vbs | Ministry Blackboard

16Jul/120

the Monday Morning Debrief: Making the most out of an opportunity

Last summer, MySocialCloud.com had the opportunity of a lifetime. Because they responded to a tweet from Richard Branson, Virgin Mobile CEO and entrepreneur, they went from an unknown company to being invested in by Branson for $1 million. How did this happen, might you ask?

Because they saw an opportunity and responded. The opportunity was an invitation on Twitter by Branson that whoever donates $2,000 a charity of his backing, they would have the opportunity to meet him for cocktails. So the MySocialCloud.com founders Stacey and Scott responded, donated, met Branson and in returned ended up having him invest in their company to the tune of $1 million dollars. Now their company has been propelled in further ahead of their plan. Not to shabby for responding to a tweet.

So how does this apply to ministry?

Simple. Stacey and Scott saw an opportunity and jumped on it. What opportunities are right in front of you that you need to respond to? What is God doing right in front of you, ready for the taking, just ready for you to see it and respond?

In January, I started a youth event called "the Hangout" every Friday night where middle and high school students would come and hangout, play games and have a safe place to go on a Friday night that didn't involve drinking and recklessness. Well, one thing that started happening was that after our nZone Grand Opening event, some lower income families from the local neighborhood started hearing about "the Hangout" and began dropping off their elementary aged children on Friday nights. They thought "the Hangout" was for them too.

Now, having elementary aged students coming out to a middle and high school event wasn't exactly what I had in mind, but more and more of these students started coming out. They were really loving it. Then some of the staff from New Life and I started hearing from local teachers how these students kept on talking about it at school. The teachers would tell us that if these children weren't coming to "the Hangout" on Friday nights they would be stealing bikes and getting in all sorts of mischief.

So what do we do? You can't mix high school teens with elementary aged kids? We should just turn these kids away until we can program and plan for something, right?

Wrong. Through others at New Life starting to see an opportunity, we were able to formulate a plan to keep drawing these students to the nZone on Friday night AND, even better, a group of us have developed a modified VBS every M, W, F this summer specificically for these lower income children. It has been amazing so far with over 30 children each time.

So here's the point. Opportunities are all around us. The question is are we seeing them? Are we looking for them? Are we acting on them?

This ministry to lower income children and their families was not what I intended when I started this Friday night deal. But God used it as a starting point for something bigger. And, because of the blessing of many great people at New Life, we are now able to reach a new group of people, a group we never thought we were going to reach like this. It just shows that God is great and can do so much.

So what about you? TAKE A MINUTE right now and think through what are the opportunities that God may have rich in front of you that you need to act on now. As Guns N Roses used to sing, "Nothing last forever in the cold November rain". Well, it's July, but still, opportunities are there, possibly waiting for you to take that step and do something about it. Will you? Or will you just let is slip away because of this or that reason?

Share your thoughts or experience about opportunities so that we can all benefit.

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Tagged as: branson, entrepreneur, friday night, nzone, twitter, vbs, virgin mobile No Comments

16May/120

Trying something different this Summer: CAMP CREATE

This summer, New Life Christian Church's Family Ministry is doing something a little different. It's not a new idea (others have done it rather successfully), but it is new to us and we are very excited about it. It's called Camp Create.

Camp Create is an action-packed week of intense fine arts training and Bible study. The five fine arts included are dance, drama, music, sign-language, and visual art. Each session touches on the five arts, a Bible study, refreshments, and a rockin' opening session.

It is a week long camp that culminates with a Friday night production for the parents. Each day will start at 1 and run til 5. The theme for this year is Safari So Good: The Goodness of ONE. Verse for the week is Psalm 136:1. "Give thanks to the Lord for He is good. His steadfast love endures forever."

This why I love that New Life is doing Camp Create:

Provides an opportunity to serve. If you are in high school or college and looking for something different and fun to help out with this summer, then this is a great opportunity to invest in children in a unique format while sharing the love of Christ with them.
It's not centered around sports. Let's be honest, the nZone IS sports. So for New Life and the nZone to be offering this camp for the "fine arts" is a great way to reach out to all different kinds of children who have a lot more interest in things other than sports.
It presents us with another opportunity to reach the community. As I said above, the nZone screams sports. Camp Create is none of that and it allows New Life to reach even more people so that they can discover of God is.

So, I'm really excited about this opportunity and I think it'll be a great opportunity for our entire community.

If Camp Create sounds interesting to you and you either want to sign up, click here or want to help out, email me. We would love for you to be involved in some way this year!

If you are not local (Northern Virginia) and have thoughts, comments or experiences about doing events like Camp Create, post them so that we can all benefit.

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Tagged as: camp, camp create, children, dance, drama, elementary school, God, music, performance, serve, service, sign language, summer, theater, vbs, volunteer No Comments

30Jul/100

The Youth & V.B.S. at work – Days 4 & 5

Background info:

In June I posted about how V.B.S. is a great service opportunity for youth during the summer. In case you missed it, you can read that post here. In it, I highlighted 5 reasons why this should be a very viable option for your youth program to help out with.

Well, this week is V.B.S. week at Cedar Run and because of this I am going to give some give real-time examples of how the 5 reasons really shine through. On Tuesday I talked about how helping out with another V.B.S. is a positive way to support another ministry in your Church. You can read it here. On Wednesday I posted about how it serves as a local mission trip. Yesterday I focused on how students bond during V.B.S.. Today is Reasons #4 & 5.

Reason 4: Opportunity for youth to serve the Church

In my June blog about this, I said:

As an advocate for youth being actively involved in the life of the church, having youth serve at V.B.S. is a great opportunity for the rest of the church body to see youth playing an active role. It shows that you do not have to be an adult to serve in some sort of ministry position. You can serve and be effective at a very young age. These young children look up to the youth so much and lasting mentorships may be developed because of this opportunity.

Obviously by the youth and young adults helping out at V.B.S., they are serving within the church. HOWEVER, this is only just 1 instance, but there are countless other ways for youth and young adults to serve within the church. They can help out and serve in areas such as acolytes, scriptures readers, worship team members, testimony sharers, ushers, greeters, work days, nursery help and many other opportunities. When you have youth serving in various areas throughout the church, people can see that the younger generation are actively apart of the church and that there can be a role for them as well.

Reason #5: Another opportunity for YOU to bond with students.

In my June blog, I said:

During the summer months students vanish. You see them one week, the next week they are on vacation or at camp or someplace else. The consistency of student involvement during the summer is just not there. But I know that every day during V.B.S., I can go in the Church from 9 am - 12 pm and see students, interact with them and encourage them in Christ. It really is one of the best non-camp contact work opportunities youth ministers get every year.

This was completely evident in the amount of students who came to help out. We had 22 youth and young adults help out at V.B.S. which means that I had a chance everyday to interact with all 22 of them. How great is that? I have bonded with them in different ways that I would not have been able to regularly. Our impromptu BK break runs and many other small things have provided great memories and good bonding moments for me with them all.

To sum of the week, having the youth and young adults team up together to help out with V.B.S. provided so many benefits to them and the church. It is my hope that you got to see these reasons why flushed out with some real examples. AND, it is my hope that next year both the Children's Ministry Director and you, the Youth Director, can team up to use youth in V.B.S. and see how the Lord uses it to be a ministry to them, you all and the church.

Thoughts, questions, comments? Post them so we can get a good discussion and all of us can benefit.

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Tagged as: service, vbs No Comments

29Jul/100

The Youth & V.B.S. at work – Day 3

Background info:

Well, this week is V.B.S. week at Cedar Run and because of this I am going to give some give real-time examples of how the 5 reasons really shine through. On Tuesday I talked about how helping out with another V.B.S. is a positive way to support another ministry in your Church. You can read it here. Yesterday I posted about how it serves as a local mission trip. Today is Reason #3.

Reason 3: Students bond.

In my June blog about this, I said:

Being apart of the V.B.S. Team allows students who do not normally socialize together bond. Sure they are apart of the "youth group" and they may go to the same school, but that doesn't meant they socialize or interact together. When they help out with V.B.S., they have interactions and experiences together that they may never have had before. Which again, helps builds friendships and bonds that may last eternity.

This is how I have seen this flushed out this week. My team (we are the Game Crew) consists of 5 youth. Usually the day is very structured as new groups come to our game time every 20 minutes. However, as the scheduled worked out, our team has a 40 minute break every day. So, after Monday, we decided that we would use this break as a time to go to Burger King for something to eat or drink. BK is just across the street so it wasn't impossible to do. For, the past 2 days we have gone to BK as a group, talking and socializing the whole time. It has been a great experience since not everyone on my team were friends at first. Sure they "knew" each other but they didn't really "know" one another. So this time together working as a team and then going over to BK has been a really rewarding time together.

Other youth and young adults working may not have the break my team has but they have bonded with each other as well as they team up for teaching or crafts or music. They have been able to start and begin to foster some new friendships with each other. It is my hope that these friendships they are now developing will continue over the course of the school year and beyond.

Why should the Youth and Young Adults help out at V.B.S.? Because they bond together which will hopefully last a lifetime.

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28Jul/100

The Youth & V.B.S. at work – Day 2

Background info:

Well, this week is V.B.S. week at Cedar Run and because of this I am going to give some give real-time examples of how the 5 reasons really shine through. Yesterday I talked about how helping out with another V.B.S. is a positive way to support another ministry in your Church. You can read it here. Today is Reason #2.

Reason 2: It's a local Mission Trip!

In my June blog about this, I said:

Having the youth help out and work with the Children's ministry was a perfect opportunity to add another type of service during the summer. Every year, our church offers 2 mission trips - one international (open to the whole church) and another to a domestic location (youth only trip). Even though scholarship is available to help students go on these trips, helping out at V.B.S. provides a local, free option that students can have while still feel like they are giving to others and serving.

Here is how this was flushed out at this year's V.B.S.. Of the 22 youth and young adults who are helping at V.B.S., 13 of them were not, for some reason or another, able to go on either of our 2 other "mission" trips. Therefore, without helping out at V.B.S., they would not have had an experience to give and serve in this capacity all summer. What a great opportunity for them and a great opportunity for these children.

What I believe makes this just a little bit better than a typical mission trip is that these youth and young adults are ministering to and building relationships with young children in their own church. What a great model of investing in the younger generations and seeing children grow up to be teens and young adults having relationships with an older generation. Tons of mentorship possibilities abound because of the investment being made during events like V.B.S.

So, when you are looking at service opportunities for your youth next year or even during the year, partner up with the Children's Ministry and see how small little investments not only benefit the children but also the youth and young adults as well.

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Tagged as: missions, service, vbs No Comments

27Jul/100

The Youth & V.B.S. at work – Day 1

Well, this week is V.B.S. week at Cedar Run and because of this I am going to show some give real-time examples of how the 5 reasons really shine through. I will post these examples over the course of the week 1 per day.

Reason 1: You are supporting another ministry at your church.

In my June blog about this, I said:

Too many times in church world, I have seen Ministry Department Heads get territorial and want to do what is best for their ministry only. They don't care what happens in the other departments, just as long as their needs are being met. I'm sorry but that is NOT an effective way to do ministry. Ministries within the church need to partner together and work to bring all people, young and old, into a relationship with Christ. By having the youth support the children's ministry, you are supporting the church. As a youth minister you are saying that you value another ministry just as much as yours and that want to support what they are doing to further the kingdom of heaven. It is a great model.

Here is how I saw this flushed out on Monday. Of the 57 volunteers helping out daily this week, 22 of them were youth or young adults! That is amazing. The youth and young adults were definitely supporting the children's department this week. In fact Carolyn, our Children's Ministry Director said that without them helping, V.B.S. would not be possible. How great is that?! The youth and young adults are actively contributing to another ministry and serving them in so many different ways. They are game leaders, teachers, teacher assistants, toddler helpers, sound board workers, craft leaders, and snack helpers. It was very evident that everywhere you turned, the youth and young adults were helping another ministry and it was benefiting the Church.

This is a great example of how ministries can help each other and should be helping each other. After all, it is all for the glory of the Lord anyways, therefore we should be working together, especially on big events such as V.B.S..