by David Hanson | Sep 7, 2014 | The Youth Ministry Blog
This past weekend, we had our annual Launch Conference where we exhort students to live on mission in their schools, among friends, and in their families. It went AMAZING!
We are in the third year of the Launch Conference and have seen some amazing initiatives birth out of teaching students how to live on mission for Christ everyday.
It is imperative that students renew the way they view school. If you are anything like I was in jr. high & high school, then you viewed school as a burden, as something that had to be endured. But I’m certain this is not what Christ intended. The Great Commission calls us all to live on mission as we “Go therefore,” or “As we are going.”
This is why my staff and I are bent on helping students understand how to live on mission each day in their schools. We want to see students so amped up about Jesus that they take what was ordinary and mundane and make it a matter of eternity. We want to see students embrace daily ministry, so that they become adults who carry this daily mission into the workplace.
In a world where teenagers seem to be apathetic about everything, we want to see students living on purpose! And they are!
- We have one student feeding fellow students who have no meals on the weekends. She has never met the people she feeds, but continues to provide meal packs!
- We have students hosting Bible Studies IN THEIR SCHOOLS on a weekly basis! (We did a breakout session at Launch and had even more students step up to begin these!)
- We have students initiating prayer times before their respective sports or activities.
How are you helping students live on mission? How have you seen students stand up and embrace our collective mission to make disciples? Comment below!
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David Hanson: Texas native, Texas Tech Red Raider, M.Div. at Truett Seminary, husband to Ashley, father to Ava & Ben, Student Pastor at LifePoint Church in Plano, Tx, table tennis (ping-pong) extraordinaire, addicted to coffee. For anything else…you’ll just have to ask.
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by David Hanson | Aug 19, 2014 | The Youth Ministry Blog
Whew! I don’t know about you, but Summer 2014 has been a whirlwind of youth ministry activity! Camps, mission trips, lunches, hang outs, discipleship, multi-site, etc. It has been nuts, and I am stoked to get back into a routine…if that exists in youth ministry! I am also excited to get back to blogging. It is downright impossible, at least for me, to prioritize blogging during youth ministry summers. Something’s got to give and it sure isn’t going to be my family time or ministry time! I’m only human people! But here is what I’ve been up to…I’m sure you can relate!
1. Preacher Man – I began the summer by preaching at a camp for FBC Amarillo. I had a blast getting to exhort students at “Breakaway” at Camp Table Rock in Missouri (beautiful place!). If there was ever a student ministry that I was prepared to speak to, it was this one. This was my home church for 18 years, so it was an honor to join them and Bradley Maybin who has faithfully pastored the student ministry at FBC for 10+ years! (Side note: Go check out The Gladsome Light if you are looking for a band. They are fantastic!
2. Camp Time – A week after I returned from preaching at a summer camp, I took my students to summer camp. We have attended LifeWay’s Fuge Camp for the past three years in Glorieta, NM. This year was the best yet! The folks who run Camp Eagle bought the camp grounds in Glorieta from the SBC, and have really invested in taking the camp grounds to the next level. (Side Note: Go to camp with your youth pastor friends and their student ministries. It makes camp THAT much more fun! I went again this year with Brandon Weir, The Fellowship Round Rock, and Kyle Ogle, Champion Fellowship.)
3. Haiti – Our student ministry sent two teams to Haiti this summer to visit an orphan village that our church, LifePoint Church, supports. It was extra special because these are OUR kids. In partnership with The Global Orphan Project, our church has “adopted” a church and orphanage in Haiti, so it was special to see 1) our tithe money at work, and 2) orphans I’ve prayed for before ever stepping foot in Haiti.
4. Discipleship & Fun – The summer has also been filled with a weekly discipleship program we have titled “Infused.” We brand it as as seminary for teenagers and are relentless in our attempts to take students deep. We spent an hour and fifteen minutes in teaching and discussion, and students kept coming back! We know that investing in the maturity of our students will pay out greatly in the long run. And sure, we played a little 4-Square Volleyball and Spikeball afterward, it wasn’t ALL business.
It was a GREAT summer! And now I look forward to the start of our weekly Small Groups and our back to school conference we put on every year entitled “Launch,” where we amp students up about living out their faith on the mission field they know as school. (You will see more posts about this in the near future.) Until then, you can go check out my Instagram if you want the play-by-play of my summer, @davidhanson1.
I pray that your summer has been full of His presence and the expansion of the kingdom!
David
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David Hanson: Texas native, Texas Tech Red Raider, M.Div. at Truett Seminary, husband to Ashley, father to Ava & Ben, Student Pastor at LifePoint Church in Plano, Tx, table tennis (ping-pong) extraordinaire, addicted to coffee. For anything else…you’ll just have to ask.
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by David Hanson | Jun 24, 2014 | The Youth Ministry Blog
On Mondays throughout the summer, we have P.I.E. (People Interested in Eating). Yesterday we went to Canes and I had the chance to dine with a group of soon-to-be Freshmen. During our conversations I learned about two things, one serious, one dumb.
1. Parents are tracking students.
I have no clue how we arrived on the topic, but I had a 10-minute conversation with two girls about how their parents track their every move. What was most shocking was the fact that neither were upset with this situation. They both expressed comfort in the fact that someone was looking out for them.
Ways to track students:
Life360 App
Find My Friends App
What are your thoughts on parents tracking students? Is this a way for helicopter parents to thrive?
2. Crack Kid Vine Compilations
I was speechless after watching a few of these…take your pick! But then get back to work.
It’s amazing the things you learn when sharing a meal with teenagers! Try it…weekly…and ask lots of questions!
[guestpost]David Hanson: Texas native, Texas Tech Red Raider, M.Div. at Truett Seminary, husband to Ashley, father to Ava & Ben, Student Pastor at LifePoint Church in Plano, Tx, table tennis (ping-pong) extraordinaire, addicted to coffee. For anything else…you’ll just have to ask.[/guestpost]
by David Hanson | Jun 23, 2014 | The Youth Ministry Blog
We’ve all been there. We tell a student to meet us at a certain time. We arrive early just in case. They arrive late just because. There can easily be 30 minutes to an hour of idle time waiting for appointments in ministry.
My first instinct to to pull out my phone and check my social media feeds (but I just did that 10 minutes ago, so nothing really has happened since then). My second instinct is to play a game on my phone. I tend to lean toward quick puzzles.
What if we turned those idle minutes into productive moments? Instead of turning to social media time wastes we could knock a few things off our to do list. Here are a few things I do when I am waiting for a student to show up:
1. Write a blog post! I’m currently writing this on my phone in a mall food court. With note apps it’s really easy to get some writing done.
2. Do some ethnography. In other words people watch. Thanks to Adam Mclane for challenging me to make observations of the people in my community. What do people wear or carry with them? What shopping bags are they carrying? What conversations do you hear? These are all great tools for lesson illustrations and cultural observation.
3. Make some needed phone calls. Is there an event you need to book for? Is there a person who needs a call back? Use your idle time to check these off your list.
4. Read/Memorize scripture. Duh! This is a no brainer. Fill your time by filling your mind with the scripture. It’s one thing we can easily neglect in our busy schedule, but we shouldn’t.
5. Do graphics work. Last October David Hausknecht introduced me to two apps called Over and Phoster. He uses them to make slides and cool Instagram photos.
There you have it. It’s time to make idle time into productive time. My student just showed up so I better get going…
[guestpost]Kevin Libick is a Middle School Pastor living in Fort Worth, TX with his wife Kara and her two cats. He is a novice banjo picker and expert Hawaiian food eater. Kevin loves to connect with other youth workers and equip them to live out their calling in God’s Kingdom. Kevin loves to connect with and empower youth workers. Connect with Kevin on Twitter: @kevinlibick[/guestpost]
by David Hanson | Jun 19, 2014 | The Youth Ministry Blog, Theology
One of my students and I are walking through Wayne Grudem’s Systematic Theology. Each week we read a chapter and then discuss specific doctrine and how it is applicable to our life and faith. We are only 200 pages into this 1,200 page beast, but plan to finish before he graduates in 2 years.
Our topic of discussion this past week was focused on God’s communicable attributes (attributes we share with God), and more specifically God’s spirituality and invisibility.
Gruden’s definition of spirituality:
“God’s spirituality means that God exists as a being that is not made of any matter, has no parts or dimensions, is unable to be perceived by our bodily senses, and is more excellent than any other kind of existence.”
Gruden’s definition of invisibility:
“God’s invisibility means that God’s total essence, all of his spiritual being, will never be able to be seen by us, yet God still shows himself to us though visible, created things.”
These two topics lead to great discussion about how we think of God and how we worship God in his fullness. For most of my life, I just pictured God as and old man with a huge grey beard and an intense look in his eyes. The student I was meeting with admitted that he only thinks about Jesus, and hadn’t given much thought to the appearance of the Father. Which isn’t the worst thing in that “Jesus is “the image of the invisible God” (Col. 1:15), and is “the bright radiance of the glory of God” and is “the exact representation of his nature” (Heb. 1:3).”
But it starts to mess with your brain when you think about the vastness of God, how we will never see Him in his fullness, in that we will always operate in one place and time where God is omnipresent and for Him to be fully present in one place means He would not be present in others.
I can tell this idea even messes with a great mind like Grudem. You can hear the wonder in his statement that “…we must say that God is spirit. Whatever this means, it is a kind of existence that is unlike anything else in creation.”
Application to Youth Ministry
So how do we talk about God to students? How do we describe what is indescribable? How do we define what is undefinable or even attempt to convey what is unmeasurable? Answer: Intentionally and faithfully. May we not limit the God we convey to students, but may we be diligent in conveying different parts of his nature, character, and love, that students might see, if only in part, the vastness and greatness of God.
Two ways to talk about God:
1. The names of God: In Scripture we see God called by different names, each of which reveal something about his nature. Here is a great list and study from Blue Letter Bible: Names of God (Also a great resource for studying scripture!)
2. Analogies or descriptions of God from Scripture: (Instead of recreating the list, here is what Grudem gives us in his Systematic Theology)
Click to enlarge.
[guestpost]David Hanson: Texas native, Texas Tech Red Raider, M.Div. at Truett Seminary, husband to Ashley, father to Ava & Ben, Student Pastor at LifePoint Church in Plano, Tx, table tennis (ping-pong) extraordinaire, addicted to coffee. For anything else…you’ll just have to ask.[/guestpost]
