More or Less

One of the biggest battles that every youth worker faces on a daily, weekly, monthly basis is: TIME MANAGEMENT!

Improve your time management in two easy steps:

1. ONE: one calendar & one to-do list. By consolidating everything you will have it in one place and you will see how much time you have or don't have to get things done. This means that you will condense your family calendar with your ministry calendar, your ministry to-do list with your home to-do list; home reno's, exercise, ministry, reading, RSS feeds, schooling, kids, spouse, meetings, research, email, visits, volunteering, etc... into ONE. This will give you a more realistic outlook on everything that you have to do and future events.
2. COMPARE: the most crucial step to your survival in youth ministry is you must compare your most recent job description with what you are honestly doing each week in the allotted hours required for your role. Take each section and each point and give that a specific amount of length of time that you are giving to each one each day and each week. This will require you to keep track of you hours but it will give you a healthy COMPARISON. You will also need to list all the additional things that are not listed on your job description that you are doing for you role, your blog, facebook group, v-blog, etc...

Jeff Smyth is a youth worker who has been involved in both the local church and non-profit areas of Canada. He works with DOXA Toronto, providing resources, training and coaching for local churches. Jeff lives in Toronto with his wife Heather and son Nathan. Jeff's blog ThinkYouthMinistry.com

Communication - Don't let it breakdown

Right now we have more ways to communicate with each other than ever before.  I know a large portion of my life is actually looking down reading something off my phone.  Yet we as humans continue still struggle with the basic forms of communication(Eye contact, listening, asking good questions).

 Something I've struggled with over the years is that during the week my job requires that I am in constant communication with people all day long and at a moments notice.  So when it came time for a youth activity or being with more people I tended to clam up and not be as open as I should have been.  It is something I am working personally.

Answer honestly some of the questions I've put together and see where that might lead you this week.

• What are you doing this week to work on your communication? 
• Do you suffer from being overly connected for long periods of time? 
• How do you handle it when you are not connected?
• What is one thing I can do this week be a better communicator?
• How can I connect with a youth this week that I haven't previously?

 

Spiritual Practice of the Week:  A worship service:  Follow Me

Be welcome to use this service at an upcoming meeting with youth or young adults.

Preparation: Have pieces of red string cut into lengths long enough to be tied around a person’s wrist. Set the space as you wish, with a central Christ candle.  Invite people to settle around the candle in a circle, perhaps have some music playing to quiet the space.   

Opening Words:  Jesus says, follow me. All of us have different reasons for being here tonight: maybe you came for friendship and fun, or because your parents made you come, or because you felt alone. But we all in some way have chosen to be here and to follow. Following isn’t always easy. Sometimes it’s hard, lonely, or weird and doesn’t make sense.  So what does it mean in your life to follow?  This is a story about some people who chose to follow a long time ago.

Read Mark 1: 16-20

Pose this question:  What does following mean for you? Invite people to share their responses with the people around them. Give time for some in-depth conversation.

Song:  choose a song familiar to your group on this theme of Following.

Action Words:  Often Christians wear the symbol of a cross as a sign that they are connected to the life of Jesus. Today we offer this string to tie around your wrist as a symbol that you know you are following the path of Jesus.

Take a piece of string and ask someone in the room to tie it onto your wrist. When tying on the string, say the person’s name first and then say, “You are a child of God.” Think about what it means to wear this string. Think about what you will say to people if they ask about the string. You may choose to tell people about the meaning behind the string, or keep it to yourself.  How will the string be an action of sharing and reflection. 

Closing Prayer:  Jesus, our brother and friend. We are thankful that we have freedom to follow you if we choose.  We remember those around the world who are persecuted for living out their faith.  We are thankful that there is a path to walk with you. We come to all the gifts, challenges, and blessings that following you brings, we draw the circle wide to include all in your love, with eyes wide open to life and to one another. Amen.

© This prayer practice and all of those on the Sunday Morning Blog Post can be found in:  "Go Deep: Spiritual Practices for Youth Ministry" Wood Lake Publishing.  Doris is the Youth Director for the United Church of Canada in BC and the Director of World Pilgrim Awareness Travel.

 

 

 

Going Slow with Dr. Low

Normally when I blog about slowing down I'm talking about us, but what if God is sometimes willing to slow down for His dear children, especially if we are wearing or depressed or struggling with life?

I was hastily walking through a parking lot this evening as I often do, leaving my children far behind and asking them to hurry up.  Suddenly my 4 year old cried out, "I need to hold your hand daddy."  I stopped for him to catch up to me and said to him, "Brayden, I need you to keep up with me so you don't get hit by a car in this busy parking lot."  "I know," he said, "That's why I need to hold your hand because then we'll go the same speed."

When my son uttered these simple but profound words it made me think about my relationship with God the Father.  Sometimes it feels like He is way ahead of me or I'm way behind.  Perhaps that's my choice or His or maybe it's just life.  But what if I hold His hand?  What if I ask Him to take my hand?

When my son held my son in the parking lot today it made him speed up a little bit and I, as a loving father, slowed down a bit to be sensitive to his speed.  Well goodness knows God is far more sensitive and patient than I am so if I'm dragging my feet a little perhaps God understands this and is willing to hold my hand and proceed with the speed of grace.

How are you walking through life?  Are you falling behind God, are you running ahead of Him, are you walking beside but at a safe distance or are you holding His hand?

Twitter for Youth Ministry 2

Today, we’ll discuss how to use the limited time you have as a youth worker to work on this, and other social media tools, most effectively. You can also see my previous post: Twitter for Youth Ministry

Following the steps below will help you get the most out of each minute you have to work on your various social media accounts. 

1. Perhaps the most important: use your tweets to give something to your followers. Your tweets should only rarely (maybe 1 out of 20) answer the question “what are you doing right now?” and the rest of the time, should be focused on providing information or inspiration to your followers. You might tweet a link to an interesting website or blog, offer an inspiring quote from a book your reading, or invite them into conversation by asking a question. As a youth worker, you should use your website to give away books occasionally, and definitely advertise your church and youth ministry activities via Twitter.
2. Link your Twitter account to your Facebook account so that when you tweet, it automatically shows up on your Facebook page. However, you can produce #FAIL posts on Facebook by using hashtags in your posts. Hashtags are meaningless in Facebook, save your hashtags for twitter only.
3. Link your blog to Twitter so that when you post something on your blog, a notification and link are sent out via your Twitter account. You can link your blog to Facebook through Networked Blogs
4. Use hashtags. For example, a tweet about an event might include a hashtag with the category, such as #guysnightout or #c4ignite. Hashtags make your tweets more searchable—and Twitter continues to evolve into a place where people search for information.
5. Use hashtags to search for tweets about the topics you write about. Then join the conversation by posting tweets about your youth ministries content with the same hashtag.
6. Craft tweets with provocative quotes from books you read including the Bible, followed by a link to a site that sells that book or has the bible online. It’s easiest to sit down and create perhaps 20 or so of these, linking to various sites (amazon, chapters/indigo, youversion, etc.), and post one per day. Or use a scheduling tool to set that up (see next point).
7. Try out a tweet scheduling site such as hootsuite.com, and socialoomph.com, which allow you to schedule a variety of posts across media. Hootsuite and SocialOomph both have free and paid programs. Each has a variety of capabilities. Experiment to see what works for you.
8. When someone else mentions you in a positive way, don’t just tweet back “thanks!” In addition, retweet! Especially if it’s a link to something they said about you, your youth ministry, or some sort of praise for your work.

Start Something - That Matters

In the book Star Something that Matters written by the founder of TOMS shoes Blake Mycoskie he highlights a specific charity called Charity:Water.  They are an interesting group as they pledge 100% of all funds raise actually go to the cause of helping people get water.  How they do this is by having a secondary list of donars that only give money to help fund the administration costs.  It is quite an interesting setup, and lets you trust them with your money.  They also track every single dollar given and when your money is used to build a well they send you an email with pictures and a GPS coordinate.  It's such a simple idea, but does a long way in fixing some problems that people have with charity.

I also follow a fairly well known silicon valley entrepeneur by the name of Kevin Rose.  Kevin was the original founder of Digg and has gone on to do some interesting stuff.  He also runs a series of interviews with well known entrepeuners.  He does an amazing video with the founder of Charity:Water Scott Harrison.  I've said all that to say this: Watch the following interview, it is a bit on the long side, but touches on some really interesting points.  Remember this as well, that your work with youth matters to them more than you will ever know.  Make sure you start every interaction with them thinking about what matters to them, and what matters to God.

Spirit Day 2012: "Almighty"

We at the Office of Youth and Young Adult Ministry (OYYAM) of the Archdiocese of Vancouver have just released our promo and registration material for Spirit Day - our annual rally for grade 7 students.  Spirit Day has quickly grown to be the largest Catholic youth rally in western Canada and it has blessed our churches in so many ways.

Close to 100 youth and young adult volunteers put the event together by serving on a variety of teams: the Stage Team, the Spirit Team, the Logistics Team, and the Production Team.  It's an awesome witness for the 1,900 grade 7 participants (and their adult leaders) to see so many young people (many of them former Spirit Day participants) serving at the event.

The theme for this year's event is "Almighty" - a recognition of God's power and strength. For God and with God, all things are possible.

Enjoy these 2 videos.  The first one is the official promo video and the second one is a music video parody of One Direction's "What Makes You Beautiful".




Clayton Imoo is husband to Gail and father to sons Sean Isaiah and Jacob Isaac and daughter Kayla Marie.  He has served as the Director of the Office of Youth and Young Adult Ministry of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Vancouver for the past ten years, helping parishes develop their own youth and young adult ministries.  When not doing ministry, Clay enjoys spending time with his family, playing music, playing sports, playing naptime, and writing blogs on topics such as family, faith, and the Vancouver Canucks.  Learn more about him at http://www.claytonimoo.com or follow him @claytonimoo