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Thoughts On Mid-Week... Every Wednesday night this summer, we've done a Mid-Week program called "Dive-In Movie". It kind of started with a series that we do in our adult service called "God at the Movies". Being the movie guy that I am. I thought that it would be pretty cool to do a Bible study on a different movie every week during the summer. So, in our summer design team meeting, Mindi suggested setting up a screen and speaker by a pool and letting the students watch the movie while they swim. Thus, "Dive-In Movie" was born. It's been a great thing to have during the summer too. Tomorrow is our last one, so I thought that I would share some thoughts I had on it...

1) When you ask students to bring chips, every single one of them will bring cool ranch Doritos.

2) It's important to remind the students to dry their arms completely before reaching into said bag of Doritos. Nothing is more disgusting than the cool ranch/chlorinated water soup that gathers at the bottom of the bag if you don't.

3) When using technology off campus, it's important that you take inventory of the things that you need to make the technology work... and then bring those things with you. *Every time I taught, I would forget at least one cable or other vitally important part of the set-up and have to go back to church to get it. It was immensely frustrating to me while simultaneously being hilarious to my volunteers.

4) The man you see in the above picture is Tom. Believe it or not, he's not actually trying to kick that student in the head. He's much too cool for that. Before coming to San Diego, he was a volunteer youth pastor at his church in Long Island for ten years. Everytime I see him with students, I secretly pray that I can grow up to be as good of a man as him.

5) When you do a weekly meeting at a pool for seven weeks but don't get in the pool until week 6 every student who is in the pool will try to drown you. Not all at once, mind you. But they will try to drown you none-the-less.

6) It's important to remember when playing ultimate or football (or pretty much anything physical) with students that you aren't fourteen any more. Don't expect your body to perform like you are. Do yourself a favor and go buy some IcyHot.

7) All of those students who act like they can't stand you every weekend... yeah, they're going to very suddenly love you. So much so, in fact, that they will give you lots of hugs right after they get out of the pool dripping wet.

8) No matter how much bigger than you that eighth grade boy is, he's still going to want you to pick him up and throw him in the pool.

9) Even if you have "No two pieces!" tattooed on every girl's forehead, at least three of them will develop temporary amnesia every week. This will cause them to forget to bring a one piece. But, thankfully, it won't destroy their memory so much as to prevent them from remembering to bring their bikini.

10) I have absolutely loved doing a laid-back program like this during the summer. It's allowed me to hang out with our students without having to worry about which element of the service is coming up next. As a result, relational ministry has been happening like crazy. I can't wait to do this again next summer!
Posted by Josh(ua) Treece at 7:43 PM
Labeled As: Ministry muzik316 said...

Sweet, i love just chillin with youth... especially when it's laid back!!!! No one does it like southerners... It's great when the youth get to see that your real, not just some super spiritual guy who they get to hang around.

8/8/06, 10:31 PM Joshua Griffin said...

These are gold. Expect link love! JG

8/9/06, 2:08 AM Chris Marsden said...

We used to do this for fun at a firends house in High School. Always a blast.

From the standpoint of Student Ministry...Did you show the whole movie, then talk about it or was it just a clip?

8/11/06, 10:02 AM offroadcamry said...

We would show clips from the movie during the lesson at the start of the night. Then, after the lesson, we would play the whole thing so that those that were interested could watch it.

8/11/06, 5:43 PM