Cool Text Toy!

Glitter Graphics Maker & MySpace Layouts

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If your students are into Myspace like mine are, you will want to be able to do some cool stuff with Myspace. So here's a cool toy that allows you to create your own glitter text! Fun Stuff.

Enjoy,
-Jeff-

Invite Night pt 4: Sermon

Invite Night occurred October 15th, 2008 and saw 6 new people come to our youth ministry (there were 37 total for the night), with 5 students getting saved or recommitting their lives to Christ. It was such a resounding success that we've decided to detail the process here so others can take this idea and try it in their ministries.

Here are the other parts: Advertising, Games and Schedule.

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Something tragic has occurred. The blog silence for the last two weeks (save for yesterdays post) was for the most part due to the fact that my computer blew up and I was using my outdated laptop for a while. This made doing anything and everything painfully slow. Therefore I tried not to be on the computer as much as possible, which is actually a nice exercise, if you mean to do it and don't have it forced on you.

*End Rant*

I said all of that to say that my actual sermon notes from Invite Night are now missing. If I ever stumble across them I'll post them, but here in a nutshell is what I talked about:

I started by referring to the game Chubby Bunny, and asked them (rhetorically) what they thought the point of a game like that was. After giving them a second to ponder that question, I opened another poll question, asking them their favorite super heroes from their childhood. The best responses were mighty mouse and captain caveman. From there we discussed Jeremiah 29:11 and talked about how God created us with a purpose, like a super hero and unlike Chubby Bunny.

At Youth Conference, the speaker Jeremy Johnson gave a great illustration about how a sponge in it's packaging has all the potential in the world to absorb water, which is it's purpose. However, a sponge can only absorb water when it's placed in water. I talked then about how we were created to be in fellowship with God, that's our purpose, and only in God can we be fulfilled.

That's the night in a nutshell, it was amazing, and even more encouraging is that some of the students are coming back, and they're getting plugged in to their purpose. I would highly recommend doing an Invite Night, in fact, we've got another one planned for January.

Did you do an Invite Night? Leave me a comment.
-Jeff-

Invite Night pt 3: Schedule

Invite Night occurred October 15th, 2008 and saw 6 new people come to our youth ministry (there were 37 total for the night), with 5 students getting saved or recommitting their lives to Christ. It was such a resounding success that we've decided to detail the process here so others can take this idea and try it in their ministries.

Here are the other parts: Advertising, Games and Sermon.

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Here is the schedule for how the evening went down. Check out my other posts for a description of the games we used.

5:45-6:15- Pizza and Poll Questions. We also used this time for visitor registration. For the first time using Polleverywhere.com you have to take time to show them how to do it, and you have to be patient with the ones that aren't catching on.

6:15-6:18- Butterfly Man- A Video Clip that we got from Bluefish TV. You can view it by clicking here.

6:18-6:30- Wii Sports Boxing Tournament. Tournament is too strong a word, there wasn't a bracket. We let students challenge each other based on age and opposing genders. You can read more about the set up by clicking over to part two.

6:30-6:35- Another Poll Question- And a convenient excuse to get the students participating in Atomic Twinkies out of the room while we told everyone else what to expect.

6:35-6:45- Atomic Twinkies- I apologize for not posting pictures, my camera didn't do this game justice. I'm not sure that the students will ever trust an eating game again.

6:45-6:48- SWAT- Another Bluefish video while we cleaned up the mess left behind by the last game and set up for the next one.

6:48-6:57- Chubby Bunny. If you don't know what this game is, you must not be in youth ministry. We ran out of ideas at the last moment (just kidding, it actually segued into the sermon I preached that night).

6:57-7:00- One more Poll Question, some hangout time and a chance to use the restroom before service.

7:00-7:30- Worship. Our youth band rocked that night!

7:30-7:40- Give a ways and announcements.

7:40-8:15- Sermon. But that's a post all to itself.

Is this helpful? Leave a comment.

-Jeff-