Book Winners - YOUthwork book.

It wasn’t easy to pick the five winners of the YOUthwork book. You guys submitted some hilarious/honest answers to the question “What youth group related topic is still missing from Stuff Christians Like?”

Check out the entire list of comments here. In the meantime here are the five people who won a free copy of the book. If you made one of the winning comments please email me at theacuffs@yahoo.com with your mailing address and “YOUthwork” in the subject line. Thanks so much for sharing your ideas.

Erin said...
I'm a youth group alum, and we always had very interesting ways of raising money for whatever we were doing. Here are a few we tried:

1. Car washes - the boys were allowed to take their shirts off, but the girls were not even allowed to wear bathing suits.

2. Donation dinners- the youth would cook (and what youth know or cares about cooking?), and everyone who attended would give a donation for their plate. But the food we made was never worth much money, and I always wanted to say, "You really don't want to eat that."

3. Talent shows- this was the time when anyone who could strum a guitar was worshipped. Because the alternative was the youth choir doing a number, sounding horrible, but still getting a Standing O.

4. Rock-a-thon- This is where we got donations per hour or flat-rate to rock, in a rocking chair, all night. My calves are still sore.

LJ said...
How about a post concerning youth group skit teams? When I was in YG, we did what we called "human videos" to popular Christian songs. Our favorite was to "Arise My Love" by Newsong--a skit in which we all did sign language-like motions to the words. At the end, our zealous skit team leader came out dressed as Jesus (as if he'd just risen from the grave) wielding a flaming sword. Every time we did this skit at other churches or youth rallies, we were sure that 10s of people got saved. We were also sure that God had smiled with favor upon us, since no one's hair caught on fire.

I'm not sure if you can relate to this, but skit team was the bread and butter of my YG experience.

Laura said...
What about the instability that ensues in youth group when the regime changes? The “getting a new youth director” phenomenon.

Loyalties divide up between those youth who miss the old leader and the few revolutionaries who are happy for the change – and it gets messy. There are tearful, overly emotional slideshows at goodbye parties and cards to be signed by everyone – shoot, I wish leaving my job at the office got such hullabaloo.

Then the new leader comes bounding in (literally sometimes) and the turmoil of “but Dave didn’t do it that way” or “this year’s mud fight was so much cooler than last year’s” begins.

It takes a while for the new leadership to regain stability, but I suppose it’s just a part of the office…I mean job.


Julie said...
Stuff Christians Like: Praying for unsaved youth to come to youth group and then complaining when they do.

Otherwise known as the "We want you to know Christ but first you must put out your cig & stop riding your skateboard in the sanctuary" phenomenon.

Dustin said...
This is what every youth group doesn’t need:
College Kids who refuse to grow up
As a youth pastor I have 10 college students who come in and are a huge distraction every summer and major holiday that they choose to bless us with their presence. These are the kids whose parents are deacons but they get drunk every weekend and slowly pull the HS seniors down because they look up to the college kids. The sad part is you cant say anything because their father is deacon...hooray church politics...boo my negative attitude this morning...sorry