cow tipping: wrestling with youth ministry

Top 10 Reasons Why You Should Take My Church's High School Job

10. Competitive Pay and Benefits. We pay really well and have great benefits (including seminary scholarships).

9. Great Facilities. We have great offices, decent facilities, and above average media resources.

8. Location. Location. Location. Granted you are moving to the 9th most expensive place in the country, but a lot of cool benefits come along with it. Our school districts are some of the best in the country and the sky is the limit what you could do with such brillant kids. There are also a lot of great Starbucks for relational ministry!

7. Endless Outreach Possibilties. There aren't a lot of thriving youth ministries in our part of the suburbs. There are a lot of youth who aren't being reached by anyone (Willow Creek is at least 45 minutes away).

6. Solid Small Group Base. Community is a high value at our church and it is best modeled by our youth ministry.

5. Progressive Confirmation Program. I know confirmation scares a lot of people away, but it is actually very cool. Our mentor-based program is a very effective transition into high school. It goes along way to pregventing that huge drop-off that many churches experience.

4. Strong Middle School Ministry. You would partner with a middle school pastor who believes in your high school ministry and will work year-round to prepare kids for a healthy transition.

3. Parents. I have found our parents to be an amazing untapped resource. They are just waiting to be asked to serve. They have found that happy medium between neglectful and smothering!

2. Amazing Senior Pastor. He GETS youth ministry and will be your biggest fan! The rest of our staff is pretty cool too!

1. Passionate Young Followers of Jesus. Our kids desperately want to know Jesus Christ. They want to share their story with their peers and caring adults and connect it to the story God is telling.

Is it you or is it me? The search for a NEW High School Pastor

We are heading into our 9th month of searching for a new High School Pastor. Our search team has looked at almost 200 resumes, but has only brought 3-4 candidates in for an interview. I'm not on the search team, so I can't tell you why no one has worked out. However, I can tell you they have exhausted their list and are back to square one. What's the problem?

Are we the problem? Is it our job description (is it too much, not enough, too complex, not detailed enough)? Is it our church (are we too old-school, too reformed, no clear vision, too white-bread)?

Are my fellow youth workers the problem? Is it their lack of experience and maturity? Is it their lack of vision? Do they have too much vision? Are their expectations too high? Are they afraid to take risks?

Then I hear about the many churches that are also on the market for High School Pastors. That brings to light a third possible problem: the other churches are the problem! Too many churches looking for the same experienced, educated, passionate, relational youth worker (who loves Jesus). That means that we better know what our problems are so that we can find the youth worker who has as few problems as possible before some other church with fewer problems than us snatches up the guy with the least amount of problems. Complicated? That's probably why we can't find a High School Pastor, huh?

Whatever the solution, please spread the word: there is a Middle School Pastor in Oak Brook, IL who is praying for a new High School Pastor everyday!

Shift

I'm headed to Shift, the Willow Creek Student Ministry conference tomorrow. It's actually a 20 minute drive from my house, so it doesn't seem like a big deal. I am looking forward to the line-up of speakers: Brian McLaren, Mark Yaconelli, and Dan Kimball. I am really excited about my breakout seminars on Thursday. I have chosen the Teaching the Bible through Story and Dialogue with Mike Novelli. Here's the description:

This interactive training is designed to inspire and equip you to teach the Bible through story and dialogue. We will explore the art of "Storying", a dialogical approach founded in the Hebrew tradition and used extensively in missions all over the world. This new (and ancient) way of engaging God's Story has proven effective to help people to discover God's unique identity and calling for their life - to see themselves as part of a bigger story. During this breakout you will discover new things about God and the Bible through a "Storying" experience, and learn new methods to communicate and interact with God's Story. You'll also receive a workbook packed with ideas and resources to help you lead in your context.

I have known about "chronological storying" since grad school, but never really explored it further. Novelli has written some great curriculum, but it takes some training to fully understand. I will be sure to post my exerience with it after the conference.

Send me an e-mail if you want to hook up at the conference.

Come work with me!

Christ Church of Oak Brook is located in the western suburbs of Chicago.We're an independent, evangelical church in the Reformed tradition. Worship attendance is around 2,000. We have a significant and growing youth ministry program. We're looking for a High School Director who has a demonstrated commitment to and love for Christ. We want someone who loves teenagers and pursues excellence in the nuts and bolts of ministry. Ideally, we'd like a person with proven experience in a mid-sized to large sized church or para -church ministry. We need someone who has some biblical and theological savvy so a solid educational background is necessary. You need to be able to motivate and grow students, leaders and parents. Must be willing to work in a team with our Middle School Director (that's me) and a Ministry Assistant. This is a full-time position with a very competitive compensation structure.

Download Job Description

Send resumes to Mike McCurry at studentministriesrecruiting@cc-ob.org

Download Job Description

Send resumes to Mike McCurry at studentministriesrecruiting@cc-ob.org

My New Blog

I apologize to my legends of readers for not posting lately. I especially feel bad since I made Marko's blog roll. The reason is because I started a new blog this last month. I started a blog for my middle school mission team to post their reflections on their book club selection, Be the Change by Zach Hunter. Each week we read a chapter and post our answers to some of the discussion questions at the end of each chapter. We are not requiring them to post, we just gave each kid a book and a schedule for the reading. The student's comments have been so insightful and inspiring. They love Zach Hunter and are so jacked up about this year's mission project. In previous years, it has been hard to build team unity and do any kind of training in advance - it was like pulling teeth to get them to come to any meetings. However, this internet-based approach has been amazing! When we actually do the project this July, we'll use the site for our daily blog for parents to visit. At the end of the summer we'll convert the blog into a book for each student (Typepad has a really cool feature that does it for you).

I decided to let you visit the blog so I can possibly get some feedback from those of you who have done something similar. Please don't post any comments or stalk my students: www.cowtales.org.

"I'm never going to wash this hand again!"

So we asked our 8th graders where they wanted to go for their class retreat. It is our tradition to take the 8th graders away for the weekend to hang out with the middle school staff and high school staff and talk about the past three years in middle school and the future 4 years in high school. They unanimously voted to visit Mars Hill Bible Church in Grand Rapids to hear Rob Bell teach. We've probably showed half of the Noomas and we've had a few of the student ministry guys (Josh Bishop & Steve Carter) teach on our retreats, but I was still surprised that they cooked up the idea all by themselves. So we went up to GR and stayed at a hotel right next door to the church and went out for dinner and bowled. The next morning our kids got up at the crack of dawn so they could get the "good seats." They sat spellbound listening to the message (which was on fasting). When the service ended, 25 students made a bee-line for the stage. I started to imagine all of them asking Rob to autograph their Bibles. I was relieved to watch from my seat, as they formed a single-file line to simply shake Rob's hand and say "hi". Rob was very cool and shook each kid's hand and said "howdy". All I heard from our girls on the 3-hour trip home was "I'm never going to wash this hand again!"

I guess I could be concerned that our kids have a bad case of hero-worship and see church as a spectator sport, but I'm pretty cool with 25 students going back to school yesterday telling their friends how excited they were to shake hands with a pastor. Sure, that's not normal. But that is what is so cool about it.

Zach Hunter's Good Morning America Interview

My middle school mission project team are reading Be the Change by Zach Hunter this spring. They love the book and are huge admirers of Zach's. We were so excited to learn that Zach was on Good Morning America today. We're even more excited that we could get a copy of the video.

Good Morning America Interview

Real Sex?

Does anyone know of a youth ministry (specifically middle school) that has used Lauren Winner's book, Real Sex, as its curriculum? I am attempting to use it this month with our middle school series on sex, and wanted to dialog about the ideas with someone.

Purity Pledges

Like most good youth workers, we're preparing for our big February Sex Series. Last fall we gave our students an anonymous survey to get an idea of how to approach this series. We had a fair sampling of genders (Female 56% Male 44%) and grades (6th: 39% 7th: 33% 8th: 28%) and this is what we discovered:

Even though 50% of our students reported being in love at some point in their lives, only 17% have romantically kissed someone and only 2% claim to have gone “too far physically.” 69% of the students reported having talked with their parents about sex, but reported that they have learned most about the topic from health class and friends. Sadly, not one student named the church or the Bible as their source for information on sex. This may explain why only 58% of our students believe “sex is designed by God for marriage only” when asked “Why do you think you should not have sex before marriage?”

So, the middle school team and I decided that we should offers a biblically and theologically grounded understanding of sex and an honest exploration of the merit of chastity when decreed in scripture. However, I am not a big fan of "purity pledges" and telling kids to wait just a little bit longer. I feel like I'm taunting the students when I say that. So, one of my middle school volunteers, single female college student, told me about Lauren Winner's book, Real Sex. After I ordered the book, I started doing research on the author and book and found a great article she wrote for the NY Times, "Saving Grace." This short little article articulated exactly what I have been thinking about a middle school series on sex - purity pledges and all!

She starts off by critiquing the old stand-by purity pledge:

"Believing that true love waits, I make a commitment to God, myself, my family, my friends, my future mate and my future children to a lifetime of purity including sexual abstinence from this day until the day I enter a biblical marriage relationship."

Winner calls this pledge "deeply flawed" for a few reasons:

1. Chasity is not merely passive waiting! "It is about actively conforming our bodies to the arc of the Gospel and receiving the Holy Spirit right now."
2. Chasity is not about controlling intense bodily desires simply by exercising their wills. We are wounded and broken and we can do nothing without God's grace. "Perhaps the centrality of grace is recognized best not in a pledge but in a prayer that names chastity as a gift and beseeches God for the grace to receive it."
3. Chastity is not just a personal decision! William Willimon once wrote: "Decisions are fine. But decisions that are not reinforced and reformed by the community tend to be short-lived."

Winner closes with a challenge for the church to make pledges a communal act and suggests the following pledge:

"We pledge to support you in this difficult, counter-cultural choice; we pledge that the church is a place where you can lay bare your brokenness and sin, where you don't have to dissemble; we pledge to cheer you on when chastity seems unbearably difficult, and we pledge to speak God's forgiveness to you if you falter."

No pledge will guarantee our middle school student's purity, but in Winner's words, "words of grace and communal commitment are perhaps a firmer basis for sexual ethics than simple assertions that true love waits."

Your thoughts?

Name that Sex Series Contest

I need a cool name for my upcoming Sex Series next month. I found the perfect picture (Nike ad), but I just can't seem to come up with a catchy series title. I don't have any prizes, oh wait, I'll give you my extra copy of Mark Oestreicher and Kurt Johnston's great new book, My Faith - or if you happen to be Mark Oestreicher and Kurt Johnston, I'll give you a back rub. Here's the picture: