Thanks!

Dennis

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Dennis

Great things are ahead.

Thanks for visiting VolunteerYouthMinistry.com,

Dennis

I saw this post over on Kurt Johnston’s blog. He’s got a lot of great stuff on his blog. Click here to check it out.

Teaching 101….part one.

Here is a short list of what I believe to be fundamental when teaching/speaking to junior highers:

- The first minute is the most important minute
- It doesn’t need to be long to be good
- If it’s going to be long it needs to be good
- Junior Highers like to laugh
- Junior Highers like stories
- Be authentic
- Be relevant to THEIR world
- When possible, include active learning ingredients. Students learn more when they experience it.
- Offer specific application steps
- The last minute is also the most important minute

We had our first night of small group tonight. When I got home, I had this note on my Facebook page. I’ll put this in the trophy case. It’s important to celebrate the tokens of appreciation our students shoot our way.

I’ve been asked to share some tips for small group leaders this week in our training meeting. I only have 3 or 4 minutes. Since it’s directed toward rookie leaders,

I thought I’d share 2 helpful thoughts about leading a small group. One is for the leader’s sanity and longevity. The other is for bonding the group in a safe close-knit environment.

1. For your sake: Thinking through age-appropriate behavior will save you a lot of anguish and you can use it to help you plan your lesson
– Think through what to expect from your group based on their gender and age
– What will the energy level and attention span be?
– How can you use that to their advantage while teaching?

2. For your students’ sake: Define the culture of your group and actively pursue it.
– This is our group
– What’s said in the group stays in the group
– We will have fun, but not at each other’s expense
– When it’s time to start the Bible study, we’ll do it without a lot of messing around and everybody will participate

I got permission from our youth ministry team to conduct volunteer round table discussions. We’ve done these in training meetings years ago. They were some of the best trainings we’ve had because we’re discussing youth ministry concepts with others who also volunteer youth workers. I’m very excited to see the training that comes out of these. I’ll post some of what we learn on this blog.

I love leaving students with some kind of a memory they can tie to a lesson. At this weekend’s services, our high school students are writing “heal” and “real” on their arms to remind them that in order to experience healing, they need to get real with God. It’s a great visual that will remind them of the lesson until it washes off.