Last night, our create photography group created this video. The idea behind create is for the youth to be able to use their talents and gifts to “create” something that can be used in the church. That said, you might be seeing a more significant stopmotion project coming soon. Stopmotion is:
Stop-motion (also known as stop-action or frame-by-frame) is an animation technique to make a physically manipulated object appear to move on its own. [WIKIPEDIA]
This first one was kind of fun, and the two 6th graders I had last night enjoyed seeing their project from start to finish in under 30 minutes!
JM already posted about our time with Doug Murren last week. Another point he made stuck out to me — especially after hearing it twice [I also spent Tuesday with Doug at Fairview at River Club in Fredericksburg, and he told the story in both contexts].
Doug said that a few years back, they studied assimilation/visitor follow-up in two different style churches. One church had a 12-step follow-up process, and the other church did nothing. Doug found that both churches assimilated the same number of visitors. Why? Because 85% of people who visit a church already have a relationship with somebody in that church. When they visit, the assimilation is dependent upon the pre-existing connection. Some stay, others do not.
Last Monday, Kara Powell at Fuller Youth Institute also posted about 85%. She writes that Dr. Christian Smith at the National Study of Youth and Religion recently published a book where he says “that 85% of those 18-23 who have ever made a commitment to God did so before age 14.” That makes me even more excited about LSM at Gayton!
Also last Monday, I stopped in at Ukrop’s for a quick grocery shopping trip. Their Monday sale item was 85% beef. [this really has nothing to do with the other two points, aside from referencing 85%].
My 1st summer at Gayton is almost in the books. Really, it feels like summer is already over. We’re in the advent of Gayton Youth 2.0, and I can finally feel the excitement building around us. I’m even excited now! It took some time this summer to get past the busyness of the mission trip, and now that we’re a month past the trip, I finally feel like I’ve kicked it into gear. But before we get too far ahead, a look back at the summer (a la Kurt):
It’s really hard to maintain the typical year-round ministries during the summer. I liked what Tim Schmoyer wrote about this at the beginning of the summer (here and here). Keeping up the rhythm, the planning, the energy, the excitement, is so hard. With so many vacations, family trips and camps during these months, keeping our regular programming up is more of a downer than a benefit. I think we need to revisit this next summer: increase relationships, decrease programs. Which leads to my second thought…and third thought…
Our girls middle school Bible study is a classic example — with great leadership from our interns, it thrived this summer. This was my first experience leading interns, and I hope they took as much out of the summer as they put into it.
I think our Sunday night youth group experiences could have been better served in a more relational context, but instead we tried to keep our traditional Sunday night programming going. It didn’t work.
The justice journey to Red Springs, NC was all I had hoped it would be for our youth. With 87 youth and 27 adults, we spent a week in this small town, and it was great. There are always some hiccups with a group of that size, but from our Reflection Night last week, the youth truly experienced relationships with new people that week. During our prep/training season before the experience, we used Deep Justice Journeys from YS/FYI. This was something we’ve tried to pull off a few times, and Kara, Brad and the FYI crew pulled it off. It was a great leadership resource.
Now, it’s September 1 and the start of school is a week away. I can’t wait to see how 2.0 kicks off and gets rolling. There are a lot of growing edges, but I think we’re in a good place right now to start. As our mantra has become, it’s a process…
Following up on Kurt’s 5 Super Cheap Summer Ideas, I figured I would share the little bit of ingenuity we have come up with this summer @ Gayton.
Starting after school gets out, we will roll out $10 Tuesdays with our middle schoolers. Mondays are when our middle school Bible studies (guys and girls) will be meeting; Wednesdays are swim meet days; Thursdays are, well, Thursdays; and Fridays are almost the weekend. So Tuesdays won.
What are $10 Tuesdays? A great time to hang out with the middle schoolers: sometimes a meal, sometimes a game, sometimes a mission project. Always fun and never more than $10.
I know churches have full-fledged studios, high-tech cameras, lighting gear and a video production staff. We don’t. But we do have:
Following up on Kurt’s