Series: "3D"
Key Thought: God desires for us to have deep faith. Deep faith is developed through making Daily Decisions to be Devoted to God.
Understandable Message: This week we introduced the "3D" through our different environments (Middle School, High School, College) after being together for worship in the Student Chapel. The key text for our teachers was taken from Exodus 16. God chose to feed Israel in the wilderness through daily manna. God chooses to feed us spiritually through our daily disciplines of prayer and reading the Bible. We also focused on the reality that today matters. If we are going to develop deep faith then we must begin with today. We too often over-exaggerate yesterday, over-estimate tomorrow, and under-estimate today. We challenged students to commit to read their Bible everyday during the summer through committing to our "3D Luke/Acts Challenge." We had bookmarks for everyone that listed the scriptures we are reading together this summer. My life changed completely when I started reading the Bible daily. I am excited to see what is going to happen through this challenge!
Creative Elements: Since this was the kickoff of "3D" we went all out with the theme. We had 3D glasses for all the students when they came in. All of our handouts were in 3D. All of our pre-service announcements were in 3D. Also, we opened up service with a highlight video from last week's youth service that was in 3D. We also built a large replica of our "3D" logo that was on the platform.
Songs: Take it All, From the Inside Out, Tear Down the Walls
Next Week: Week 2 of "3D"
in Graphics, ideas, pictures, planning, Sermon Series, Staff Resource, Worship, Youth Room, Youth Service | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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This is a blog from David McGovern's blog! David is a great Student Pastor from escondido, CA! He is one of the most creative people I know! He has such a heart for student ministry! Check out his blog here!
Before you give up on the story, you should know that it has a pretty cool ending. In fact, Henry would go on to make great contributions to cognitive psychology and marketing. Oh, and by the way, Henry was the guy who influenced the length of our phone numbers.
After his traumatic bike accident, his doctors attempted to localize his seizures, so they removed part of Henry’s medial temporal lobes. The surgery left Henry with severe retrograde amnesia.
Here’s the thing about Henry: he could remember everything prior to the surgery, but his brain could not encode new long-term memories. Although he could never remember anything from 5 minutes beforehand, the last 30 seconds were crystal clear to him at all times. Henry’s curious case provided science with the first pieces of evidence that humans have a uniquely powerful yet concise short-term working memory. But here’s the kicker: our short-term memory has a finite capacity.
In 1956, cognitive psychologist George A. Miller suggested that this capacity was SEVEN (plus or minus 3) items. Decades later it was determined to be roughly 2.5 seconds of information. In English, that equates to SEVEN (plus or minus 3) words.
The implication is that people are remarkably better at remembering messages with 7-10 words or less.
The concept of “7 words” is so powerful that some marketing boutiques, like BluePrint, do nothing but help companies arrive at 7 words or less to answer the question, “Why should I choose you?”. Because while companies like Southwest become successful with their consistent answer, the fact of the matter is most organizations lack a concise communication of their purpose.
The challenge for student pastors is this – know your 7 words. Spend some time thinking about some simple words or phrases that clearly communicate what your student ministry is, what it does, and why it’s important. At Solid, we have what we call “The Solid Life”. The Solid Life is a foundation of 7 (plus 3) simple words that define our student ministry. From the time a student enters Solid in 7th grade, until they graduate from Solid in their post-high-school years, at the very minimum, each student should have a firm grasp on these 7 (plus 3) principles and see them in consistent practice in their everyday lives. (Andy Stanley’s “7Checkpoints” and Jeremy Gutshce’s “Exploiting Chaos” helped me out alot with this!)
1. Fearless Faith
2. Disciplined Devotion
3. Moral Boundaries
4. Real Relationships
5. Wise Choices
6. Spiritual Authority
7. Selfless Service
8. Unapologetically Evangelistic
9. Living Worship
10. Apostolic Identity
What are your 7 (plus or minus 3) words? I’d love to hear em. Love you all.
Read more of David's blog here!
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Something that has been helping us lately at revolution has been something called the BOX! Each week we try to plan our youth services in such a way that they are compelling and life changing. We want to provide the right enviornment where students can connect with God.
One of the greatest ways that this happens is through dilligent preperation. There have been times that I have had so many elements planned out, however, I neglected to realize that if those elements were not communicated far in advance to our team then it would not be effective.
The box is a password protected place on our youth website that is updated weekly with what is going on for the next two weeks at revolution. This is a great thing because it allows all staff, musicians, and singers to be on the same page for what is going on for the next two weeks. The cool thing is that the technology that we use is free. Go to www.box.net to get your own box. We put the mp3s/lyrics of the songs that we are doing. This allows students/leaders to put the songs on their ipods and print off the chord/lyric sheets. Each week every student is responsible to log into that week's box and download what is going on for the week. Sofar it has been working awesome! The cool thing for me is that I can update the box from any computer! It is a cool thing that is working for us at revolution...
here is an example of a weekly box.
in Drama, Music, planning, Video, Web/Tech, Worship, Youth Service | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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