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24 May 2018

FREE DYMUniversity Course: Suicide Prevention

By |2018-05-24T09:30:44-07:00May 24th, 2018|Youth Ministry Resources|0 Comments

It’s been a great night at small group: someone laughed so hard, soda shot out of his nose, the discussion was focused, and prayer requests were deep. On your way out to the car, Jack, who’s been surprisingly quiet all night, stops you and starts to tell you about how awful the last few weeks have been…

His grades have been slipping since the start of the school year.

Over the last few weeks, he’s been fighting with his parents a ton.

He sighs and says, “I just don’t think this will ever get better. I’ve disappointed everyone. I give up.”

What do you ask to determine if he’s just going through a hard time or showing signs of depression; to determine if this is a “text him in a few days” or a “call his parents on the way home” situation?

As youth workers, we have a front row seat to the lives of the teenagers in our ministries. This is a privilege: we get to celebrate alongside them in joyful times. It’s also a big responsibility: we’re in a unique position to see warning signs that others may not.

Even if you’ve been working with students for decades, it’s likely you have more questions than answers when it comes to caring for a student showing signs of depression. At what point does depression lead to thoughts of self-harm? What if a student alludes to thoughts of suicide? Being sad and anxious is part of regular life, but at what point is it considered a mental illness? Why the need for labels like that anyway?

Thankfully there are people out there with tools to help us navigate these delicate situations.

This morning, we added two bonus extended sessions to the DYM University catalog: Understanding Mental Illness and Suicide Detection and Prevention from Suicide Prevention Specialist, Craig Lomax with introductions by Kay Warren, Co-founder of Saddleback Church.

This is, by no means, a complete education on mental health, but it’s a great starting point to help your ministry team feel even more equipped as you care for students.

We’d like to give you and your leaders one of these sessions completely free.

After their son Matthew died by suicide a few years ago, Kay has dedicated much of her life to educating church leaders about mental health and suicide prevention. Listen to her heart and how she believes these sessions could shape the way you and your team care for students and families in your community:

These are such important topics for those of us working with teenagers these days. It’s surprising how FEW tools on the subject are currently available for youth workers.

CLICK HERE to get the Suicide Detection and Prevention session for free!

We want to help equip your leaders to identify the warning signs of suicide and be prepared with helpful action steps if or when a student shares that he or she is thinking about suicide.

To share this training through DYMU, click above and redeem access to this session for yourself and follow the simple steps to enter the email addresses of your leaders. They’ll receive an email with a link to the session and the PDF outline.

Here’s more information on the new sessions in DYM University course 201.

Session 7: Understanding Mental Illness
Did you know 1 in 5 teenagers have a mental health challenge each year? And on average, mental illness begins at the age of 14. This means it’s likely that there are students in your ministry who are already struggling with or will begin to struggle with a mental illness.

The good news is: mental illness is treatable! Let us help equip you and your leaders to recognize early signs of mental illness and have tools at your disposal to care for and support them in an appropriate way.

Session 8: Suicide Detection and Prevention (with DYMU co-founder, Josh Griffin)
Suicide is the second leading cause of death for 15-24-year-olds. This means that it’s not a matter of if there are students in your ministry struggling with suicidal thoughts, but a question of which ones.

Suicide is largely preventable. We want nothing more than to help the caring adults in the lives of your students identify the warning signs of suicide and be prepared with helpful action steps if a student shares that he or she is thinking about suicide.

We hope you are able to use these training videos to care for your students even more effectively.

Blessings,
Doug Fields and Josh Griffin
DYMU Co-founders

P.S. If you want to share more from the YM201 DYMU course with your leaders–to give them access to these sessions and more, the best option is to purchase the YM 101-401 bundle site license.

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20 Apr 2018

The Michiana Meet Up by Allison Williams

By |2018-04-20T12:01:46-07:00April 20th, 2018|Leadership, Training, Youth Ministry Resources, Youth Pastor Life|0 Comments

A couple of weeks back, 50ish of us gathered for the DYM Michiana Meet Up.  It was the brainchild of Derry Prenkert, John Keim, and Jeff Selph.  Those guys did an incredible job organizing, advertising, and structuring the day.  Any good event needs people at the helm and we had some of the best running this one.

We started the day out with coffee, bagels, and introductions.  There were people there with their team, others that drove in with pieces of their network, and some that came solo.  Regardless of your situation, every minister needs friends outside of their context that understand the pressures and joys of church work.  As we were going around the room introducing ourselves, you could almost feel everyone breathe deeper — it was obvious early on that we were surrounded by our tribe.

There were six DYM Ambassadors present for this gathering.  That might not feel like a lot, but I think there are only 15ish nationally, so it was a pretty large representation.  Peppered through our time together, the ambassadors all spoke briefly to the group about the piece of DYM that we love the most: Membership, resources, DYMU, the Student Leadership Conference, Podcast Network, and Facebook community group.  The underlying current of those mini commercials was trying to convey how DYM wants to be behind us, prompting and encouraging the kingdom work in our context.

We also spent time in open-source sharing.  If you’ve never experienced that before, those are facilitated conversations that hopefully everyone in the group contributes to.  We had two timeslots with six conversations going at tables around the room covering a gambit of topics.  Seriously, there was something for everyone.  I wish I could have pulled up a chair to all 12 conversations throughout our time together.  There were practical ministry ideas, new strategies, and an emphasis on rest, balance, and self-care.  Our time together was both personally restorative, fostered new networking connections, and gave us some ideas to roll around in our brains.

We ended the meeting portion of the event with Doug Fields.  If you’ve never had the opportunity to spend time with Doug, just know that his heartbeat in ministry is encouraging and edifying youth workers.  That’s what he did as he spoke for a few minutes to close out our time together and continued to do at the lunch we headed to after.  I actually had to send the waitress after his order because he was wandering around the restaurant making sure every youth worker felt known and valued.  He’s a class act (blogmaster, don’t let DF delete this paragraph).

I can’t speak for the room because we were at random tables, but lunch was my favorite part of the day.  I got to sit with old and newer friends and talk about life and ministry.  We even dreamed up a few ideas for ministry and future DYM resources.  On a personal note, I got some very wise counsel from people that know youth ministry and understand how I think.  Moments like that can be rare, so when they come around, we should pay close attention.

It was such a valuable day.  Whether it’s a DYM Meet Up or another kind of network gathering, prioritize getting connected to the larger youth worker community.  You are not alone (and this is coming from a female youth pastor with a church next to cornfields)!  Meet our tribe.  Jump into our Facebook community.  Grab coffee with the person at the next church over.  Organize an event.  People that stay in our profession for the long haul prioritize a youth worker family mentality.  Your future tribe might just be waiting on you to invite them to a conversation.

[Just as a note, Doug didn’t fly in for our morning network meeting.  We timed it around an event that he was already in town for that evening.  If you are looking to host a DYM Meet Up, the DYM team will happily try to help you where they can, but will not be able to be present unless the schedule lines up perfectly.]

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7 Dec 2017

Best of 2017: Youth Ministry Freebies

By |2017-12-07T08:54:47-08:00December 7th, 2017|Youth Ministry Resources|1 Comment

The Best of 2017 is a collection of lists – best-selling resources, most buzzed about blog posts or products that moved the #youthministry needle this past year. In this edition we carve out the top membership items that are now in the DYM Store. Out of tons of freebie items this year, these rose to the very top. Again, these are all completely free, so roll on over to the free section of DYM and grab these sure-fire winners:

Best of 2017: Most Popular Membership Item

Best of 2017: Youth Ministry Freebies

  1. Extreme Bingo
  2. Whip or Nae Nae Game
  3. Solar Eclipse Game
  4. Family Graphic Pack and Discussion Guide
  5. Noise Video

HONORABLE MENTION: Legacy

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5 Dec 2017

Best of 2017: Most Popular Membership Items

By |2017-12-04T20:49:44-08:00December 5th, 2017|Youth Ministry Resources|0 Comments

The Best of 2017 is a collection of lists – best-selling resources, most buzzed about blog posts or products that moved the #youthministry needle this past year. In this edition we carve out the top membership items that are now in the DYM Store. Out of literally a hundred membership items this year, these rose to the very top. Not a member and missed out on these FREE downloads each month? Start your membership today, or at the very least consider grabbing of few of these sure-fire winners:

Best of 2017: Most Popular Membership Item

  1. Welcome to Youth Service
  2. Gif Charades
  3. Odd Man Out
  4. Sirioke: Animated Movies Edition
  5. 7 Video Transition Pack
  6. Fool’s Gold Video

NOTE:  This list chooses to exclude Dead Cat, which one the coveted Game of the Years moniker late last week. Read about it here!

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16 Nov 2017

My Favorite Things: 12-Weeks of DYM Resources in One Bundle

By |2017-11-16T08:40:09-08:00November 16th, 2017|Leadership, Teaching, Teaching/Programming, Youth Ministry Resources|0 Comments

One of the most difficult choices I make as a youth pastor is the direction of our ministry. The sermons, the games, the events… it’s a huge job. Have you ever thought “It would be so fun to have someone help me in that process!” If you’ve ever felt like this, let me be that partner for you. Let me help you get into my mind and how I put together series in our ministry.
I put together a bundle of resources from the DYM Store to help you with your next 12 weeks of sermons, games, a monthly event, and leader training. Everything you need for the next season of ministry programs!
Now I am not saying that I know it all, but service (and series) programming is one of my favorite things to do. There’s just something about having a blank calendar in front of you and being able to fill it with intentionality and series arcs so you can take your students on a spiritual journey with the hope that they grow closer and closer to Jesus.
Everything we do in our ministry planning is intentional… as I’m sure it is for you, too. We want to make sure that wherever we are going 1) God is there and we want to follow His direction and 2) our students will actually enjoy going through it.
Every year our team get together and prays through where we will go in the coming year and what comes out of that time together is a fully planned out, week-by-week scheduled program.
In our ministry, we follow this pattern when it comes to sermon series:
  • Topical
  • Jesus
  • Book Study
We feel that through this rotation you are able to cover a lot of Scripture, encourage students in different areas of their faith and challenge them to follow Jesus more closely. We also try to match the games with something that is somewhat related to the topic of the night. (This does not work all of the time and if it doesn’t, a fun, funny game could get the same results.) We always say in our meetings, “Fun breaks down walls” and it could be the thing that opens up a student to the Holy Spirit.
If I were to choose the next 12 weeks of ministry programming, straight from the DYM store, this is what I would choose.* (Note: this isn’t my next 12 weeks because I’m recommending resources I have used and loved.)
HOW TO RUIN YOUR LIFE
  • This series is by far one of the best series we have done in the last few years. Not only is it a great and unique take on topics (by giving opposite advice), but each topic was on point for what our students needed to hear. This series hits wisdom on dealing with your cell phone, friendships, and relationships… our students were talking about it every week on social media. (I can usually tell when a message hits hard when students take to social media…)

GAME: Cell Phone Shoot Out – Truth or Dare:

  • For whatever reason, our students are WAY into Jimmy Fallon-type games. They love when just a few students are up-front playing an entertaining game and they can just sit back and watch others make a fool of themselves. That is why Cell Phone Shoot Out is always a hit! This one is great when it comes to a friendship series (or you can even pit a BF and GF against each other.)

LEADER TRAINING: The Power of Encouraging Words

  • One of my favorite times of any season is being able to get together with our leaders and do some training. This video teaching is one of the most important we can do. The truth is we don’t know what voices our students are hearing to and allowing to sink into their lives. What we as leaders can use (for free!) are our encouraging words. Helping your leaders know their words are powerful in students lives is priceless.

MONTH 2 HIGHLIGHTS:

SERIES: THAT’S WHAT HE SAID

  • After a very topical and fun series, challenging students in their everyday lives, I’d suggest jumping into a series that takes a deeper look into Jesus’ teaching. I would even encourage students to invite their friends–this series is a great introduction to the life and ministry of Jesus.

GAME: What Would You Do For A Klondike Bar?

  • Bring up one, two or more participants who are willing to do whatever it takes to get a delicious treat. It could be anything from doing 10 push-ups to drinking clam juice to dancing with no music for 30 seconds. (You’ll need a few additional supplies, including Klondike bars, of course.) The game includes eight rounds (of video) which and the winner gets a free Klondike bar. It is amazing what students will do for free stuff. It was hilarious to watch.

EVENT: Extreme Bingo

  • Who doesn’t love bingo? Well, playing extreme bingo is even better! I can promise you one thing for sure: your students will never be more frustrated with you… and it’s a great thing. Using the BOXES tool in the DYM Games App, you can create “Boxes of Doom”: certain tasks, punishments, or “everyone is out” type consequences if they happen when a specific number that is called. Our students loved it, yelled at me, and completed the tasks. It always kept them on their toes and was by far one of the best games we have ever played.

MONTH 3 HIGHLIGHTS:

SERIES: ROMANS IN 5

•  In a world where students are Biblically illiterate, I think we ought to make it a priority to teach students the importance of scripture. This series is great because the outlines are just that: outlines. They are not manuscripts, but instead some main points to help you dive into Scripture yourself and then help your students understand it as well.

GAME: Impossibler 4 Corners:

• The game prompts students to move around the room to the corners marked A, B, C, or D. When the question is presented, students must move to a respective corner,  but here’s the catch: they’re trying to get the answer WRONG. Whatever corner answers correctly is out. If you want to add even more fun and twists, add a dodgeball element to it. As students are switching corners, have leaders play dodgeball. If a student gets hit by the ball, they are out!

• Reading The Bible With Students: What better way to train your leaders or small group leaders as we go through a book of the Bible than to help your leaders learn how to read their Bibles more effectively with students. This was by far one of the best and most practical trainings we have done. We have had more feedback on this training than any other.
Well, there you have it! Just a little look in to how I would put together 12 full weeks of programming and training within my own ministry. I hope it is helpful to you and your ministry. Thank you for letting me partner with you!
If you’d like to purchase this bundle, which include these 3 series, 14 games, and 3 events, CLICK HERE.
Justin Knowles
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2 May 2017

DYM Games – Custom Title Graphics

By |2017-05-01T17:55:23-07:00May 2nd, 2017|Games, Youth Ministry Resources|1 Comment

In DYM Games 1.6 we’ve introduced a brand new feature that you’ve been asking for — the ability to add in your own title graphics. Now “Boxes” doesn’t have to be “Boxes”, but can be the “Random Picker of Students”. “Wheel of Destiny” can be “Spin that Wheel of Disgusting Drink Concoctions”. “Pixelate” can be “Kim Kardashian or Kim Jung Un”. “Trivia” can be “Four-Corners Sudden Death addition”. You decide!

To change a title graphic first you have to find or create a title graphic. You can use anything: Photoshop, Keynote, PowerPoint, images pulled from the internet, use your phone to take a picture, whatever! The important thing is that you need an image. Once you have that image, click on the “+” button next to the Title Graphic button inside any game. Add your image, Move it and scale it if you need to and you’re good to go. Now when you click on the Title Graphic button it will no longer show the name of the game (“Pixelate”), but show the graphic you put in there!

Watch this to see it in action!

There you go! Create a game of your own! And, maybe even submit it to the store!

What is DYM Games

DYM Games is your new creative programming sidekick—allowing you to build and present engaging, reusable and customizable games that are ready in minutes and good for groups of all sizes (from 5 to 5,000!). All easily-operated from your computer. We believe DYM Games is one of the best youth ministry tools around–If it’s not already.

Start Your FREE Trial Today

Don’t take our word for it. Try it for yourself! Download the DYM Games app today and you’ll have full access to try Trivia and other great games (including Emoji Hunt, Poser, Survey Says, Pixelate and more!) Build and customize your own incredible and engaging games in just a few clicks.


Download DYM Games


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2 May 2017

DYM Games – Trivia

By |2017-05-01T17:53:04-07:00May 2nd, 2017|Games, Youth Ministry Resources|1 Comment

It’s that time again! We’ve worked hard to push out another HUUUGE UPDATE to DYM Games. In this version (1.6.0) we’re introducing Trivia!

Trivia

Trivia is nothing new. You can make a trivia based game in PowerPoint and ProPresenter. But, those aren’t made to do trivia. With DYM Games’ Trivia, you can create a game in seconds. You can edit that game super fast. And there are a few other bells and whistles that aren’t available in those other apps.

  • Games can have as many questions as you want. Each question can have 2-5 possible answers, one being correct.
  • Everything is designed and formatted for you. Choose a theme that works best for that game! Things just work!
  • Choose a background from our selection. Or add your own background!
  • Display the answer chosen by the contestant. Let the computer show if it’s right or wrong.

Check out this video to see Trivia in action!

Other features and improvements

  • Title Graphics are now customizable! You can now make every game your own! Find out more here.
  • New updating engine. Now you’ll know when a new version is ready for you within the app.
  • Revamped login. Now the app is more stable when starting it up for the first time.
  • Tons of speed improvements.

How do I get the update

To update, all you need to do it start up DYM Games with an internet connection. You’ll get a notification that says an update has been downloaded. Simply restart the app and you’ll have the new version!

What is DYM Games

DYM Games is your new creative programming sidekick—allowing you to build and present engaging, reusable and customizable games that are ready in minutes and good for groups of all sizes (from 5 to 5,000!). All easily-operated from your computer. We believe DYM Games is one of the best youth ministry tools around–If it’s not already.

Start Your FREE Trial Today

Don’t take our word for it. Try it for yourself! Download the DYM Games app today and you’ll have full access to try Trivia and other great games (including Emoji Hunt, Poser, Survey Says, Pixelate and more!) Build and customize your own incredible and engaging games in just a few clicks.


Download DYM Games


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13 Apr 2017

Introducing DYM University

By |2017-04-12T15:15:03-07:00April 13th, 2017|Training, Volunteers, Youth Ministry Resources|0 Comments

In all my years of youth ministry, I have tried all types of methods and technologies to deliver important training to my volunteers.

Well-trained leaders have always been crucial to my ministry, and it’s always been a tension to get them the training they need. Trained leaders are better leaders.

Which is why I’m THRILLED to unveil this brand-new training tool from Download Youth Ministry:

INTRODUCING DYM UNIVERSITY!

We have created the training. 10-minute on-demand video sessions taught by some of the leading voices in Youth Ministry… Reggie Joiner, Katie Edwards, Heather Flies, Chap Clark, Walt Mueller, the list is pretty impressive and it’s growing every week. Also, Josh Griffin and myself teach several of the courses.

There are some really good courses for you and your leaders. All you need to do is choose the training that’s right for you and/or identify the best next step for each of your leaders.

We’ve made it SUPER EASY for you to SHARE these trainings with your leaders. Now, they can get the training they need and access it anywhere there is internet on their device of choice. So simple.

We’ve also created a church-wide license so you can train ALL of your leaders with this one turn-key tool.
DYMU was created to make your job a little easier while making your leaders a lot stronger. Just add Wifi and DYMU will help you move your leaders from rookies to pros.

We’d love for you to try it for FREE with “Understanding Relational Ministry.”

DYM U Free Session

 

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