Sidewalk Skate Ministry

Curriculum
We could have a list of curriculum available to buy. We could sell it and try to make money. There is plenty curriculum out there for you to spend money on as it is. However our philosophy when it comes to a message is to be real with our audience. This is born from speaking from the heart, where God dwells. If you really need curriculum for your message, I recommend taking it as a skeleton and personalizing it as much as possible. Copy cat ministries and ministers are weak at best. When dealing with youth and especially skaters, they will quickly size you up and if they don’t find something authentic they will dismiss your words. Speak truth, but speak a truth you truly believe. It should be obvious, but if we share a message which is not a living and real truth in our own lives, why will anyone else buy into it?

The best thing to develop in preaching and speaking is our commitment to speak what we hear God telling us, beyond that a constant drive to better our technique is also profitable. Below are some good basic principles to apply when speaking to an audience and running your site in general. Train your team in these principles and review them frequently. We all have room to grow and develop, but the most important thing is just getting up and doing something in the first place. Trial and error is the best teacher we have. Build a personal understanding of what these principles below really mean to you. Subtle changes such as voice inflection, eye contact or body language can have a dramatic effect on your stage presence and charisma. By nature you may not feel extroverted or even a talker… so fake it. As long as your content is true to your heart, how you share it is nothing less than an art form: one which you can develop and improve like any other skill.

Preparation

The battle is won on the night before. There can never be too much preparation.
Your message preparation requires, thought, study, prayer and effort.
Be more concerned that the audience apply what they learn, rather than memorize what you say.
Always create a friendly atmosphere. Shake hands, hug, smile, welcome.
Plan on arriving early.
Make sure you have a checklist.

Music, Videos and Power Point should all be on before anyone arrives.
Make sure your music selection is age appropriate, and exciting.
Don’t hide behind the stage. Use the time to greet the skaters and encourage the workers.
Exercise authority if you are on the mic. You are in charge.
Don’t idle chatter.

Pay attention to what’s happening on stage and adjust volume as necessary.
Play music loud.
Always play music quietly when someone is talking.
Play music constantly during opening to cover any dead time or transitions.
Turn off music during message to eliminate all distractions.
Learn how to use all the equipment
Think ahead and be ready to change discs or videos or power point

In General

There should be no dead time EVER.
Always face the audience, never turn your back to them
Make sure you can be seen and heard and communicate with your team
Be excited otherwise the audience will not be excited.
Be genuine and not patronizing.
Credit people with intelligence and talk to them with respect.
Never leave the area unattended.
Have fun but draw the line at silliness if it compromises authority.
Build relationships and be encouraging.

Be well organized and not chaotic.
One person should explain the game to the players and another person to explain it to the crowd.
Judge the games fairly and quickly.
Put someone in charge of giving out the prizes.
Make sure the audience can see the action!

Preparing your audience

Take a few minutes to explain your expectations
Discipline is a process of education.
Encourage certain behavior with rewards if need be.
Have team members on the floor dealing with problems. The person on the mic should be free to speak, not focused on crowd control.

Keep things moving along. It takes no time at all to lose your audience concentration

There will often be distractions, don’t stop preaching. Get your workers to deal with the problem and keep preaching.
Who is your model as a teacher? Jesus
All of your Messages must be
Focused. Stick to one point
- Visual. 80% of child’s learning is visual
- Mosaic. Multiple input, voice change, back n forth, etc
- Relevant. Culture today
- Personal. From own heart and experience
- Applicable Teach application of message
Know the difference between Bible trivia and Bible truth.
Capture the audience attention- don’t just talk.
Use simple language. Avoid Biblical words and Christian jargon. VIP.
Words need to be simple and understandable even to a child.
The message is more important than exact literal translations. Don’t get lost in trying to be deep, translating Greek and so forth. The goal is to share Truth not knowledge.

Bible Reading

IT REALLY HAPPENED!
Keep it simple, short and visual.
We are teaching people not lessons.
Don’t get bogged down in minor details.

Object Lessons

Do not ramble.
Try to avoid cliches.
Make eye contact with everyone.
Use your voice to create excitement.
How to teach an object lesson:
Grab them with a one liner
Educate them about the objects
Relate the object to a spiritual principle, power point
Apply to their lives

Life story

Tell a true story and don’t exaggerate or lie.
Flow between story and personal application smoothly
Stories hold peoples attention, use them frequently. Jesus used them. They make deep truths simple to understand.

Know how you will conclude the lesson ahead of time.
Bring lesson to a strong conclusion.
Tie everything in the message together.
Bring the audience to a point of decision and or action

Closing Prayer

Providing an opportunity for the children to respond.
Make sure your prayers are simple and short.
Give the kids an opportunity for personal ministry during the dismissal.

Developing a message
I suggest choosing a book of the Bible, perhaps one of the Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John) and go through it a chapter or section at a time. Study it for yourself. See what God says to you through it and then take those truths and build a message from them. You can reference verses from other parts of the Bible too of course, but I think the overall goal should be to make Jesus known. Follow a Gospel from start to finish and you will have shared the life of Jesus, his character and ultimately Gods love in a broad way. You can break down the meaning of each verse and share cultural insights if you like, but stay on track. The goal is to show the way, the truth and the life, not show off your Bible knowledge. If you are not adept to research and studying the background of each and every word of the Bible find stories from your own life that illustrate the point at hand. In fact I would recommend this method over any other. Be transparent, share what you believe, confess any area of confusion and highlight Gods love as much as possible at every opportunity you find in a passage. Build as much application into your message as possible i.e. How does your audience apply to their lives what you are teaching them? If all they come away with is Bible facts and not a chance to apply Bible truth you have wasted everyone’s time.

Follow the example Jesus gave us. He told parables. Stories about the culture and world the people were familiar with and used them to highlight a spiritual parallel. Do the same. Tell stories. Find parables in skateboarding, music and life today and reveal Gods truth.

Studying the Bible
The source we must turn to for our foundation in any message is of course the Bible. We must read it and live it. But the well spring of life is Jesus and you can know the Bible inside out and still not know Jesus.

There are many methods and directions you can go with studying the Bible, and each method is determined by what you hope to achieve while reading it. Some people filter it simply as an historical account. Some view it as the living Word of God, but actually still only treat it as a historical work. There is of course great value and understanding to be gleaned from looking at the historical context in which the Bible is set, but God never intended to isolate his Holy Words to a portion of history. Indeed it is a light to the path for mankind’s feet for every era of history, from past to present to the end of time. It is not a report on what has happened or may still happen, but a reflection of a living God. No it’s not just that even… for the word of God is God. He inhabits the words and speaks to our hearts TODAY. Only with eyes to see and ears to hear can we hear him speak to us today, but for those who choose to take the Bible from this angle, here is how I most favor reading the Bible taught to me by Pastor Randy Gariss from College Heights in Joplin. Reading a section at a time, maybe a chapter, I then take each paragraph and ask this question: ‘What does God want to say to ME from reading this? What is it he wants ME to know?’ From that I may find one, possibly two points from each paragraph. I write them down in order, until I have been through all the paragraphs and have about 6-10 points. Personally I take it a step further; I then use these points to write a continuous message back to myself as though it were Jesus talking to me. It makes it much more personal and I find it easier to read through than a list of points. The trick is to be as honest and true to the passage as possible. Of course this is where historical context and detailed study can bring to light much deeper truths from the text, but pulling out these details and viewing the Bible with a microscope can cause a person to miss the whole point. God is speaking to ME… TODAY. Deeper study into the nuances of Jewish culture and the Roman world aid us in our journey of discovery, but they are part of the journey not the objective. That is all they are: tools and aids to the deeper and personal reality of God alive and active in my life. The Bible is not just an inspiring story of other people’s lives from yesteryear.

It seems to me in Christian circles we adopt and throw around a lot of clichés or sayings which quite often we haven’t fully thought through for ourselves. One such cliché is: ‘The Bible is the ultimate authority of God’. Have you heard that before? What does that actually mean? If you think about it, if you are going through a rough time, or maybe have a hard decision to make you may go to the Bible as your ultimate authority in deciding Gods will for you in your decisions, but in what way do you get your answer. Is it really the Bible that answers you and is therefore the ultimate authority, or do we mean something more when we say this?

For me as a 19 year old I was laid off from my construction management job in London and my life came to a crossroads. As I was despairing, swallowed by confusion I opened my Bible for answers. I don’t remember how much I read, if it was a whole chapter, or if I just jumped straight to this one verse, but for whatever reason the words jumped off the page and slapped me in my face. Acts 4:11 in my NIV said ‘…the Stone the builders rejected which became the Capstone…’ I could be wrong, but God was demanding I pay attention to these words. In context these are words about Jesus and have nothing to do with Mark Jannetta in 1997 or whatever date it was… or were they? Can they be both? Are these dead words describing only what has been, or are they living words to feed my soul in my neediest times? These words engulfed me with hope, with acknowledgement that God saw where I was at, saw my brokenness and loved me. He still had a plan for me despite anyone else’s rejection; he would bring me back on top of things. The builders could reject me, but I was still worth something to God, who saw me right there and then in my situation. Can God speak completely free from historical context a very personal promise to me in my world? I think he can and that kind of ‘word’ is more valuable than anything else. It is buried treasure. It took root in me as a seed which grew and bore fruit. That is his kingdom; alive and active and sharper than any sword. It changed my life.

Back to the point, what was the ultimate authority on which I built my life from then on? It came through the words on the page of my Bible, but it was Gods spirit calling to the deep places of my heart, not to my head, which spoke to me with authority and clarity. The ultimate authority was not my invention of what I thought it said, a dissection of the literal meaning of the words, and what it was suppose to say, or what it meant in context, the ultimate authority I listened to, was the leading of Gods Holy Spirit. We are called to worship in Spirit and in Truth. Yes the Bible is full of the truth to be read and stored in our heads. It can give us plenty of practical insight and guidance on daily living without any need of any kind of ‘revelation’, but it is not to be confused with God himself. God is God. He is the ultimate focus, commander and authority. It is to him we bow, not the Bible in his place. We must be careful to what we pledge our allegiance or we could be in danger of idolatry. Many good people base far too much emphasis on the knowledge they fill their heads with and miss the very heart of God in a much deeper personal way. The gate to Gods heart and Gods heart to you is through Jesus and Jesus is the Word and Jesus is alive and speaking today, so don’t isolate your view of Gods word to a short sighted historical document, where minute details about culture and context put you on a platform over others who do not know such things. It is supposed to be a dialogue between you and God, not a source of info you can use to talk about God. Knowledge puffs up, love builds up. Little children can know God deeper than the brainiest college professor. All they need do is tune in their hearts as children do, while adults engage too much of their brains. Reason and understanding is greatly over valued. We are too smart for our own good. And it is our own eternal good which is sacrificed as we put to death faith and substitute it for reason, for Gods truth is not revealed by what we know but through who we know. It is God we learn to know as we delve into the Bible and look beyond the mere words on the page. Behind the veneer of a historical manuscript is the person and reality of God. That is what we must seek and look for behind the humble black and white text, because that is where we find the ultimate reality of our lives; the final authority sharing and guiding us in a very creative and personal way. It is a simple and closed mind that can only take the good book at face value; one that tries to confine God to one avenue, to one method, to a restricted and finite religion. This is for people who play it safe. Who can not abandon themselves to faith, but feel they must figure everything out and that they hold life’s answers.

It is an open and tender heart which finds God within; that speaks to an intimate God who knows us deeply, who is as much mystery as he is revealed, who says ‘put faith in me and trust me’ even when you don’t have all the answers. But for many, this is far too dangerous an approach, too much room for personal interpretation, false doctrine and corruption of Gods truth. Unless it really is God speaking and really is his spirit in authority, then what is there to fear? Is it better we lean on our interpretation of words and filter through our reason, or listen to the voice of God at work in our hearts? Which is really more dangerous? I suggest we are better steered by the Spirit of God alive in us as our ultimate authority. Read your Bible and listen to this voice above all else, because human understanding is limited, but an eternal, infinite God is standing by willing to whisper the deepest mysteries of the universe to us in a custom way, just for us, so we can have understanding and know him profoundly. This after all is the point of studying the Bible.