I’m humbled that you guys dedicate your time and passion to serve our students.  We are each gifted in so many unique ways, and I want to capitalize on our potential.  I don’t want us to be just a group of people who sit around and talk about things…I want us to be a group of leaders who are leveraging themselves for our student ministry vision and our strategy.  So, we are going to be talking about this probably for the next few meetings we have. 

To prepare for our meeting this Wednesday night…be thinking around these couple of questions:

1. What are you good at?  What do you love to do?

2. How can you use this to influence our students in our ministry?

3. How does your gift/gifts fit into our mission and strategy?

Thanks a lot guys.  See you tomorrow night!

We have re-opened the talk about the environments that we are offering our students….more specifically, we’ve been talking about revisioning RAZE and offering it on Sunday nights instead of Wednesday nights.  I still feel that this is the best for this environment because it maximizes our student audience (much more students are available on sunday nights than wednesday nights…especially during the school year), as well as maximizing our potential for volunteer recruitment (in the multi-purpose room and with the revisioning, RAZE will be an event that requires a lot of hands and hearts to live up to it’s full potential).  We will be looking for a worship team, a drama team manager which can help students put together engaging dramas on screen or live on stage, cooks, and volunteers for set up and tear down.  However, there is also a lot of risk that the enviornment will not succeed, that we won’t get enough volunteers, that parents won’t support, etc..

So…last Wednesday night @ staff I asked you guys to wrap your heads around the question:  what would an engaging worship environment for students look like?  Please keep thinking about that.  On a much larger scale (dealing with our whole grow, love, lead strategy) please also consider these questions for Wendesday night’s meeting:

1.  What are the resources available to us as we engage this student generation?
2.  What are the most effective ways to earn the right to be listened to by today’s students?
3.  What is the best possible way (or avenue through which) for us to leverage the resources and opportunities above?
4.  Could we achieve more by doing less?  Please explain your answer.

Those are some good questions to be thinking about.  I’m going to have some groundwork on our environments done by Wednesday’s staff meeting for our observation, discussion, and planning.  THIS IS AN IMPORTANT STAFF MEETING…please make your plans to be there!! 

You guys rock, and our students are entering into the Jesus life more fully because of your hearts and your example.  Thank you.  Please keep praying for Devon, Mama B, Brant, and Mal…they are hoping for a room in Columbus.

Ok…free thought.  What’s broken in our student ministry?  How do we fix what’s broken?  What things could we break in order to engage our students?

There will probably be a couple of bloggings birthed (that word was chosen for new grandpa Marty) out of last nights meeting, but I want to get our minds thinking about our mission and strategy.  For understanding how mission and strategy works, and why this is important…check out the ‘Realizing Mission’ postings on my blog (shameless plug, but worthwhile reading).  Ok, here we go!

Our mission:  to lead students to become fully absorbed with the Jesus life.  What does that ‘fully absorbed life’ look like?  We determined that a fully absorbed life is one that is GROWING, LOVING, and LEADING.  And with this understanding, we just discovered our strategy…to offer environments that lead students to grow in their relationship with God (raze gathering), belong in community with each other (fusion community groups), and equip them to lead in the areas that they are gifted (influence intiatives).

So the questions now are:

• Under this strategy, how can we most fully align our resources in order to give energy to our mission?
• How do we promote this effectively with our students and parents?
• Under this strategy, what are specific roles that will be needed to fill (such as curriculum writers for fusion groups, worship team for RAZE, etc.)

Ok…I think that’s broad enough for today.  Have fun with the conversation!  Remember, just throw your ideas out even if they aren’t fully formed…they will get us thinking together!

During the next few weeks, building up to our two series’ that we’ve been planning, i am going to be teaching community with our students during our RAZE gatherings.  As I have been praying and thinking through these messages, I keep coming to this conclusion:

our students are in activity together, not community together.

When we are in activity together, our relationships and interactions are shallow.  We are removed from each other’s lives, except on a limited basis.  I believe this greatly undercuts our spiritual growth.  I also believe that this is one reason that our fusion community groups are not accomplishing their mission currently.  Community influences, motivates, challenges, and equips.  We must begin to think about how our fusion groups are teaching our students to become influencers, motivators, challengers, and equippers.

So as I keep thinking through this, I’m posing two questions for you:

1) In what ways is it evident that our group is in activity together, and not in community together?

2) How can our fusion community groups become more than a youth group event, and become an environment that shapes our students?

Head over to my blog (http://merging.wordpress.com) and check it out!

Great brainstorming session last night!  Remember that these are going to be our next two raze serie’s coming up, and next Wednesday we will meet to start doing some creative planning.  As you look at the list above, what are the thoughts that come to your mind?

That’s it.  That’s our win.  That’s our creed.  That’s what we live or die by.  As members of this staff, we should all share this sort of mutual passion (albeit, it may express itself a little differently in each of us because we’re wired that way) to see scattered and marginalized students become fully absorbed with this Jesus life.

So…if that’s the end, how do we get there?  Remember, our strategy is to provide core environments and select activities through which students are compelled, taught, mentored, and challenged to live the Jesus life.  We should be consistently evaluating these environments to see what’s working, what’s failing, and what’s lacking.  So let’s use those three for a launching point….

In the Eklektos student ministry, what’s working…what’s failing…and what’s lacking? 

1.  Build a community mindset among students (we sought to accomplish this through the scavenger hunt, active staff interaction, shared meals, individual room prayer time, gender specific devotional time, and unique conversations).

2.  Engage students in authentic and responsive worship  (we sought to accomplish this through our group devotional times at the hotel, relating the Scriptures to their lives, and individual room prayer time).

3. Witness life change among students in a way that manifests beyond the trip  (we sought to accomplish this through praying for students in our room by name both before, during, and after the trip;  making ourselves available to have meaningful, spiritual conversations with individual students regarding problems or issues;  create lasting bonds and relationships with students;  and hold students accountable for their actions during the weekend).

So…looking back, did we accomplish our wins?

The overall conversation I want us to have prior to the trip is:  how can we maximize our time with our students in order see results during/after the trip?  As I evaluate this trip, I think that it is becoming more of a ‘trip’ and less of an ‘intentional activity.’  Remember, our strategy for student ministry is to offer core environment and select activities through which students are compelled, mentored, and empowered to live the Jesus life.  How can we become more intentional with this trip?

But, before we can fully engage in that conversation…I think that we need to start with another discussion.  We need to define the purpose of this trip.  We do that by starting with the end (or result) in mind and asking the question, ‘what are the measurable results that we want to see out of our students during/after this trip?’

We will start with this question so that we can come up with a definitive mission for this trip…and then strategize together about how we can fulfill the vision.  Ok…post your answers/thoughts below and let’s get this conversation rolling.  I’m excited to see what you guys are thinking!

Amy…you do/have done a lot of work @ events like this where you are constantly engaging kids….what advice do you have for us?