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GUEST POST: Worship Music and Scripture

Working with teens with a wide range of Biblical knowledge, I’m often reminded of how many times students are singing songs in worship, but yet don’t realize that the lyrics are based on Scripture. We hand out a “What’s Up” flyer each week after our large group gathering that has an update on upcoming events, as well as a short devotional related to our current series. Periodically, the devotional will be written based on a worship song that is currently in our “playlist”, or that links to the week’s talk. Here’s an example of one of these devotionals — feel free to download and use if you find it helpful.

Bethanie Carlson is a volunteer leader for high school ministry Grace Community Church Raleigh, NC.

simplykurt.com

Cleaning Up The Clutter

In Tuesday’s post, I mentioned that I have asked our JH and HS teams to begin to brainstorm what a cleaner, more streamlined ministry plan might look like. There was only one comment left in the comments section, but I thought it was a powerful one:

“Perhaps a bigger ?what if? for most of us is what if we were allowed to try that.”

I really don’t know of many churches that give the leaders and pastors more freedom to try new stuff than Saddleback. Throughout the years, Pastor Rick has encouraged us to think differently, try new things, make changes, and make mistakes…and he has led by example. But, with that being said, change is ALWAYS tough and it will be tough for us to make significant changes to our ministry, but we simply have to try. And I think that would be my response to the comment above. You may not be allowed to try to make changes, but as a leader, you have to try to try!

In our setting, ministry has simply become too cluttered. Our calendar of events and programs is cluttered, our infrastructure is cluttered, our team is cluttered (and I’m not talking about my office!), and our work days are cluttered. There’s lots and lots of really good stuff happening, but much of it has beenoverrun by all the clutter.

It won’t be easy, and I’m sure we will hit some obstacles along the way (both internal and external). But God is doingsomething specialin our ministry and [...]

youthministrygeek.com

Crowd Sourced Video Projects

Over the last week, I’ve come across two different video projects online that are using or used the power and reach of the internet to produce them. The first one is a group that setting out to remake Star Wars, but letting people pick their favorite scene and recreate it however they want. The second is a music video that that was written, produced and shot by user submissions to the creators youtube channel. He also has a bigger vision of getting this song on the UK music charts to raise money for charity.

Here are the videos:

Star Wars: Uncut Trailer from Casey Pugh on Vimeo.

I just love the idea, and really enjoyed the results. I was thinking this could be a fun youth group project. Getting different groups of kids to shoot different parts of video and putting them all together could be a really fun activity. I used to volunteer in a ministry that had a film festival of student made films every year and something like this would have been a great addition. And with the availability of cameras like the Flip

marriedtoayouthpastor.com

God runs through it!

simplyurbanministry.com

Soul Food! If you love yourself, feed yourself!!!