Tag: Purpose Driven Youth Ministry

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Kingdom Day Right Around the Corner

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PDYM Kingdom Day is right around the corner and will be here before you know it. Kingdom Day is a ONE day service project where the church comes together as ONE body to accomplish ONE purpose. The Church and Christians talk a lot…there is no doubt about that, but we are usually found absent when it comes time to back that talk up.

Kingdom Day is all about the Church putting our hands and feet where our mouth is. We say we love…we’re going to show it. We talk about sacrifice…we’re going to give it. I hope you will join with us on April 25th for Kingdom Day.

Kingdom Day has been encouraging student ministries  all across the US to partner with another student ministry  in their community to work together (across denominational lines), as One body to serve those who are less fortunate than we are. Every group is atonymous and is working on the project they feel led to do for their community. Our goal is to go beyond talking about a Gospel of love to acting it out. One group plans on working on a local camp, other groups are working soup kitchens, while others are seeking out shut ins to assist with cleaning their homes and cleaning up their yards.

The Question I want you to ask yourself is this, “Is there a need in our community that our student ministries can tackle?” If there is, I encourage you to contact a student ministry in your area and plan a service project with them for Saturday, April 25. Some churches have talked about participating in Kingdom Day as an entire body with other churches, so don’t let the word Student Ministry narrow your focus, adults are more than welcome to participate as well.

The Purpose Driven Youth Ministry is fueling Kingdom Day, but you do not have to follow the PDYM paradigm for your ministry to participate. If you plan on attending PDYM the Conference at Saddleback on March 24-27, we would love to meet you. We’ll be participating in the conference at some point. If you want to attend, there is still time and room at the conference, you can register HERE, if you are not attending because of finances, contact us, and I can get you in touch with someone who can assist with a discount.

Click Here to Register your Group.
Click Here to Follow PDYM Kingdom Day on Twitter.

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PDYM the Conference: Worth the Money

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I am really excited about PDYM the Conference and can’t wait to head out to Saddleback Church to attend on March 24-27. Okay, maybe I’m a little excited about getting to eat at Wahoos and In and Out Burger too 😉

With my budget being tighter this year it made me think twice about spending the money to attend a conference.

But I know the training that I’ll get, the people I’ll get to rub shoulders with, and the fact that Doug Fields will be teaching all the general sessions makes it more than worth the cost of going, plus its in Southern California! 🙂 (Did you know you can follow Doug’s personal Twitter account? Click HERE)

I really think it’s worth you joining me at the PDYM Conference! If you want more info about the conference you can go to http://www.pdymcommunity.org/ or just leave a comment on my blog and I’d love to tell you more about it myself.

See you there!

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PDYM: The Conference

Purpose Driven Youth Ministry: The Conference is rocking back on to the student ministry conference scene in a big…but small way in 2009. The PDYM Conference took a couple of years off due to some busyness in their ministry and after experimenting with two very successful regional conferences in Florida and Texas.

In 2009 the conference will return, but its going back to some of its roots by focusing on an intamate atmosphere. Even when the conference got big, I always felt it had a much more intimate feel than YS or anyother large youth conference. The Conference is only going to register around 650 649 people for the conference, so if you plan on attending, now’s the time to register yourself and your team. You can register now by clicking HERE. For more information on the conference such as pricing, travel information, Click HERE.

Why PDYM?

  • Balance
  • Simplification
  • Biblical
  • Effective

There has been a lot that has been misunderstood and incorrectly conveyed about PDYM and about Purpose Driven in general, this has led to a lot of assumptions and misconceptions. Here is a little of how PDYM helped me and why I believe in its principles.

PDYM is not program driven or program heavy. In fact when I first started looking at PDYM and started to implement it, our student ministry reduced the number of programs we were doing. We looked at the 5 basic principles that PD emphasises and determined what those looked like in our ministry and what we would do to weave them into our ministry. Where our church had people strongly focused on evangelism through a program, we emphasised evangelism being a lifestyle, something that should happen all the time not just in a program. Where our church had a Sunday School program and dabbled in Small groups that focused on discipleship, we simplified our focus and utilized discipleship tools through our small groups to focus on spiritual growth. We did not want to teach the mentality that spiritual growth happens in a program, rather it has to happen on our own, and by providing tools, we encouraged that personal growth, while our small group leaders were there to assist students through that process.

We transitioned our traditional “come and watch while we feed and entertain you” youth group into a student ministry where we encouraged students to own it and to serve the students in the community that we were reaching and those we hoped to reach. We provided opportunities for students to serve and encouraged students to create their own ministries surrounding their passions. We cut out monthly “Events” and “activities” and focused on periodic larger events (Fall Retreat, Summer Camp, Etc.) that emphasized relationships and a theme for our students to grow spiritually around. Instead of providing a baby sitting service we encouraged our small group leaders to invest in their students’ lives by going to their ball games, taking them to lunch, and being a central part of their life as a caring adult.

As a State Mentor I hear a lot of criticisms of PDYM, when I ask, “Have you read the book?” The typical response is, “I’ve read some of it, I’ve read half of it, or No, I have not read it.” Basically, they are saying, I formed my own opinion based on a couple of chapters or they are saying I have formed my opinion based on the opinion of someone else. Typically I hear this when discussing the use of other strategies within PDYM. It is highly recommended that you solely use PDYM if you want to be a student ministry that is balanced (structurally) around Evangelism, Discipleship, Ministry (or Service), Fellowship (or Relationships), and Worship. Some people say they prefer “The Seven Checkpoints” over “PDYM,” and that is great, however I have examined the Seven Checkpoints extensively and it will not do anything for your ministry outside of discipleship. It is not something you would use to build a structure by unless you are going to focus heavily on discipleship. The Seven Checkpoints is great for spiritual growth and we have used it within our small groups and we have taught from them, but it is not strong on structuring to help balance out all of the purposes for the church. A lot of churches are strong on one or some of the purposes, but come up short on balance. Are you there? Do you do a lot of activities, but maybe you are not seeing life change through salvations and spiritual growth? Or are you seeing a lot of salvations, yet you have nothing in place to see those students mature spiritually? PDYM can help!

The Conference is worth going to. You will not walk away without learning something, and if you can carry a team of volunteers I highly recommend you do it, they will come home pumped up and ready to share Jesus with students all throughout your community. The breakouts are awesome and this year if you are attend I hope you will come by the breakout for Kingdom Day.

Remember only 650 spots are available to Register Today!

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2009 Kingdom Day Update

I am blogging over at the PDYM Blog today, but my post is very relevant here as well. I started promoting Kingdom Day HERE and HERE a while back. Purpose Driven has picked up on it and has allowed me to promote the day within our Network and is helping put an engine to the locomotive. I was given the opportunity to promote the day to our state mentors at the Gathering and will have the opportunity to promote it at the PDYM Conference in March with a breakout session. We are calling it PDYM Kingdom Day, but this day is definitely not limited to student ministries who use the PDYM paradigm for their ministries, this day is for every student ministry that uses the Bible for a foundation of what they do. Kingdom Day is about living out the Gospel, I hope we all believe that to be important. Here is an excerpt to what I wrote on the PDYM Blog, I encourage you to go read it in its entirity there!

200.
Currently, that’s the approximate number of churches that will be participating in the 2009 PDYM Kingdom Day on Saturday, April 25, 2009.

Kingdom Day is set to be the single largest Service project in the history of the church, and you have the opportunity to be a part of that history. In a single day, student ministries will unite together despite denomination and regardless of group size to live out the Gospel of love to our communities by serving those who are in need. This is a great opportunity to emphasize the purpose of ministry within your student ministries, as well to promote our individual churches working together united as ONE body to be more effective in reaching our communities, to impact our nation, our country, and our world. READ ENTIRE POST

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The Refinery at Saddleback

One of the cool things that we got to do while in California was tour the Refinery; we also held our daily meetings there. Doug expressed his love/hate relationship with the building and I think every youth worker who has a solid focus on growing their students spiritually through relationships would agree with his premise, although we would also love to have a building like the Refinery 🙂 . Doug shared that he has been doing student ministry for over 25 years without a “student building” and in that time he has come to the realization that student ministry can be done outside of a permenant building. I think most of us realize it can be done in a living room, in a gym, outisde under a tree, or where ever else students convene. If we ‘think’ our student ministries can only be effective in a nice building, we run the risk of narrowing our focus of ministry to be program driven. That is not my heart and I know it is not the heart of focus of PDYM. Doug said he made it clear that he did not want the Refinery to be considered the “Student” building, though it has a student ministry theme throughout, he wants it to be considered a “Community Center,” and by the looks of what happens throughout the week, its exactly that. They are using this beast of a building to reach out to their community…and that is awesome! They also host their new service FUSE in the high school auditorium, from what I’ve heard that service for 20 somethings to 30 somethings has exploded and God is blessing it in a huge way.

I’ve included some pictures of the Refinery below, I ripped them from my friend Tom’s Facebook and my friend Dan’s blog (My wife would not let me take her camera). Click HERE to go to the Extending the Vision Blog for more Refinery pics and stories.

By the way, this picture shows a little more about what the Gathering is. Its not a big conference and really not a big youth pastor’s event. (Its big to us) It is a “Gathering” of PDYM like minded youth pastors who Doug Fields and Neely have selected to represent the PDYM philosophy/paradigm for student ministry in their states. Like Proverbs 27:17, we sharpen each other, pray for each other, and have a lot of fun. When its time to say goodbye we are like a bunch of school girls crying that it would not end.