youthpastors.com

Brian Littrell, Rebecca St. James Team Up For Christmas Tour

Brian Littrell, of the Backstreet Boys, is shaking up Christian music.

As part of the boy band that started it all, Littrell and the other Boys sold over 80 million records (a new Backstreet Boys album is reportedly in the works for '07) and accumulated a ton of fans worldwide.  This past spring, Littrell came out with his first solo project, a Christian album, which has produced two hit singles so far.

Next month, Littrell is hitting the road with contemporary Christian artist Rebecca St. James on a Christmas tour.  (See the article about the tour in today's Christian Post).

In the interest of full disclosure, yours truly is producing four of the dates on this tour.  If the email traffic that is hitting my inbox is any indication, Littrell has the potential to attract some people to a Christian concert who probably would never otherwise attend.  And that's a good thing.  I'm excited about what God is doing -- and will do -- through his ministry.

As of this writing, Brian and I have not yet met, but I am already impressed with him.  He agreed to extend his tour, sans Rebecca, for one day to play a free concert we are doing for members of the military and their families at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot on Parris Island in Beaufort, South Carolina.  (Avalon will join Brian for this performance).  Many members of the Navy and Marines from this community are either currently deployed or soon will be.  This concert will be a blessing to these families and I am grateful to Brian and Avalon for supporting it.

Ministers on MySpace

MySpace may be on its way to being "yesterday" in the minds of teens (at least according to some in the media), but it's still pretty hot.

NewYork-based hitwise.com rated MySpace the No. 1 site for the week ending Nov. 11, accounting for about 5 percent of all U.S. Internet traffic.  Alexa.com, another ratings site, put it in the No. 3 spot among U.S. websites.  Either way, MySpace has more than 100 million accounts with a demographic that is dominated by teens and people in their 20s.

Opinions about MySpace vary, with some youth pastors seeing it as a helpful ministry tool and others loudly condemning it as the work of the devil.

Certainly, MySpace does have the potential to get kids in trouble...but they're not the only ones.  I recently did some consulting with a church in the southeast that has dismissed its youth minister over some postings (about the church and its leadership, among other things) on his personal MySpace page.

Today's Minneapolis Star-Tribune carries a story about how some youth pastors view the popular web site.  As for me, I don't have a MySpace page...I'll just stick to blogging about youth ministry.  Seems safer.

Can you hear me now?

Now that seemingly every teenager in America has a cell phone, the question is:  where is it okay for them to have them?

New York City Schools, America's largest school system, has not allowed cell phones for years, but students have carried the gadgets mostly without consequence. When the city began random security checks for weapons last spring, searchers started finding and confiscating hundreds of cell phones -- setting off a charged debate.

Parents who oppose the cell phone ban are ranting in e-mails to the city's government that the policy is unreasonable, irresponsible, and hints at "thoughtless fascism," the Associated Press reports.

Many youth pastors -- myself included -- routinely ban cell phones and other electronic devices from mission trips, retreats, camps.  Part of the purpose of such events is to get away from the distractions of the world, we reason.  We understand the need of parents to be able to communicate with their kids in the event of an emergency, so we take great pains to provide emergency numbers before we leave. 

My advice:  if you have such a policy, this is the time to put it in writing and have it officially endorsed by your church's governing body.  If it hasn't been a problem in your ministry yet, stay tuned... 

Air Guitar Goes High Tech

Everyone knows that youth pastors are supposed to play the guitar, right?  Well, thanks to some Australian scientists, there's hope for the rest of us.

Apparently, they have developed a high-tech T-shirt that turns the strumming of an air guitar into music.

The T-shirt has motion sensors built into its elbows that pick up the wearer's arm motions and relay them wirelessly to a computer which interprets them as guitar riffs, Richard Helmer, an engineer who leads the research team from the government's Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, told the Associated Press.

One arm is interpreted as picking chords while the other strums. The "wearable instrument shirt" is adaptable to both right and left-handed would-be rock stars.

"It's an easy-to-use, virtual instrument that allows real-time music making even by players without significant musical or computing skills," Helmer said in a statement.

"It allows you to jump around and the sound generated is just like an original MP3," he added, referring to the digital audio file format.

Group Works On High School-College Transition

The former "Ministry Edge" dropped its name and existence this week to birth the Youth Transition Network involving some 40 leaders from major ministries such as Campus Crusade for Christ, InterVarsity, the Navigators, Chi Alpha Ministries and the National Network of Youth Ministries.

The mission:  to better transition high school youth to college.

"I'm giving everything that I built in the last two years away ... so that we can work together nationally in a neutral environment to transition youth," Jeff Schadt, a major coordinator for the Youth Transition Network, told The Christian Post.

The effort to grow the network for a major unprecedented national campaign for youth transition began in March of this year. It now has the commitment of prominent church and ministry groups that will help propel the campaign kickoff next year, the Post reported.

"This whole campaign is designed to ... help transition our youth to get connected to ministries before leaving home [for college]," commented Schadt.

Pastors Switch Pulpits To Promote Racial Unity

How much racial unity is there among youth groups in  your community?

I'm working in a community in the south these days where there may not be much racial tension, but we probably have a ways to go before we reach the kind of unity God wants for us.

There are never any easy answers or simple solutions to these problems, but my hat is always off to those who try to make a difference and bring God's people together.

A group of pastors in Central Kentucky are switching pulpits in an effort to promote racial unity where they live.  Check out the Courier-Journal story here.

Master the Possibilities at Sam's

Sam’s Club is making the lives of youth pastors everywhere a lot easier.

Sam's announced today that it will start accepting MasterCard Inc. credit cards for the first time.

Sam’s Club previously accepted credit cards only from Discover Financial Services Inc. and its own in-house cards at its 589 stores in the U.S., Puerto Rico and Canada (a royal pain when trying to stock up for mission trips and such). The chain does accept MasterCard and Visa credit cards for gasoline and online purchases.

So rush out and stock up on a 500 lb. container of jolly ranchers.

TV Viewing Among Pre-Teens May Be Linked To Alcohol, Tobacco Use

Two new studies spotlight both the difficulty parents often have in keeping children away from the TV and also the potential health rewards for kids in cutting down on TV and other media, HealthDay News reported.

For example, one study found that 9-to-12-year-olds who were barred from watching R-rated movies on television also had lower risks for smoking and drinking.

Those results show that "the media is a very important part of children's lives today, and parents need to take it seriously," said the lead author of the TV-and-health study, Madeline Dalton, director of the Hood Center for Children and Families at Dartmouth Medical School in Lebanon, N.H.

The findings are published in the November issue of Pediatrics.

In the first study, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania sought to determine whether or not new TV-watching guidelines from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) were being implemented in real life.

Among other things, the AAP suggests that parents limit TV time to no more than two hours a day for children over 2 years of age, and that children shouldn't have TVs in their bedrooms.

The researchers interviewed 180 parents and children about their media use. The kids were between the ages of 6 and 13 years old.

They found that most children spend at least three hours per day watching TV.

"Getting parents to be aware of how much time children are spending in front of a screen is important," said the lead author of the first study, Amy Jordan, a senior research investigator at the Annenberg Public Policy Research Center at the University of Pennsylvania. "When parents started adding it up, then they started realizing, it was probably three, four or five hours a day."

The average home in the study had four television sets, and two-thirds of the youngsters had TVs in their bedrooms, the researchers found. About half of the households also had TVs in the dining room or kitchen area.

Most parents said they did have rules for TV viewing, but few reported restricting the amount of time TV was watched.

Email Is For Old People

If you think your youth group members aren't reading your emails, you're probably right.

A new survey by Parks Associates shows that teenagers are less likely to communicate via e-mail than any other demographic, Fox News reports.

According to the study, less than one-fifth of the 13-17-year-olds surveyed profess to using e-mail to communicate with friends, compared to 40 percent of adults aged 25-54.

The study shows that instant messaging is the dominant form of communication for teenagers, with one-third of teens relying on the messaging system, compared to only 11 percent of adults.

'The Nativity Story' Big On Details

Looks like the "next big thing" in Christian film circles will be The Nativity Story, due in theaters December 1.

A number of pre-screenings for youth pastors and other ministy leaders are taking place around the country all month.

One thing is for sure, the producers are pretty big on authenticity.  The film's web site declares:  "Director Catherine Hardwicke, a former production designer, was adament that every detail from the locations, to the sets, to the props, look and feel authentic.  As a result, Harwicke, writer Mike Rich, and production designer Stefano Ortolani spent countless hours researching the era."

No kidding.

USA Weekend reported that, in order to bolster authenticity, the cast members were taught how to milk goats, press olives and grapes, make bread and cheese, use period-appropriate tools and build a home.