Recently, I was privileged enough to attend the Unleash Conference atNewSpring Church. We arrived on Wednesday afternoon, and had planned to attend NewSpring’s Wednesday Night service for middle school students, Fuse.
I had a pretty good idea that I would be seeing and hearing some things that wowed me. Most of the times I get to go observe a youth ministry that has been immensely blessed by God, I try to pull myself out of the worship aspect of it and just concentrate on all of the practical elements that it takes to put something like that together (i.e. Production, Media, Volunteerism, Hardware, Staging Elements, etc).
This particular time, however, I found myself lost in worship. The experience was awesome, and I got to check out some of the practical elements, too! So, this post is all about what inspired me, what I learned, and what I want to change about what we’re doing in our context in Bryant, Arkansas.
First of all, we were asked to arrive on campus no later than 5:00 pm. The service starts at 6:30 pm. While this may seem a little extreme to a lot of people, this is just the first example of a group of people caring so much about a group of teenagers that they’re willing to put the needs of a bunch of youth pastors aside.
And I loved it!
Think about it. Do you want a couple hundred random adults walking around your teenagers during their service? If you’re OK with that, I’m not OK with you. In fact, I heard a story that a friend of mine told me about a time he’d visited the student ministry the year prior. They walked in a little later than the rest and entered the front doors of the student building. Within seconds, a man larger than myself kindly and quickly introduced himself to my friend. As my friend told me the story, he grabbed my arm to illustrate the situation. He pushed on a pressure point on the inside of my arm, which made me cower like a middle school girl (no offense, middle school girls – just sayin’). “Can I help you?’ the adult asked intently. My friend shared that he was there to observe the service. The youth workers at NewSpring then kindly showed him around.
First youth ministry lesson: Can a complete stranger walk in your student ministry environment and have free reign with any of the students?
So, we signed in outside of the side of the building, and were escorted to our seats in the Fuse worship center. Myself and about 150 other leaders sat in the corner of the auditorium, when a young, blond youth worker greeted us all. She politely greeted us and gave us the run-down of how things were going to happen. She made no qualms about the fact that they unapologetically ask youth pastors to step out if the middle school students needed seats. They mentioned something about middle school students needing to hear about Jesus. Crazy, right?
Second youth ministry lesson: What is the burning passion of your youth workers? A night without problems? A well-oiled machine? All these are good, but let’s not miss the point. Eternity hangs in the balanace.
We were told that the middle school students would be coming in momentarily, and that we needed to be ready to jet if they ran out of seats. While we desperately wanted to see the service, we were pretty pumped about filling that room up with middle school students, too. As they started flowing in, we knew there weren’t going to be enough seats, so we started talking about dinner plans. But lo and behold, the doors shut behind the last student, leaving around 20 seats in a 900-seat auditorium. We got to stay! The service kicked off with an upbeat song and the students were totally into it. Throughout the night, i noticed that the setlist didn’t include a lot of “happy fun songs” that you might think comprise a middle school service. Nope – these were main service level songs. And here’s the best part – THE STUDENTS WERE SO INTO IT!
Third youth ministry lesson: Are you writing off the middle school students’ ability to get lost in worship? Don’t.
Brad got up to teach, and as always, hit a home run. They started a new series called, “Less and Less,” which was centered on the truth of John 3:30 (He must increase and I must decrease). He used some great illustrations like the hot air balloon and my personal favorite, the hour glass (as the top empties, the bottom fills up). It was straight brilliance. I’ve included a couple videos below to give you an idea what we saw. The two junky quality videos are of Brad laying down some truth, and of the band singing. The HQ Vimeo video is an illustration video they capped off the service with – and it was excellent.
My favorite part of my experience was getting to watch the Fuse team prepare in the run-through. Here are a couple things I noticed:
1. They ran through every single song, all the way through.
2. When Brad came out to quickly run through his part, they checked every element of his teaching. For instance, he was using a chalk board, and they tested it out to see how it looked on the screen.
3. They all weighed in on the font size on the screen.
4. The volunteers were pumped about it! They all kept givin’ each other “atta boys” and “atta girls” when they did something well.
5. Everyone used the term, “family” to refer to each other on the team. And in case you’re thinking that that’s cheesy…think again. There was a love between these people that was purely evident. This is a tight-knit team. If they were playing Red Rover, well you know :).
All in all, it was a super-inspirational visit and I learned a lot. Not to mention, it was great to not be involved in planning a service. I got lost in worship, got taught the Word, and had a great time. I seriously would invite you to check the videos below, but make sure to check in with Brad sometime at his blog.