Making Bigger Asks
Don’t feel like reading? Then listen to this post instead! Or subscribe to my podcast for more audio versions of my blog posts! SUBSCRIBE One of the best things we can do to help a kid experience community is to give them a small group leader who knows them,...Every Kid Needs a Champion
I watched an incredible TED Talk last week. Maybe you’ve seen it, maybe you haven’t. Either way, it’s worth (another) watch. Rita Pierson is an educator, but the ideas she talks about here are way bigger than just tactics to help kids learn. I heard...My Soapbox Rant About Empowering Volunteers
Yesterday I gave you some of my favorite snippets and takeaways from the 2013 Middle School Ministry Campference. I hope you checked it out because, seriously, there was a heck of a lot of goodness in those notes.
Now, to keep the Campference conversation going, I want to tell you about a little Campference tradition that I got to be a part of this year: the Soapbox Sessions. Apparently, every year, Marko asks a handful of Campference people to give quick little 5-minute “soapbox rants” in response to this question:
“What is one thing you wish every middle school youth worker would stop doing, or start doing, or understand?”
And, this year, he asked me to get in on it.
So here’s my response, inspired by my 5-minute Campference Soapbox Rant.
11 Must-Have Small Group Supplies
When Kenny and I aren’t doing Stuff You Can Use, we’re doing Middle School Ministry at an awesome church in Buffalo, NY. It’s pretty fun. We’re learning a lot, we’re trying a lot, and part of the reason this blog exists is so we can share with you some of our experiences and experiments. Maybe some things we share will spark something really genius in your ministry context. That’s what we’re up to in today’s post.
One of our personal core philosophies in ministry is this: in everything we do, we want to set up our Small Group Leaders to win with their students. In every aspect of ministry, we want to give our Small Group Leaders every opportunity and resource they need to be successful. Because they’re the heart and hands of what we do.
One of the ways we’ve tried to do that has been to create a Small Group Leader Supply Station. It’s sort of a one-stop shop for anything and everything our Small Group Leaders (or SGL’s) might need. Today, we wanted to give you a peek at it!