You probably have noticed that most churches and ministries now have a ministry app. You may be wondering why though. Well you probably have noticed that we now live in a mobile world. Just look around your church and you can see that we never leave home without our mobile devices. Now some of this needs to be rejected or done away with as we do spend far too much time on our mobile devices. But also I believe that some of this use of technology just needs to be redeemed. What do I mean? Instead of just telling everyone to get rid of their phones and tablets why not see them as an opportunity to effectively equip our members to go out and do ministry. Some churches have begun to see this opportunity and therefore have an app. But most of those apps are more about marketing their church. Why not have an app that actually helps the people whom you minister to, go out and minister to others. Then we take what has for a while now been a distraction and a temptation for sin and redeem as something that can help us be a light to a lost world around us.
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Hey everybody, this is Buck. I wanted to let you know I just got the opportunity to spend the weekend speaking at a Disciple Now in East Texas this weekend. They were using our "Empowered" curriculum and it was great to hear the kids and leaders responses to the curriculum and what it was teaching them. You can check out the audio of the series I taught below.
It was also a great reminder of just how great an event Disciple Now is. I loved everything from speaking and worshiping with the students, to hanging out to having a crazy time with them on a scavenger hunt, to helping them serve their community. It is always great to see how God is using these weekends to transform students lives all over and to be able to be a part of what God is doing. I would love to be a part of what God is doing in your students' lives and churches as well. If you are in need of a speaker for Disciple Now, Camps, Special events, or whatever, I would love to come and join together to help your student ministry and church find what it is God is calling them to. Just contact me through our website and I will get in touch with you. I'm speaking at one of my ex students DNow tonight! I wanted to show you how he is using www.disciplenowcurriculum.com for DNow.
The Christmas holidays are over and its time to get back to planning Dnow. Since hopefully you took a few days off and stepped away from everything, I want to encourage you to do something special on your first day back. I want you to take the time to lay out everything you have done and pray over every single component. If you have not done anything yet then pray over each thing that you plan to do. This includes schedules, host homes, leaders, curriculum, etc. Pray deeply about whether anything needs to change. Once God gives you peace about that then pray God would move mightily in each component of your event. If you have not done anything then pray for direction in each step of your planning. This not only helps to refresh your memory about where you are in the process but is also a great way to get started back in the right direction after your break.
Traditionally in a DNow weekend you bring in college students to lead your small groups. There is nothing wrong with this and this is what we have done for years. But we are trying something different at our event this year. This year we are going to let the small group leaders within our ministry lead the groups that are meeting in our host homes. Why are we doing this? There really is only one big reason. These leaders already have relationships with our students. This gives three great benefits. They will not have to spend half the weekend getting to know our students and getting our students to open up. Also, our students will be less likely to get away with putting on a show since their leaders know their lives and their hurts and struggles. Finally, having our students' weekly leaders lead their small groups for this event will help keep them from thinking that God only moves in special events but instead can move anytime, anywhere. There are many other great benefits but hopefully these help you consider following our lead and
At the root of Dnow is family. Here is what I mean. First and foremost is that you need to make sure you make time for your family as you plan and run your event. Too often we get so wrapped up in ministry that we forget what is most important. The second part of this is about your host homes. You want people who are willing to open up their homes and be a family to your students for the weekend. This is especially true for those students who do not get to experience a healthy family life normally. Finally, your small groups should be a family. They need to realize that this weekend is about more than just bible study but instead about building relationships that can support one another through the difficult road ahead. So as you plan your event keep one word in mind, family.
After your Dnow weekend you need to stop and have a time of thanks. Of course you need to first stop and thank God for all that He did throughout the weekend. But your thankfulness does not end there. You also need to thank a few other people. You need to thank your leaders for giving of their time to invest in your students and your ministry. And I highly encourage you to thank your small group leaders with a paycheck if you can. You need to thank your host homes for laying the safety of their home on the line for one weekend of possible life change for students. And a gift card or two here might help to get that thankfulness message across. You need to thank any support staff that you have because I can guarantee that they probably worked just as hard if not harder than you did. And you need to thank your church as a whole for their support and prayers and let them know that all that did not go to waste. This is important because not only is this the right thing to do but it also will help make next year easier as you try to pull everything together once again because people will be more ready to jump back in since they remember how appreciated they were the year before.
In planning for your dnow, and doing ministry in general, the big danger is that you get so busy that you fail to stop and listen to the needs around you. While we are not exactly in the midst of planning our disciple now weekend, currently I got a small taste of this danger yesterday. Like most of us I am busy most of the time. But because we slowed down and had a Christmas party of sorts in our small groups I had the chance to really slow down and hang out with some students. Thankfully, one student who usually comes on Sundays just for the worship service, decided to come to come to small group as well. We got the opportunity to sit and chat and he began to pour his heart out about the incredible difficulties he was having. I got an opportunity to listen and to mourn with him and to offer some encouragement and to let him know I was there. It broke my heart, not just that he was facing great trials, but also because I began to think of all the other students out there who were probably hurting as well. How many other students were crossing my path weekly and daily, and because I was so busy I missed out on the opportunity to give them the love that they needed? We have to find ways to slow down and be sensitive to what is going on around us. We have to do train our leaders to do the same thing. It will not be easy for some of us, and some work may not get done, but if we are not doing the work of sharing love with our students who so greatly need it, then the everything else we do is meaningless.
Dnow is a great event. But if that is where all of your hard work ends it is all for nothing. You have to think about what the next step will be. Granted, this is a slippery slope. I have a bad habit of dreaming ahead of the next big thing instead of enjoying the moment and making sure I finish the task at hand. This gets me into a lot of trouble at times. This is not good, but the other extreme is not good either. That is getting so caught up in the moment that you think that is all that matters and once that is over there is nothing else to worry about. You have to find that balance between throwing your full energy into what you are doing and keeping an eye on where you are going. This is especially true with this event. On Sunday afternoon, or Monday morning after the dust settles, what this the next step for your students and your ministry? You may not fully know until the event ends but you need to begin to wrestle with this question so you do not miss out on the chance to maximize the life changing experiences your students will have y
Dnow should not be just about your students coming to see a show. Instead this event should be about you empowering your students to go out and do ministry. There are many reasons for this, too many to mention in one blog post, so I will just cut to the chase. There is too much work to be done and too many lives that need to be changed for you to do it all on your own. Therefore you need to be training others to go out and do the work of sharing the Gospel, showing love, and changing lives. That way more impact can be made in the short time we have to change the course of students' lives. Not to mention that students can reach their friends a lot better than you can. I know this is harsh. I apologize if it hurts your feelings. But if you disagree with me on this you are wrong. Yes we can reach students and should continue too but revival will only come if students start reaching out to those around them instead of relying on us to do it for them. So plan your dnow weekend, and all your ministry for that matter, in such a way that students are empowered to go out and change the world around them. And with any luck they will all do it so well that we have to find new careers.
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