Amy-Jo & Darrel

Last night I was walking my dog quickly to his “spot” and I saw two teenaged girls that I didn’t know walking back from their trek to the Sonic that is located near our neighborhood. I looked intently to see if they were girls that attended our church and also lived in my neighborhood but I didn’t recognize them.  However, I smiled and gave a nod as they were intersecting with the path of my dog and I.  They giggled at my dog Diesel and I then one stopped dead in her tracks to ask me, “Does this look weird with me holding two large drinks in my hands”?  She really wanted to know what I thought about her.  I told her, “Um no. It just looks like you’re thirsty.”  She laughed and relaxed as she rolled her eyes and said “I am—and I love Vanilla Coke!”  I waved and said something to let her know I’m glad.  As I went upstairs, I started thinking—why did that interaction happen.  I don’t even know those girls and yet, they are openly starting dialogue with me.  And then it hit me—-I think it’s because I saw them first and was acknowledging them.

It was such a little gesture but something in my body language made me appear open for conversation. I’ve been realizing that there are things I can do to create an atmosphere for an engaging conversation wherever I go.  I’ve also gotten into the habit of taking mental notes like a detective to determine social cues.  I’m going to share some of those with you and hopefully they will allow you to find yourself having random conversations with people that intersect with your path.

1. Look for shared experiences in the moment.

I was able to have a complete traveling group made of strangers because we were sitting on the tarmac for an obscene amount of time.  We were all frustrated but I chose to break the silence by asking a question regarding the time.  As a result, I made friends with 4 ladies sitting around me.

2. Create a door or a window that opens the “wall of silence”.

So you walk up to a group of girls and they stop talking. What’s your door? What’s your window that will get that group of girls open to talking with you?

Once I was sitting alone at a musical and a group of girls came sitting down by me.  After a few minutes I simply asked: “Excuse me I’m here to see one of the girls from our church in this musical, but I don’t know a thing about this play.  Can you help me know what this is all about?

3. Body language is saying a lot:

Make sure you are looking at people in the eyes as they pass you.  Smile at women and say hello.  It will amaze you at how little things like this make the unlikeliest people come and say something that will strike up a conversation.

What are some things you do to make yourself approachable?

The following post was first posted as a featured article at Youthministry360.com. I’m excited to be a contributer to this new site. Check out their blog and make sure you check out their resources. Andy Blanks and his team are great people who have a great heart for doing youth ministry full circle. “Youth ministry, full circle” is youthministry360’s way of meeting the needs of youth workers. They offer tools for training, networking, community, and bible study resources. Thanks for letting me re-post here on girlsminister.com.

This summer I have had the opportunity to have a lot of conversations with girls, moms, and leaders. I had conversations by the pool, in our bunkhouse, in different countries, and as we ministered together in the inner city of Chicago. Over and over again in those conversations, I heard two words. These two words are not flowery. In fact, they’re pretty normal. Yet, I found them to be powerful evidence of the community created when we do ministry together.

The two words? “Me, too.”

These two words came about because of connection, and yet, they created a connection . . . a very powerful one. The beginning of the conversation was rarely the same. But somewhere along the way, as trust and intimacy developed, the conversation always seemed to go below merely surface level discussion. Before I knew it, a teen girl would share deeply of a wound, a struggle, a dream, or a victory. Just like that, it was out, hanging in the air for all to see and feel, this deep part of her lingering before the group. Sometimes I wondered how it would be received. But then a beautiful thing would happen. Without warning a girl or two would respond:

“Me, too!”

And where a girl was isolated and vulnerable in her transparency, suddenly a companionship was formed between these girls who had shared a similar experience. We were better for being a part of it because before our very eyes we saw evidence of community.

In ministry to girls there is oftentimes division or separation between different age groups. it’s understandable, to some extent. But there doesn’t always have to be. Ephesians 4:4-6 says this:

There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to one hope when you were called—one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.

It’s such a blessing to me as a girls minister to know that God’s design is for our relationships to be permeated with “oneness.” One of the most powerful things you can do as you minister to students (whether girls or boys) is to provide moments for students of all ages to share with one another. It’s in those times that the words, “me, too” will be spoken. And “me, too” almost always leads to brothers and sisters in Christ encouraging each other to keep going. “Me, too” let’s students know they are not alone in their journey.

How do we as youth workers provide these moments? Here are just a few ways I have seen “me, too” opportunities happen within our ministry:

A Parent Life-group: While our girls are in their small groups, we invite the moms to journey together and get to know each other. Regardless if you’re a girls minister or the leader of 7-12 grade mixed gender classes, making time for your parents to get to know one another does wonders to build community.
A Girls’ Retreat: We have a “girls only” discipleship retreat called Snowball that happens every winter. It’s during this time that some amazing conversations happen in the margins of the weekend. Again, whether or not you can do these types of separate events or not, making time during your retreats for times of personal sharing develops strong bonds of community within your group.
A Mission Trip for Girls: I have had the opportunity to be a part of several as a teen girl, and I have led one all girls mission experience. It was an amazing moment to spend with the girls and leaders without the distraction of boys! It was beautiful to see the girls plan and lead the entire experience.
These are just a few of the opportunities I have seen God use to create some “me, too” moments within our girls ministry. What about you? How have you seen some “me, too” moments happen in your life or among your students and parents?

Tiffany Haynes has done us the favor of sharing another guest blog for us.  I am so very thankful because girlsminister.com has been very busy going from mission week to summer camp to VBS to missions week and I haven’t had a chance to take a breath and process all that God has been doing. Thanks to Tiffany, we have a post this week!

If you haven’t met Tiffany, check out her other articles here.

Exposing God’s Word To Students

One of common understandings we know regarding the nature of girls v. boys is that girls typically mature faster than boys.  However, one thing we often fail to remember is that this truth is not only relevant from a physical and emotional standpoint, but also from a spiritual standpoint.

As we teach our girls, we need to remember that providing them with spiritual meat to chew on is muy Bueno (that’s “very good” in Spanish.  See, I did pay attention in college!).  As my friend, Gregg, states – we must tear muscle to build muscle.  We need to be giving our girls’ spiritual jaws a hefty workout by tossing God’s meaty Word their way.  Too often we get skittish of going “too deep” in our topics with them.  The bad part is, we’re so anxious about the deep waters that we over-compensate and then find ourselves (and our students) standing in the shallow end of the pool.

Like it says in Colossians 2:7 (NIV), we need to be “rooted and built up in Him.”  It’s important to expose girls to the depth of our Lord and Christ.  Oftentimes, we take a reverse approach and try to address a common issue by crafting scripture around the issue.  We work diligently at wrapping the message in a ritzy bow in order increase the appeal of our words instead of just allowing God’s Word to do the work for us (check out Nehemiah 8:3).

As leaders, our purpose is to expose our girls to God’s Word and then allow His Holy Spirit to equip.  In order to expose them more, consider teaching from an “expository” approach.  Expository is just a fancy word for going through a book of the Bible and describing, informing, and defining the author’s writings – and referencing other Scriptures to reinforce the context – to the reader.  This will definitely stretch your own spiritual muscles as you study and prepare for these types of messages (try using commentaries, concordances, and other credible study sources); but remember, it was never God’s intention that we play hop-scotch with His Word.

Deep Calleth Deep

Back in January I began doing a study on the book of Exodus.  I read nearly every day out of this 384 page book with insanely tiny print.  It’s July now and I’m only half way through it!  There’s much to chew on, but it has truly been the most breathtaking ride to study God’s Word in such intimate detail.  The parallelism between the Old Testament and the New Testament has simply rocked my face off and I pray leaders would help their students learn to study and known God’s Word with such depth.

We truly serve a God of details.  Did you know that the Ark in Exodus was made of “shittim wood” (also known as acacia)?  Funky word and can easily be glossed over, but it was said to be from a tree which many thought to be imperishable and could thrive in very dry conditions.  Furthermore, it’s interesting to find that when this tree is pierced, it actually oozes and produces a type of gum which is used in medicinal preparations.  Does this “piercing” remind you of anything?  Ah, yes, our Jesus who was pierced for us and whose blood flowed forth from His side.  Through His death, we experience healing.  What a phenomenally intricate reassurance to know how God chose the very wood the Ark would be comprised of in order to foreshadow what Christ would achieve for us thousands of years later.

Do our girls clearly understand the intensity of our Father?  How can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard?  And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?  (Romans 10:14) As leaders involved in girls ministry, it’s so vital to ensure we don’t linger in the shallows too long, but teach our girls to immerse themselves in the rushing waters of Christ.
Good words Tiffany! What about you? How are you seeing God make His words jump off the pages and bring the spiritual nutrition you need to do what He’s called you to do?

How are you leading the girls that God places in your life to see God’s word as the meaty meal they need?

How are you helping them to excercise their spiritual jaws and really start chewing on God’s word?

This week we had our middle school missions week in our hometown. It was intentional for us to have our middle school students awaken to how God is at work in their own city. We stayed overnight in a downtown church gymnasium and then would disperse teams of 7-12 students per group to serve across the city doing various ministry assignments ranging from helping set up apartments for refugees, working with homeless, painting, and working with children.

One of my favorite moments was watching a group of 8th grade girls bond and share stories from their site. I loved seeing them make connections to little moments and realizing that God was at work In that moment. For these girls, they were assigned an inner city daycare library that had no system in place to find books. One girl felt that they should group the books by topic. She told the other girls that she would find all the dinosaur books and put them together. At the end of the day they found out that a teacher needed all the dinosaur books because she was beginning a dinosaur series with her class. The students were ecstatic. Wow! How cool that God prompted them to do something that they had no idea would give them an opportunity to point that teacher to God. Matthew 5:16 says “Let your light so shine before men so that they may see your good deeds and give glory to your Father in Heaven.”

Make sure you are providing opportunities for your girls to let their light shine. And as you do, place adults around them calling attention to those moments and helping the girls see How God is orchestrating moments they sometimes can’t even see. Miss Chris is one of the leaders that poured her life into these girls this week. She served in the role of Eli this week but helping these girls to identify God’s voice and respond to it. As a result, we have a group of 8th grade girls on fire to make Him known.

Your turn:
What are some mission activities you have done to help your girls to Let their light shine?
What has been the result?

Flowtown put together a visual graphic communicating data regarding the use of cellphones when intersected with the life of a teen. It’s not totally surprising, but it is very interesting. Below is a screenshot of  a visual graphic. Some of the informataion that I took note of for future communication are the following facts: Teenage boys send an average of 30 text messages per day and girls send an average of 80 messages a day.  Also the data tells us that email is declining continuously among students.  If email is declining among teens and texting is increasing, its interesting to imagine what kind of world will they experience and shape when they come into the work force.

It says the next activity students use their phone for other than making calls or texts is for taking pictures.  That’s always a problem we battle when we tell students they can’t have their cellphones, because they quickly point out that they won’t have a camera to document their experiences.

Look at the data by clicking on the picture and let me know what your observations were as you saw the visual graph.

This past Saturday I ran in my first 1/2 marathon. Perhaps I should explain that this is the furthest I have ever run at one time in my life, and I need to clarify that I have dumb feet.  I am the recipient of feet that my doctor says “belong to that of a 60 year old woman”.  I’ve had double foot surgery but the pain is still there after all I put them through with College soccer and Highschool track.  So for me to complete this 1/2 was a great achievement, and I didn’t do it alone.   As I was running I had friends running with me. The most influential friend was Amy. Amy is pictured to the left with the white hat on.  Amy never complained or seemed to have  a difficult mile as we raced together. Instead, she continually encouraged, pointed out things about the course I didn’t know, and gave me things to look out for as we raced together.  For example, there was an incline that was particularly causing the joy to leave my life and Amy heard me sigh. Her response: “How we doin’ friend? You know this incline ends after 5 houses. Let’s count them together. 1-2-3-4-5. There. It’s flattened out. “   At another place in the race, there were people passing out fruit from the sidelines. I asked if we should get some. Her response: “No, we don’t take anything we didn’t train with. You don’t know what your body will do. Oh, and people throw their peels down so watch the road as you run, you don’t want to slip on a peel.”  It was like this the whole way.  As we neared the last 2 miles, she would begin to say, “2 more miles. You’ve got this. “  My response, “Um not sure that I do.” Her response: “You know what my dad says?  He says, you never regret pushing yourself harder, but you always regret quitting.”  The last mile came and I wanted that finish line.  Amy’s response: “We’ve got 10 minutes left.  You know what my dad says?  He says you can do anything for 10 minutes.”    And I am proud to say that we both finished the race in 2 hours and 20 minutes!

As I reflect on that race, I reflected on how the Holy Spirit works in our lives. The person of the Holy Spirit is alive and at work within us as we minister to girls and their families. When it gets hard—He encourages.  When we need clarity of His word—He helps shed light on the scripture path.  When we need His strength for a task—He gives us His power to bring glory to God.

3 things to remember about The HOLY SPIRIT as we do ministry:

1. He’s intelligent and knows things we don’t know: (1 Co 2:10–11) The Spirit knows the things of God and translates that to us. We know that there is a“mind of the Spirit” (Ro 8:27).
2. He possesses emotion. It is possible to grieve the Spirit (Eph 4:30)  This moved me to know that The Spirit gets moved emotionally regarding the things of God.

3. The Spirit has a will. It is the Spirit who distributes spiritual gifts “as he wills” (1 Co 12:11). The phrase might even be translated “as he purposes,” because it shows a definite act of the will.

My pastor Mike Glenn taught us about the word Comforter which is the name given by Christ to the Holy Spirit. (John 14:16)  It translates in the greek as “paraclete” and means first Advocate, a defender, helper, strengthener, as well as comforter.
(Smith, W. (1997). Smith’s Bible dictionary. Nashville: Thomas Nelson.) It also means “one who comes alongside”.

The word Comforter in its Latin derivation means “with strength.”

So as you are running that race in ministry life…remember you’re not running alone. You have “with strength” running alongside of you.

This week our student ministry will be beginning our “SPRING MEETINGS” with volunteers. This is a new thing we are doing and I’m excited about it. Our 3 ministers took all the names of every volunteer small group leader and Sunday School teacher, then we divided the list up among the three of us. This will be a intentional 45-60 minute check in with every leader asking them key questions so that we can know how God is at work in and through their volunteer position. In addition, it allows us to know if they will be a leader in the fall, if there are dynamics that have cropped up during the last few months that they haven’t had a chance to let us know about, it helps us know how to pray for them personally, and to hear those stories that are victories God has done in their group that we may not have had the chance to celebrate with them. As a girls minister, it is my job to check in with all of our girl groups regularly and encourage our girls leaders specifically. I try to schedule ongoing coffee’s, lunches, and breakfasts with our leaders all throughout the year, but there are times when it is difficult to get to everyone. Knowing that we have 3 weeks to connect with all of our leaders regarding the same questions will truly be healthy and give us a pulse of what has been going on that we may not be seeing. It’s one more way to care for our leaders and really care for our students. I had my first spring meeting this week and it was such a blessing. Can’t wait to meet with my other assigned leaders. We are using TUNGLE to schedule all of these meetings and so far it has been going well. If you have missed what Tungle is…click here for my article discussing it. Now all of our student ministry staff have tungle pages!

So what do you talk about during Spring meetings?

Our team came up with some questions that we will use with all of our volunteers:

Check in with them to find out how their “7 ports of life” are doing. What are the 7 ports of life?

1. Family
2. recreation/entertainment
3. spiritual
4. work
5. social/ friends
6. self development
7. community/civic duty

What are some of the victories you have experienced this past year in your volunteer position?

How is your group doing in welcoming/ contacting members and guests?
(Open chair principle)

Do you have an associate teacher/ apprentice?  Do you have any you can recommend?

How can we help you be a better small group leader/ volunteer. what are the needs?

Are there any natural “healthy clusters” in your group that could help us identify how to multiply your group into another smallgroup? (Multiplication)

Do you feel led to lead a group next year?

Were you able to get to know the parents of your smallgroup students?

SHARE WITH US: what questions or checkin conversations do you have with your volunteers?

Two years ago I had the opportunity to create an Easter Prayer Experience for our student ministry to use in a family friendly worship service on Easter. We utilized this again last year and wanted to pass it along to you if you are looking for a prayer experience…even for perhaps tonight *GASP*. I know sometimes there are weeks that necessitate some last minute planning. No worries—you’re forgiven Enjoy. easter prayer experience