This is the special Other Board about all the great ideas that preteen leaders have all across the globe that came to the preteen leaders conference. Enjoy these Other ideas from preteen leaders like you.

1. Decorate your own cupcake -yum-
2. Preteen mission trip with group workcamps. AWESOME!
3. Service Projects Yearly, Quarterly, mini ways to serve Trips to Minister and Serve
4. Mission Project Cleaning Local Camp Facility-One Day Trip
5. Weekend camping trip with sleepover one month prior at church building to learn camping skills Carolyn, J12 at Sunshine HIlls Delta, BC, Canada
6. Outreach Lock-in with clear Gospel presentation
7. ROCK-IT! Rock-climbing; Laser-Tag, Lunch, Park, back to church for service/speaker and worship!
8. Mystery Dinner just before promotion. Kids serve parents  a crazy mixed-up meal. Menu is based on theme (is, Nascar, baseball, jail house rock) bonnie@lifepointnv.com will share the plan with you.
9. Outreach Lock-in with clear Gospel presentation.  Themes: Minute to win it; App Attack; Winter Olympics; Fear Factor
10. Memory work incentives: 1000 pt, 2,000 pt, 3,000 pt, 4,000 pt, 5,000pt = Always amusement Park)
11. Surprise Kidnap: Pre-call parents and make plans to surprise your Kids. Pick them up for a special surprise, evening/Bowling, game night or pizza ect.
12. LIfe-Sized Apps: Angry Birds, Labyrinth, Google Earth, Cut the Rope
13. Family Mission Trip: 2012- Trinidad and Guatemala Preteens and Parents serve in short-term missions.
14. Spin the wheel for shekels (or free prize) if you bring a friend whose never been then spend your shekels at the 56 stop
15. Operation Christmas Child
16. Easter baskets for retirement home
17. Two Truths and A Lie
18. Garbage in/Garbage out
19. Jesus story
20. Survivor
21. Jesus: Original X-Man
22. Themes: Angry Birds (Emotions); My (not so) Perfect life; I Survived a Japanese Game Show; Deal or No Deal; Family Swap
23. Mission Project; Cleaning, planting new flowers @ local schools
24. Use Ticket rewards: Give out blue tickets for bringing your bible, win games, answer questions.  White tickets: bring a friend, learn a Bible verse, regular attend, 4 blue tickets = 1 white ticket. Blue ticket box: small candy, small toys: White box- candy bars,toys (Buy candy 1/2 price after holidays)

Volunteers ROCK. Here are ideas all about volunteers from the attendees at the 2012 preteen Conference.

1. Always have Ice Cream Social for leader Appreciation (Then ask if they will return in fall)
2. Great Leaders usually have Preteens, experience
3. Youth make great leaders and make events work

2012 Conference is underway and we have asked all the attendees to help out with sharing what great GAME ideas they are doing in their preteen ministries. Here is their list.

1. Crud War- Messy Games!!!
2. Source4ym.org “The best resource”
3. Everybody’s It! (Grapple)
4. Bible Baseball & Jepardy
5. Medic (Aslo called Aw Fony) on source4ym.org
6. Win it in a minute, Booger Wars.
7. Minute 2 win it games
8. Preteenministry.net
9. Cheetah head
10. Bible Trivia Who wants to be a Christianire
11. Minute To Win It Style Games, THEY LOVE THEM!
12. Balloon Launchers for all sorts of things.
13. Amazing Race Varies Activities that challenge the kids
14. GROG Type “Grog” game into google browser an in the dark flashlight game.
15. Toilet Paper Dodge Ball
16. OMC (Organized Mass Chaos) lifeway Cantrikid Camps
17. Shuffle Your Buns
18. Ice Skate Indoors! Use “Tile Backing Board or Whiteboards from Lowe’s/Home depot and connect them.  Then whip it down w/pledge and have the kids slide around on it with their socks.
19. Glow in the Dark Kickball!
20. Team Competition Format: Split the group into 2 teams: Red vs Blue.  Teams earn points by showing respect, paying attention, participating, Having fun.  Points are given out in forms of balls hard or soft ect. Points are earned by games, quizzing, good behavior or points earned for the other team by misbehaving.  At the end the winning team gets 3 pieces of small candy and the other team 2
21. Dragon Ball: Make a large square 15 ft x 15 ft or a size that will fit half of your students and a low them to move a bit. The other half are outside the square. The students outside the square roll a “4 square” ball @ the kids inside the square.  If the students inside the square get hit, they are out and then join those outside the square and roll the ball.  The last student left in the middle wins.  Then switch the roles from the start of the game and start over.
22. Called “Pig-Trough” We R “PIGS” Precious In God’s Sight
23. Butt Wars: Balloon Game: Nock the balloon to the other side.  But all players have to stay on their butts to move around.  Great for open room.
24. Golfball Pizza Relay: Use empty pizza boxes to balance a golf ball while running an obstacle course
25. Shuffle Your Buns, Fruit Basket Upset, Wack-A-Mole
26. Gutter Ice-Cream
27. Hantis
28. Reverse Capture the Flag (Put a flag in the other team’s goal)

Part of the 2012 Preteen Conference was for all the attendees to write down their great ideas about what they have done with regards to curriculum and teaching their preteens. Here is the list they came up with.

1. Connect
2. Grapple
3. J12
4. Lifechurch.tv “the loop”
5. Also use for girls small group “true colors” by WOW kids
6. Life Point
7. Have just finished Flyte right now using Preteenministry.net
8. 144 deals
9. Wed night movie clip Lessons from preteenministry.net
10. Memory, Mechanics, Teaching Scriptures through pictures! Oscar and Cecila Gomez Church on The Way
11. Preteenministry.net Awesome!
12. Promiseland
13. Write our own
14. Walk through the Bible
15. Preteen Ministry.net (Awesome! Epic! The BEST!)
16. “The case for kids” Faith
17. Sunday Service Grapple
18. Superstart!
19. FBC Elk Grove: Children Desiring God “Names of God” 5th; “Providence of God” 6th
20. TRU
21. Answers in Genesis
22. Dare To Be A Daniel

For the 2012 Preteen Conference people were asked to share what they do in their preteen ministries with WORSHIP. Here are their ideas

1. Loud and Fun, Get them Excited to Worship
2. Lots of dancing, jumping and moving!
3. Hillsong
4. 1shine MARC WYMORE-great Preteen Worship
5. Amber Sky
6. We don’t have too big of a worship section, we have guitar and our voices…campfire style
7. Aaron Niequist
8. Gungor
9. Super Excited To Be Here
10. Worship Activities (Karyn Henley)
11. Word or Topic of the day on a Whiteboard/wall and students draw or illustrate what that means for them.
12. Highvoltagekids.com

At the 2012 Preteen conference attendees were asked to write their ideas of what they do with Small Groups so we could share them with the world. Here are the small group ideas:

1.Games within your small groups. It gets the quiet kids to open up and talk more.
2. Small groups of boys with men leaders, girls with women leaders- no more than 6-8 kids per group. Same leader entire year

3. Highvoltagekids.com

4. Create a Theme For Your Group: My Group is TEAM FOOT PRINTS. Every week we share what foot print we have left on another person.

This question was asked at the start of the conference. For many of us this is a difficult question. We rarely get a chance to really sit down and dream about the future.

One great thing about coming to the FourFiveSix Conference is that it allows you to dream with others who are living out ideas that are new to you. The challenge we pose to us all is to make sure that you allow yourself to dream and really reflect on what your next steps will be.

There is a wealth of experience and knowledge. Pause while you are here, not just to get good ideas to implement right away when you get home or to tweak a thought you heard from someone else but to really process the future of your ministry and ask, “What’s your next step?”

This annual event is the SXSW of preteen ministry. While SXSW is a gathering of all things music and film and interactive, paving the way forward for the next Twitter and Foursquare, the FourFiveSix conference is a gathering of all things preteen ministry, paving the way forward for you, your ministry, and your students.

So join us in Rocklin, California next month. And if you’re headed to SXSW next week, be sure to tell us all about it!

The centerpiece of our conference this year is what are calling, “Delivery Methods”.  And we are so excited to experience these with you…we can hardly contain the anticipation.

What is a “Delivery Method” exactly?  Well, I’m glad you asked.

The first two years of the conference, we were really exploring the question, “What exactly is preteen ministry?  And why is it important?”  Out of those two years came the FourFiveSix community and the “Letting Go of the Bike” philosophy of preteen ministry.

During the third and fourth years of the conference, we shared this philosophy, and started to explore another question that came up time and time again – “What, exactly, does a preteen ministry look like?”  We gleaned ideas from one another, and spent countless hours trying to flesh out exactly what a “Letting Go of the Bike” Preteen Ministry would be like.  What kind of music would we use?  What service formats worked?  How about leadership and service opportunities?  What, exactly, does a preteen ministry look like, from top to bottom, soup to nuts?

After years of trial, lots of error, retooling, bouncing ideas off of one another, gleaning, attempting, creating, going back to the drawing boards numerous times, more trial, more error, etc. etc….we finally have some really great, intentional, and unique models of preteen ministry to share with one another!

And that, my friends, is what this year’s conference is about: Delivery Methods.  This year, three different ministry leaders will take you on an in depth look at their ministries.  Not just what a service looks like, not just what their special events look like, but the whole thing, from top to bottom, soup to nuts!  All three leaders share a desire to convey the truths of who God is with their preteens, and all three want to help their preteens to find identity in Christ…but all three have completely different delivery methods.

Come ready, not just to learn and grow, but to participate and share your own Delivery Methods.

We’re excited!  Are you?

Not registered for the conference yet?  Then click on over and sign up right now!

The topic of Parents or Volunteers is always heavy on the mind of the pastors to students of all ages. Who fits where and why as the teacher, motivator, discipler, craft person or creative genius in the preteen ministry? I have read Collaborate and right now I am reading The Future of Children’s Ministry. Both of these writings point out the obvious answer to parents or volunteers. The answer is both.

The leaders of the preteen ministry where I lead at are parents. They have children in teen ministry and preteen ministry. Here is the point with these parents they have a heart and ownership for the ministry. They are sold out and growing everyday in their commitment to this ministry God is continually growing on their hearts.

Building Relationships

What is the current landscape? Where is all of this leading to in the future? I believe as I have been coached that the current landscape is building relationships and always has been about building relationships. This is the best way to build teams. In the future, which is now, is allowing the students to grow as leaders, build a team and to implement ideas with the help of the adults who have chosen ownership to the ministry over just filling a spot.