I’m going to continue reading through this book, and on October 1st, I’ll be posting an article from Ava here on this site.

For more information, pick up a copy of the book And God Was Pleased by Ava Semerau. The book is available online at amazon.com in both paperback and Kindle versions, and is also available at fine booksellers around the globe. To learn more about Ava Semerau, visit her sit at www.avasemerau.com, or simply send her an email.

Camp Little Red Blog – The Online Offbeat Inside Out

It just made it’s debut moments ago, so check it out! So far, you’ll find the latest Inside Out Newsletter and a few aerial photos of the camp property, but there’s lots more on the way so stay tuned.

Or just head straight to the main site – www.camplittlered.com for all kinds of info about the camp.

How It Works

Each team starts with one egg, one tin can, and one matchbook. They are given an area in which them must hard boil their egg. Usually the water should be about knee deep, but you can adjust the depth according to your location and your particular group. The deeper the water, the greater the difficulty – especially in moving water.

The teams can float their fire on logs, build an elevated fire on stilts, pile up rocks to make a small island, or whatever else they come up with, as long as their egg is hard boiled within the given area. You can do this activity in still water such as a pond or lake, or for an added challenge you can do it in moving water such as a river. I’ve done it in both still and moving water, and neither was easy.

#1. Help Them to Become Discontent

I don’t mean for you to teach them to become avid complainers. What I mean is to teach them not to be happy with ‘ok’. Jesus didn’t come to give us an ‘ok life’ – he came to give us abundant life (John 10:10). We shouldn’t be content to be content. We should want more. To know God more. To love God more. To serve God more. To make a big difference in this world for Christ. In order to develop a vision, we must be discontent with where we are right now.

#2. Help Them See Their Significance

This is probably the hardest step – helping kids see that they can make a real difference in their church/community/world. At their stage of life, everyone else tells them what to do. They feel they are the lowest on the chain of command. What good can they do? Lots… eventually. Becoming a leader takes time. Every president, every pastor, every missionary, every board member, every CEO were all kids at one time. They all had someone change their diaper. They were all told what to do. But in time, they would change their world. What great potential lies within your youth group! Who knows who you have in there?!

#3. Help Them Dream

Once they have become discontent with staying where they are now, and once they realize that they can actually be significant, the dreaming will come easy. The hard part will be to figure out how to make that vision a reality. In order to do this, you will need to establish your long terms goals, your short term goals, and develop a plan of action to accomplish each of those goals. Is it a lot of work? Oh yeah. Is it worth it. You bet.

To make things perhaps a little easier for you, I’ve posted the material I used to develop a vision for my youth group executive. It involves a weekend retreat and comes complete with schedule and three interactive presentations that work through the above three points. You can download it here.

In Bible school I was taught the “Hook, Book, Look, Took” teaching method. Here is that method in a nutshell:

• Hook: Get their attention.

• Book: Find out what the Bible passage says.

• Look: What is the principle to be learned?

• Took: What are you going to do about it?

Many times hook, book, and look are present – but took is no where to be seen or else is really weak. If you want to see change happen because of your teaching, here are three keys to successful lesson application.

#1. Make It Easy To Do (Realistic)

How many people make New Year’s Resolutions only to have them last 3 days? The exact same thing often happens after a Bible lesson. You hear a message about reading your Bible more, so you decide you’re going to read 20 chapters a day. Is that realistic? Perhaps for some – but not most people. So what happens after 3 days? Nothing at all. It’s too hard and so they give up.

The key is to make it easy. Take baby steps. If you currently read one verse a day, try reading two. If you read for three minutes, try reading for five.

If your lesson is on witnessing to others, don’t send your youth group out to do street evangelism (not yet, anyway.) Maybe have them start by asking their friends at school if they believe in God. Don’t overwhelm them with an unrealistic task. Make it easy.

#2. Make It Measurable

After a lesson in honoring your parents, which of the following applications do you think is more effective?

1. “This week honor your parents more.”
2. “This week write a note to your parents thanking them for something they’ve done for you.”

If you chose #1, after the week is over, how will you know if you actually followed through or not? But by choosing #2, there is no doubt whether you did or you didn’t. Your success in applying the lesson is measurable.

#3. Be Specific

This one goes hand in hand with “Make It Measurable”. When applying a lesson, you need a specific target to shoot for. If you don’t know what you’re shooting for, you’ll likely miss. For example: “Love your family more” is much more difficult target to hit than “Don’t punch your brother when he comes in your room.”

#4. Have Accountability

Write it down. If you meet regularly, do a checkup on each other and see if everyone followed through. Application without any accountability rarely makes any significant change in a person’s life.

So there you have it – applications should be easy, measurable, specific, and followed up on. Those are the four keys to successful lesson application that changes lives.

The Questions

1. What is one thing you would invent to make life better?
2. What is the best thing that has happened to you this week?
3. What is your favorite time of the year?
4. When you think about yourself in the future, what do you see?
5. What is one question you would like to ask God right now?
6. What is a Christmas present that you’ll never forget?
7. What was your worst day of school?
8. What is one word that describes your relationship with God today?
9. What is one thing you really like about yourself?
10. What is one thing you’d like to change about yourself?
11. If everyone in the world had to do what you said for one day, what would you tell them to do?
12. Do you like chicken soup or tomato soup better?
13. What did you do for devotions this morning?
14. If you could make a type of vegetable disappear from the face of the earth forever – what would you choose?
15. Do you think you act more like your mom or your dad?
16. What is the last Bible verse you have memorized?
17. What are your thoughts about mustaches?
18. Would you rather step in a cow pie or swallow a fly?

They say “there’s no teacher like experience”, but they never said the experience had to be your own. So from my experience, here are 3 blunders of game leaders – in hopes you can avoid the experience yourself.

Blunder #1. Playing the Game Too Long

This is the best way to kill a great game for a long time. I have played (and led) many a game that went too long. What starts as a great game quickly becomes a great drag. You’re tired of playing, the enthusiasm is gone, you just want it to end – but it doesn’t. It goes on and on and on. Finally, when it’s over, you never want to play that game again.

Want to know the secret to a game that everyone will want to play again and again? End it early. Don’t play it until they’re ready to quit. End it while they still want more. Then when the next time rolls around, they’ll be begging you to play that great game they played last time.

Blunder #2. Not Planning Enough Games for Your Time

If there is on thing I’ve learned about planning games is to plan way more games than you think you’ll have time to play. Too often I’ve planned what I thought was enough games for two hours only to be done in one. Then what to do?! It’s much better to have three games planned that you never get around to playing, than having to make up stuff on the spot for an hour.

When planning most games, plan for about 1 game every 15 minutes (Keeping in mind Blunder #1). Of course some games will take much longer – but by having extra games planned, you won’t get caught with lots of time and no games.

Blunder #3. Taking a Vote to See What Game to Play

At first, you might disagree with me on this one. After all, doesn’t it make sense to play the games that they want to play? Well, yes and no. Most often votes are not unanimous. That means that when you vote for which game to play, no matter what game wins, there will always be those who didn’t want to play ‘that game’. Not being able to play “their” game dampens enthusiasm and worst, could lead to bad attitudes/poor sportsmanship. By making an executive decision yourself, you avoid the entire conflict.