Student Ministry
Customizing xp3 curriculum for me!
12:17 PM
A few weeks ago I got the extreme honor of writing a post for xp3 Curriculum on customizing and crafting messages to better fit me! I really enjoyed getting to do it so I thought I would take a minute and share it here! For the original post you can go HERE
But at the begging of this process I did run into a little bit of a problem. If you have ever used xp3 then you know they provide a teaching script for you to use! When we first started using this resource I REALLY struggled. I felt this intense pressure to stay on point with the script so that the small groups could be set up for success. I was trying to go verbatim from the script. And because of that pressure I really had a rough start. My first 5 or 6 six messages were a train wreck. I spent so much time trying to memorize the script that I never internalized the thought it was trying to convey. So the message came across dry!
To be honest my confidence took quite the blow. So I went back to the drawing board and started to process through how to make this curriculum, which I loved, work for me and my teaching style. So that it could in turn better fit my context and what we do during our Mid week gathering! It took me a while but I was able to develop a process that worked for me and gave me freedom to embrace the curriculum but it also allowed the creative in me to come out and put its stamp on the message!
I have summed my process up in 4 words!
Read – every Thursday one of the first things I do is read the message for the next week. This is just to go ahead and get my mind wrapped around the main thought! Then I generically begin to process how I will talk about it and what the broad strokes of the talk with be!
Wrestle – I want to wrestle the bottom line to the ground. These thoughts apply to my life if I let them. I don’t want to communicate a thought to students that suggests I am speaking only to them and these issues don’t apply to me. I want to tweak how I say what I say so they can clearly understand a potentially huge idea! So I take some time and wrestle with and internalize the main thought of the message. For me I can more clearly communicate what I am able to filter through my own experiences. I usually give this step a couple of days.
Process – i process a lot through writing. So on Monday afternoon I write it down. I follow the same format that xp3 uses. Introduction, Tension, Truth, Application, and Landing! This is a guide for me as I begin to write and think through how I am going to communicate the bottom line! This generally takes me a couple of hours! This is a very rough draft for me. I just write as it comes out and whittle it down later.
Finish – this is Tuesday afternoon for about 3 to 4 hours. I go through and I really whittle down the bottom line then I create my outline. I do the talk one time in my office with the door shut and no distractions! After that I make any final changes that I need to make and then I revisit it for about 30 minutes on Wednesday. Just to make sure its fresh.
So all in all I start the process on Thursday morning and I finish it on Wednesday afternoon. That may not be a process that works for you. The point is if you really want to unleash the power and potential of the curriculum then figure out your process for molding it to fit you and don’t feel the pressure to conform yourself so you can better fit it. The xp3 creative team makes it easy to and encourages you to make it better to fit what you do and how you do it!
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