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Dennis

VolunteerYouthMinistry.com has moved to a new location. To catch up on the latest tips, videos, free resources and conference information click here

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VolunteerYouthMinistry.com Has Moved

As of October 2, 2009, new posts will not appear here for VolunteerYouthMinistry.com. The URL is now pointing to a new server. If you have links to VolunteerYouthMinistry.com via dbeckner.wordpress.com, please update them.

Click here to see the latest posts.

Thanks for visiting!

Dennis

Moving To A New Server

VolunteerYouthMinistry.com may disappear for a little while tonight. I’m in the process of moving to a new server. Hopefully it will only be offline for a little while.

Great things are ahead.

Thanks for visiting VolunteerYouthMinistry.com,

Dennis

Teaching Jr Highers

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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

This Made My Day

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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.

Book Review: 99 Thoughts for Youth Workers by Josh Griffin

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My friend Josh Griffin just came out with his first book 99 Thoughts for Youth Workers. I read though this book and have some very good things to say about it. It didn’t hurt that he wrote the nice inscription (below) inside the book. I think a better title for this book is The Best Of MoreThanDodgeball.com. Josh has pulled the best from his blog and put them into a pocket-size book of essential nuggets of wisdom for youth ministry. I highly recommend grabbing this book. At $4.99 per copy, it’s even a great gift book for youth ministry leaders. It would be a great way to say “Thank you”, “I believe in you”, “Happy birthday” or “Merry Christmas”. Of course, don’t forget to include a $5.00 Starbucks giftcard so they can enjoy a tasty beverage as they read it.

Small Group Leader Training

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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

Volunteer Round Table Discussions

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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.

Service Opportunity: Feed My Starving Children

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Today our high school ministry served a mission organization called Feed My Starving Children. By packaging small bags with rice, soy and dried veggies, we were able to provide food to feed 57 children for a year. I highly recommend this as a service opportunity for students in your ministry. They’ll even come to your location so you don’t have to travel. All of the details are on their website at FMSC.org Here are some stats from our efforts today: We packaged 20,736 meals in 2 hours That will feed 57 children for a year Another group served yesterday. Combining our efforts with theirs, here are more life-changing stats: 113,000 meals packaged That’s enough to feed 311 kids for a year All of that is to show a big difference can be made with even a small amount of time. We had 85 people working today. I don’t know how many people helped yesterday. Here’s some more information about this mission organization: Their website is FMSC.org Each meal costs 15 cents $14 will feed a child for about 3 months They have videos on their website about their work On their website you can get information about helping them package meals We had a fun time, they were very organized and easy to work with

Lesson Helper: Real Heal

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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.

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