Believe Conference Tales!

If you deal with Jr. High Ministry: Believe is the one conference you need to go to. CIY has taken the liberty of making almost all the plans for you and centered the conference around your students. Seriously, as a youth pastor all you have to do is worry about getting your kids down there and back and feeding and housing them! The teaching is centered around middle school students; you are never doing the same thing twice; there is never a dull moment on stage; and you are involved in everything! It is a Jr. High ministry dream come true!

Small Groups: This year Believe hid all of the small group questions in fortune cookies. The black fortune cookie held random questions like: What is your favorite outfit that your youth minister wears?; or what is your favorite thing to eat at Taco Bell? (seriously this was really a question). The other questions were in three different colored cookies. Each small group session was a different colored cookie. Kids would read the questions in the group and answer them; there was absolutely no prep work (which if you have gone to MOVE is one of the most time consuming prep things to do). It was a great way to do small groups!

Worship: Worship was led by Johnny Scott, Hetti Marie, and Foundation Red. They were awesome! Did some Fee stuff and got the kids fired up. Mike Miyahara on guitar was melting some faces! They brought out Eric Samuel Timm, the painter (who played God this weekend) as an artist during worship! One key to Jr. High Ministry is keeping their focus! With all this stuff going on the kids were definitely focused. It was great worship.

We stayed the night at a church down in tulsa; playing dodgeball most of the night! We were still able to sleep for 5 or 6 hours. We took 18 students who had a ball. We also took 7 high school students who worked for Believe during the weekend. They had a blast and really enjoyed working for Shawn Miyahara (she mentioned me in her blog so I mentioned her back) and Nikki Palmateer. It was an awesome weekend that changed my kids lives. If you are on the fence about believe; I would rank it as the most productive Jr. High thing that I do (even above a jr. high camp during the summer).

A COOL STORY:

Right before our kids at pizza on Saturday afternoon; our boys were explaining to the Town and Country boys that girls were the first to eat. That was pretty sweet; our guys standing up for chivalry and the girls in their youth group! That is a good feeling.

Special thanks to Town and Country for letting us mooch rides down with them and letting us hang out all weekend with them. James Wright is doing a great job with their ministry and is a great asset to Town and Country Christian Church! I couldn't be more proud of my high school kids. They were a great asset to me and the Believe Staff. They had a great time working alongside the CIY team; and I think they got a lot out of it.

BELIEVE CONFERENCE

Last weekend, 19 of our kids and 4 of my sponsors took the long trip to Tulsa, Oklahoma for Believe Conference.

It was a great weekend. Our kids love going on trips like that. Believe is a 24 hour event that is solely devoted to teaching to Jr. High Students. Everything from programing to material is centered around short attention spans. I love it because I think like a Jr. High student, and learn like a Jr. High Student. This year they studied through Jeremiah 1, and the call on his life. The theme was "Speak." Following Jesus was easier for me in Jr. High than really doing anything with it, so I thought it was an awesome theme.

What the kids got out of it, I cant be sure. Call me pessimistic, but I think most of my kids have heard most of it before. A majority of my kids had grown up in church and Christian school, so this was nothing new to them. I was really challenged by it, but many of them seemed almost immune to the fact that anything was going on. The worship was really good and they liked that. I don't really know a good way to prep for a conference like this, so Im not sure how this stuff really effected them.

Honestly, I felt my high schoolers who went to help got more out of it than anyone. They seemed to have grown closer and talk about this experience constantly. I have one who wants to be Brent the Stunt guy, and another who is a little "Eric the Painter."

Between Jared Hall the illusionist (who was awesome), the Rubyz (good stuff too); and the aforementioned it was a great weekend. I thoroughly recommend it for everyone.

It was a great week, and our kids came back fired up to worship, but I am not sure how fired up they were to "Speak."