Youth Ministry Blog

Youth Ministry Resources by Grahame Knox

Grahame Knox’s Blog “Insight: reflections and resources on christian youth ministry and leadership” is regularly updated with resources for youth ministry including bible studies, worship resources, discussion starters, ministry resources, articles, ice breakers, game ideas and more. Of particular interest are a few of his latest releases including:

• Bible study methods for youth leaders - the eBook
• Talking to God - three youth group discussion starters on prayer
• Getting started - three youth group discussion starters

Go over and say hello, and check out some of the resources while you’re there…

HT to Rethinking Youth Ministry for the link to the ebook

ConversantLife.com

I was checking up soon-to-be-released books and dvds today (as I do purey as research into my ministry role, not because I’m a consumer addict *cough*) and bumped into the book “A Purple State of Mind” by Craig Detweiler, a new book being published by Conversant.Life.

This interested me for a variety of reasons, firstly because Craig and Barry Taylor’s book “A Matrix of Meanings” is one of my favourite books on spirituality, faith and culture and the idea that he’s got yet another book (I’ve already mentioned the Cultural Exegesis series of which he’s an author).

Secondly because, in doing a google search on Craig I found out that he’s has also released a film of the same name. Purple State of Mind is a film by Craig and John Marks that follows a conversation between two old friends about the things that divide and unite all of us: our memories, our identities, our beliefs, our choices. Craig and John say this about the movie (that can be purchased on amazon.com):

We’ve become a nation of speech-makers. Everyone has their bullet points. Everyone takes aim. Left versus right. Gay versus straight. Atheist versus believer. The shrapnel has caught all of us in the crossfire, and we struggle to respond like soldiers; we fire back, but our own guns fail us. As a person of faith, Craig is troubled by the perception of Christians as judgmental and hypocritical. How could Jesus, the great defender of the poor, the hungry and the hurting have been turned into a hater? As a reporter in the Balkans, John witnessed the process by which religious and ethnic identity drives division. He’s unnerved by the potential for a war of words to become something far worse.

Purple State of Mind, our movie, is an 80-minute effort to bridge the cultural gap, to push past politics, and wade into the middle ground where most people live. Purple State, the web experience, extends that effort out into the homes, dorm rooms, churches, offices and playing fields where people are struggling to have their own conversations. In a world of increasing tension, we hope Purple State of Mind offers an alternative–a warm, humorous, genuine conversation that at the same time pulls no punches.

We didn’t start with a plan, just a mutual desire to find some common ground despite our differences. We had four conversations in four states over the course of one year. We started at a polite distance, before we plunged into our past, and faced our genuine disagreements. Those haven’t gone away. But we’ve renewed our respect for one another and won a hard understanding of our differences. Making Purple State of Mind was an act of hope, but it’s only the beginning.

Thirdly I was excited to see that Craig’s started blogging, something that was news to me, always glad to add a new blog to the blogroll. I love the title of the blog: “Dr Film”. I’ve added it to my rss feeds and look forward to reading Dr Film’s thoughts on faith, film, life, culture and more…

And finally I was intrigued by the ConversantLife.com website which is in Beta mode at the moment, I guess until it irons out whatever bugs it might have. ConversantLife.com is a rather nicely designed social networking, blog, resource, communication, printing suit for people wanting to discuss faith, spirituality, culture and more, a few rather interesting authors like Craig seem to have joined the project as contributors and bloggers as well as having their books published by ConversantLife.com.

The site also has the facility to host video and music files of unsigned artists, hoping that it’ll provide musicians and film producers to connect with it and use it as a means for their gifts to be shared and promoted.

It seems that the site and project from the Conversant Media Group (started by Bruce Bickel and Steve Janz) is partnered by Harvest House Publishers, I’m not sure as of yet if its being used for good or evil, but from my 2 hours wandering through it’s blogs and articles I’m pretty keen to see ConversantLife.com grow and survive, it looks like it could be a great addition to the conversations between faith and culture and a great resource for students and ministers and young people and…

Ok, to sum this up, check these links out:

• The Book: “A Purple State of Mind” by Craig Detweiler
• The Film: Purple State of Mind by Craig Detweiler and John Marks
• Purchase the film from Amazon.com: Purple State of Mind
• The Blog: Dr Film
• The Website: ConversantLife.com

Jesus The Great “I Ummmmm”

I’ve been to a number of camps and conferences recently in which I’ve mused (mostly to myself) at how well some people have become at replacing the word “umm” or “err” with “Jesus” or “Just” or “Father” during public prayer.

You know what I mean though, and I don’t mean to make much of it, but I did get to thinking that it’s got to take a fair bit of training to replace the usual stumped silences with a set vocabulary, whether it be Jesus, God, Father or Just.

I listen to these prayers and, it’s hard to own up to it, but I’ve started hearing “umm” when the name “Jesus” or word “Just” is used… I guess this makes me sound cynical.

But, truth be told, I wonder why it’s become necessary to do this, is it bad to be without words in the presence of God, or in the presence of others? Is silence such a bad thing that we need to fill space while speaking with God? Is it more professional? Do we need to be professional whilst in prayer?

And then I wonder how we could possibly make Jesus, the Great I AM, just a replacement for the word ummmm.

My A-Z of Indispensable Mac Applications For The Mac Beginner

A couple of friends have recently moved over to a mac, when I made the move about a year and a half ago it took me a while to get through a few programs and learn what ones might be of use to me and for what purpose I’d use them for. I thought in order to help them settle in I’d put together a list of the applications that I’d put on a new mac before I did anything else on it, what would your list look like?

Note that I’ve not included iWork or iLife in this list, I assume you’re going to buy them anyhow, and if not I’ll ask why then contemplate throwing a wet, cold fish in your direction, cheap, easy to install and fantastic programs

Icon	Information
	Quicksilver Quicksilver allows you to find files and applications easily, to set up shortcuts all by the click of a few keys. I’m still getting the hang of Quicksilver
	Quicktime Pro Mac or PC you should have the pro version, no debating, just do it.
	VLC or Miro VLC is the cross platform media player of many people’s choice. It’ll play almost anything on either Windows, Mac or Linux or… Miro does a similar thing, although it also allows you to save torrents and youtube videos and the like, more of an internet television application than VLC is. I’m still debating on which one I like the most, VLC is cross platform so useful for people with mac and pc in their house like me…
	FfmpegX Media file converter, I’ve found it do be extremely useful.
	Flip4Mac Media plugin that allows Quicktime to play wmv files and more…
	Firefox or Flock or Camino Different browsers, each based on Netscape, both open source projects. You might still be happy with Safari, on the mac it’s a much better and faster browser than it used to be. I’m using Flock at the moment and like how it integrates with and works with Flickr, Facebook, Blogs… that being said, I’m seriously contemplating going back to Safari. Don;t ask about Camino, I’ve not used it, although I’ve seen a lot of glowing reviews.
	Bento by Filemaker I’m only just getting into using Bento, but it’s looking like a great program for personal databases and project management, I’m using it at the moment for my organisation of Winter Camp and I’m starting to find it very useful.
	Adium Universal chat client medium, interfaces with msn, icq, jabber, yahoo, aim… Based on the windows application “Pidgin” which was originally named GAIM back in the days…
	Handbrake Open Source DVD to mpeg4 convertor, a fantastic program for converting dvds to video files…
	Open Office or NeoOffice Open Source office suit, don’t want to use microsoft office? and still don’t want to use pages or keynote? then open office is the best option around, actually It’s fantastic, better than ms office for windows in my opinion, run your entire church system or school on openoffice and skip the need to pay licensing fees to Microsoft, give it a try if you’re on mac or pc and you’ll find it hard to figure out why you’ve never used it before. On the mac you might also want to compare it to Neo Office a software port of Open Office for MacosX
	TOAST 9 Titanium Roxio’s dvd/cd burning software. Probably one of the best burning suits that I’ve used so far, with a lot of options and easy to use for the beginner. Purchasing it online is much cheaper than buying it from the stores too. sure, idvd and macosx have their own burning facilities, but I’ve found that Toast is a necessary part of my arsenal.
	Skype I sang happy birthday to my niece the other day over skype, then we sat and had a funny conversation with her and her little sister over video conference. I’m also learning that I can organise skype conference calls where a number of people can converse online, perhaps even to do lectures or book clubs… certainly a must instal program.
	Delicious Library Lindsay Cullen sent me this as a present a while back, it’s a fantastic program that allows me to catalogue my cds, dvds and books on my computer, linking in with amazon.com it’s a great program. I can only hope that it releases an upgrade soon that links in with librarything.com and natively links in with itunes. But a great program that gets a lot of people going oooh and ahhhh, especially when I use my isight camera to scan in barcodes from a book.
	Transmit Transmit was probably one of the first programs I purchased on the mac, an easy to use ftp client for the mac. I’d be lost without it actually, (now that’s sad).
	Receipt Wallet This is another geeky invention, scan in your receipts, save them as pdfs and keep a database of all your purchases. Fantastic for the minister with too many receipts and who is hopeless at organising his paper filing system. I can’t wait until my accountant gets his hands on this during this year’s taxation period, I’ll look oh so organised.
	Writeroom I’m still getting used to this, but many people might find it useful. WriteRoom is not Microsoft Word. It won’t generate a table of contents, it won’t place borders around your documents, and it doesn’t have an animated paper-clip looking over your shoulder. Instead WriteRoom just provides the essential features required to get words on the page. Stay focused with WriteRoom’s distraction free environment. Stay on track with word count. Stay safe with autosave. You just type, and WriteRoom will do its best to stay out of your way.
	GIMP or Seashore I should have put this up further, but I forgot about my favourite little image program. The open source version of photoshop with a lot of similar filters and options. And, yes, that’s right… Free to download and use. Seashore is based on Gimp, so some people may be keen to give it a try, I’ve not given it much of a go, but will be doing so soon…
	SpamSieve This is actually the first thing you should install, sorry I put it all the way down here on the list, a free to use mail spam filter that learns. Go get it now, I installed this and haven’t looked back.
	Unarchiver or Stuffit Ever found .rar files or other compressed files that you had no idea how to unpack? Give Unarchiver a try, I use it regularly. Stuffit Expander is also a great program, bit of a much the muchness as to which one you choose to use.
	Appzapper Have troubles removing the ever growing list of applications that you don’t use? This little application does it well…
	Battery Health Monitor I’ve only just started using this, guess who’s battery is down to 40% health… Good to have this application running and looking after your battery life and health.
	Google Earth Google Earth lets you fly anywhere on Earth to view satellite imagery, maps, terrain, 3D buildings and even explore galaxies in the Sky. You can explore rich geographical content, save your toured places and share with others.
	Mac Saber This is one of the more amusing programs out there, and probably the most useles, but I really love wandering around my house waving my mac around like a light saber and hearing it make noises just like in the movies.
	Perian Perian is another plugin for Quicktime that allows Quicktime to play avi flv and mkv files as well as many many more formats…
	Wallsaver Want to set your screensaver as your computer’s wallpaper? way cool, mostly useless, but having your wallpaper be the code design from the matrix is pretty groovy and makes people look at you like you’re really cool.
	Adobe Lightroom or Aperture Both of these programs allow you to develop photos from your digital camera, especially in the case of RAW files. My photography would be almost impossible without one of them, Aperture is possibly the cheapest option while Lightroom is possibly a better program
	. NewsFire One of the best News readers/Aggregators that I’ve found for the mac.

My Future Student Video Competition 2008

The “My Future Student Video Competition” for 2008 website is up and running, go over and check it out for all the information on this year’s competition. Unfortunately the website lacks a lot in design and all the information is there as pdf downloads (as apart from being site content), but the competition is still a great opportunity for kids to explore vocation, call and career options.

As someone in youth ministry I see this particular competition as something that could possibly benefit the community, your faith community and the young people in your ministries. How often do we get the time to seriously find out what makes someone tick, to find out what someone does for a vocation, to ask questions of our own sense of call?

The competition encourages young people to explore their career options. Entrants will produce a 2- 3 min video clip profiling an occupation from the list provided on this website. Information about the occupation you choose for your entry can be found at www.myfuture.edu.au. Myfuture, Australia’s national on line career information service.

The competition is supported with broadcast, online and DVD resources that provide a unique opportunity for classrooms and individuals to embrace careers education in a creative and innovative way.

The CREW Program on SBS Monday afternoon on SBS Television will broadcast regular updates and career stories as well as video production tips. This competition is an Australian Government initiative. Call the shots for your future today!!

Link: My Future Student Video Competition 2008

Contextless Links - 07 May 2009

I’m not usually a huge fan of contextless link posts, it seems odd to make a blog post linking a number of items in one huge hit. That being said (or typed as it were) I’m going to have to start doing them occasionally as my tab-bar on Flock just seems to grow and grow with items I’d love to post about but find myself without the time…

I will attempt to get back to a few of them in time, but for now I’m starting a new “contextless links” category for times like these…

Check these out:

TECH-savvy Christians have a new holy calling — crowd-sourced prayer arranged via mobile phones. (A new service in the UK is using SMS messages to coordinate simultaneous “focused prayer” amongst subscribers.)

FrameByFrame - Stop Motion movie creation on Mac (FrameByFrame lets you create stop-motion animation videos using any webcam/video camera connected to your Mac, including iSight. Just take some pictures and in a matter of seconds you‘ve got your very own stop-motion QuickTime movie!)

A thought in progress (Cheryl musing on hospitality, tables and community

Desmond Tutu on Forgiveness (Apparently it’s good for your health)

Doctor Who to boost church popularity ( A job I wouldn’t mind having, watching Dr Who and thinking theologically and musing whimsically)

Small Groups and the Mission of God (Alan Hirsch talks about the untapped potential of individuals and small-group communities.)

130 MORE youth ministry tips and ideas (Tim asks for your help to produce the next list of Youth Ministry Tips, which reminds me I’ve got a list of his questions that I really want to get onto answering sometime soon…)

Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh (Bob asking questions about how the church may silence others…)

Radiohead - All I Need (The new Radiohead MTV Video release through a day, one kid living in the West, another who works in a Sweat Shop, addressing issues of human exploitation and trafficking… ahh heck, it’s so good I’ll post the clip below) ht Bob

Stop Assuming People Get It

I’m in the process of organising a camp, one of the major issues is finding leaders, but a larger issue is communication.  I’ve attempted to put out a number of documents and emails focusing on issues like theme, program, worship, learning groups, leadership etc and haven’t had much in the way of feedback. Even now, 2 months before the camp the most common question I’m being asked is (can you guess?) “what are the dates?” I know it’s annoying, they know it’s annoying, but I’m becoming more and more aware that I need to stop assuming people actually read things, assuming that they actually get it, assuming they’ve done the basics like writing dates into diaries…

I was reminded of this as I was reading through my news feeds today and saw the post from Church Marketing Sucks on “People Gotta Know” we need to stop assuming people get it…

It’s not that people are thick, it’s just that we’re busy and actually need to be reminded occasionally about why things are important to us.

This includes how we speak with our youth and children’s ministry teams about our mission, our aims, our purpose, our hopes, our dreams… this also includes things like safety issues, responsibilities, sexual misconduct, pastoral care…

Stop assuming…

Barna Research On The Use of Multimedia in Protestant Churches

A new report from the Barna Group on the use of multimedia by Protestant Churches is rather interesting, I wonder if we could do a similar study in our Australian churches to get a bigger picture of how we utilise these medias.  Personally, I’m a tech tinkerer and like playing with the various options, although I would almost always argue that instead of spending $10k on sound system and screen, projector most churches would be better served by staying low tech and using the money in some form of missional context… but that’s just me, I seem to think that church + property = bad idea almost 90% of the time…

Anyhooo..

Protestant churches across the nation are using various forms of emerging technology to influence people’s lives and enliven their church experience. But the pace of technology adoption seems to have slowed in the past two years as some churches focus upon making the most of what they already have, and other churches attempt to get by without incorporating such tools into their ministry mix.

The new study explored the presence of eight technologies and applications in Protestant churches. Those tools included large screens used for showing video imagery; showing movie clips and other video segments during church events; sending email blasts to all or portions of the congregation; operating a church website; offering a blog site or pages for interaction with church leaders; maintaining a page on behalf of the church on one or more social networking sites; providing podcasts for people to listen to; and receiving programming and training via a satellite dish.

The report also gives us some interesting stats:

• 65% of Protestant churches now have a large screen projection system in their church that they use for services and other events.
• The presence of a large-screen system is related to the church’s size and theology. The smaller a church is, the less likely it is to use such tools.
• Only 43% of churches described by their pastor as possessing “liberal theology” have big screen capabilities, compared to 68% among the churches that say they are theologically conservative.

The report also looks at the use of email, satellites, websites, use of movie clips, use of the internet…

It might be an interesting read for some people, particularly in some of the mainline denominations in Australia.

Read the entire report: Barna Research On The Use of Multimedia in Protestant Churches

Examen

Len over at NextReformation has recently posted an entry on the prayer of examen, I suggest you make a mental note to go over there sometime and give it a read and think about how you might be able to use the process, or an altered version of it in your youth ministry…

Sometimes prayer is more than just holding hands and saying “just” or “father” or “father, just” lots…

Oasis Video and Report

I’ve recently noticed a huge interest in the NYC report on youth homelessness in Australia, spurred on a lot by the Oasis dvd project that was screened on the ABC television not too long ago. For many people the issue of homelessness, and that of the homelessness of children, youth and families remains under the rug, something that they don’t see much, if at all. The Oasis film, and the NYC report lifted the rug for many, and it’s inspired many people to do something, others may find themselves tempted to lift the rug again and grab the broom.

For youth workers, pastors and family workers I recommend that you grab a copy of the report and give it a read, and as you do stop occasionally to watch the Oasis piece which you can order on DVD or download online. I then suggest that you show it to your community and see if it spurs anyone to do something with it, after all “how can we worship a homeless man on Sundays if only to ignore the homeless for the rest of the days of our lives?”

I also suggest that you might be interested to listen to a number of the stories that didn’t make it into the final film, many of which are online to view as short films, there are also a number of other resources on the website for people to engage with.

“The National Youth Commission’s report Australia’s Homeless Youth is the result of the first national independent inquiry into youth homelessness since the Burdekin Human Rights inquiry in 1989.”

The National Youth Commission (NYC) held 21 days of hearings in 2007 across all States and territories. Altogether, 319 people gave formal evidence and 91 written submissions were received from community organisations, individuals and government departments.

The NYC’s findings have been published in this report, including over 80 recommendations. The report is available to download below as a summary or in chapters.

The National Youth Commission’s Australia’s Homeless Youth Report, and the feature documentary The Oasis were both launched during National Youth Week in April 2008.

Download the NYC Report: The National Youth Commission’s Australia’s Homeless Youth Report

Download the Oasis Documentary: The feature documentary “The Oasis”