Earlier this month, I met with my good friend Tim Schmoyer to catch up and discuss student ministry. Tim is a youth ministry blogger and the author of a new book, Life in Student Ministry. Tim asked my thoughts on how youth ministry has changed in 10 years and was kind enough to put together a quick video of my answer.

The quick version is I say the rate of cultural change is increasing and we need to understand the science behind what works.  In order to adapt to the changing culture, it is important that youth ministries are balanced with (1) relationships, (2) solid Scriptural teaching, (3) structure & discipline, and then (4) a creative WOW factor.

For Discussion:
- How do you think youth ministry has changed in 10 years?

During Catalyst Conference, Craig Groeschel of LifeChurch.tv (Edmond, OK) discussed generational tension.

We have a spiritual enemy that wants to divide us by denominations, so that we don’t work together. And I also have a hunch he wants to divide us generationally, so that we don’t work together.

When it comes to generations in the church, division is bad, but the tension can be good because we need each other.

I am able to do so much of what I do today because of the wisdom of those who have come before me.

TO THE OLDER GENERATION

Do not resent, fear, or judge the next generation of ministers but believe in them and invest in them. They are not the church of tomorrow. They are the church of today. They are different just like you were different.

One of the reasons the older generation finds it difficult to invest in the younger generation is because of insecurity. When you lead from insecurity, nothing works well.

Delegate authority not tasks. Tasks create followers. Authority creates leaders.

The younger generation wants authenticity and someone who believes in them.

If you are not dead, you are not done. Your age and experience is not a liability. It is an asset. Embrace the season you are in.

One of the greatest honors I can have at this age to to become as a spiritual dad to the younger generation.

Now that I am old and gray, do not abandon me, O God. Let me proclaim your power to this new generation, your mighty miracles to all who come after me
- Psalm 71:18

TO THE YOUNGER GENERATION

You need those who have come before you.

Business leaders describe the younger generation as entitled. You have been protected and encouraged, so you feel very entitled.

You tend to overestimate what God wants to do through you in the short run. This disillusions you and then causes you to underestimate what God will do through you in the long run.

Because the younger generation feels entitled so much, it is a generation that does not show honor well. Andy Stanley says, “Honor publicly leads to influence privately.” If you want to lead up, show honor.

Then Jesus told them, “A prophet is honored everywhere except in his own hometown and among his relatives and his own family.”
- Mark 6:4

One of the reason God is not doing more in churches today is because there is not a culture of honor. Jesus is not your homeboy. He is the King of Kings.

If you want to be over someone, learn to serve under people well. Honor values, respects, and highly esteems. Honor lifts up. Dishonor tears down.

There is a big difference between respect and honor. Respect is earned, but honor is given.

Some of you need to repent because you have dishonored those above you, and that dishonor is hindering you from being able to achieve what you need to do.

Be teachable.

You don’t need to have the same standard of living at age 25 as mom and dad. Don’t be entitled.

You are the most cause driven, mission minded generation in modern history. If you will come under authority and be teachable, you will be the greatest generation of our time.

God believes in you. You didn’t choose Him. He chose you.

Do not underestimate your future.

Give God glory by taking the the best of those who have come before us. Quit messing around in pride and arrogance and do something that glorifies the cause of Christ.

My list of the Top 100 Church Blogs has been updated for fall 2010.

This is the 4th edition of the list, and it has been interesting to watch it evolve. Each update adds new blogs that have recommended or discovered. And each update has some surprise ranking shifts as various blogs change their url, change their RSS link, or even lose Google PageRank. This fall 2010 edition saw a considerable number of blogs lose Google PageRank since the spring 2010 update (I’m not sure why).

As I’ve said before, the list is far from perfect. I try to pick metrics that are stable, high in integrity, and difficult to artificially inflate. But even still, the list is flawed.

Don’t get too hung up on the psychology of rankings. I encourage you to use this list as a resource to scientifically see what others find worth reading.

The Top 100 Church Blogs list is a great starting point to find great church blogs to read. But also be sure you look elsewhere for good blogs to read. Personally, some of my favorite church blogs do not make the rankings.

For Discussion:
>> What blogs not on the list do you recommend checking out for the next update?
>> Should the Top 100 Church Blogs list be an annual fall update or a twice a year spring and fall update? Currently, it updates twice a year.

Outreach magazine just released their 2010 lists of the Top 100 Largest Churches in America and the Top 100 Fastest-Growing Churches in America. These annual lists have been around for awhile. An annual top 100 largest U.S. churches list has been publically available since 2006. And an annual top 100 fastest-growing churches list has been publically available since 2004.

What is most interesting about these lists is no longer the data itself but rather how many churches are choosing to no longer take part in these studies.

From a research perspective, this nonparticipation is sad. But theologically speaking, the reasons many churches choose to not broadcast their numbers are quite noble. Many nonparticipating churches just don’t want to negatively affect other churches. And, of course others, just forget to report their numbers to the researchers.

Over the last 7 years, there have been 18 top churches lists published. Combined they make a great directory of churches worth studying, but the constant stream of lists can also occasionally become overbearing, nurture unhealthy competition, and create an imbalanced perspective of which ministry metrics are most important.

Personally, I see no right or wrong answer as to whether a church should participate (as long as they have the right heart attitude).

In the 5 years of measuring gigachurches (10,000+ weekly attendance), 64 gigachurches have been listed. However, on the new 2010 list, only 35 of these 64 gigachurches reported their numbers. What happened to the other 29 gigachurches?

I call them the “Invisible Gigachurches.”

TOP LARGEST U.S. GIGACHURCHES (including invisible gigachurches)
Only the first 15 churches from 2010’s list are named out of respect to Outreach magazine. Outreach is selling the full list here. All invisible gigachurches from 2006-2009 are named.

1. 43,500 // Lakewood Church (Houston, TX) - Joel Osteen
2. **26,776 (2009) // LifeChurch.tv (Edmond, OK) - Craig Groeschel
3. 24,325 // North Point Community Church (Atlanta, GA) - Andy Stanley
4. 24,041 // Second Baptist Church (Houston, TX) - Ed Young, Sr.
5. 24,000 // Willow Creek Community Church (South Barrington, IL) - Bill Hybels
6. **23,900 (2006) // Without Walls International (Tampa, FL) - Paula White
7. **20,000 (2008) // West Angeles Church of God in Christ (Los Angeles, CA) - Charles Blake
8. 19,230 // Southeast Christian Church (Louisville, KY) - Dave Stone
9. 18,763 // Saddleback Church (Lake Forest, CA) - Rick Warren
10. 18,322 // Woodlands Church (Woodlands, TX) -  Kerry Shook
11. **17,000 (2008) // The Potter’s House (Dallas, TX) - TD Jakes
12. 16,660 // First Assembly of God (Phoenix, AZ) - Tommy Barnett
13. 16,582 // Central Christian Church (Las Vegas, NV) - Jud Wilhite
14. **16,000 (2008) // Hopewell Missionary Baptist (Norcross, GA) - William Sheals
15. 15,560 // Calvary Chapel Ft. Lauderdale (Ft. Lauderdale, FL) - Bob Coy
16. 15,465 // First Baptist Church Hammond (Hammond, IN)
17. 14,236 // Prestonwood Baptist Church (Plano, TX)
18. 14,149 // Crossroads Community Church (Cincinnati, OH)
19. 14,003 // Community Bible Church (San Antonio, TX)
20. 14,000 // Calvary Chapel of Albuquerque (Albuquerque, NM)
21. 13,838 // see Outreach’s 2010 list
22. 13,796 // see Outreach’s 2010 list
23. 13,500 // see Outreach’s 2010 list
24. **13,500 (2008) // New Light Christian Center (Houston, TX) - Ira Hillard
25. 13,100 // see Outreach’s 2010 list
26. **13,000 (2009) // New Birth Missionary Baptist (Decatur, GA) - Eddie Long
27. **13,000 (2006) // Greater St Stephen Full Baptist Church (New Orleans, LA) - Paul Morton Sr
28. 12,515 // see Outreach’s 2010 list
29. **12,399 (2009) // Christ Fellowship (Palm Beach Gardens) - Tom Mullins
30. 12,313 // see Outreach’s 2010 list
31. 12,300 // see Outreach’s 2010 list
32. 12,238 // see Outreach’s 2010 list
33. 12,086 // see Outreach’s 2010 list
34. **12,000 (2008) // Calvary Chapel Golden Springs (Diamond Bar, CA) - Raul Ries
35. 11,874 // see Outreach’s 2010 list
36. **11,752 (2008) // The Fountain of Praise (Houston, TX) - Remus Wright
37. **11,500 (2006) // Jericho City of Praise (Landover, MD) - Betty Peebles
38. **11,344 (2007) // Calvary Community Church (Phoenix, AZ) - J. Mark Martin
39. 11,289 // see Outreach’s 2010 list
40. 11,246 // see Outreach’s 2010 list
41. 11,150 // see Outreach’s 2010 list
42. **11,000 (2007) // Word of Faith International Christian Center (Southfield, MI) - Keith Butler
43. **10,800 (2009) // Calvary Chapel South Bay (Gardena, CA) - Steve Mays
44. **10,800 (2008) // Valley Bible Fellowship (Bakersfield, CA) - Ron Vietti
45. 11,712 // see Outreach’s 2010 list
46. 10,583 // see Outreach’s 2010 list
47. 10,559 // see Outreach’s 2010 list
48. **10,550 (2009) // Redemption World Outreach (Greenville, SC) - Ron Carpenter
49. 10,500 // see Outreach’s 2010 list
50. 10,350 // see Outreach’s 2010 list
51. **10,300 (2009) // Faith Fellowship Ministries (Sayreville, NJ) - David Demola
52. 10,270 // see Outreach’s 2010 list
53. **10,263 (2009) // Northland a Church Distributed (Longwood, FL) - Joel Hunter
54. 10,047 // see Outreach’s 2010 list
55. **10,035 (2008) // St. Matthew’s Baptist Church (Williamstown, NJ) - Raymond Gordon
56. **10,000 (2009) // First A.M.E. Church (Los Angeles, CA) - John Hunter
57. **10,000 (2008) // Faith Community Church (West Covina, CA) - Jim Reeve
58. **10,000 (2008) // Faith Landmarks Ministries (Richmond, VA)
59. **10,000 (2008) // Heritage Christian Center (Denver, CO) - Dennis Leonard
60. **10,000 (2008) // Mount Zion Baptist Church (Nashville, TN) - Joseph Walker III
61. **10,000 (2008) // World Changers Church International (College Park, GA) - Creflo Dollar
62. **10,000 (2007) // Mars Hill Bible Church (Grandville, MI) - Rob Bell
63. **10,000 (2006) // Church on the Move (Tulsa, OK) - Willie George
64. **10,000 (2006) // The Brooklyn Tabernacle (Brooklyn, NY) - Jim Cymbala

For Discussion:
>> Are churches not participating in these lists just sitting a few rounds out?
>> Or do you think it is a growing trend stemming from list fatigue or unhealthy collateral damage?
>> Why do you think churches should or should not participate?

Recently the Barna Group and the reThink Group teamed up to explore how having a child influences a parent’s connection to a church or faith community. Here are some highlights:

How parents say having kids affects their connection to a faith community:

• 50% did not change involvement
  >> Most common among Northeast and West USA, atheists/agnostics (90%), non-Christian religions (70%), and among college graduates
• 20% increased already active involvement
  >> Most common among lower income homes and Hispanics
• 17% began attending after a long period of not going
  >> Most common among Republicans and political conservatives
• 5% became active in a faith community for the first time
  >> Most common among Midwest USA, Catholics, and Hispanics
• 4% became less active
  >> Most common among single parents, never married parents, and Asians

For full analysis on the study, read the Barna Group’s full report.

What I love about this study is it is a great example of why we can’t assume all people are alike or even that all subcultures are alike. Not every parent is affected the same way by having kids. And what is probable for college-educated atheist parents in the Northeast isn’t necessarily probable for a lower-income Hispanic parent in the Midwest.

Statistics like these are incredibly useful in letting us compare our sociological observations with scientific trends. They are a sounding board. However, one of the most important things you can do is learn the unique probability of the community that you are called to reach. Rather than surveys and polls, the best way to do this is listen, ask questions, get out into your community’s different cultures, and listen some more.

If you can understand the microstatistics of your community’s niche, then you can better understand how you can turn the bad statistics into good statistics.

For Discussion:
- Describe the types of cultures that your ministry reaches.
- What do you do to better understand these cultures?

One of the wisest things a pastor can do is learn from other churches. Ministry is a busy vocation, so it is important use your limited time wisely when looking for churches to study.

There are roughly 320,000 churches in the United States, and obviously no one has time to study them all. In fact, few people have time to study all 421 churches from the 16 big “top churches” lists since 2004. If you are looking for some top churches to watch in America, I have created mashups of the top churches to study in the areas of growth, innovation, church planting, size, influence, and overall.

CONTINUE READING >>
to see the lists of the top U.S. churches to watch in 2010

For Discussion:
- What churches not on these lists would you recommend watching in 2010 and why?

Earlier this month, Symantec published a list of the top 100 kids’ online search words for 2009 (ages 18 & under). The data comes from a free search monitoring service for parents called OnlineFamily.Norton.

As expected with a sample group including teenagers, some of the online search words are anything but innocent. However, what is shocking is that “porn” is the 4th most popular search word among kids ages 7 and younger.

Amusingly, “Norton Safety Minder” is the 46th most searched for phrase among kids 18 and under. Search results include instructions on how to temporarily disable OnlineFamily.Norton.

BAD SEARCHES FROM THE TOP 100
by boys and girls (ages 18 & under)

#4 - Sex (#4 for boys & #5 for girls)
#5 - Porn (#5 for boys & #24 for girls)
#32 - Boobs (#17 for boys)
#82 - Pussy

TOP 25 SEARCHES
segmented by age groups

You can learn a lot about someone by what they search for online. These top search results paint a pretty clear psychographic picture of the priorities, preferences, and habits of online youth.

Kids and teens are obviously learning and experimenting with adult content much sooner than many parents, kids’ ministries, and youth ministries realize. As Time magazine reported early this month, 40% of adolescents have intercourse before ever talking to their parents about safe sex, birth control, or sexually transmitted diseases. Parents often dread giving their kids the sex talk(s), but studies show that kids want to learn from their parents. Instead, many kids learn about sex through friends, the Internet, and experimentation.

Parents sometimes say things more vaguely because they are uncomfortable and they think they’ve addressed something, but the kids don’t hear the topic at all.
- Dr. Karen Soren :: New York Presbyterian Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital

From a children’s ministry perspective, it is important to realize that statistically quite a few 7-year-olds in your class are searching for porn and exposing themselves to things much more serious than what traditional lessons cover. Obviously, children’s ministries cannot be straightforward about sex, but being too vague doesn’t work either.

Perhaps there are subtle ways to layer lessons with mature spiritual principles. Ideally, children’s ministry lessons should clearly yet subtly word things in a way that trains, helps, and ministers to the kids who are hurting and/or have picked up bad habits while simultaneously “going over the heads” and still teaching the kids who still have their innocence. Unfortunately, that is easier said than done.

For Discussion:
- What do you think about these online trends?
- How can churches help?

(via Mashable & CNET)

The Walt Disney Company is giving refunds on Baby Einstein DVDs after acknowledging that they do not enhance infant brain development.

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends no screen time under age 2 and <2 hours of screen time for over age 2 (screen time:  TV, DVDs, computers, & electronic games).

For Infants: videos only teach infants to watch TV, which causes increased risks for obesity, attention problems, school difficulties, sleep disturbances, and anxiety.

For Preschoolers: well-designed educational screen media can improve language skills, reading, math, and school readiness. High school seniors who watched educational TV during their preschool years experienced higher grades, greater creativity, more reading, placing higher value on achievement, and less anxiety and aggression during high school.

The most important time in a child’s intellectual development is the first 3 years and in the womb. Babies begin to learn languages in the womb, and during 6-12 months, infants focus on learning the sounds of their native language and lose their ability to distinguish the phonetic sounds of other languages.

This loss of ability is because at birth, an infants brain has roughly 100 billion unconnected brain cells that immediately begin wiring the circuitry of the brain and learning. This wiring during infancy and early childhood actually overproduces neural connections (pruned later in life) for learning in a state of hyperawareness.  Think of a child’s brain like wet concrete that is far more impressionable in the early stages and less and less impressionable with time (as the brain wires and prunes itself).

WHAT DOES SCREEN MEDIA DO TO KIDS?

• Nothing Learned (a few exceptions for preschoolers)
  Studies show children cannot reliably learn anything from an electronic screen until about 30 months. TV viewing before the age of 2 does not improve a child’s language and visual motor skills. However, there are a few very rare TV exceptions that have a positive effect for children ages 2-3. (via / via)
• Stunted Language Development
  Children need human social interaction to learn languages, which is why educational audio and screen resources have proved ineffective. Screen media replaces social interaction with humans or at least reduces verbal interaction, which causes babies to miss crucial developmental experiences. For 2-48 month olds, each additional hour of TV exposure is associated with a decrease of 7% (770 words) that the child hears from an adult. For every hour per day spent watching baby DVDs, 8-16 month olds understand an average of 6 to 8 fewer words than children who did not watch television.  (via / via / via)
• Stunted Eye Development
  Staring a the small parameters of a screen may affect the development of a full range of eye movement. (via)
• Decreased Focus & Increased ADHD
  Watching screen media may reduce the length of time kids can stay focused. Each hour of television viewed daily between ages 1-3 increased the likelihood of disorders like ADHD by nearly 10% at age 7. (via / via)
• Increased Aggression
  98%+ of pediatricians say that media violence affects childhood aggression. 10 percent of real-life violence may be attributed to media violence. (via)
• Increased Weight
  Children who consistently spend more than 4 hours per day watching TV are more likely to be overweight. (via)
• Increased Consumerism
  U.S. kids see 40,000 commercials a year. Research shows a single exposure to a television advertisement affected preschool children’s brand preferences. A taste-testing study showed 60% of kids (ages 3-5) thought an identical burger in a McDonalds wrapper tasted better than an identical burger in a plan wrapper. (via)

Researcher Aric Sigman goes as far as claiming that TV is bad for both kids and adults in 15 ways: obesity, healing, heart trouble, metabolism, eyesight, Alzheimer’s, attention span, hormones, cancer, early puberty, autism, sleep, hunger, brain growth, and diabetes.

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR THE CHURCH?

Using screen media in children’s ministry should be done with educated caution. Researchers agree that well-designed educational media can be effective for kids ages 2+.

Screen media has teaching challenges which can be overcome, but not everyone can achieve such a feat.

Blue’s Clues is perhaps the best example of what rigorous research, creativity, talent, and testing can achieve. Blue’s Clues tested and tweaked all episodes at least 3 times before going on air, and that investment paid off. On a 60-item test where Blue’s Clues watchers could correctly identify 50 items, the control group could only identify 35 items. (via)

Effective teaching, particularly with screen media, isn’t easy. If you want an effective children’s ministry, you need to do your homework and invest, invest, invest.