Weekend Teaching Series: How NOT to Get Grounded (series premiere, week 1 of 4)

Sermon Synopsis: This week I got to speak for the first time in JH this year and it was a total blast! I gave a new talk called “make good choices” and spoke from the book of Proverbs on how we can avoid getting grounded by walking with Jesus each step of the way. I compared the wise to the foolish, and had a few pictures of what wisdom (Chick-Fil-A, catchy tunes) looks like vs foolish (Popeyes, face tattoos). Students seem to respond well to the talk and there was good discussion around tables for the 10m at the end of the service.

Service Length: 61 minutes

Element of Fun/Positive Environment: This week we played DYM’s Super Bowel in honor of the big game happening this past weekend as well as a few rounds of Impossible Shot. Both games absolutely crushed and kids were surprisingly into dietary fiber. We’re going to really expand impossible shot in the future and make it a semi-regular segment as well. This week was SUPER fun, engaging and silly. The students were eating it up!

Music Playlist: Freedom

Volunteer Involvement: We had a few new volunteers this week! We’re pushing hard to have 12 volunteers at each fo the 4 services every weekend, and this week we came super close! We had some people checking things out, and some faithfuls as well. We used a high school student leader on stage with Cooper to co-host the game and that went super well. VERY happy to see the boost, now we’re got to give them mission critical roles and prep them well for the discussion time to help them stick!

Favorite Moment: I loved the fact that students are really digging the two things we’ve asked them to do this New Year so far: 1) check in with their (or their parent’s) phone number and get a name tag, and 2) share a little bit of what they learned from The Weeknd service with their parents. There’s a note/announcements for parents each week on the back of the program, and I’m continually surprised that kids talk to their parents and then text in “WETALKED” to our contact number. Pretty great!

Up next: How NOT to Get Grounded (week 2 of 4)

[also a few people have been asking to follow Mariner’s JH ministry, you can on Instagram right here!]