Could it be expantiated on?

Honestly, that sounds like a good message to me!

I used to attend that church when I was in seminary. I loved IBC! I make it a point to go back there whenever I'm in town.

A great practical and insightful plan with ideas!

Great Resource. Thanks for sharing :)

Good suggestions, although I think he missed the most important one: prayer. A close second is vision.

hi, i'm the co-founder/ceo of phonevite, mentioned above. one of the reasons i started it with my co-founder (who worked with me in a previous start-up that was the fastest-growing, largest voip web service) was to make my life easier as a youth group leader communicating with my group - lol. and it's really satisfying, at times emotional, to see phonevite used by hundreds of churches and youth groups across america today. glory to God for adding his super to our natural~ john@phonevite.com youth director, new hope community church of l.a. (hollywood, ca)

I have been dealing with this a lot lately and will probably write something over the summer about it as I prepare for my thesis. These are some great reminders. I recently sat through some teaching of Chris Folmsbee and he shared this information with us. Youth minister at best get 50 hours a year with there students Parents get at best 2000 hours a year with their teen. I am researching the idea that maybe we need to start equipping parents better to minister to their child. Just some thoughts.

Be VERY careful with link sharing. Google is very good a picking up on it and will penalize your page rank if it thinks you're doing it. A better way to earn incoming links: provide content that good enough for people to actually WANT to link to it on their own initiative.

Great find! Thanks for sharing!

there is a realization as well that this post has been up 11 days and we only have 7 comments on it. I think that helps us understand that we are out doing ministry not just sitting online discussing it.

there's nothing at all wrong with healthy conversation about ministry. That's why there is a comment box. Without coversation the church would be in a world of hurt. But I'm glad you've joined the discussion!

Not to down the conversation, but I think the time thats been spent talking about this might be put to better use praying & thinking & talking about ways that we can disciple young people and share the gospel with them. You know, things that actually matter. Don't mean to sound negative but someone had to say it.

I believe that all people who claim christianity should be offended by anything being offered from a group who "glorifies" sexual abuse, lustful thoughts and degrades the human body claiming to be Christian. It is time for the world to see a difference in the Body of Christ and for the Body of Christ to be a seperate people as the Word of God has told us to be.....

i am voting Barack

Mostly good ideas, although some are kinda outdated. Messages boards are so 1998 and paying for advertising is mostly pointless if you don't have a product you're trying to sell to earn cash.

I agree with the youth culture part.

Typical overarching stereotypes and biased views of how Christians should vote.

The authors of the New Testament are constantly reminding us that we are family (brothers and sisters, God as our father, Jesus as our brother, etc)..so I think there is a precedent for having a familial tone to our ministry. They also use the teacher/student relationship (disciple/rabbi, etc.). I think "student" ministry better describes what the overall ministry is about, yet referring to each of the individuals as students has the potential to send the an unintended message to the teens (we are here to teach you...instead of we are here to teach you and care for you and help you along this spiritual journey). Again, by no means am I advocating for the term "kids" to be used...but I like relational terminology. However, I don't know what would work without sounding cult-ish.

my question to Nikomas is this, where do you seperate your family from the ministry? My personal children do not like it and actually call me on it when I refer to my students as my kids. They often already feel like they are being robbed of me so much by the church and then to have who they are be robbed as well to is not really worth the title "my kids." I do agree that we want to create the familial feel of ministry but am not sure that I want to replace my family with the students at the church.

If you are not sure why we call them "Generation Y", check out this link: http://bp0.blogger.com/_BEP6yBcOVuk/SCRxnDlSMeI/AAAAAAAAAJQ/2gH6FsWwIWg/s1600-h/Gen+Y.bmp

On the flip side, when I hear some say "my kids" it has a familial undertone, indicating a close relationship. I think teens like that. Not the term "kids", but the familial undertone. When I hear someone say "my students" I don't sense the relationship so much as I sense "this person learns from me in a classroom setting" I think teens want to feel like they are more than just recipients of our knowledge. Instead of being called Pastor by your boss, imagine being introduced as "This is Joe, he learns from me."

I do think the language we use is very important, but saying student in my opinion says we think of you as higher than a teenager because even college students are often referred to as students. I do hate it when adults refer to teenagers as kids, but the word student like tim said is like splitting hairs.

I watch almost every sermon podcast from LifeChurch.tv. They're excellent! Now a bunch of my sr. high kids do, too!

Yeah, one would hope, but reality is, that's just not the case. It's rare that people in church intentionally think about marketing. If anything, it's more like, "Jesus isn't a product that needs to be marketed."