Sunday, August 17, 2014

Product Review: Simply Youth Group


Awhile back I received an email from Simply Youth Ministry. While at my previous church, where I was a bivocational youth minister, we participated in a Group Mission's Trip. While there I filled out information including the fact that I was bivocational. Prior to my last church, I was a volunteer youth minister at a small church. So to say I have a special spot in my heart for bivocational and volunteer youth ministers is an understatement.

In this email the crew at SYM were laying out the vision of a new product they were working on and they needed beta testers. This product was a curriculum developed to help bi-vo and volunteer youth pastors in their ministry. It was to be a video based curriculum which was basically a youth group in a box. It starts off with a simple game, then goes into a video lesson usually including an inspirational video, then it goes into a discussion time, and then a scripture tie in. It requires little to no preparation time for the youth minister, thus freeing them up to spend more time focusing on building relationships with their youth group.

As I am reading this email I am thinking, "What a tremendous resource!" I could not think of anything better as a bi-vo youth pastor at the time that could help me spend more time with my students than a lesson that required no prep on my part. Why? Because we are busy!

The time in my life I am talking about was a very busy time. I worked a full time job from 7AM until around 5:30PM every day Mon-Sat with one day off, I was a part time youth minister at a church that was around 20 minutes from my house, I was a full time college student taking classes online every night, and was married with two young children which included all the trappings of family life; soccer games, karate classes, and school events. So what little time I had free was usually spent preparing youth minister lessons or events.

The benefit of Simply Youth Group cannot be understated. More free time for you to spend building relationships with your students. To me that is worth an immeasurable amount of money. But $40 a month is a very cheap price to pay for a top notch curriculum. That is only $10 a week! Skip McDonald's for dinner one night and your set!

Go over to http://www.simplyyouthgroup.com and check it out! Score yourself a free month trial while your there and see how good it is for yourself!

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