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Live Curriculum: Part 4 Real Life

February 17, 2012 by · Leave a Comment

If you can’t tell…I LOVE LIVE CURRICULUM!   And no Matty did not pay me a dime to say that….But seriously you cannot go wrong with this curriculum.  Take a look back at my posts for this series and you will see how great it can be for your church and your ministry.  And over the next couple years, it will transform your ministry.

For me it was a great kickoff for small groups in both churches that I have used it for.  It was very easy for me to start and hand off to my adult small group leaders.  It took very little training for me to get them going.  At both churches, the students got on board really quick.  And they both loved it.   It went from boring typical curriculum to great real life conversations.  And with the variety we used it also for our Sunday School material as well.

But my favorite part of my LIVE story is that I have seen it change one adult’s life in particular.   Two years ago I was preaching on youth sunday at my former church on “There’s an APP for that” and I pleaded that we needed help in our middle school sunday school class.  As you know, getting someone to teach middle school sunday school is more than a task…its a special calling.   I really wasn’t sure if the pulpit was the way to ask for help on this, but I figured why not.  And after the service was over I had one of my parents who I played softball with tell me that he was interested.  I had already known that this guy had a past and was just getting back into church.  He was also already on my radar for a possible volunteer, but there was no way I wanted to run him off by throwing him into teaching middle schoolers!    So he asked how hard it was…And I told him it wasn’t tough if he had a computer a love for middle schoolers!

The next week he stopped by and I walked him through the calendar of lessons and how to print things out.  And he was sold!  I was still very hesitant, but decided that I would give him a try here…So off he went!  A month later I had several other middle school parents tell me how excited they were that their middle school students were enjoying sunday school and that their students were coming home telling what they had learned.   A few weeks after that my volunteer stopped by my office and thanked me for giving him the opportunity to get back in church and help with the youth group that he had grown up in.  He went on tell me about his divorce and several other things from his past few years.   He explained to me that this opportunity to teach brought him back to God!

Now almost two years later he is a very strong leader in the church and in the youth ministry.   I’m very thankful that LIVE was an instrument into helping my friend find his calling in volunteering but more importantly changing his and the students lives.

Give Matty a call and see how LIVE can change your group!

Filed Under: church, Friends, God, technology, Uncategorized, Youth Ministry, Youth Ministry Ideas · Tagged: , , , ,

Live Curriculum Part 3:

February 16, 2012 by · Leave a Comment

There are so many great benefits to LIVE Curriculum.  As I stated in my previous blogs on LIVE, the possibilities for your group(s) are endless.  So let’s start off simple, if you just purchase the high school plan…That gives you 4 years worth of material.  Now if you add JR High, you have 6 years of planning taken care of for your students for whatever venue you decided to use it.  On top of that you can add Books of the Bible and have another 2 years of material.   But here is the really cool benefit…Are you ready?  Simply LIVE is in the process of working on Children’s and College Curriculum to their sets of options to be released in the next year!  SO now you can team up with your Children’s pastor and have Curriculum plan that builds upon each other through your entire church.

Another great benefit, that I like to point out is that there is only one type of theology in LIVE….its JESUS!  Its not Calvinist, not Pentecostal, Liberal, Reformed, or Wesleyan…Its Jesus!  Matty will call from time to time and ask me to give someone a call who has a question about the theology of LIVE from someone who works at at Methodist Church.  I’m glad that some people actually think about that before they buy their material of any sorts instead of just buying the greatest and latest item out in the youth ministry curriculum world.   So bottom line is that, its safe and its great for whatever church you work for!

I love how the team at LIVE is always taking suggestions and always updating the curriculum.   There is an area in each lesson where you can leave feedback for their team.  You can tell them of video clip you used or any other add on and they will look at it and will update their lessons.  This is great because as the years go by, they will always be relevant.  LIVE looks into the future and just will not be another irrelevant curriculum that we all used to use.

So what else can I say…

Well if you are a techie, there are some really cool things.  You can access the site from your smart phone or tablet.  If you have an iPad or iPhone, there’s an APP for that!  We use the APP to present our lesson.  But you can also print the lesson.   All the lessons are available on PDF and Word form, so you can download it to almost any device.

LIVE is LIFE CHANGING!   Its life changing for not only students but also the adults who teach it.   Tomorrow I will close out this series on LIVE with how LIVE has changed lives in our students and adults.  LIVE is an amazing tool that shapes the story of God in so many ways!

 

 

Filed Under: church, forms, Friends, God, just sayin, misc, stuff, technology, UMC, Uncategorized, Volunteers, Youth Ministry, Youth Ministry Ideas · Tagged: , , , , , ,

Live Curriculum Part II: the Format

February 14, 2012 by · Leave a Comment

LIVE Curriculm is made for YOU and YOUR GROUP.  If you decide to use it as your Youth Lesson, Sunday School Lesson, Small Group Setting, Adult Leadership, Student Leadership, College Ministry, Adult Sunday School or Adult Small Group setting…it works!  The best part about live is that you can customize it to fit YOUR GROUP’S needs!  You can make it as simple as you want or as in depth as you want.  You can be a first time substitute teacher or a twenty year veteran!

So the Lesson assignments are pretty straightforward and if you have plenty of choices.  If you go the High School route, you have 4 years of lessons!  And you can pick and choose.  You just click on the date you want to add a lesson, then click through the lesson selection screen and it to the appropriate calendar(s).  This is great if you have several groups going over the same material.  For our group, we have three types of groups that meet.  We are currently using Books of the Bible for our Small Groups on Wednesday nights, High School Curriculum for our High School Sunday School Classes, and Jr. High Curriculum for our Middle School Sunday School Class.

The really great thing is that you can go into each lesson and edit it to the needs of your group.  You can rearrange the format for the need of each group.  And you even add more questions, mixers, video clips, or whatever you need for the learning needs of your group.  You can even divide it in half if you don’t have the time.  Like I said earlier, it is up to you on how you want to teach it for the needs of your group!

This includes:

1. LEADER PREPARATION

  • LESSON OVERVIEW
  • LESSON OBJECTIVES:  The What, Why, and How
  • PRIMARY SCRIPTURE
  • SECONDARY SCRIPTURES
  • TEACHING PREP:  The short overview below is designed to help you prepare for your lesson. While you may not want to convey this information word-for-word with your teenagers, you’ll definitely want to refer to it as you lead.
  • THE BEFORE & AFTER   
    • Text Message Questions: They
    • provide a couple of different text message questions to send out to your students prior to your meeting. Feel free to use one or both of the questions below. As with the rest of the curriculum, edit these questions to fit the needs of your ministry.

    Parent Email:  They provide you with an email below that you can send to your parents following the lesson. Our hope is to encourage parents to continue the conversation at home. Feel free to edit and customize the email to fit your ministry needs.

  • 2.   LESSON GUIDE
  • GETTING THINGS STARTED [optional]
  • Before your meeting, send a text message or email (as listed above) to your students asking them to bring an item that reflects something they love. It may be an iPod that represents their love for music, a picture of their family, or a baseball glove to reflect their love for baseball.
  •  TEACHING POINTS
  • The goal of the Teaching Points is to help students capture the essence of each lesson with more discussion and less lecture-style teaching. The main points we have chosen here are (1) We are created in God’s image, (2) We reflect God’s love more by what we do that by what we say, (3) We reflect God’s love by putting others’ needs first, and (4) Accept the responsibility of reaching the people God has given you today.  Remember: All throughout these lessons, it’s up to you to choose (1) how many questions you use, and (2) the wording of the main points—keep ours, or change the wording to make it clearer for your students.
  •  ****SAY SOMETHING LIKE: I Love this!  They give your volunteers help here!  They help fill the awkward moments by giving them something to say!
  • ADDITIONAL DISCUSSION [optional]
  • SUMMARY
  • End your lesson here. Provide your teenagers with a quick summary or take-home challenge based on (1) the content of this lesson, (2) the dialogue that took place during the lesson, (3) your understanding of the issues and struggles your teenagers are facing, and (4) the big picture of your youth ministry and what your leadership team wants accomplished with the teaching and discussion time.
  •  
  • FOR KEEPS [MEMORY VERSE]
  • Encourage and challenge your teenagers to memorize the verse below.

 

 

And it doesn’t stop there!  You can even add your own lessons!  There is a great feature of File Upload.  You upload your word document or pdf and add it to your calendar.

And if you have no clue what you are doing, just go to the Help tab and watch the videos to help you walk through everything!  If you still can’t get it…just call Matty!  He’s a great help!  Or you can just call me!  I’ve actually helped several people walk through things…but really its not that hard!  The sky is the limit with LIVE!

Right now they offer 4 years of High School, 2 Years of JR High, 60 weeks of Adult and Student Leadership, 72 weeks of the Bible, several video series…and that’s just the beginning.  They are in the process of working on Children’s Curriculum and College Curriculum!   But in the mean time you can still use and customize any of the others for your group.  At my current church we have used the Books of the Bible for our College Small groups!  So take a test drive today and give Matty a call!

 

Filed Under: church, God, technology, UMC, Volunteers, Youth Ministry, Youth Ministry Ideas · Tagged: , , , , , , ,

Live Curriculum Part I

February 13, 2012 by · 2 Comments

 

Back in 2009 I was walking around the NYWC exhibit hall when I first took a real look at Simply Youth Ministry’s Live Curriculum.  I had received a few post cards and flyers in the mail about it from SYM, but had not had the chance to take the time to look at the free demo.  I walked up to the SYM/Group exhibit area and met a guy named Matt McCage.  I soon found out that I was already following him on twitter.  We struck up a great conversation and my buddy was trying to get him to get Doug Field’s cell phone number.  After the joking was over, I asked Matty to tell me more about this new Curriculum.  He told me at that time they had one year of lessons complete, with all the online resources necessary to start and that they would be releasing the next 3 years worth in the upcoming months.  And then he told me the price…$499!  Yes it is was four years of High School Sunday School or Small Group Curriculum…but $499 that was a little out of my league.  Then he mentioned that if we bought it there at NYWC we would get Media Shout 4 (the newest version) for free as a conference only deal!  I knew that my church was about to purchase it anyways for $399!  So basically I would get four years worth of small group/Sunday school material for $100!!!  YES PLEASE!

So after returning home from SYMC I called an adult meeting to talk about this new curriculum.  My adults really loved the idea of everything being online and how when I planned it out they could just log in and get their lesson for the week and print it out.  They also loved that part, because if they needed to be out of town or was sick, they could easily give their substitute quick access to the lessons. They were sold quicker than I was!  To be honest I didnt really even look at everything, because I was more interested in the fact that we got the new Media Shout 4 included.

But as I started to schedule the Winter/Spring 2010 semester, I started to dive into the format and the unique style of LIVE.  It was a very solid Bible based curriculum that anybody could pick up and use.  The online website had so many features I didn’t know where to begin.  I gave Matty a call and asked him to walk me through it.  Matty was so great!  He spent about an hour that first call and helped me set up my lessons and explained everything.  In all my years of ministry  I had never received not only the technical support, but the personal investment that Matty gave to me.

Over the next week I will be going through LIVE Curriculum here and give you the highlights, the perks, stories from the trenches, and more!   If you haven’t tried LIVE yet, go over to their website and give it a try.  And then give Matty a call!

 

Filed Under: church, God, Monday Ministry Tip, technology, UMC, Youth Ministry, Youth Ministry Ideas · Tagged: , , , , , , ,

Simply Youth SoulCare

February 10, 2012 by · Leave a Comment

 

 

This past fall I saw a tweet about a new ministry by Simply Youth called Soul Care.  I took a look at the site and thought it was an area that has been needed in youth ministry for the longest time.  Over the past six months I’ve had to deal with several things in ministry and in my personal life that I was unsure where to go to for answers, prayer, an ear to listen, and advice.  One night in September after praying for several hours about a difficult situation in ministry I was dealing with I opened up twitter on my iPhone and saw a tweet from @SYMsoulcare .  It was asking for any prayer requests.  So I sent a DM to them and had a response within a few minutes.  The next day I filled out the form and got a call from one of my friends who is a big part of SYM Soul Care and talked to him about the situation.  It was great to have an ear outside of my everyday circle to listen to what was going on.  It was even more encouraging with the followup and knowing so many were praying for me and my situation.

Since that time I have leaned on SYM soul care for several ministry and personal situations.   On their site, SYM Soul Care describes their ministry as:

Everyone experiences highs & lows in life & ministry, and sometimes it can feel like there is no “safe place” to turn when things get tough. But you’re not alone. Simply Soul Care is a new ministry outreach from Group & Simply Youth Ministry that offers youth workers free, confidential pastoral support when you need it. It’s like “urgent care” for a youth worker’s heart & soul! This ministry first began onsite as “the Shelter” at the Simply Youth Ministry Conference, and we’ve realized the need extends outside the conference walls all year long.

Like I described in one of my situations back in September, they go above and beyond the call in a much needed area.  Thanks to this amazing group of people!  They have been a light during a few dark and confusing times over the past few months.  They are more than just a text, an email, or phone call.  They are a network of prayer warriors that are Kingdom minded!  I’m very glad to have them in youth ministry.  It is a long overdue ministry that is and has been needed.  I look back at the last fourteen plus years of ministry and wished they would have been there for other times.

I’m a strong believer in prayer and helping others build up the body of Christ.  If you are going through something personally or professionally in youth ministry, don’t care the burden yourself.  Take a moment and go to their site and fill out the form.  You will not regret it.  And if you are going to SYMC next month be sure to join the Facebook group to connect with them while you are there.  And if you are going to SYMC leave a comment below or shoot me a message on here, twitter @uscerock , or Facebook.  I would love to catch up with you there!

 

Filed Under: church, Current Affairs, God, Personal Care, Prayer, Soul Care, Youth Ministry, Youth Ministry Ideas · Tagged: , , , , , , , ,
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