The folks at interlinc have been able to cultivate a very cool relationship with Adam from the band Owl City (if you haven’t heard of them, your students have – he was #1 on iTunes for weeks). I’m told Adam is a wonderful believer and is letting his music communicate his faith.

Free Bible study for Owl City music

Interlinc wants to share their digital introduction to Owl City (a letter from Adam to youth leaders and some song explanations) and a two-session Bible study guide to go along with two of Owl City’s songs, including “Fireflies” (you can listen to the song at the bottom of the page here).

Free music video DVD loop

Interlinc would also love to give you a copy of their Music Video Loop 68 DVD. It contains a ton of music videos and extras. They’ll send you the DVD completely free – no strings attached – they just want you to try and see what playing some good Christian music for you student can do. Just call 1-800-725-3300 and say “I want the free Music Video Loop 68 DVD.”

Check out the DVD contents here. It includes videos from Flyleaf, Skillet, Switchfoot, Britt Nicole, Hawk Nelson, KJ-52, and a lot more.

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Join us for LIVE YM Talk this Monday, February 1! We’re discussing, “The need for theological questioning in youth ministry.” Our guest will be Jake Bouma. We’d love to have you join us! The live conversation starts at 2:00 PM eastern time! See our LIVE YM Talk page for details.

Two weeks ago I had the privilege to watch an advanced screening of the movie, To Save A Life. They have a pretty agressive marketing campaign among the Christian community, so you’ve no-doubt heard of it and either dismissed it because it’s a “Christian film” and thought, “Please, no more Kirk Cameron!,” or, like me, you just put it on a back burner due to all the other demands of your time. Here are my thoughts after watching the film:

Plot

The story starts at the grave side of a high school student who committed suicide. A few of his family and friends are present, including Jake Taylor, the high school senior the movie shadows for the next two hours. For a number of reasons, Jake is devastated by the tragedy and, through his search for answers, he meets a youth pastor, Chris, who becomes a trusted friend. As Jake wrestles through issues like popularity, cutting, abortion, sex, divorce, drugs and relationships, his life eventually hits rock bottom. One might expect that this is the point when he turns to Christ, but the story is thankfully a bit more real than that. The truth is, Jake decided to give God a try early in the film and because of that, combined with the consequences of his past mistakes, he hits bottom, thinking that God was supposed to make everything better.

The plot is very heavy for two hours straight and has almost no comic relief. I was craving a break in the tension after about an hour or so, but none came, leaving me pretty emotionally worn out by the end, but fortunately it has a positive ending. A normal Christian film might try to wrap up all the teen issues with an over-simplistic and unbiblical, “Jesus can make your life happy and perfect!” but instead To Save A Life ends with the more realistic, “Life is hard, there are no simple answers, and a relationship with Christ is the only way to navigate it all.”

Quality

The film is surprisingly very well done. I was expecting a lot of cheesy moments from poor acting and churchiness, but the cheese-factor was kept to a minimum. In fact, there’s only one or two places that make you roll your eyes a bit, but even then it’s not big enough to make you laugh or grin.

Overall, the acting was a solid performance. They hired people who have experience in various other films and TV shows, which was probably a good move, regardless of if most of them are unbelievers. In my opinion, a movie that’s professionally done and credible trumps whether or not the actors on the screen actually know Christ or not. Hopefully this film is one that brings them one step closer in that direction!

My only gripe with the acting is that the main character, played by Randy Wayne, had this, “I’m deep in thought” look on his face for the first three-quarters of the movie. Granted, he was thinking through a lot of issues in the film, but a slightly different “deep in thought” face would’ve been nice. After a while, it kinda looked like his face was stuck like that.

His girlfriend in the movie, played by Deja Kreutzberg, did an outstanding job, though. I was thoroughly impressed with her performance despite her more limited film career.

Content

True to it’s marketing hype, the film discusses many teen issues like cutting, suicide, school shootings, abortion, divorce, cliques, drinking, peer pressure, dating, sex, and a lot more. Impressively, none of these issues feel forced into the story — they all feel like a natural part of Jake Taylor’s life and experiences.

However, I would opt to change some of the wording I read in other reviews and promotional pieces: the film doesn’t “deal” with all of these issues as much as it just highlights them and brings attention to how they’re often all integrated. That said, it does give more treatment to some of the issues than others, especially cliques and peer pressure, but I’m not sure I’d say it deals with every issue.

You should also be aware that, although it is a Christian film, it is not overtly so. My impression is that the producer wanted to demonstrate the power of a changed life through Christ without getting too churchy, which is good, but I would’ve liked to see the gospel communicated more clearly at the end. If there was ever a film to pull it off without being weird or tacky about it, this film could’ve done it very successfully. Instead, we just see a glimpse into what a changed life looks like.

The other thing about not being an overtly Christian film is that there is some swearing, an implied sex scene, and some of the normal graphic footage you might expect to see in a film that contains cutting and alcohol. It’s probably nothing “worse” than what you’d normally see on network TV, though. I wasn’t offended by it at all. In fact, it almost gave the film more credibility in the sense that we should never expect unbelievers to act like believers, and most of the characters in the film are definitely unbelievers. They’re just living the way they know how, and that transparency is communicated on the screen.

Bottom Line

So the million dollar question: Should you take your church’s youth group to see this film? For high school students, absolutely! For jr. high students, probably. The only reason I hesitate with jr. highers is because of the power of suggestion for them. Most, if not all, high school students have had first- or second-hand experience with the issues that are visually highlighted in the film. Some jr. highers, on the other hand, have a chance of still being a little more innocent (albiet, a small chance). They definitely need to be exposed to these issues around this age and doing it within the safety and wisdom of adults in a faith-based context is the best place to do it, but it is an emotionally taxing movie. I’d advise that you take a couple weeks to talk through these teen issues with jr. highers first, then go see the movie together. With sr. high, I’d probably do just the reverse: see the movie together first, then discuss it.

To Save A Life has youth group curriculum to accompany the movie, which you can purchase for $59.99 right now. I haven’t used it yet, but will probably pick it up soon for some of the high school small groups in my church after some further input from the adult and student leaders.

Trailer

Here’s the official trailer on YouTube.

More information

The movie is playing in theaters starting TODAY! Check out ToSaveALifeMovie.com for more information about the movie and to find a theater near you.

Win a free “To Save A Life” fan pack!

The people at To Save A Life have graciously given me 1 fan pack of schwag to give away for FREE to a lucky random person! The fan pack contains:

• Limited Edition Hoodie
• Printed novel
• A slap bracelet
• Pens
• and other fun movie stuff

All you have to do is use the Twitter or Facebook Share buttons at the top of this page to help spread the word about this film and review! Next Friday, January 29, I will select one person at random and award them with the fan pack. (Note: you may tweet and post this review multiple times if you want, but doing so will not increase your chances of winning.) Enjoy!

UPDATE: This contest is over. See a video of the drawing for the fan pack giveaway here. Did you win it?

You have to see this video about the social media revolution. It underscores why the Online Missions Trip outreach campaign comes at such a pivotal moment in history.

The worship director at my father-in-law’s church, Russell Martin, does a pretty regular feature called “Instrumental Reflections” on his blog. He often sits down in front of the piano just to play and worship, which became the inspiration for it:

I started thinking that maybe you would benefit from some recordings of these musical ramblings as a background to your own corporate or personal prayer and reflection times. So… every week I will upload an instrumental reflection. I may use one that I was able to record during a worship service, or go and sit down at the piano and record something new. I will put the songs up here and provide a download link. You are free to use the music for any worship service or other service you wish. All I ask is that you ask me before using it for other purposes, like on a video, compilation CD, or something like that.

Download his mp3s for altar time, devotional music, reflection background music for youth group, or whatever else you could use it for in ministry.

Here’s the category link for his Instrumental Reflections. Click through each title to download the mp3 associated with it and read more about the background behind the music track.

Instrumental Reflections

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Our LIVE YM Talk for today is CANCELED. We’ll have to postpone Patti Gibbons until another Friday in September. Enjoy your Friday off!

This week’s freebie is pretty cool. With all the road trips we’re taking with our youth group kids, it seems obvious that we need some good rockin’ tunes we can all jam to while we travel.

Interlinc already thought of it and wants to send you a FREE music CD with 19 songs with music from well-known artists like Family Force 5, John Reuben, Ayiesha Woods, Tenth Avenue North and a number of amazing new artists. They’ll also be adding Bible Studies and other downloads to go with the CD, five of which are already available as a free download.

Check out this page on Interlinc’s website to request the free CD and check out the free Bible studies.

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Join us at 2:00 PM EST this afternoon in our LIVE YM Talk. It’s our 1 year anniversary show and YOU are the featured guest! We’ll all have a chance to answer the question, “What have you learned about youth ministry in the past year?” See the LIVE YM Talk page for details on how to join the call and/or the live chat.

In 2004 a man named Roland Boyce, who would later become my sr. pastor, wrote a book for youth groups called, “Issues and Answers.” Today we’re both still serving together, albeit at a different location with different titles, and I still continue to see his heart for teenagers demonstrated in so many ways.

He’s asked me to make all 350+ pages of his work, “Issues and Answers,” available to you for free! This curriculum is intended to be a teaching guide to help youth workers and parents provide biblical answers for some of the tough issues in our society. In the introduction, Rol explains the format as:

“…a topical listing of 47 issues alphabetically, the Biblical background on the issue, the basic conclusions of Biblical teaching surrounding the issue, a statement of the youth’s culture prevailing perspective on the topic, and bibliographical helps for further study plus an interesting bit of trivia to add a little ‘seasoning’ to the subject matter.

The issues covered are:

• Abortion
• Alcohol
• Authority
• Bible (The)
• Birth Control
• Church (The)
• Cloning
• Clothes/Fads
• Counseling
• Cults/Occult
• Dancing
• Dating
• Death and Dying
• Death Penalty
• Depression
• Devotional Life
• Discipleship
• Divorce
• Drugs
• Ecology
• Evolution
• Euthanasia
• Food
• Gambling
• God
• Homosexuality
• Marriage
• Modern Day Religions
• Money-(Stewardship)
• Music
• M.T.V.
• Parent-Child Relationships
• Peer Pressure
• Pets
• Politics
• Pornography
• Pre-Marital Sex
• Racism
• Sabbath/Sunday (The)
• School
• Smoking
• Sports
• Suicide
• Swearing
• Tattoos/(Body Piercing)
• War
• Women’s Rights

Obviously, some of the topics are open to a lot of interpretation based on your theological background. I promise Roland Boyce will not take it personally if you disagree with his conclusions on any of these issues!

IMPORTANT: Each lesson has parts that are in different documents. The main lesson is clearly titled as such, but supplemental statistics for each lesson can be found in the “issues and answers stats.doc” document, and a teachable activity/exercise for each lesson along with the lesson’s aim is found in the “Life Labs” document.

ALSO IMPORTANT: Pastor Roland Boyce is providing this to you for free, but he would greatly appreciate hearing your feedback about it, especially if you use it with your groups. Please email him at rboyce@alexandriacovenant.org with your thoughts, recommendations, suggestions and encouragement.

[ download no longer available ]

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Join us at 2:00 PM EST this afternoon in our LIVE YM Talk. Our featured guest is Jeff Borton, co-author of a brand new book, Simple Student Ministry. He’ll lead us in a discussion about simplifying our student ministries. See the LIVE YM Talk page for details on how to join the call and/or the live chat.

The following guest post is contributed by a high school friend of mine, Kira Dacanay. She is passionate for maintaining a global environment that is as clean and healthy as possible for everything that lives in it. This post contains some of her many ideas for how youth ministries can do their part. The best part is, most of them are very easy to do and will still have a very significant impact.

Activity Ideas

• Community tree-plantings: municipal parks, side-walk shade trees, urban tree plantings, etc.; also flower gardens
• Trash pick-ups: local parks, “Adopt A Spot” public-right-of-ways, stream banks, etc. Always wear protective gloves!
• Flower or Veggie garden: community designated spot or church property

General Tips/Tricks

• Connect with local and state authorities; NGO’s or wildlife refuges for activity ideas or jumping on board an established one. NGO’s and wildlife refuges always welcome volunteers and are often planning events themselves.
• Always get explicit permission from the municipality if public lands involved.
• Check out Americorps, the “domestic Peace Corps” where I served. Trained personnel are available at no charge to help plan your own project or get you involved with one of theirs.
• Donations: Large companies have budgets for “social responsibility” requirements. Search their web pages or talk to the store manager. Giants like Home Depot and Lowes are will be able to provide you with lawn/leaf bags, plants, shovels etc., also grant money for larger projects. Contacting the store manager for simple items like lawn/leaf bags. Ask for donations from local “mom and pop” garden centers, too.
• Other local businesses may contribute if you have a set plan and give them proper credit for their contribution. By telling other members of the community that this local business supported a community project, it sends a strong message about that business’s commitment to the well-being of its customers.
• Fostering Stewardship: Set the example! You, as a youth leader are responsible for feeling a strong sense of stewardship in the first place and passing in on to your group. Not everyone may bite, but guaranteed you’ll at least a few who really latch on. Do background research on the project and similar projects, and give examples to your group about successful projects elsewhere and how that community has benefited. Before/after photos are especially helpful! Also, keep track of the process. If you are doing tree plantings for example, take photos before, during, after, and waaay after to show your group and new members how your trees have grown. Talk about difficulties encountered and how it makes each person feel to see the positive changes they’ve contributed to their environment.

Schedule activities on a yearly basis (i.e. every Earth Day have an activity). Or every October have one just because. If it becomes and annual event, you are more likely to keep youths interested and involved, and new ones will see that the older kids think it’s cool too. Eventually, parents and other church members will become more supportive of your efforts as they see their children looking forward to “this year’s event.” You can also solicit the general public to volunteer at an event as well. Ask them to bring a non-perishable food item too.

Also, connect with the spiritual side of embracing the world around you. Take some time to reflect on the day’s activities. Put your palm on the trunk of an old tree or young sapling. Think about the many years that old tree has “seen” come and go, how it has weathered the impacts of humans on earth, “seen” changes in it’s landscape, and been powerless to defend itself in a changing environment. Think of how this new, young sapling has so much life to live, and could very well outlive you. Give it hope for a long, healthy life by promising to do your part by keeping the air, water, and soil it needs to live clean. In turn, that tree will help keep the air, water, and soil you need to live, clean, too. We’re all connected in one-way or another. God put us on this earth to do great things, and He gave us a magnificent planet to work with. Respect the earth and care for it as God would have you nurture your own children.

I would love to share ideas with you, I have many!! Contact me at kdacanay2@yahoo.com.

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Kira Dacanay is a Master’s Candidate at the University of Rhode Island in the Department of Marine Affairs, and holds a Bachelor of Science in Natural Resource Management from Rutgers University, NJ. She completed 1700 hours of community service work with the AmeriCorps NJ Watershed Ambassador Program in 2007 and worked nearly 2 years with the NJ Department of Environmental Protection prior to beginning her Master’s degree. She enjoys connecting spiritually with the natural world and strives to improve her stewardship of the great resource that God has provided.

I’m not sure passing laws and focusing on education will change anything. It’s not a major deterrent to stopping drug usage, so why should it stop kids from sexting? The solution definitely has to go back to having parents who are actually in touch with their kids lives and who are teaching them openly, honestly and biblically about sexuality from a younger age. Otherwise, what’s next? Safe-sexting?

This MSNBC news video is worth watching.

[ht Inetta Smith via email]

…before I started.

1. It’s very emotional, unlike any other job. You’ll experience the highest of highs, and the lowest of lows.

2. It’s very messy, and always will be as long as you work with people who are just as imperfect and sinful as you are.

3. It’s constantly changing. Youth culture never stays the same from year to year, and neither do the kids, values, nor worldviews. Youth ministry must always morph along with it. As soon as you think you have a handle on it, think again.

4. It requires strong vision casting. Any leadership position does, but leadership in youth ministry does especially. Your leaders, teens, parents, church and community all depend on it.

5. Don’t think you need to do it all. In fact, the ministry is healthier when you enable others to serve instead of taking responsibility for every youth event, trip, fundraiser, small group, idea, and strategy that furthers the vision.

6. No matter what people at your new church say, don’t make deep rooted changes in the ministry until after two years of building trust and respect.

7. Live a life that is above reproach in everything. Eventually even “little things” will come to light and you will be held to a higher level of accountability for it (and rightly so).

8. Kids really don’t care how “cool” you are or how well you know scripture as much as they care about how much you love them as individuals, not as a group.

9. Have a firm grasp on what your values are in ministry and make sure they’re are aligned with a church’s written and unwritten values before accepting a paid youth ministry position there.

10. Don’t be too discouraged if you don’t see results and life-change take place right away. Sometimes it takes years, and even then you won’t always hear about it.

What do you wish someone would’ve told you about youth ministry before you got started? We’d all love to hear it in the comments below.

I actually drafted this post several months ago, but am finally publishing it now in light of some other blog posts that are coming out. Among others, Anastasia Goodstein writes about Facebook and youth social networking fatigue, Libby Issendorf says that gen Y lost that loving feeling for Facebook, and Adam McLanes writes about how MTV lost their “cool factor” with this generation.

The cycle of youth culture

It’s really not surprising to me that this is happening. It’s the cycle of youth culture. Teens gravitate to something, usually under criticism from adults, until it becomes common and mainstream. As the adults eventually start adopting it themselves, teens gradually move on to something else.

Remember that, in his day, Elvis Presley was greatly criticized for his gyrating hips and the moral values his followers were adopting, but eventually his music became common among adults, parents, and teens alike. So, teens moved on to other flavors of rock and roll. As those flavors became mainstream with adults, teens moved once again to alternative rock. And so on…

Mark Oestreicher, in his book, Youth Ministry 3.0, summarizes it well:

Youth culture has become the dominate culture…. Middle-aged and younger parents listen to the same music their teenagers listen to (or, at least, used to listen to)…. Clothing brands cross age barriers…. Adults are all over Facebook and MySpace. …youth culture cannot stand by while it becomes completely commoditized and commonplace. That rubs against the essential fabric of adolescence…. Teenagers’ constant need to differentiate from the adult world… drives them to new, “other” ways of connecting, coping, and creating. Every time some aspect of youth culture becomes commoditized and mainstream, accepted by adults and culture at large, teenagers tweak it in a new way for themselves or create a whole new category. Case in point: All Web-watchers and adolescent speculators were still convinced that teenagers were going to continue using email and online chat rooms to connect with each other virtually, but teenagers slid out from under that and embraced instant messaging. Then we adults… were shocked… that teens would slide out from under our assumptions about their IM use and move to texting as the most common form of social networking. (Pages 65, 66, 68.)

It’s impossible to predict what teens will move toward next, but I will take the liberty of going on record to say that the general population of teens will move away from Facebook in the next two years.

This is becoming more and more evident as young adults like Julian Smith are annoyed that grandparents are joining Facebook. In his popular video, 25 Things I Hate About Facebook, Julian says there should be an age limit to Facebook (1:14 in the video).

Some teens I know still love Facebook and use it daily, but not everyone. Actually, what prompted me to write this blog post a couple months ago was a conversation I had with a teen who said he closed his Facebook account because there’s too many adults there and it’s too bloated with random features he doesn’t care about.

So what’s next?

I have no idea what they’ll gravitate toward as teens stop checking Facebook multiple times a day and start checking it only once a day, eventually checking it a couple times a week and then only once in a while, but I think it will have a couple elements:

1. It will not be tethered to a computer. Although Facebook has a mobile version and features, it’s still largely bound to a computer. As teens become more and more mobile and as smart phone data plans become more common, their networking will move to a mobile device that connects to a computer rather than the other way around.

2. It will still enhance and lead to face-to-face socializing. When the telephone was gaining traction, the criticism was that people would no longer meet face-to-face to talk and the dangers of miscommunication from not seeing body language would create a lot of problems. Today we all know people still continue to meet face-to-face anyway. The telephone just extended our communication. Oddly enough, however, that’s the same argument that was made when I was younger and email and IM was gaining traction, except that those communication methods didn’t even have talking involved! But yet, here we are today still meeting in person, despite all the text messaging and social networking sites. Remember, God has created mankind with an innate need for relationships, primarily with Himself, but also with each other. That face-to-face component will never go away, just the expressions of it change as technology and youth culture continues to develop.

One possibility of something teens might gravitate toward is something like Loopt, a social service that utilizes the GPS capabilities of newer phones to show you where your friends are in proximity to you, what they’re doing, and quickly contact them so you can meet together face-to-face. (This Apple commercial explains it a bit more.) Whether or not it will reach the widespread acceptance like Facebook is yet to be seen (I kinda think it won’t).

Whatever teens move toward, though, it will initially come under criticism from adults just like MySpace and Facebook did. Soon enough adults will accept it and cause the teens to once again move elsewhere, but thus is the cycle of youth culture and all the subsequent challenges of youth ministry.

What do you think?

Do you think it will take teens longer than two years to move to something else? Shorter? Will Facebook be able to keep up with the morphing trends in culture and adolescence? Have an idea of what they’ll move toward after Facebook? Would love to hear from you in the comments below.