spoke with a youth pastor from another state about youth ministry. He told me about some great things he had coming up and I shared some things we were doing as well.

2:00 PM//Oneighty Conference Meeting

We took a few hours to meet with Whit and his Creative Arts team about our conference coming up in February. We talked about scheduling, advertising, and tons of things that will help us pull off an incredible training event for visiting youth leaders.

Now on the surface, this may seem like an extremely boring and uneventful day. However, if done right, it is days like this that shape the future, make things better, and win more people to Christ. Meetings are extremely important. Here are some things I always do for a meeting…

1) Ask the question…”Do we really have to meet or can this be done over the phone or email?”

2) Set the “win” for the meeting. What are the top three things we want to accomplish?

3) Take time beforehand to prepare all information needed to play a solid role in the discussion.

4) Stay on task during the meeting.

5) If getting off on rabbit trails, take a break and come back when ready to focus again.

6) Once the “win” has been accomplished, call the meeting over and move on to the next thing.

If done right, meetings can be fun, energetic, and a catalyst for change in ministry.

There is nothing like being a youth pastor. We are a totally different breed. In this blog I thought I would celebrate some of the traits and tendencies that can be found in almost all of us that work in youth ministry.

You are probably a youth pastor if…

• At some point in your life you’ve rocked either a goatee or a soul patch.
• You have at least two plaid western shirts from Urban Outfitters in your closet.
• You pride yourself on how fast you can set up folding chairs.
• You secretly desire to look just like any of the dudes from Hillsong United.
• At least one time in your ministry career you’ve scheduled an outreach event, just so you could get some free food.
• Every time you want to “go deeper”, the first thing you do is read a book by Mark Driscoll.
• You can always come up with 3 legit reasons to do it later. (And it doesn’t matter what “it” is)
• Your car catches on fire and the first thing that comes to your mind is, “This would be an incredible message illustration.”
• You got married just so you could have one more steady youth worker.

If you’re a youth pastor, you know what I’m saying is true. Rather than fight it, let’s embrace it. I say, let’s go out and get a cool deep v-neck shirt, read a Driscoll book, and keep setting up folding chairs at a lightning fast pace… because that is who we are. We are youth pastors and the body of Christ needs us… soul patch and all.

Over my past two blogs I’ve been writing about some of the nuances of doing a Big Event in your student ministry. So I thought I’d take a minute to give you the low-down on what we did for some of our big outreach events and show you the promo video we ran to promote the event to our students and their friends.

Here are a few of the things we’ve done to reach out to students in our area.

The Biggies
We kicked off this 6-week series at Oneighty with a big event that featured guest speaker Justin Lookadoo, free pizza, and some sweet prizes including the all-new Apple iPad. On this night we had over 1,500 in attendance with more than 200 first-time visitors and 28 young people accepted Christ.

On the night of the big event we ran this video, letting students know what we were going to be tackling over the course of the next few weeks. It worked. This was one of the best series we’ve done at Oneighty. (You can download it here)

Oneighty’s World Premier Event
We’ve done this event three years in a row and each year it just keeps getting better and better. On this night we rolled out the red carpet (literally) for the world premier of Oneighty Films “The End is Near” scary movie. We invited students to dress in their Hollywood best and walk the red carpet as Paparazzi took their photos, we had free popcorn for everyone, and we gave away an LCD TV as well as a Flip camera. This past year we had over 1,300 students in attendance and 51 young people accepted Christ as their Savior. (You can download all 3 installments of The End Is Near here)

Crush
This is one of my favorite outreach events that we’ve ever done. For this event we created our own boy band called “There4u” and we made special music videos to promote their live performance on the night of the big event. We had a special speaker that specialized on the dating topic and served free cupcakes to everyone.

One of the unique things we did for Crush was fill our basketball court knee high with balloons and then had a contest for teenagers to dive in and find prizes that were hidden under the balloons. This night was a huge success! We had 1,200 in attendance with 100 first-time visitors and 10 teenagers accepted Christ as their Savior.

ALL OUT w/ Shawn Alexander
For this event we invited former NFL MVP Shawn Alexander to come and minister to our students. We gave away some sweet prizes, had a post-service party with a live DJ, as well as a Punt, Pass, and Catch Contest in our Oneighty field. We worked with the local schools and FCA programs to get the word out and it worked. That night more than 1,500 students showed up, 315 of them were first time visitors, and 61 teenagers gave their life to Jesus Christ.

Multi-Week Themed Pushes

Over the years we’ve done several multi-week themed pushes at Oneighty. One time, we did a multi-week event called “Oneighty Wars”, where we divided our students into teams and had a giant party for the winning team.

We also had a four-week event titled “American Gladiators”, where we had a contest between our students and our Oneighty gladiators. We did the joust, the gauntlet, and more. It was incredible seeing teenagers go up against our monstrous men that completed as our gladiators.

However, my favorite themed push that we’ve done took place last Christmas. We did a two-week series titled “Give Life” in which we teamed up with James Robison Ministries and challenged our students to raise $4,800 to build a clean-water well in a village on the continent of Africa. They came through in a big way, giving more than $6,800 toward our water well project.


One thing I’ve seen through my 19 years in youth ministry is when we get creative and give teenagers a physical reason to come to church, they actually show up, have fun, and walk away closer to Christ.

So this fall, sit down with your team, plan out some incredible outreach events and see what God does in the lives of teenagers in your area.

If there’s one thing a leader from any organization wants, it’s momentum. We want things to happen that propel our company, our church, or our youth ministry forward. We all want the BIG MO. Over the past 19 years that I’ve served in youth ministry, that is exactly what the big event has given me.

Now, I’ve got to be completely honest and say that there have been a few times that I planned a big outreach event and it flopped. By “flopped” I mean, either we did not get the single night results we were striving for or we did get the single night results, but we quickly went back down to where we were before the event.

Here are three reasons big events flop.

BAD PLAN
The goal of an outreach event is to reach out. You want to give teenagers that typically would not come to your youth service a reason to put down the XBOX 360 controller and come check out what you’re doing. In order for that to happen you have to have something planned that the un-churched teenager will want to attend and your churched students will want to bring a friend to. There have been times through the years that I have planned an event that I thought would be really good, but none of my students got excited about. Therefore, they didn’t show up. Here is a personal principle that I always go by when planning a big event: “At this event we are trying to draw young people ages 13 – 18. I’m 39 years old. I have four kids and drive a minivan. If what we are doing at the event is something that I would personally love to do, we’ve got a bad plan.”

BAD TIMING
Years ago, while serving as a youth pastor in Northern Indiana, I brought in a really good regional band. They had some notoriety in my area and our students loved them. This was going to be a great outreach event. We planned out an end of the school year concert. We had the band, great give-a-ways, and some free food. We passed out flyers and talked it up in the area really well. I was confident this event was going to bring in a lot of un-churched teenagers. On the night of the concert, we had 25 students. Twenty-Five! The reason had nothing to do with the event. It had everything to do with the timing. In scheduling the concert, I did not check the local school calendar. We only had 25 teenagers show up because I had scheduled the concert on the same night as PROM! Bad timing killed this outreach event.

BAD PLACEMENT
When and where your big event is placed in your monthly service schedule will play a huge role in the type of success you have in retaining the new students you attracted that night. One mistake we made early on in my time here at Oneighty is placing the big event on a single night, in between two teaching series. Almost every time we’ve done a “stand alone” big event, we have had great attendance that night, but because there was no tangible reason for the students to come back the next week or two, many of them bailed and we quickly went back to where we were before. Learning from this mistake we now have two places we strategically place our big events.

At the end of a teaching series.

Last February we did a teaching series titled “Looking for Love”. Each week I took 20 minutes to answer a specific question pertaining to the ever-popular topics of sex, love, and dating. Throughout the message we allowed students to text in questions on this topic to a specific number. After the message I took 10 minutes to answer as many of their personal questions as I could. The students loved the series!

Each week of the series we advertised that on the final night of “Looking for Love” we are doing a special event where you can “Find out everything you’ve ever wanted to know about the opposite sex.” (That was the title of the event) On this night they could text in their questions and I would answer them live and off the cuff for the entirety of the message. We also had great prizes and special games after the service. The students LOVED it. Each week’s attendance throughout the series was bigger than the week before. The students were talking to their friends about what we were doing and telling them “you have to come on the last night, Oneighty is going to answer all our questions about the opposite sex”. 
Needless to say the event was a success. We reached more students not only for the big night, but also for the entire series as a whole. We had more visitors, more salvations, and more life change. Tying the big event to the end of a series gave us momentum.

At the beginning of a teaching series.

This past semester we kicked off a six-week teaching series called “The Biggies” with a huge outreach event. For three weeks we advertised (in some very unique ways) that on “March 31st we are kicking off a brand new series that you won’t want to miss”. For the kick off night, we brought in a special speaker that our teenagers love to hear, had some big give-a-ways, free food and great activities for everyone to enjoy. That night, the students packed the place out. We had a capacity crowd, tons of visitors, and 28 students accepted Christ. The night was a huge success.

But the cool thing was, because we had advertised not only the single “big event”, but the entire series, we kept a large portion of those students. Each week of the series we tackled some big issues like “Is there a God?”, “Is there absolute truth?”, “Is Jesus really the only way to Heaven, what about the other religions?” and each week the students just kept coming and accepting Christ as their savior. During that series we led 85 teenagers to Christ.

We had momentum!

Once again, tying the big event to a teaching series, instead of doing just one single night, proved to be a catalyst for change not only in our ministry, but most importantly in the lives of students.

We’ve seen that Big Events work. If you stay away from the flops of a bad plan, bad timing, and bad placement by tying a “student friendly” event to a teaching series, you will have what your looking for…momentum.

Around the youth ministry landscape right now, there is some debate on if “Big Events” really work? In conversations with youth pastors from around the country, the most common reason I’ve heard as to why student ministries have decided to stop doing big events is…”We worked real hard, spent a lot of money, our numbers went up for one week, then within two weeks we were right back to were we were before. So I stopped doing them.”

If you don’t do outreach events properly, the truth of the matter is… you can spend a boatload of money and not see any real momentum or growth in your ministry. However, if done properly, we have found that the “Big Event” can be a catalyst for true life change in the lives of both the believing and non-believing teenager.

Last fall, we hosted a big event simply called “The Biggies”. At this event we had over 1,500 in attendance with 200 first-time visitors, and 28 teenagers accepted Christ as their personal Savior. In the six weeks that followed the event, we averaged over 1,300 per week in attendance, had over 400 first-time visitors, and 85 teenagers became Christians. During this timeframe, we also graduated 75 young people from our Turn Life discipleship ministry. It was this Biggies event that not only catapulted us into what God had for our ministry, but also most importantly drew more teenagers closer to Jesus Christ.

Through the years we have seen that, yes, big events do work.

Over my next few blogs I’m going to dive into the nuances of the big event, in hopes that you and your student ministry will join us in using this incredible tool to grow the Kingdom of God in your area.

For this first blog, I want to give you four reasons you need to do a big event.

1) It gives teenagers that have never been to your student ministry a reason to show up.
Unsaved teenagers don’t wake up in the morning and think “Boy, I’d like to go to church tonight, have some dude preach to me, and then give my life to Jesus.” Teenagers that don’t know Christ will never think about going to church unless you give them a reason to think about it. That is what the big event does best. It puts “church” into the mind of someone that typically never thinks about it.

2) It gives students that have not attended your service in a while, a reason to come back.
Why have some of your teenagers stopped coming to your youth service? Maybe they’ve forgotten about it, maybe they’ve been busy, or maybe they haven’t had a real good reason to come back in a while. Doing a big event gives unplugged teenagers a reason to get off the couch and plug back into your student ministry.

3) It gives your hard-core Christians a reason to bring a friend with them to church.
Let’s face it. It is extremely tough to get Christian teenagers to bring unsaved friends with them to church. Maybe it’s because they don’t have that many unsaved friends. It could be that they know they should invite someone, but just can’t seem to get up enough courage to ask them, or maybe they’ve never actually thought about it at all. No matter what the reason is, hosting a big event in your student ministry will give your Christian teenagers a reason to find someone that doesn’t know Jesus, break through their fear, and actually bring them to church.

4) It gives your volunteers something to rally around, pray for, and be excited about.
People want to make a difference. They want to be a part of something that is bigger than themselves, that’s why your volunteers are giving you their time and energy each and every week. Allow them to make a difference. Show them that God is up to something big in your community by hosting a big event that impacts tons of teenagers. When you do, your volunteers will be more excited, they will feel more involved, and they will keep volunteering for years to come.

Throughout my 19 years in student ministry, I have seen that, yes, big events do work. In my next blog, I will talk about how you can use big events to build big momentum in your ministry.

I love speaking. For me, there is nothing like standing in front of a group of people opening my mouth and letting it rip. I love to speak. For the past 18 years or so, I’ve had the honor of standing in front of small groups, large groups, teenagers, adults, and leaders and talking to them about faith, God, Christianity, love, leadership, and more.

Over the past several years, I’ve really begun to study the art of communicating. While sitting under the teaching of Pastor Willie George each week, and also listening to other great communicators deliver their talks, I’ve picked up several things that have helped me hone in on what it takes to be a really good speaker. Here are some things I’ve learned - I hope they help you as you prepare your next message!

HEAR FROM GOD ON WHAT TO SPEAK
With all the great speakers and messages floating around on the internet today, it’s very easy to hear a message from Ed Young, Andy Stanley, Mark Driscoll, or my pastor, Pastor Willie George, and just take their stuff, reshuffle it a little bit and call it your own.

Don’t get me wrong. There is nothing wrong with listening to other speakers, getting ideas and points for messages. However, when you stand before a group of people, you need to know that you have heard from God on what to speak about.

If listening to someone else’s message stirs something up inside of you, that’s great. Don’t be afraid to use that information as a catalyst of creativity and content for what you’re going to say. However, before you get up on stage, make sure that you have heard from God on what to speak, not just from another wonderful communicator. 

PRAY
If the first time you’ve prayed over your message is when you get on stage to present it…you could be in trouble. Spend time praying over your material, your delivery, your audience and things will go much smoother for you and the people listening to you.

PREPARE
Take time to make your message the best it possibly can be. Get out your Bible, your commentaries, and prepare. Carve out time in your schedule to get more information than you actually need. Then start cutting it down to what you are going to present on stage.

PRACTICE
Athletes and dancers practice for hours before their game or performance. You need to practice too.  Practicing your message looks different for everyone, but you need to do it. Here is what “practicing” looks like for me. I 1) write out my message, 2) do a read through of my message with a few trusted staff members, 3) get alone and read my notes quietly 5 times or so, 4) start reading it out loud over and over again until I really get the feel of the message and the flow of the talk.

SPEAK ON WHAT YOU’RE PASSIONATE ABOUT
Are you excited about what you’re going to deliver to your audience? If you’re not, how will they be excited about receiving it from you?

SPEAK TO THE BACK OF THE ROOM
When you speak, speak to the people in the back of the room. Watch their eyes, their body movements. Are they with you? Are they listening? Are they engaged? If you own the people in the back of the room, I guarantee the people in the front, are 100% with you as well. So speak to the back of the room.

BE YOU
What is your name? Say it out loud. If you did not say Ed Young Jr., Pastor Willie George, T.D. Jakes, Mark Driscoll, Andy Stanley, or Erwin McManus, then don’t be them on stage. Be you.

God made you with a unique speaking style that matches perfectly with the people you are supposed to be reaching. So be the very best you you can be.

I became a full time youth pastor in January of 2000. That spring, my senior pastor called me on the phone and told me to come to his office because he had something he wanted to give me. As I walked down the hallway my mind started racing.

“What in the world is it? Maybe he’s going to give me a raise. Maybe he is going give me more opportunities to speak on Sunday mornings or give me the position of associate pastor of the church.”

I couldn’t wait to see what my Pastor wanted to give me.

When I stepped into his office, my pastor stood to his feet and said “Kevin, I have something to give you.” He reached out his hand and handed me a paintbrush and paint can. Then he told me, “There is a church picnic this weekend, so I need you to go out in the field and paint the baseball backstop, so it looks presentable”.

I thought to myself, “Paint the backstop! Are you kidding me?”

As I walked outside, holding the “gift” from my pastor I remember thinking, “I didn’t go into full-time ministry to paint a fence. I didn’t become a youth pastor to do manual labor. I went into ministry to make a difference. I don’t need to be doing this, this is the janitor’s job.”

But the more I painted, the more I began to realize: painting the backstop would be a janitor’s job…if we had a janitor. But we don’t. It’s just the pastor and me.

He is the pastor of the church. He has a message to prepare. The backstop needs painting and I’m the only one that he can turn to. So as I stood there in the hot sun painting that backstop, I began to pray, “Lord, I thank You for my pastor. Thank You for giving me this opportunity to serve him, thank You for allowing me to help him, so he can do what he needs to do.”

From that day on, I always looked for opportunities to serve my pastor. Sometimes, I did what some people would think are very menial tasks, like setting up chairs, mowing the lawn, or taking a sick church member to the hospital. 

But the more I served him in the little things, the more my pastor gave me opportunities to do the bigger things. Eventually, I did get a raise. I started preaching more on Sunday mornings, and even became the associate pastor of the church.

I can’t tell you how thankful I am for that paintbrush and paint can. Those two items taught me one of the greatest ministry lessons I’ve ever learned. 

As a youth pastor, my job is not to build my own little kingdom, and look out for my own interests. 

My job as a youth pastor is to faithfully serve my leader, doing anything I can do to make sure his vision comes to pass.

A few months ago, I was listening to the Stephen A. Smith morning sports radio show. He threw out the statement that Peyton Manning was one of the best quarterbacks of all time, possibly the best. He instantly got bombarded with tons of calls from people that agreed and disagreed.

It was funny, but for the most part the callers that disagreed with Stephen absolutely refused to look at things objectively. They only looked at the situation as fans of a particular player.

There were fans of Brett Farvre that said he was the best. There were fans of Tom Brady that called and said that Peyton couldn’t compare with Tom. There were Steve Young, Joe Montana, and John Elway fans that called in and voiced their opinion. One guy called and said that Peyton Manning was “ok” but Joe Namath was far superior than number 18. To which, Stephen A. replied, “Joe Namath, are you kidding me? Are you on drugs? Joe Namath? Come on man, Joe Namath was good but he doesn’t even deserve to be in the same conversation with Peyton Manning.”

When it comes to sports, when you are a fan of someone or some team, your “fan hood” skews your view of reality. So much so that you refuse to let go of the glory days of yesteryear when “Broadway Joe” was the talk of the town. Because you are a “fan” you refuse to look at things objectively and see that it is a new day and that other things, or other people in the present may actually be better than your heroes of yesteryear.

This is true in both sports and in ministry. It is very easy for us to be “fans” of a ministry, a program, a style of worship, or service order that worked back in the day. If you are a fan of these things you’ll find yourself saying things like “it was amazing”, “you should have been there”, “God really used this and it was incredible”.

You know all of those things may be true. But because it is the message, and not the method, that is sacred, we need to check our “fan-hood” at the door and look at everything we do objectively.

Is it a new day? Is this incredible thing of the past still effective? Or has something else (an idea, a ministry, a new style, or method) come along that is much more appealing, much more exciting, and much more useful than the old way of doing things?

Too many people in ministry are like the person that calls into the radio show trying with everything within them to prove that “Broadway Joe” of yesteryear is so much better than the young pup of today. They fight to keep things the same, they hold onto old ways, and because they refuse to look at things objectively, they are in danger of becoming much less effective at winning people to Christ.

When it comes to ministry, look at things objectively, not as a fan.

By the way…Peyton Manning is one of the best quarterbacks of all time!

Go Colts!