#SYMC 2012 Final thoughts

March 8, 2012 by · Leave a Comment

Yesterday I shared some of my thoughts on SYMC mostly talking about the labs and seminars.  Today I want to continue with my final thoughts, even though I do not think I can ever put them down in words.

One of the main things that blew me away this past weekend was the main sessions.  The music of Shane & Shane and Tim Timmons was just truly pure worship.  There were no guitar solos or any comments by either group saying that a song was from their latest album.  They were there to worship with us and not put on a worship concert.  Too often at conferences, it has become more about the artists, their solos, them trying to dress and act to impress the audience.  But this past weekend I experienced the first authentic worship in a long long time at an event.  It was so refreshing for my soul and for my time away from the noise.  It allowed me to breathe in God.

I also really enjoyed the Skit Guys.  I have seen these two for years and own every DVD and almost every download video the have out.  But how they were this weekend, was just what I needed.  I have seen and watched several of the skits they performed over the weekend, but after being in authentic worship and transitioning to them I got more out of their skits than I ever have before.

The speakers this weekend were just amazing.  They covered every area that most of us youth workers are dealing with in our lives and ministries.  Talking with many fellow youth workers over the weekend they felt they same thing.  I just really loved watching them from a distance as outside of them on stage I saw them engage with youth workers, be in full worship, praying to the side, and not trying to be an “All-Star” “Super Star” main stage speaker.

Overall it was great to see the leadership of SYMC caring for youth workers. Kurt Johnston, Josh Griffin, Kami Gilmour, Matty McCage, Jake Rutenbar, Andy Brazleton, Rick Lawrence, Len Evans, and everyone else that is a part of leadership I want to thank you for being amazing and loving God and loving Youth workers.  You guys were real and it wasn’t about selling us anything or having vendors who were down our throat trying to sell us things.  It was all about taking care, encouraging, empowering, and getting to know us.  It was a fresh take on Conferences.  And almost think you should rename it the Simply Youth Workers Retreat.  Because that is what it really was.  It was a time for us to have our time being the campers more than it was being conference attendees!

Here is part of the email that I sent Matty McCage thanking him for inviting me to SYMC 2012.

It is so great to be part of something so authentic.  Between the amazing worship, talks that were perfect for anyone in their journey in ministry to seminars from youth workers in the trenches who were not about self promoting themselves or their products to being a part of soul care and mentoring younger youth workers.  It was truly the best conference/training/soulcare/time with God that I have experienced in 14 1/2 years of ministry. 

Over the past couple years I have lost my brother, my wife had a miscarriage, and at many times felt separated from the church.  During the past year at my new church I started to trust the church again.  And this past weekend put the icing in the cake with falling back in love with being in ministry.  I will never be able to repay you for your great friend or the invitation to SYMC but know I would if I could.  

And here is what I wrote to many of the leadership team of SYMC.

I want to thank all of you and your team for a great weekend at SYMC.  It was my first time ever going to SYMC. Matt McCage and I have known each other for over three years now and he has been trying to get me to come every since we met.  Last Fall, Matt talked me into going after talking up how great SYMC was.  I will let you know that going into the weekend I had very high expectations.  And you guys blew those expectations right out of the water!
I have been in ministry since I was a freshman in college.  I have been to many conferences from NYWC, Catalyst, YS One Day, Passion, and many one or two day trainings over these past 15 years.  I have been a seminar presenter and breakout group leader at many of them.  I have helped on design teams for UMC conference trainings.  I have been on both sides of all of this and I have never experienced what I did this past weekend.  

I talked with Matty on Sunday Night and Josh on Monday afternoon and the only word that summed up the weekend was Authentic!  
  • Authentic Worship
  • Authentic Speakers
  • Authentic Staff
  • Authentic Care
  • Authentic Leadership
  • Authentic Vision
I am very glad I finally listened to Matty and decided to come this past weekend.  I feel refreshed and have truly fallen in love with youth ministry…AGAIN!

I will  see you in Indy next March!!!

Filed Under: church, Friends, God, just sayin, Personal Care, Soul Care, UMC, Volunteers, Youth Ministry, Youth Ministry Ideas · Tagged: , , , , , , , , , ,

Day Four of #SYMC…

March 6, 2012 by · Leave a Comment

The last session at any ministry conference is always the smallest crowd.  A lot of people leave early due to travel, so the last session is typically more intimate.  And I’ve always stayed to end the for the part of any conference for that very reason.  I woke up early, packed, ordered breakfast, and was ready for the last morning of Simply Youth.  I decided to go to the JR High discussion panel for my last breakout time.  It was awesome to hear so many great ideas on games, fundraisers, curriculum, and other things.  I defiantly got my moneys worth for the entire weekend out of just this 90 minute discussion.  I then made my way to the Soul Care booth to say some goodbyes before grabbing a few of the sessions on DVD to take back to my volunteers.

Tim Timmons once again led some incredible worship during the last session.  That guy has a really cool sound and a big heart for God.  Rick Lawrence blew us all away with his amazing creativity even though most of us in the room acted like middle schoolers before he even started with our trash bag like object lesson.  He taught one of the simplest but greatest scriptures I’ve ever heard at a conference.  Amos 5:4, “SEEK GOD AND LIVE!”  Then Kurt Johnston closed out with helping us to learn how to embrace the mess.  We too often try to fit all our lives into four equal boxes, but in reality we just need to embrace it and go with it.

The is so much from this past weekend I tried to digest on the way home and sitting in airports all day.  I’m just still at “WOW” from this weekend.  I have attend numerous conferences and seminars in ministry over the past 15 years, but nothing has been authentic as what I experienced during these past four days.  God really worked on me this weekend.  I got more out of it than I could ever fathom.  And thats why I’ve already placed my $50 deposit down for next year.  During the next three days I’m going to sit down and reflect and blog about how this weekend just changed me, grew me, and renewed me.

Filed Under: church, God, Personal Care, Soul Care, UMC, Youth Ministry, Youth Ministry Ideas · Tagged: , , , , ,

First day at #SYMC 2012

March 4, 2012 by · Leave a Comment

Today was my first official day at SYMC 2012 and wow!!! I chose to do a pre-conference seminar with Rick Lawerence (editor of Group Magazine) on Sifted. And what a seminar it was! Rick is an amazing teacher and really helped all of us with his seminar. We started off by giving each other Indian Names. My partner was Tim Schmoyer and I gave him the name “Man from Youtube with Kingdom Visions”. Rick then showed us different clips from the Princess Bride and 60 minutes. We also had the chance to sift wheat. The breakout group time was a great time to share and learn not only more about ourselves but others. The journaling time really made me think and look at my relationship with God in a new light. It made me see more than I ever have on how much God was and is always there for me during rough times in my life. The most interesting part of the seminar was when I started receiving text messages from my wife, adult counselors, and other friends asking if we were okay. Evidently we were under a severe weather warning/watch. And about at that time the hotel alarm went off several times. At one point we were told we were under a Tornado watch/warning and had to move to one of the ballrooms. Luckily everything was okay and we were safe and went back to our session. I’m very thankful I experienced this class. I really enjoyed talking to Rick after the sessions. He is such a brilliant man and has such a huge passion for ministry and an amazing heart for GOD!

On a side note I really enjoyed getting to meet and know Tim Schmoyer face to face.   We have exchanged Facebook, emails, and tweets over the years and it was really great getting to know him and hear his story of where he is now in ministry.  Really cool to see and hear all the things he is doing!

Worship tonight was really great tonight.  I decided to go in by myself and not meet up with any of my friends that are here.   I got there early and rushed to the front. I ended up sitting by two guys from Texas.  It was really awesome to talk to them and hear their stories in ministry.  Worship with Shane and Shane was really authentic and fresh.  I always love to hear Shane and Shane live and love having them lead worship.  Francis Chan was the speaker tonight.  The first part of his talk I had heard when he spoke to just the leaders at Passion this year in Atlanta.  But the second half was really great.  It was a great challenge and a great reminder of the reason we are all in ministry here.

After worship, I went and had dinner with a longtime friend Jason.  It was really great to catch up with him.  He is such a great friend and brother to me.  Over the past 5 years he has been my conference buddy.  We always end up at the same conferences and it is a great time for us to catch up since we no longer live in the same state, even though we do talk every week on the phone.

After dinner, I went and previewed the upcoming movie Blue Like Jazz.  I read the book six years ago and loved it.   I had high expectations for this film and let me say that I was not let down.  The story, acting, score, and extras was beyond what I thought it would be.  Donald Miller did a great job translating his book into a script.  I really want to go back and read the book again after seeing the movie!  If you haven’t read the book, I highly recommend that you do before you see the movie when its released April 13th.

I finished the night by catching up with Jason and other UMC friends.  I just love how the United Methodist Church is so connectional.  We had a great time talking and then we were interrupted by a guy and his wife making a comment about my USC hat.  He was a Clemson grad.  So we then struck up a conversation and found out that were from South Carolina and Methodist.  We plan on meeting up to talk about some things later this weekend.

First day impressions…I’m blown away by SYMC.  Unlike other conferences I’ve been over the years, it is so laid back.  I want to say that I feel out of my comfort zone here.  All the other conferences I’ve been to have been in the Southeast, so I know many people and know what to expect.  But here I know like 5 people.  But it doesn’t matter, everyone from youth workers to the speakers are very open friendly.  I’ve barely been here, but feel part of the SYMC tribe now!  But really it is better than I expected things to be so far.

I’m defiantly falling in love with ministry all over again…

Filed Under: church, God, Personal Care, Soul Care, UMC, Youth Ministry, Youth Ministry Ideas · Tagged: , , , , , ,

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: , , , , , ,
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