From 1 Corinthians
I am a fool. A weak fool. I am not of noble birth nor influential. I have not much about which to boast – save Jesus Christ. 1 Corinthians reminds me that at have no cause for pride. I have done nothing to earn the assurance I own. It is easy to forget that outside of Jesus we are worthless, that we deserve death and hell.
From the Gospel of Mark
The Gospel According to Mark, finding itself among the Synoptic Gospels is predictably similar to the Gospel of Matthew. Reading the Gospel of Mark this week I found my attention captured by chapter 5. Here Jesus and his lot have landed a boat only to find a demon-possessed man. This man had been tormented for a long time. The townspeople knew him well, and if verse 4 is any indication they were troubled by this individual. He was someone who frightened them, someone they shielded their children from. The people had tried chains and irons to control the man to no avail.
Loving Difficult Students from ym360blog
Great post over at youthministry360.com by Vickie Greatwood about dealing with students with behavior problems. If you have been in youth ministry for any amount of time, no doubt you have had one (or more) of these kids in your group. Here is a portion of the article, be sure and click over for its entirety.
“In youth ministry you encounter many different students with many different backgrounds. Sometimes you may get students that exhibit difficult behaviors. But in so many cases, this acting out is in response to things that are going on in their personal life.
While it can be extremely challenging to deal with these behaviors, the compassion and patience you demonstrate might be the most positive influence in the student’s life.
It’s vital that you are the one who is the source of love and encouragement. But, that doesn’t mean it’s easy! How can we deal with keeping our cool in the midst of some of these rough behaviors? Aside from lots of prayer, here are some helpful things that can offer you hope in working through those difficult behaviors with your students.”
Read more at http://ow.ly/5dZSw
Student Ministry Outreach Strategies
We are gearing up to launch a student outreach program within our student ministry. We will be having converstations with other ministries that have been successfully doing student outreach for some time, and are eager to hear what has worked for them and what has not. Do you have a formal outreach strategy in your church or student ministry? What has worked for you?
Keeping track of our student ministry
FOR MY FIRST FEW YEARS IN STUDENT MINISTRY I admittedly struggled with keeping up with student data. How long has it been since we’ve seen so and so? Do we have a current address on this kid? Did anyone get a head-count at tonight’s service? I brainstormed this strategy and that, but nothing ever worked really well…
PLEASE WELCOME TO THE STAGE YOUTHTRACKER.NET. This is a completely web-based service which allows tracking of student data in ways that I could never accomplish on my own. Because it is web-based, there is no software to install, and your data can be accessed via any computer with an internet connection. I have even taken attendance with my iPhone at remote events!
youthtracker.net
For years I have toggled between contact information on hand-written “hard copies” of student info cards and data entered in address book on my Mac. It’s amazing how many times someone’s handwriting has rendered an address illegible. “Is that a seven?” “What is that street name?” No more! With YOUTHTRACKER.NET students simply type in their information, and there it is. No more deciphering. Also great is the fact that all my student data is virtually always at my fingertips. Let’s be honest, there is no such thing as 9 to 5 ministry, and every pastor I know finds himself working here and there in what was intended to be “off time.” No more late night trips to the office to grab addresses for mailers that must go out tomorrow. Granted, many people are successfully using Outlook or Address Book or some other resource, but in YOUTHTRACKER.NET everything is contained in one page for each student: family names, emergency contacts, dad’s cell number, t-shirt size, facebook, email, event attendance, recent spiritual decisions, event account balances. This service will even allow students to make payments for event registrations online!
youthtracker.net sign in screen
Perhaps one of my favorite features of YOUTHTRACKER.NET is the student sign-in feature. We have a “check-in” table as students enter our youth room, complete with a computer logged into YOUTHTRACKER.NET. Kids just type their name, and they are signed into the event, or if they are a new student, they are prompted to enter their info to create a new account. We have another computer in our sound booth that we use to send YOUTHTRACKER.NET to the screen onstage, and we use another cool feature which will randomly select a student who is signed in to the current event. Game contestants made simple! This also has an ulterior motivation to encourage kids to sign in. They always sign in because they want to play the game!
What about cost? When I was shopping around for a software resource to help me on the administrative end of youth ministry, I saw several price tags in the few hundred dollars neighborhood. YOUTHTRACKER.NET is a subscription, and we are currently paying just $19.99 a month. I know, in a year or so the pay-once software is eventually cheaper, but for me, $19.99 a month is a much easier sell than a $400.00 upfront cost. Plus I love the flexibility of knowing I can change services if this no longer suits our needs, although I really expect to be using YOUTHTRACKER.NET for years to come.
delighted to share. 