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Youth Ministry Tip #14: Spend more time focusing on who students are becoming rather than how they behave.

How many youth pastors if asked would say that the parents of their students would just be happy if the youth ministry and youth pastor could help their kids just behave better? Probably just about everyone. However, why would we want to settle for just having kids behave well, when we can help enable them to become more like Christ.

I know, I know. Your saying, “Isn’t that the same thing?”

“NO, it isn’t!” Becoming is a process that takes a student from where they are to BECOMING more like Christ. It doesn’t always promise good behavior. Instead it promises responding to live, mess ups, and mistakes more in line with Christ. Becoming is realizing that we need God before, during and even after our sins. Becoming is allowing God’s spirit use us in spite of our struggles. Behavior is when we look a certain way. Behavior can be faked and doesn’t mean we are desiring God. Behavior is oftentimes a response from fear of consequence. Becoming is a response to knowing God more.

Pray for God to show you what this looks like in your life, marriage and ministry. Are you more concerned about students behaving rightly or becoming more like God. Becoming is much more messy.

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I have been thinking about how Santa is perceived versus Jesus. It is something that always comes to mind when we are reminded of the true meaning of Christmas. For some reason even though we know that Christmas is born out of the birth of Jesus we still get caught up in the busyness of shopping and decorating and all of the parties that we oftentimes put the heart of Christmas on the backburner. I know this is especially true when we are driving in traffic near any mall on the planet. Anyways, God really gave me an interesting thought that I wanted to share with you all and encourage you to pass it along.

Santa Claus vs. Jesus Claus

The thought of Santa Claus vs. Jesus Claus came after I was taking my 4 year old son to preschool and a lady asked a boy that was standing nearby, “Is Santa going to bring you some nice gifts this year?”
The boy responding without blinking an eye, “Yes, I have been more good than bad!” I realized at that moment something interesting. There are two conditions that must be met in order to receive gifts from Santa. The first condition is that you must believe in Santa Claus and the Spirit of Christmas. You must believe that Santa is real. The second condition is that you must be more good than bad. I began to shiver as I thought to myself, “What would Jesus require for gifts?”
Jesus Claus would require something as well. In order to receive gifts from Jesus Claus you must believe in Jesus. You must believe He is real and He is who He says He is. The second condition is that it doesn’t matter if you have been more good than bad as long as you meet condition number 1. In fact, the kid who is the most obedient kid doesn’t get any more gifts than the kid who is always in time out or never seems to listen to their parents or do anything right at all.
This got me thinking even more. What does this say about what we believe about Christmas? There is so much focus on our behavior that we fail to see that the Love of Christ comes to each and everyone of us no matter how good we are. You see the standard for who receives the reward of heaven is absolute perfection. There must be no disobedience, no moment in our lives that we don’t love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength and no moment that we don’t love others more than ourselves. Big Problem. I fail everyday. I would never get the reward or gift. Of course the great news is that the standard of perfection shows us that a Perfect God cannot live with imperfect people. God must punish sin and it must be done with total separation from Him, in other words, the payment is death.
Here is the “Santa Claus” problem. Many Christians and many people who try to understand what it means to be a Christian believe that being a Christian is more like Santa Claus than Jesus Claus. Many people believe that if you believe in Jesus and do more good than bad then you will get your reward. We don’t live like we understand the truth that being a Christian is believing in Jesus and understanding you will never be more good than bad – we can never keep up to the perfect standard God lays before us.

Now the cool thing is that God has given us the coolest Christmas Gift we could get. If we believe in Jesus (Claus) and in what he has done (been the final payment of sin for us) then we can receive presents (gift of eternal life). All we have to do is believe in Him and what He has done and it is not based upon whether I have been more good than bad.
I don’t think people question that God loves them or not, it is usually that we question whether He will accept us or not. Our struggle in understanding the truth of God stops when we fail to realize that God doesn’t accept us because of our behavior. God accepts us because of our faith in Him. The only way to please a holy, righteous, perfect God is our faith in Him and what He has done. That our only chance for acceptance. We must realize that our acceptance is based in what has already been done on the cross.

I learned from a pastor one day a way to show my children how much I love them. Starting when they were just 2 years old I asked them if their daddy loved them more when they are good or bad. For the first few times I asked them they answered, “When I am good.” I would reply back, “No, your daddy loves you when your good or bad.” Now when I ask them they will respond, “My daddy loves me all the time, even when I good or bad.” Then of course I look them in the eye and say, “That is how Jesus loves you too. He loves you when your good or bad!”

Thanks!

Kevin Deming
Youth Pastor

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Here are some ideas for the perfect Youth Ministry Christmas Party. Remember you can keep it simple and still have an awesome time. As you look to promote your Christmas Party be sure to really encourage people to come dressed up in fun Christmas outfits. We encouraged this in 2 ways. You can have your small groups challenge each other by seeing which group can come dressed up with the best Christmas Spirit. You can give prizes to individual winners and maybe a pizza party or ice cream party for the small group who wins. We had someone come dressed in a tree covered in ornaments and another dressed as a big present that was wrapped.

Once you get the date planned and you start promoting it you will need to think about what you will do, how you will communicate what they need to bring and what food you will have. On our Christmas party everyone came in and we had Christmas music playing while we had pizza (for $3 to cover costs) and Christmas Cookies and drinks. If you have enough time it might be better to have some parents prepare finger foods and cookies instead. Once everyone was hanging out and eating we had someone play a few fun Christmas songs. Since so many people were dressed up there was already a Christmas feel and a great environment for the party.

After the Music it is time to play Christmas Games. We divided them out into their small groups (this is a great way to include people who are not in small groups with people who are). Here are a list of some games you can play that I downloaded online:

Christmas Trivia Game: Download here
Christmas Sing-a-long: Download Here
Christmas Zoom: Download Here
Christmas Wrap Off: Download Here

Here are some ideas on how to make these games better. For the Christmas Trivia game either have cards labeled A, B, C, or D or just have your students use thier fingers. 1 finger is A, 2 Fingers B, etc.. Show the Trivia Question and then have each group hold up either their groups cards or hold up the finger (pointer finger) or multiple fingers. Each team that gets it right you can award them points. If a team is the only one to get it right award them double points.

For the Christmas Sing-a-long you can have 1 person from each team come up and when the lyrics are shown you give points to the first one who gets the lyrics exactly right. You can also play it like “Don’t Forget the Lyrics” if you want to take the time to get all the songs ready and people really want to sing.

For Christmas Zoom you can do it the same way as the sing-a-long or with anyone in the group can yell out the answer.

Here is another twist to doing trivia games that I love, go to this
link.

After the games you can do a devotional Christmas thought.

To close the night off we do a gift exchange. We have found that when you do gift exchanges with more than $1 then people really can get possesive and upset when they don’t get a good gift. We used to do $7-10 gifts but if someone brought a really good gift and they got a lousey one they were upset. So we have changed things to where we encourage each person to bring a $1 gift or a white elephant gift from home that is usable. This allows for creativity and a lot of really funny gifts. With the money they would have spent on another gift we will also take up an offering to help those in need. You can use a charity or organization that your ministry supports or you can collect money to buy gifts for a family in your church that is in need.

I hope this helps you to have the ultimate youth ministry Christmas party.

Well, as much as I hate to have to get people to register we really need for you to register in order to comment on our blogs. We really want your input and insight and feel that hearing from you will make our website so much better. We want to provide easy access for you to comment but because there are certain people in this world who feel that they want to take over blogs and article comment section by posting random things that have no relevance to what the blog is about we have to have people register. We have been getting multiple comments on a regular basis, most likely done by a computer or someone who has way too much time on their hands. Sorry about the inconvience but we really want to hear from you. Register Free Here!

Grace & Peace,

iyouthpastor team

Well, I went on to the Wikipedia page on Young Earth Creationist and you will be glad to know that Creation is a Myth. It also links to another page entitled Genesis Creation Myth. I wonder what would happen if you created a page called. Evolution Myth. Don’t people realize that both Creation and Evolution can’t be proven by Science and that both are models on how some people believe the Earth was created. I choose to believe the Bible and Creation not only because it is what is written in God’s word but because it makes the most sense.

Here is why:

All matter that exists had to either exist forever or have a beginning.

You either have to believe something that can create has existed forever or matter has existed forever.

I choose to believe in a Creator rather than random chance doing the impossible.

I think there are some who believe in Evolution because they are convinced that evidence proves it. There has never been any evidence to scientifically prove evolution. I would love to hear from you on any proof that evolution is truth. Anyone know of any?

Here is a video you can use this Sunday for your church or youth ministry. I know some of you are looking like crazy to find something so here it is.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyPA56-HGN8

There are some other really good ones out there too.

Have a great Easter!!