Connection algorithm for helping girls belong
Wouldn’t it be great if there was a Connection Algorithm like Sheldon’s that would help you connect a girl to the student ministry or a girls lifegroup?
I remember the first day on the job as a girlsminister. Such an algorithm would have been very handy. It was our fall retreat! I was surrounded by cliques of girls and I couldn’t figure out how to get inside of one of those circles. They all seemed to be looking at me—the new girl—and sizing me up. Didn’t they realize I was an adult and the girls minister?! I think I thought there would be instant connection like there was when I worked summers at the large Christian camps. Just because I was camp staffer, I often had students come up and start talking with me about some pretty heavy things. But, this was not how it was on my first day on the job. There were some sweet people that tried to come over and introduce themselves but mostly it was cliques. My go to entry line was, “Hey do you guys know where I could get a soda?” and then when the conversation tanked, I’d say, “wow better go look for that soda.” Then on Sundays and Wednesdays there was the hallway that I renamed “The Gauntlet”. It was a horrible hallway because you had to walk down it to get into the sunday school room and lining every square inch of wallspace were groups of girls that weren’t talking to me but to each other. Very intimidating! I’m very thankful for the gauntlet and for that first fall retreat because it reminds me of what it feels like to be new in our student ministry. It’s scary!
That’s why I worked with some leaders and girls over the years to have a algorithm of sorts or a strategy to receive new girls into our student ministry. The idea is the 1-2-3 CLICK! method. Now understand that we don’t just go around saying “hey new girl…this is how we’re going to get you connected in three clicks.” This is just something that I have used to explain to students or leaders to help them understand how to continue reaching out to new people that have been introduced to our student ministry.
Here’s the basic premise:
1. Meet a girl who is unconnected and introduce her to her peer group.
2. Take her to coffee or introduce her to a peer or leader which will take her to coffee to get to know her.
3. Get her connected to a lifegroup of girls who have hung out with her or introduce her to a relationship building catalyst like our Snowball Girls Retreat. AND CLICK! She’s in.
I have observed that typically after 3 intentional relationship connections from you the leader—to a healthy peer group—and then to a bonding event or small group with that healthy peer group, the student will click into a place they feel welcomed and known within your student ministry.
As we have grown through the years, it has become imperative to utilize volunteers like our Chris and Debbie who are not only lifegroup leaders on Wednesdays, but also are moms that have journeyed through our student ministry alongside their students. They are the faces on Sunday AM when we have girls walk up to the check-in table to get connected. On Wednesdays we use our amazing ministry assistants Carol and Julia to connect girls to lifegroups and introduce them to a peer that will “show them the way” for the evening.
In addition to that, we have begun having a SOUP N’ STUDY at my home on Tuesday evenings. Surprisingly many girls that would not walk into the big student group have shown up at my home to meet girls in a smaller context. That may be something you could add to your connection plan as well.
How do you get girls connected and help them feel safe, loved and known in your student ministry?
Working with guys on church staff part 3
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Posted under: Featured, Girls Ministry, interview, training, volunteers, webisodes
Today I’m featuring video interview #3 in my on-going series of interviews that deal with the subject matter of working with guys on church staff. In case you’ve missed the other videos, I included a slide show collection of the previous videos from my senior pastor, and my first student ministry team I started with at Brentwood Baptist. I hope these are helpful to you. I’d love to hear from you about what you’ve learned as you’ve worked with girls on staff or if you are a girls minister, what has been helpful to you from these videos.
An inside look at a girls retreat online leaders meeting
No Comments Posted under: Featured, Girls Ministry, technology, training, Videos, volunteers
This year, I did something a little different with our leaders meeting before our girls retreat. I recorded it and sent out a password protected video link that had a biblestudy and schedule attached. It was well received as it allowed each leader the chance to “meet” with me on their own time. As there is not any “personal” information shared, I thought it might be beneficial to allow other girls ministers to see how I led our “snowball leaders information meeting”. It’s a little long…13 minutes, but hopefully it will be of some benefit to you. So without further ado…
GUY TALK: former student ministers share about working with a girls minister
At the end of February, I had the opportunity to lead a conference at The Lifeway Girls Ministry Forum on the topic of working with guys on a church staff. I have to say that in my almost 9 years of working at Brentwood Baptist, that I have been extremely blessed with the guys I get to work with. I count it a blessing to be able to look at these guys that I’ve worked with as my brothers. They have walked with me and helped me mature as a minister to girls. They have encouraged me, laughed with me and at me, and have been a blessing to work with. With that said, it was not easy and there were intentional things that were done to foster a healthy environment and structure to work together as a team. For my conference, I felt that other girls ministers would benefit from hearing from these guys that I work with. Some of the guys talked about what they’ve learned working with a girls minister and how that differs from their time working without a girls minister. Others talked about difficult moments we had in working together and how we moved through that to be a stronger team. My pastor shared his wisdom on boundaries that need to be in place with teams that have women and men working together. I am not posting all the videos I shared at my conference, but have received permission from Jay and Aaron to share this video with you. Jay and Aaron were the first guys to work with me as a girls minister and I think that God truly helped us understand some things that could make a difference for other student ministries looking to hire a girls minister or trying to figure out how to work with a girls minister. I love these guys and I’m thankful that we got to work together for the little over 3 years we did. I now work with a different team of guys, but I still get to cheer these two guys on from a distance as Jay pastors our Station Hill church campus and as Aaron leads our Young Adult Ministry. Take a chance to listen to Jay and Aaron on this 7 minute interview video and pass it along to your student ministers and girls ministers.
Cookies: a great recipe for getting to know girls
1 Comment Posted under: Featured, Girls Ministry, Girls Ministry Activities, Mentoring, volunteers
This past Sunday two of our 8th grade girls lifegroup leaders put together a Valentine’s eve cookie party. I joined them after the damage had already begun on the kitchen table. You probably heard us sometime during the afternoon. You must have heard us, as those 12 or so 8th grade girls hit decibels that broke the sound barrier at least 5 or 6 times. You know how it goes. You start making cookies. You start giggling. You start singing, and it quickly escalates into a sound barrier breaking rendition of “I am a C. I am a C-H. I am a C-H-R-I-S-T-I-A-N.” Amazing. And I loved how not only did we make heart cookies, but we had Yoda, Bobba Fett, and a Storm trooper that showed up in our cookie tray as well. Why do we do it? Because in the margins of making cookies, we share more than a recipe. We share time. We share turns getting to hear what’s going on, or what one girls likes, or what one girl doesn’t like. We share laughter. And as a result, we’ve shared life together. Walking into that group on Wednesday night doesn’t seem like a sterile classroom anymore. There’s growth happening even more now because these two lifegroup leaders took time to bring girls to their home and make cookies for an afternoon. I love that our leaders see the importance of doing life outside of our scheduled time on Wednesday. Thanks Kathy and Debbie! And thanks to many other leaders who do this on a regular basis. I just didn’t call attention to you today. BUT it’s coming:)
GROUPME: a great way to communicate with teams of people via text
One of the things I have most enjoyed using in 2010 was this real-time group communications tool via my phone called GROUPME. It’s free and it has been amazing with many different uses. Our student ministry staff no longer uses text messaging as our means of communicating with each other because this has been so helpful. We utilize this so that instantly we all receive the message and in real time we can all view each person’s response. The downside with text messaging is even if your phone can send a message to multiple recipients, the recipients don’t know who else received the message and they can only respond back to you. With GROUPME, this is not the case. It’s like a little text conversation for a group. It has brought our team even closer as we can celebrate with each other, joke with each other, grieve with each other over bad news, pray with each other, and instantly alert each other so that no one is left out of important information. We have even used this tool with our leaders for events. For example, I’ve set up a groupme text group for a pre-teen retreat and our fall retreat. I’ve entered in all of the volunteers numbers and instantly we have communication in text that links us all together even when we are spread out across a campus. It is a time saver when we are doing cabin checks or passing out the student meds or getting bible study supplies to students. It is really handy because someone in bible study group can quickly use groupme to alert us all that a student has yet to show up. We were quickly able to identify that a cabin had overslept and missed their wake-up call instead of having to run all over campus trying to see where the group was.
You can then terminate the group at the end of retreat so that volunteers don’t get annoyed with the ongoing dialogue. The only downside is that there are only 25 people allowed to a groupme number. I had to set up 2 groups for our fall retreat. They also have a feature if you use the GROUPME iphone app to make a conference call and get everyone on the line. And now you can upload images that all the group can see and respond to. Very cool. So how do you get started? Just go to groupme.com and you’re ready to start. But before you do, check out some ways we’re using groupme.
Here are some ways I think you could utilize GROUPME in your ministry to girls:
-Use GROUPME with the girls you are discipling. Just make sure you create some digital boundaries to mute the conversation after a certain hour. You might also want to bring in another adult onto the GROUPME just for accountability.
-Use GROUPME for a volunteer checkin with your smallgroups and for announcements for the evening or Sunday AM.
-Use GROUPME for your student staff like we have been doing.
What are some other ways you could utilize GROUPME? Share below.
Tips to help your new years resolution for recruiting new volunteers
You may have written some new years resolutions that have to do with finding new volunteers to help out in the girls ministry. If so, today’s post may be helpful to you.
The new year is a great time to look for new leaders and invite them into the girls ministry even if every “slot” (for lack of a better word) is filled. I have found myself scrambling for leaders at the beginning of a school year, because I wasn’t actively looking for potential leaders in the midst of the previous school year. The beginning of a new year, is the middle of our small group year so we’re not having to make a mad dash for new leaders. We are simply looking at the groups to see if there are groups ready to multiply and if there are, we need to move leaders into those spaces in order to grow a new group. So how do you go about recruiting a new leader and growing a group? This is more than one blog post so today I’ll just post a couple of tips and if it’s helpful, I’ll post some more.
TIPS:
- At the beginning of a new year I have found that people’s schedules may have changed, so look back through your emails or notes and don’t hesitate to ask someone who originally had been interested months ago but couldn’t due to prior commitments.
- If you have a retreat coming up, they are great opportunities to invite someone you think would make a great leader to come and just give it a try for a weekend. (Of course you need to ensure that they receive a background check prior to the retreat) I try to put the new volunteer with a group of girls that may be growing and needs to be multiplied into a new group. If the volunteer connects with the girls, guess which group she’ll be interested in serving with on a weekly basis—VOILA!
- At the beginning of a new year, take some time to look at the size of your groups. If one group is hovering around the 10-15 mark, it’s time to begin moving a new “apprentice” leader into that group. Once you move a new apprentice leader into that group, it gives the group time to get to know that person before you multiply the group into 2. It also allows you time to “train” that new leader and they begin to feel comfortable with the girls before they have to officially teach the class. When the new school rolls around, you have already built in a leader that knows the girls, and “voila” you are ready to birth a new group
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Support & Encourage Girls Ministry – A Guys View
Today we have a guest contribution from the guy’s perspective. You might say we found a guy student minister to give us a piece of his mind:) Okay, but I am excited about today’s article. I love getting to meet and share new blog friends. And Josh is someone I’ve been meaning to introduce to the girlsminister.com community for awhile. Josh Cosineau is The Youth Pastor of East Auburn Baptist Church in Auburn, Maine. He also is a Youth speaker & teacher. He has a beautiful wife named Anna and they have two sons. I asked Josh to share some insight from a guy’s perspective to help guys who work with girls and for us to hear some encouragement from a male student minister. He did an amazing job so I hope this will be one you read and pass on. Thanks Josh for taking the time to share with us today and on behalf of girl leaders everywhere—thanks for helping us to gain a little bit of a guy’s perspective and truly partnering with us as sisters in Christ. We are so thankful! Don’t forget to check out the questions that Josh gave us at the end of us article. Hopefully it will be something you can use to begin or continue some much needed dialogue between your other gendered co-laborers.
By Josh Cousineau
http://joshcousineau.com
Support & Encourage Girls Ministry – A Guys View
As a male youth pastor I am constantly faced with the challenge of attempting to minister to teens of the opposite sex. I am very blessed to have great female leaders on my team and most likely do not thank them enough for the work they put into the ministry. One key component to any youth ministry is addressing the different issues that guys and girls will face. If your ministry is a ‘one-size fits all’, you may need to rethink your approach. If you don’t see or understand the difference between guys and girls, then you’re definitely not married, and most likely need to evaluate your methods of ministry. It is in these differences that we see the wonders of God’s creation. They also make clear our dire need for a great leadership team that is comprised of not only godly men, but also women who love Jesus and want to serve Him. Our reaction to the female leaders, how we see their authority and leadership, will have great impact upon the girls and guys within our ministry.
Below I attempt to answer two questions that will help us think through these two drastically different areas of our ministry. These lists are far from exhaustive, but my hope is that they will help you think through the role of girl’s ministry in your youth group.
- How to support and encourage girl’s ministries.
- Have female leaders – I know it may sound simple but to really minister to the girls in your youth group you must have great girl leaders. It is more natural for us as men to draw men and work with men than to draw and work with woman. Nonetheless, bringing women leaders on-board is vital to the health and growth of your ministry and the girls within our ministry.
- Treat them like your sister – If our view of the women leaders and the girls in our ministry is anything less than that of a sister, it is un-biblical (1 Tim. 5.2). Don’t fool yourself; men constantly fail because of the lust of our flesh. We have an improper view of the girls in our ministries, both leaders and students. The Bible calls us to view them as sisters. If you struggle in this area GET HELP!!! A great place to start is a little booklet called Sexual Detox. If you can’t afford it message me I will get it for you.
- Treat them as Jesus did – All throughout the Bible Jesus not only had women serve Him, but He also served them. He did not use them nor abuse them. On the contrary, He loved them, cared for them and saw their worth and value in His ministry. How much more of an example do we need than to treat them as Jesus did? Here are a couple passages that point out the great care and love Jesus had for women and His earthly ministry.
1. Matt. 26.6-12
2. Mark. 15.40-41
3. Luke. 10.37-42
4. John. 4.1-45
5. John. 7.53-8.11
6. John. 19.25-27
7. John. 20.14-18
- Point them towards Jesus – Our goal is not to impress them, to show them we know how to do it, or to be the end all. No, we are to point them to Jesus. Our love, care, support and encouragement as we treat them like a sister will help lead them towards Jesus. Pray for them, speak the gospel to them, and above all point them towards the only man in life that really matters, Jesus.
- Their worth is in Jesus – We need all our students, parents and leaders to understand their standing with Jesus as opposed to their standing with us. This is even more true with the females on our team. They are loved by Jesus, accepted by Jesus and adopted by Jesus. We are merely to point them towards this understanding of Jesus.
- Stay away – When all is said and done we need to just stay away. This does not mean that we are to never talk to girls, but trust me guys, girls want their space. Get great female leaders, treat them as Jesus did, love them and point them to Jesus. Then trust the Spirit and stay away!
The second part of this is; (2) How can women help us?
The truth is that most of us guys just don’t get women. Regardless of age, we have a hard time understanding them. That is why it is vital to the ministry of the gospel within youth ministries to have female leaders who love Jesus above all and want to serve the girls in your ministry. Here are a couple things you as a female leader can do to help us men.
- Make it clear – We may need a flannel-graph to better understand it, but please help us understand what you need, how we can support you, and how to pray for you. Even if you say it, we may not get it (yeah, we are that numb).
- Pray for us – Please pray that God will work in our lives to help us support you. Deep down we are all a little scared. Picture the junior-high dance where the boys are on one side and girls on the other, yeah that is still us. We are timid and need the Spirit to help us.
- Tell us the truth – We need to know not only what you’re saying, but how we are doing. Women have a great way of seeing the real us. Please let us know when we are too blunt, too weak, or whatever else it may be. We need to know what it is that girls struggle with, and how we can help you through struggles, and help you support the girls in the ministry.
My hope for this list is not that it will address everything that comes into play within a youth ministry with regards to guys/girls ministry, but that it will start a conversation. Here are a couple questions that may help spark dialog.
Guy Leaders to Girl Leaders – [ask these questions in a group setting]
* How can I help point you to Jesus?
* Do I treat you and the girls in the ministry like sisters?
* Are there any areas in my ministry/life that may make a girl feel uncomfortable?
o If so how can I address these?
* Where am I numb when it comes to girls?
Girl Leaders to Guy Leaders – [ask these questions in a group setting]
* Are there actions or behaviors that the female leaders or girl teens do within the ministry that cause you to stumble or issues we can address?
* Am I doing anything inappropriate towards the leaders or teen guys?
* Do you feel supported in my role as a female leader?
Keeping our “experiences” in check when mentoring girls.
Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God. Consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith. (Heb 13:7).
The most important thing is putting women in and around the girls ministry that get God’s word in their lives and girls can see the outcome of that in the way they live their everyday lives. Don’t let YOUR PAST EXPERIENCES become your primary girlsministry tool.
Some questions to ask regarding when to use a life experience:
1. Am i sharing this to bring attention to myself?
2. Are there parts of this experience that do not need to be disclosed? Too much information for a certain age group to hear?
3. Am I sharing this experience because it has been healed, redeemed, transformed or is this possibly a therapy session for me?
4. Sharing an experience brings a certain level of authenticity at times so I’m not saying never share personal stories, just ask yourself—what spiritual truth does this experience reinforce as I mentor this sister in Christ?
Life scripting: Are you reading the same “lines”?
I just finished reading a book called: My Teenage Werewolf: A Mother, a Daughter, a Journey Through the Thicket of Adolescence by Lauren Kessler
It was a very interesting read. I don’t agree with everything in the book, mainly because the author does not have experience with the transformation Christ will have in a mother daughter relationship submits to His guidance. However, it is a highly entertaining and informative book that does provide quite an array of research.
As I was reading this book, I would also dialogue with my mother to talk about our own relationship. It was very insightful for me as an adult daughter to be allowed to ask any question I wanted regarding the way my mother chose to parent me. One insight came as I was reading about the author’s epiphany in a department store where she was on her last straw with her daughter during a shopping trip to get an 8th grade graduation dress for a daughter who never wore dresses. Her epiphany was that she was playing a part in this story and kept reading the same lines over and over again. Her daughter would read from the same script. They both knew how this story would end. Each would walk out of the store, angry and stone cold. Each of them would continue this pattern until they got home, where each of them would not have a good evening because of this silent treatment. But what would happen if she changed the script? What would happen if she changed the story? She decided to grab her daughter’s arm and say: “hey let’s go watch a movie and grab some popcorn!” The story changed, and the daughter responded with a hesistant yes.
So my question to my mother was: Did you ever think we scripted? Her response: No because I made an effort not to do that. I wanted you to know that I wanted to know you. My mother asked me the same questions every day after I came home from school. I never wanted to do that to you. I never wanted to get into a pattern where you would think I didn’t care.
My mother will be the first to tell you that she was and is not perfect, but I am so thankful for her and most thankful that she didn’t script with me.
So here’s a question for you:
Are there questions or conversations that you tend to “read” over and over again into the lives of girls that God has placed in your life? Too much repetition in the same exact form will only fall on deaf ears. Learn how to look at your “messages” and conversations to find fresh ways to say some of the same things. ”You are loved” is a good statement for your girls to hear. It can be communicated in fresh ways so they hear it continually in different ways. Mix it up…and see what happens.
Another question: Is there a girl you know who is “reading” from a lifescript that is causing her life to spiral into a story that is going in a direction that is not going to end well? How can you help her to “read from a different script”?
- Girardier 2.0 update: we're having a boy! Technology was so good we could even see black rimmed glasses and converse shoes:). #fb
- RT @mikeglenn: New Post by @amyjogirardier - girls minister of @brentwoodbc on Self Esteem - http://ow.ly/6IErg #truthfulconversations
- Proud of the students I prayed with this morning at their school flagpole. Now I'm moving to breakfast. See you at the Puffy Muffin;).
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