Mary Margaret Collingsworth, the Girls Ministry Associate at Hyde Park Baptist Church in Austin, TX wrote in with this article during Guest Post Week here on MTDB. She focuses on girls ministry being real ministry. Good stuff here:

This is why I do what I do.
When people ask me what my job is, I get interesting responses. Most of the people in the church think I’m an intern or an assistant, and people outside of the church don’t understand how Girls Ministry can be a “real job.”

Well, I saw this excerpt from a photo essay by journalist Robin Bowman, entitled It’s Complicated: The American Teenager. She spent almost four years interviewing over 400 teenagers to be a part of this photo essay.

The excerpts that I read were absolutely heartbreaking, and a great reminder of why I’m so thankful that God has called me to do what I do. There are so many hurting teenagers out there who feel like they have no one to turn to, no one to talk to, and that the world has turned its back on them. I pray that they see us as a place of safety and refuge. A place where they don’t feel judged, but where they will hear about the saving grace of Jesus Christ and how he can take the broken pieces of their lives and make something beautiful out of them.

Because the truth of the matter is, if we look at our lives, at some point we’ve all been just as broken. We’ve all screwed up big time in our lives, and I think we do teenagers such a disservice to categorize sin like we do. We’ve come up with a rating scale for sin, and feel like our sins couldn’t be half as bad as theirs are, so we feel better about ourselves. Not so in God’s eyes. I wish we could grasp this… I think we would be much more compassionate towards others if we did. I’ll be the first to admit that I struggle with this, but it’s something that I’m consciously working on.

Anyway, take a look at this photo essay… I hope that it breaks your heart for teenagers like it has broken mine.

I desire for each of the girls in our ministry to know who she is… first of all in Christ. If she knows that, she can face the world like a champ, and the rest of the issues don’t seem quite as scary or huge.

And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds
Hebrews 10:24

JG

Joe Thompson sent in this article about some growing pains they are having in their youth ministry these days.

Recently, because of a few factors, there has been a dynamic shifted in our youth group. With this dynamic shift we’ve begun to encounter some behavior issues. Thankfully, the extent of the problems we’ve faced have been nothing more than disruptive behavior like talkativeness, goofing off, and things like that. Though these problems can seem minor they can quickly begin to wear down volunteers and cultivate a culture of disrespect in a youth group.

So, through some reading on the issue (Les Christie’s “When Church Kids Go Bad” and David Arp’s “Suddenly They’re 13″) and learning as I go, here are some insights that I’ve found…

We Want Every Student There
We want them all, even the bad ones. Sure it would be nice to have a youth group full of well behaved, Christ-centered students, but let’s face it; it’s not going to happen! Besides, having a group full of “good” kids is not the point. It is the unruly, self-consumed, and “bad” kids that we need to be sharing Christ’s love with the most! When we get to the point when we only want to spend time with and minister to good kids, we need to step back and take a good look (or have someone else take a good look) at our motives for being in youth ministry.

Les Christie also makes a great point in his book that the high-energy troublemakers are often the ones that end up doing something great for God while the more timid, mild-mannered ones will continue in that same vein throughout their life.

Team Up With Parents
Let’s be honest, we only have a chance to interact with most students for about 2-3 hours a week. If we think we are going to be the only agents of change in their lives then we have way too much confidence in ourselves. The truth is we need to be finding ways that we can be teaming with parents to help them develop an attitude of respect within these students. We do this by first of all letting parents know about the problem. Youth Ministers seem to shy away from notifying parents about behavior problems, I believe, because they are afraid of hurting a relationship with the students and appearing to parents like they can’t handle the situation.

When parents come on board with your plan to develop respect and good behavior you will find no greater advocate and resource.

Team Up With Students
No matter how young you feel or how hip you think you dress, a 30 year-old youth minister does not have the same influence that an upperclassman has. Students know you get paid to be the “bad guy” so they expect you to get upset when they goof off. But when an older student steps up and demands respect for the leader and for each person in the group, you’ll see what peer pressure is all about.

Unfortunately, it’s the tendency of your more mature, older students to shy away from the disruptive ones. In fact, if the more mature ones feel that they are outnumbered, some will stop coming. So, help these student leaders to recognize the influence they have. Remind them of what it was like when they were young and the kind of respect they had for the upperclassmen. Then allow them to help you put together a game plan for addressing the problem. Now, be careful not to allow any student to overstep their boundaries. It should be the adults who issue discipline, not students. But an upperclassman telling a class to quiet down and listen can often be more effective than an adult doing the same.

Respect Over Friendship
We, as youth ministers, want to be liked. We want our students to want to hang out with us and think highly of us. Unfortunately, this desire can sometimes keep us from demanding and developing respect. We may tend to not call students out or allow situations to go too far before intervening or involving parents all in the hope of not damaging a friendship with a student. But our goal should not be friendship, it should be respect. Think of your closest friends. What kind of respect do you have for them? Respect is one of the strongest foundations for friendships. If respect is not there from both sides, then there’s a good chance that you’re not a friend, you’re an enabler.

JG